Not So Distant Future

Recently, David Warlick had been exploring metaphors for the library, and has posited that librarians are like viruses,  “infecting their schools with the desire to evolve.”   While I think that is an interesting metaphor, I’m not sure I want to be a virus

I had been thinking that the library is like a heart, permeating the body (school)with life giving substance, or that libraries are like the air, because with the internet, the library is everywhere, all the time, wherever you are.

In his inspiring article, “Playing with Legos in the Sandbox and other uses for  a library,” in the November issue of Library Media Connection(unfortunately the article is not online)  librarian Bob Hassett eloquently describes  the who, what when, where, why and how of the 21st century library.

He envisions the library as a sandbox, writing:

“The Library is a space where friends and strangers come together in community, to try things out and play with things and smash things together….”  

He reminds readers of Paul Miller’s talk at Computers in Libraries last year, where he talked about a library system being like a lego–you don’t have to build the model pictured on the box, but can experiment and design your own.

Hassett writes, “This is a…description of how real people really use information. My experience tells me that it’s truer of young people than grown-ups.  In a real sense, they build and create with it.  They play with it.”

So where is the library?  I love that Hassett pulls my favorite metaphor–that the library is everywhere, and that we as librarians have to be where our information users are.

And who is the library, according to Hassett?  He tells the teachers, “You are.”   And when is the library, Hassert asks?   His answer, ”All the time.”

As Hassert writes, we cannot limit what the library does to the four walls of the library–literacy, reading, information gathering–should be and are things all of us do all the time.  So our role as librarians is to reach out to our patrons, students and teachers alike–offer them resources, assistance, inspiration, collaboration, and provide in our physical spaces a place to play, explore, talk, collaborate, experiment, and create.   

So is our job to provide a learning sandbox for the school?  What do you think?

(disappointing to say that this article isn’t full text online yet–check your professional databases in a few weeks!)

A fun way to end my summer blogging today(I am back to work in the physical sense tomorrow!) –

I was tagged by two folks for the 8 random things “meme” or game, including one high school blogger, Ethan Bodnar, and also by Clay Burrell.  Here are the rules:

THE RULES
1. Post these rules before you give your facts.
2. List 8 random facts about yourself.
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them.
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged.

Out of idle curiosity, I looked up the “8 random things” meme on Google, and found that there were 183,000 websites referencing this game of tag.   I browsed down some of the list, trying to find the earliest mention of it I could, running across all sorts of blogs on the way, including several librarian blogs, a blog about living in Africa, some religious blogs, a blog by a cancer survivor, blogs by midwives, mom blogs, book lovers blogs, knitting blogs, blogs about marketing, etc.

After I answer this, in a few days, when you search “8 random things” and “blogs” I imagine my post will come up somewhere.  (I saw Christian Long’s on think:lab as I was browsing through the Google Hits–and coincidentally, Christian tagged Ethan, and Ethan tagged me.)

The earliest response to this game I could find was in May, around May 16, though I’m sure if I’d had hours to spend, I could have found one from well before that.  It interested me that as I was digging deep into the Google results, there weren’t very many education bloggers represented in the earliest versions of the game, though there were some librarians, and quite a few just ‘regular’ bloggers.  

So I wonder if it took awhile to get around to the educational bloggers getting “tagged” and just why that might be.  Just curious about that–why would midwives and stitchery afficianados get tagged before technology educators?  I wonder if it’s the same with every meme or does it depend where it begins? (probably).   Or are we not as “in the loop” as we might think we are?

Ok, enough of the random musings….here are my 8 random things:

1.  I’m catching a cold, the day before I have to return to work, bad timing.  While this is a temporal “random thing,” it is the one most on my mind.  I’m quite annoyed about it.

2.  I was raised dreaming of travel.  My family’s idea of a fun night out would be going to the airport to stand on the rooftop deck(in those days you could) and watch the planes take off.  I like planning travel, thinking about travel, and finding interesting places to go.  Unfortunately, I don’t really enjoy actually flying.  Kind of a conundrum, there.  But I do fly

3.  I have an unexplained and strange obsession with the Iditarod, which I mentioned in the last game of tag.  

4.  I worked in an ice cream parlor in high school.  My dinner each night would consist of a pint of lime sherbet.  I’m not a huge fan of ice cream anymore.

5.  I’m fascinated by art museums.  I just like being in the space, not just entirely for the art but for the ambiance as well.  My favorite nearby one is the McNay Art Institute in San Antonio, where my grandmother used to take me when I was growing up.  I still go there several times a year–it’s a beautiful setting with a really nice Impressionist exhibit.

6.  I wish I had an iPhone.  (coveting one, actually)

7.  The Monterey Aquarium is one of my favorite places.  I love visiting aquariums, but it is by far my favorite.  I love that it is in an old cannery and that you can go out on the back decks and see the sea otters.  I also love sea otters.

8.  I could eat Mexican food every day.  (often, I do.)  I’m finishing this right at dinner time and pondering where I could have Mexican food tonight.

This is about as random as it gets–blame it on the cold ;) But if the point is to get to know other people whose blogs you read slightly better, perhaps those random facts helped?

Now I need to tap 8 people.   I’m going to tap Joel, Margie, Vicky, Karl, PjHiggins, Diane Cordell, Dennis Draper and Konrad Glogowski.

 I was going to tag Jennifer Wagner who I met at NECC(one of the WomenoftheWeb) but someone beat me to it!

I’m also wondering–what our students would say if we asked them to write down 8 random things about themselves?

  Yesterday was a unique event which the library hosts every May — Dylan Day.

If you aren’t familiar with it or aren’t from our campus, Dylan Day is a celebration of community and music, where teachers and students play and share Bob Dylan music for an entire day.   It is the brainchild of one of our English teachers, Bill Martin.  The library hosts it, moves out most of our furniture,  and closes for “normal activities” during the day, which is quite an undertaking.

Why do we do it?   Bill asked several of us to write reflections to share with students about what it means to us.   I wrote both about Dylan Day and about my grandmother, who has been very ill recently.  I thought about her sense of fun and play and how she liked to be part of a community. 

I reflected that I very happily open up the library for this because this day is about the kind of play that builds community for our school –it’s not about perfection, competition, achievement tests, or even really about performances.  It’s about sharing something together.  It’s a day that builds community for our campus in a very unique way.  

   When I look out every year over a sea of high school students sitting on the library floor, singing “Blowin in the Wind,” I am always amazed at how much warmth and openness Dylan Day brings to our school.   To see students (and teachers) work up the courage to sing in front of everyone, to see their friends singing along, and to see the cooperation involved is a powerful experience.

My grandmother died yesterday just minutes after Dylan Day ended.  She was 105.  Though sometimes in the last few days she “pretended we never have met” as the Dylan song goes, I’ll celebrate and remember her sense of humor and love of family and community, and the fact that somehow she got to share Dylan Day with all of us.

Thanks, Bill, for bringing us all together once again.

   I’m reaching the point in the school year where I’ve been driving hard and am getting pretty worn out, as I’m sure a lot of people are, even though I love what I’m doing.

So I was really interested to run across this post at Fischbowl regarding the role of play in education.   Karl Fisch highlights a post by his school district’s CIO, Dan Maas, who beautifully illustrates how the love of something is often born from having time to “play” at it early on.

In our earnestness this time of year, it’s easy to get so focused on goals that we forget the power and value of play for our students or for ourselves, for that matter. 

ForestForTrees, who created the photo from Flickr.com above, reminds us of the definition of play in his photo comments:

“Play consists of…
* “Activities not consciously performed for the sake of any result beyond themselves” (Dewey)
* “Instinctive practice, without serious intent, of activities which will later be essential to life” (Groos).
Source: Definitions of Play and Pretense“

But in his comments on Karl’s post, Barry Bachenheimer notices how often we call things we do in school “work.”

“‘Do your work’, ‘Home work’, ‘Turn in your work.’ Learning is seen as a task and not as an enjoyable activity.”

I think therein lies a real challenge for us with students.  How can we reengage that sense of play?

The other challenge this thread of commentary raises for me is  ”our work” as educators.  Do we ever think of it as play?  Do we still enjoy learning, tinkering around with things, or figuring things out?   Aren’t we more inspired and enthusiastic when we can do that?

It’s a special challenge this time of year to remember to let ourselves play, to slow down and enjoy a moment, to do something for the sheer enjoyment of it, whether at “work” or elsewhere.  But we all need to take time out to “sharpen the saw” as Stephen Covey puts it, and bring the energy we gain from our play back into our classrooms and schools.

I’ve been too tired to post much lately but I noticed when I was reading about play how much it energized me.  Perhaps even the mere notion of play can relax us?  Food for thought….