Why do you continue doing what you do?
I became a librarian because of my love for books. My district realized a shortage of school librarians, created a ‘grow your own’ program and I was lucky enough to be accepted. I loved to read and the library seemed a natural fit. Well, the reality is that I’m not a librarian and it’s not a library and in my first library course (taught online by an instructor in a Winnebego out west somewhere) I learned it’s not about the books. I’m called a ‘media specialist’, a nebulous title for someone who is more like a library teacher, and I work in a media center. Media center not ‘library’. Library: collection of print materials, quiet, librarian behind a desk. Media center incorporates more of the bottom up decision making where the end user’s needs drive service. Any technology that relates to finding, using, collecting and analyzing information will be found in a media center, which is the hub of the school. Media specialists spend tireless days helping users (teachers, students and even community members) learn how to locate information. While we’re seen as the quiet little ladies with heavy perfume and eyeglasses, if we’re doing what we ought, we’re ahead of the learning curve. And that curve is getting steeper and steeper!
I just finished reading The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need–And What We Can Do About It. It’s a compelling book about what our schools are not doing to educate educators or to prepare our students to compete on a global level. It seemed to actually embrace the notion of educating for the shear idea of learning as this would be the best way to prepare students to be able to adapt to the current and future workplace. This was rather painful reading for someone in a school that teaches to the test– an 9th grade level test which students must pass to to be eligible for a diploma.
One particular statement in the book gave me concern. I’ve heard this before: that we don’t need to require students to memorize anything anymore because there’s always a search engine available. Well, what if it’s not? And if it is, how do we verify it? Sorry, the greatest computer is the human brain! Search engines are NOT a short cut in this regard.
This brings me to another questionable statement I often hear about improving education and was disheartened to hear our president utter such erroneous reasoning. That would be the need to require longer school days and more days of school. Please tell me what good more of the same will do when the same is not working?? We need to change how students are taught! Read The Global Achievement Gap, you’ll get it! I was applying for a part time gig teaching English online (me in the US, students in Asia) and the interview would be done via MSN messenger. My daughter had a local interview on Yahoo Messenger. In the book, several examples are given as to how jobs descriptions have changed in the past few years with the need to collaborate, make decisions and adapt to new situations seen a important job skills. Are students learning to communicate effectively in writing using 2.0 technologies? Ask questions to solve problems? It’s not just the technology, it’s how it changes learning.
And the technology is a changing. I read an article this week about school getting rid of all library books. Yes, it’s a northeastern prep school that can afford to stock the shelves with Kindles but imagine the skills these students will acquire. Does your school library have an online OPAC with ebooks? Are the students learning how to search databases (which many states pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide freely to citizenry)?
And then there is Iowa State University getting rid of landline phones in dorm rooms to cut costs. Will public schools be the next to remove landlines from classrooms? Clearly Iowa state recognizes the pervasive use of cell phones among students and my question would then be how do they incorporate them into the classroom? There are entire cell phone curriculum in Japan. High school teachers in the US require students to summarize readings into a 140 character tweet. Then, there are entire school systems that still ban cell phones. Too often, these are urban systems with disproportionate numbers of students of color. Shall we talk about the digital divide??About how schools are eliminating qualified school media specialists?
Technology should knock down walls, creating a flat world for competition and collaboration of knowledge and information. This only happens when there is equal access. Too often, decisions block access to those who need it most. Sometimes the decisions make you wonder who they’re meant to benefit and I too wonder why I continue what I’m doing.
So much more at the School Library Journal Summit: Librarians as Leaders of 21st Century Learning.
Cotton Quilts Edi 
So what do you think of Bill Gates’ paperless test schools here in the US? Should we look to private sponsors for new public schools? I’m actually FOR keeping kids in school over the summer, but you’re right–what they DO during extended hours is what counts.
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Zetta,
You ask interesting questions!
I can only answer based on my own limited experience in education, but I guess the power (and downfall) of blogging is that it gives us all a voice.
It seems that many of the successes in school transformation have come from privately funded schools. I think we have to wonder why these schools can be successful when those who have been in the business of education forever are not. I would like to postulate that funding schools through a tax base would provide a more equitable distribution of resources, but that is not always the case. I wonder what would happen if we dropped all the local tax breaks corporations are given at least for the purpose of education so that urban schools could have more funding available to them.
You know I’m not the one to ask about school all year round because I’m off somewhere improving my own knowledge! It’s important for educators to be able to do that! And, if students are truly learning, they need time to step away, process, apply and get re-invigorated.
Paperless schools are a total possibility. If they can do it in developing schools in Africa, we can certainly do it here. The basic requirement to do it is making sure that all involved have access to a computer and the Internet. And training.
I would still want to slip some real books, some paper books into the media center. There is something about the interaction with print, paper… something that appeals to the senses more than a computer. Or am I being old now?
Zetta, what do you think about paperless school and private funding?
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Say it again, Edi: digital divide, access and how students are processing information. I worked in publishing, reference publishing, and I was fortunate enough to be there when they were trying to figure out how to deliver the information and investing a lot of time and money in learning how the end-user accesses information.
I still want print, but I want, we need our schools to catch up. We need technology literacy and that means not only that students learn how to use search engines but they have the critical thinking skills to connect the dots. I’ve observed over recent years how students are failing to make connections between the information they can access and how that information is relevant. Kids are not connecting the dots.
Students’ communication skills are not keeping pace with the multiple platforms available to share information. And teachers are not keeping pace with the technology and how to incorporate it in their classrooms, and I’m not simply talking about older teachers. Teachers are failing to use the Internet to connect with other educators in order to learn what new technologies are available and how they are being used in other schools, and teachers are failing to use the Internet to learn what kids are actually reading and what is being published. How can we talk about literacy if we are not mastering the technology and failing to marry technology with curriculum?
I want to read that book. I have been asking the same questions, arguing the need to get back to teaching to learn and not to pass the frackin’ test. When do we nurture and cultivate the love of learning?
Thanks, Edi. Clearly, I needed to rant a bit.
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I like what I saw of Gates’ school (in Chicago, I think?) and I liked the equality–everyone gets a laptop, everyone’s working with the same high-quality resources. I think that was a math and science school, though, so I’m not sure what a school for the arts would look like..I do want kids to read novels the old-fashioned way, and more importantly, to write on scraps of paper…I don’t want everything digital. On extending the school year, I’m FOR it b/c it would give teaching opportunities to new and semi-retired educators; you teach nine months, you deserve having the summer off. But if you’re new, and still learning, teaching through the summer is a great time to gain experience. And lots of new teachers have the stamina to keep going, so why not exploit that? We can’t keep doing what we’re doing, so I vote for hiring more teachers, paying them more, maybe lengthening class times b/c what can you really achieve in 40 minutes if half that time is spent getting the kids to settle down…it’d be like Geoff Canada’s Harlem Zone–total community involvement, health care, dental work, parenting classes. But it has to be publicly funded and open to all students everywhere.
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Edi, you are right – a longer school year, if it’s more of the same, it’s not the answer. But if we taught the way we are supposed to: keeping in mind how the brain makes sense of new information – we could use that longer year more effectively. According to tests, the students in my district are doing well, but it’s because they are good at memorizing and spitting out. What do they actually understand? How are we helping them make connections?
Like Susan said, we need to focus more on technological literacy. I’m always butting heads with teachers about things being blocked when we should be teaching students how to access and understand information. We need to teach them how to verify information. How to use information.
I think you still need printed literature – novels, plays, poems, etc but textbooks could go digital.
Like you, I’m a media specialist. Many teachers have no clue what that means. They see me as the keeper of the books. They are surprised that the library is not only NOT quiet but kids are active and we are having discussions.
Teachers tell students you need a newspaper source, an encyclopedia source, a book and you can use one internet source. WTF? Newspapers, encyclopedias, and magazines are all available on the internet. Why should I force you to use a print encyclopedia? My budget can barely keep up with the cost of new encyclopedias.
No, all of my students don’t have access to technology at home but they do at school. But we are still using the computer as a place to type papers and do powerpoint projects. Our school just received a grant that allowed us to get new computers, dvd/vcr players, projectors, and document cameras in each classroom. With the exception of the morning news, these things are barely used in classrooms.
These students never knew a world without the Google. They have known Wikipedia for most of their lives. How are we teaching them how to use these tools effectively? How often do we as adults use these tools?
I think we increase the divide – young and old teachers who stick to the way things have always been done.
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