Week Thirteen Reading

Here we are at the last week of reading!  For a while, it seemed as though this day would never come, but the semester is finally winding down!  Bit of advice for other SIers: NEVER take 5 graduate classes at once.  It might seem like it's worth it, but it's not.

As for our reading this week, it centered around the topic of providing evidence for the learning that media specialists provide for students in schools.  This is tough stuff.  Very few librarians give tests or grades that are attached specifically to them, so how do you provide enough evidence that proves your role as an important educator?  The authors we heard from this week talked about collecting data about various parts of your program.  Young talked about collecting data regarding accessibility, suitability, and competency.  I didn't really agree that this "evidence" would really prove to a board of administrators that your program effects student learning.  You need to show what they do.  That's why I was much more interested in Mueller's discussion of authentic assessments.  But in a post about assessments I think that this requires the following rant:

I believe in badges.  Have I bothered this class with badge-talk enough yet?  Badges are a concept that is taking hold in informal learning situations to both reveal learning that has taken place and to reward students for work that they have done to accomplish learning goals.  Libraries (specifically School Libraries) need to get on board with this stuff.  In the land of badges there are issuers (like libraries or teen centers or girl scouts) who provide a system for earning a badge, then they create the actual badge (a simple image file) and provide the Open Badge Infrastructure (from Mozilla, who is awesome) with the appropriate metadata that conforms to their API (check me out with all my 502 lingo).  That metadata then gets baked into the image so that it travels with the image everywhere it goes.  One of the coolest features of this is that you can click on a badge and it will show you all that juicy metadata, which includes a reference URL which links back to all the work that particular student did to earn the badge in the first place.  Here, my fellow librarians, is the best kind of evidence: not usage statistics or lesson plans or even grades (which we all know are kind of arbitrary and not standardized to begin with) but actual evidence.  If your students are earning badges from work that they do in your media center, BOOM evidence.  My second piece of advice for the day: get down with badges.

Does this sound like a feasible thing for individual school libraries to utilize?  Or am I a crazed badgevangelist?  Is this the authentic assessment we have been waiting for or is it just a fancy way of doing what we already do?  Discuss.

Week Twelve Class

Last class we had a very lively discussion about the concept of website evaluation as a checklist.  We were able to chat with Debbie Abilock regarding these issues, and the conversation went in a million different (but all very interesting) directions.  We discussed the use of restricting access to sources through search engines like sweet search, the idea of using language to shelter children, and badges even came up a few times.  What I really took away from the conversation is that I think that website evaluation is best managed around a conversation.  That's why I really resonated with the "Who? Why?" evaluation.  I think that it is simple enough to reach students at multiple developmental levels and yet complex enough to really warrant the kind of discussion that can model appropriate cognitive processes/judgments.  I also think that this kind of teaching takes guts on the part of the instructor-- they have to be comfortable with ambiguity and confident enough in their own content knowledge to start open-ended conversations with students.  That is why, I think, checklists are so popular and will continue to be so popular in K-12 education.

It also just struck me that maybe we have to be teaching students to evaluate information the same way that we, as instructors, have to learn how to assess the students themselves.  Maybe that's why it is so hard for us to teach these kinds of processes... because we aren't there yet ourselves in creating authentic assessments.  Am I way off-base, or does this resonate with you guys as well?

Professional Learning

Yucht, Alice. "Professional Development is a Personal Responsibility." School Libraries: What's New, What's Now, What's Yet to Come. 2011.


The author of this article, retired Teacher-Librarian/Blogger, discussed important practices of Professional Learning Networks, which took on the form of the mnemonic SHARE: Seek out gurus, Harness technology, Add and Adapt, Read, Reflect, and Repurpose, and Engage and Encourage.  Information is so abundant that it is almost impossible for a single individual to take it all in, but if school librarians share resources and tips with one another, it lightens the load on everyone else.

Week Twelve Reading

Budgets:
It is ethically important for libraries to have realistic budgets, even if those are not fully funded.  I think that this was my biggest takeaway from this section or reading.  As service providers, we have a responsibility to make our communities aware of what is possible.  I think that it is important to be realistic about the amount of money a community is able to provide, but I think that it is up to the librarian to get creative with those resources.

Budgeting is a skill that, as of right now, I am terrible at.  I have had to write budgets for Peace Corps projects (most of which were rejected), and I have dealt with coworkers who falsify budgets to stuff their own pockets.  Budgets scare me, mostly for the responsibility involved and the pressure to make accurate predictions.  I am one of the thriftiest people around (have you seen the hunk-of-junk I've been typing on this semester?) so I tend to underbudget and expect others to be as ok with dealing with it as I am (although I am learning that I am getting sick of "dealing with everything" as well (it's ok to want nice things)).  I am crossing my fingers that I can get in to grant-writing next semester to help me get over my fear of collecting and spending money.

Intellectual Freedom Bib

Lamb, Annette. "Everyone Does It: Teaching Ethical Use of Social Technology." Knowledge Quest 39.1 (2010): 62-65. Print.

The ethical development of children and teens is traced and discussed within the parameters of social networking online. The author suggests that attempts be made to help students practice decision-making in a safe forum such as through debates, role-playing, or discussion activities.

Storts-Brinks, Karen. "Censorship Online: One School Librarian's Journey to Provide Access to LGBT Resources." Knowledge Quest 31.1 (2010): 22-28. Print.

The story of a school librarian in Knoxville, TN who, alongside the ACLU, took on her local board of education in order to provide online access to LGBT information. Initially school computers were prohibited from visiting pro-LGBT sites which were endorsed by the National Education Association but were not blocked from anti-LGBT sites. The librarian won the lawsuit and the prohibited measures were lifted from the sites.

Week Eleven Reading

This week's reading from Coatney focused on being a leader for intellectual freedom within schools.  Issues were addressed such as self-censorship in selection, challenges to library materials, and educating students and teachers regarding intellectual freedom.

I personally tend to get less jazzed up about intellectual freedoms than many librarians.  I think that there is a level of appropriateness that needs to be maintained within schools and that those boundaries are really fuzzy.  I'd like to think that I would be able to handle challenges to materials gracefully and to work around blocked sites on school computers without complaining.  It's one of the challenges that you accept by working in schools, and I think that the opposite of this challenge could be just as problematic.  Providing internet access to minors without any parameters isn't just dangerous but I also think that it can subject kids to things that they aren't developmentally ready to be exposed to.  That can be really uncomfortable and embarrassing for children and even teens.

At the same time, I really liked Rachel (from Burns Park)'s approach: let kids use a more open search tool, but first teach kids how to respond to content that offends them.  Promote positive coping skills instead of sheltering them completely.  I think that there is a balance between providing appropriate parameters for internet use in schools and also teaching mechanisms for dealing with the inevitable questionable materials.

Week Ten Class

Last week, we visited Burns Park Elementary to observe the school media center and discuss professional development.  During this observation, we were allowed to interact with the students during their lesson, which included image searching on two sites that were new to me:  pics for learning and kid pics.  I was really unimpressed by both search engines.  One of the students I worked with unintentionally searched google images for her first picture of an eye and instantly found a million results that she wanted to use.  However, after her classmates and I reminded her that the assignment called for students to use another search engine, she tried the prescribed sites and could not find anything relevant and unique.  There were even a significant number of questionably appropriate images that were totally unrelated to the search term.  It made me wonder why those search engines were chosen over google.

Overall, it was really nice to visit such a long-standing school media program.  Rachel has obviously developed a program that is important to Burns Park Elementary and also had a lot of advice to share with us as well during our conversations.

Speaking of our conversations, I am really glad that we were able to air out all of our questions and concerns regarding professional development and the state of the profession as a whole.