Sending Sacred Cows to Pasture

As part of the fabulous School Library Journal Summit, I presented a “speed talk” on collaboration and librarians(see presentation below). Personally I find collaboration one of the most challenging aspects of our role as librarians–because collaboration is all about people, change, learning styles and growth.  But as librarians, inviting collaboration and working closely is integral to what we do–improving experiences for students. As my wise colleague Will Richardson, author of Why School, reminds us–“We need to be connectors first, and content experts second.”   As […]

What a difference a day makes

This week our school began our first 1:1 iPad deployment to all juniors and seniors.  (Teachers had received their iPads during the summer.) It’s been so energizing to watch the transformation sweeping through the campus and watching changes that perhaps it was hard for us to really envision until we saw it happening. Suddenly, we can be almost paperless, the internet is everywhere in the building, and students can have the tools they need for the jobs they are doing.   They can work, explore, play, […]

NetGen Teachers?

” . . . These employers know that for Net Geners, work should be fun.  Net Geners see no clear dividing line between the two . . . .”     Don Tapscott,  Grown Up Digital “Our research suggests that they expect to choose where and when they work; they use technology to escape traditional office space and hours; and they integrate their home and social lives with work life.  More than half of the Net Geners we surveyed online in North America say they want to […]

Which way do we go?

This morning I saw a new website twittered– BooksFree.com –which allows you to “rent” books like you do Netflix videos. Demise of library services as we know them? Will people still want to go to a place if they can get the item via their mailbox? (of course, it’s not free, you have a monthly fee, so the library is still a better deal ;)!) Similarly, I read in the NYTimes several articles relating to the demise of newspapers and/or magazines, including a touching one […]

Solar, wind, or electric: Harnessing the energy

This morning and yesterday morning both I had the honor of attending the Flat Classroom Conference in Qatar and the Educon 2.1 conference in Philadelphia, both remotely.   What was funny was that I felt such a sense of community in the chat rooms talking to students and to other wired educators, sometimes more of a sense of community than I feel where I work, even though we were half a world apart, and many of us had never met in person.   The sense of community […]