October Connections…

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Segueing from Melissa’s recent post about tips for becoming a connected teacher librarian, I have a few examples of collaboration that demonstrate a shift from the individual (library) classroom to the global stage.  This shift is possible due to the willingness for educators to share best practices for effective teaching and learning through social media, as we have continued to highlight in this blog.

According to Tom Whitby, in a post on Edutopia in early October 2014, connectedness begins with collaboration. “The idea of collaboration requires a mindset of believing there is room to learn and grow. It is also a belief that we are smarter collectively than individually.”  Technology has made collaboration much easier than in the past, and “a teacher who benefits from collaboration tends to appreciate its effect, and will use it in his or her own methodology.”

One of the core beliefs that Whitby uses to describe the connected educator, really resonates with me.  “A relevant educator is willing to explore, question, elaborate, and advance ideas through connections with other educators.”  Every day, when I check my Twitter, Feedly, or Google+ feeds, I am amazed at the exchange of ideas in the global and local school library network.  It is like a fire hose, so I have to sort through and choose that which I need, and save others for future reference in my Diigo files-with just a click of the mouse, or a tap on the smartphone or tablet.

Here are just a few of the many “relevant” opportunities to explore, question,and elaborate ideas that I have appreciated in October through my social media/real world:

  • Connected Librarian Day, October 7: Hosted by the Library 2.0 website, an international gathering of librarians, educators, and library supporters took place in a virtual environment.  If you did not have time to tune in, not to fear, recordings of all the sessions are available, along with links to other resources.  Many speakers are shining stars in the school library field, so have a listen, learn, and leave a comment.
  • AASL Fall Forum Oct. 17-18:  School Librarians in the Anywhere, Anytime Landscape. To get an idea of how ideas were explored, take a look at the AASL Blog and the SLM Blog for several posts from different points of view.  It was an ambitious task to collaborate via teleconferencing between sites around the United States. Lots of great reviews for Best Websites 2014. Read the blogs and follow the links to see some of the unique ways ideas were shared, both face to face and virtually.  Twitter Hashtag #aasl14.
  • Buffy Hamilton, The Unquiet Librarian, has been sharing her collaborative journey with a co-teacher in her blog.   Throughout the month of October, she has been posting the step by step lessons that she and her colleague are using with high school students to introduce them to the inquiry and research process. Photos, videos, and sample strategies for self selecting and narrowing topics are explored. Buffy’s honest reflection of the successes and challenges of  each day’s tasks are well developed and we can all learn from their collaborative expertise.  Each time she posts, I am excited to see what happens next-sort of like being a fly on the wall!

I know that there have been many other events that get the brain juices flowing in October, and I’d like to hear from you about an event or a learning opportunity that you have enjoyed recently-in any dimension.  How about sharing some ideas here?  Leave a comment, I‘d love to learn more!

Resources:

AASL Fall Forum, American Library Association, Oct 17, 2014.  (Website) http://www.ala.org/aasl/conferences/fall-forum (Accessed Oct. 27, 2014)

“Best Websites for Teaching & Learning 2014.” American Association of School Librarians. (Website) http://www.ala.org/aasl/standards-guidelines/best-websites/2014#media (Accessed Oct. 27, 2014)

Brennan, Lindsay. “AASL Fall Forum-First-time Attendee Reports,” AASL Blog. (Web log) October 17, 2014.  http://www.aasl.ala.org/aaslblog/?p=5114 (Accessed Oct. 27, 2014)

“Connected Librarian Day, Oct. 7, 2014.” Library 2.0 (Website) http://www.library20.com/page/connected-librarian-day (Accessed Oct. 27, 2014)

Diaz, Shelley. Scenes and Resources From the Summit,” School Library Journal. (Website) http://www.slj.com/2014/10/resources/scenes-and-resources-from-the-summit-slj-summit-2014/  (Accessed Oct. 27, 2014)

Hamilton, Buffy. “Inquiring with Students: What Do or Can ‘Good’ Research Projects Look Like?” Unquiet Librarian. (Weblog) Sept. 29, 2014. http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/inquiring-with-students-what-do-or-can-good-research-projects-look-like/ (Accessed Oct. 27, 2014)

Morris, Rebecca. “AASL Fall Forum,” School Library Monthly Blog. (Web log) Oct. 18, 2014. http://blog.schoollibrarymedia.com/index.php/2014/10/18/aasl-fall-forum/ (Accessed Oct. 27, 2014)

“SLJ Leadership Summit Fire it Up: Sparking Creativity and Motivating Students, Oct. 25 & 26,  2014.“ School Library Journal. (Website)  http://www.slj.com/leadership-summit/ (Accessed Oct. 27, 2014)

Valenza, Joyce. “Live From the Summit,” The Neverending Search. (Web log) Oct. 25, 2014. http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2014/10/25/live-from-the-summit/ (Accessed Oct. 27, 2014)

Whitby, Tom.  “The Connected Educator: It Begins with Collaboration,” Edutopia. (Weblog) October 1, 2014. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/connected-educator-begins-with-collaboration-tom-whitby (Accessed Oct. 27, 2014)

Image: Judith Kaplan Collection

School Librarians in the News, Part 2

newspaperLast week, many of us had the pleasure of attending the Library Journal/School Library Journal The Digital Shift: Libraries @the Center Virtual Conference keynote speech by Daniel Levitin. I tuned in along with three colleagues, two of whom also teach preservice school librarians, and one who has young children of his own. Dr. Levitin’s speech “Libraries, Archives, and Museums at the Intersection of History and Technology” was a wonder.

It is not often when a New York Times best-selling author shares the essential 21st-century role of librarians “who are trained in the art and science of identifying and sharing valuable information.” He described the Web as the “Wild West” and noted it is important to have “a class of people who are information specialists… who will not degrade authority.”

In his speech, Dr. Levitin recalled the day when his elementary school librarian took him from World Book to Encyclopedia Britannica. Later, she told him he was old enough to use encyclopedias as gateways but that he was ready to branch out and investigate primary and other secondary sources to answer his questions. In the information overload developed world of today, Dr. Levitin says the “primary mission of educating children should be to teach information literacy skills.” He recommends beginning at age 8 and notes that is when children should learn to interrogate sources for authority, accuracy, and bias. Bravo!

Dr. Levitin the author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload (Dutton 2014) is on a speaking tour to promote his new book. My hope is that he will continue to advocate for the library profession as he travels around the country.

So far I have only skimmed most parts of the book, but I believe Dr. Levitin provides useful strategies to help 21st-century technology-connected people manage information overload and ask the right questions of the information sources that affect our understandings and decision-making—in short, our lives. (Confession: I started by reading the last chapter “Everything Else: The Power of the Junk Drawer” due to the long-time different worldviews of my dear “piler” husband and my “filer” self.)

Dr. Levitin’s speech and his book reaffirm what many Building a Culture of Collaboration blog readers know: School librarians are needed to help students, educators, and families begin learning about information when children are in the early grades and continue to develop and refine their skills throughout their education and lives. School librarians can model and guide others in taking a lifelong stance of questioning information to ensure it is reliable and meets our information needs.

Thank you, Dr. Levitin.

Works Cited

Levitin, Daniel. “Libraries, Archives, and Museums at the Intersection of History and Technology.” Library Journal/School Library Journal The Digital Shift: Libraries @the Center Virtual Conference. 1 Oct. 2014. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://www.thedigitalshift.com/tds/libraries-at-the-center/>.

Levitin, Daniel. The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. New York: Dutton, 2014. Print.

Newspaper Clipping Image created at Fodey.com

School Librarians in the News, Part I

hands1For many years, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been providing information and resources to educators that will help them guide students in exploring and enacting social justice in the classroom, school, community, and world. As a long-time supporter of their work, I was so pleased to open the Fall issue of Teaching Tolerance Magazine to find an article featuring the role of librarians in “boosting cultural responsiveness” in schools.

In the article, Joe Hansen talks about the need for diversity in children’s literature. He cites librarian educator Jamie Naidoo and concludes what the research shows. Children and youth who never see themselves/their culture in print suffer emotionally and developmentally (20). Wisconsin school librarian Crystal Brunelle shares how she met her community’s needs for books that portray diverse cultures and are written in non-English languages. She describes the benefit of diversity to everyone in the school community.

Mr. Hansen notes: “Some librarians also take on instructional roles, working closely with teachers to incorporate culturally responsive materials into the curriculum” (22). This level of collaboration helps ensure that the diverse resources of the library are integrated into teachers’ teaching and students’ learning and are not only an add-on to core curriculum.

Classroom teacher – school/public librarian instructional partnerships can also help librarians contribute to a whole school/community culture of social justice. This helps students, educators, and families affirm the rights and responsibilities to practice cultural competence and make it central to the social and academic program of the school. (Of course, this begins with librarians’ and educators’ self-knowledge about the biases and stereotypes they hold and increasing their own cultural competence.)

Changing the perception of what librarians bring to the teaching, learning, and social justice table is also addressed in the article. This article and the accompanying toolkit is a call to action and great news for school and public librarians. I hope you will make time to read the article and use the “Check It Out! Toolkit,” which is designed to help students increase their understanding of what libraries and librarians can contribute to their learning.

Speaking of librarians in the news, on Thursday I will share my response to author Daniel Levitin’s keynote at Library Journal/School Library Journal The Digital Shift: Libraries @the Center Virtual Conference. Come back for more good news about librarianship!

Works Cited

Hansen, Joe. Check It Out!  Fall 2014. Teaching Tolerance Magazine. Web. 6 Oct. 2014. <http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-48-fall-2014/check-it-out> .

Image from Judi Moreillon’s Personal Collection

Southern Poverty Law Center. Check It Out Toolkit. Tolerance.org. Web. 6 Oct. 2014. <http://www.tolerance.org/check-it-out>.

School Librarians as Connected Educators

ConnectedAs Judy mentioned last week in her post, this month is Connected Educator Month. I was just reading this post from the Langwitches blog about the Four Big Ideas Around the Connected Educator. They identify these 4 Big Ideas as: Local Isolation, Gaining Perspective, Data Crowdsource Resources, and Model for Students. These four concepts or ideas definitely relate to the school librarian.

First is local isolation, being the only school librarian in the building definitely leads to isolation. Connecting with other school librarians, peers, and experts can provide a connection, a way to share, a support system, and a way to learn and grow as a reflective practitioner.

Gaining perspective is critical as we seek to teach our students to consider multiple points of view – to think and learn beyond their own four walls or zip code. Connecting with other educators through building and fostering your Personal Learning Network (PLN) provides a way to do this through providing different points of view, fresh ideas from new professionals, benefit of experience from those experienced school librarians, views from different cultures and locations across the world.

Take advantage of crowdsourcing and your personal learning network. Crowdsourcing “is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community.” This goes way beyond networking in the traditional face-to-face sense! I experience the value of my PLN on a daily basis – I get resources for classes, I gather data for my research, I get help when I have a problem and tips on ways to do things more efficiently that save me time, and I collaborate on a global scale 24/7.

As we expect students “consider diverse and global perspective” and to “contribute to the exchange of ideas within the learning community” it is important that we model this for both students and teachers (AASL, 2007). We must use our PLNs for more than just our own professional growth – use them to to connect teachers to resources, peers, experts so that they can grow their own learning network and model for their students, in order to open up a world of learning opportunities for their students in their classrooms.

So make sure you are a connected educator and that the teachers in your school are too – get involved in Connected Educator Month!

 

References

American Association of School Librarians (AASL). (2007). Standards for the 21st-century learner. Chicago: American Library Association. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslproftools/learningstandards/standards.cfm

Crowdsourcing. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing