9/13/2010 Collaboration

9-13 Collaboration

Wools chapter 10 & Empowering Learners chapter 2

The part of both these chapters that I found most important to me was the idea that curriculum must be cross-curricular. Wools states that curriculum units must “go across grade levels and across subject areas” (163) whereas chapter two in Empowering Learners states that learners must, “integrate their understandings with what they already know” (22). I ardently agree that this is one of the most basic, fundamental, important parts of education. So often I hear students complain that what they do has no connection to anything else or their life. I strive to make sure that this is not the case in my class. Part of this is due to the nature of the dual credit English class I teach that is offered through UMKC. Our text is really a current events text that focuses on various aspects of our life (I choose to focus on gender roles and sexuality, patriotism and terrorism, and racism). I have never heard a kid say that they didn’t see the value of what we discussed in class. And it is so lovely to watch them critically think about the world around them. Section three in chapter two in Empowering Learners states that “the number of information sources and the variety of format available can leave many information seekers struggling to identify accurate, reliable sources of information” (23). The first battle I have to fight every year is that my students (from an upper/middles class, white area) just blindly accept what appears authoritative once someone else writes it. The book I use is intentionally controversial and liberal. This not because (as I was once accused by a parent of trying to “make” their child gay by suggesting that maybe acceptance is better than hate)it is correct, but because it is meant to make them think, question, and argue. It takes a few articles for them to really understand that they aren’t supposed to agree with what it says.

This leads into my next point that I found interesting because of what was left unsaid. Empowering Learners states that high-quality reading materials must be available in the library. I argue that high-quality does not necessarily mean age appropriate or school appropriate. Though it is nice to think that our teens are innocent, we all know that they are not. I have heard more stories of what people have done from the child themselves that are so horrifying I can’t even count them all. They are, in many ways, more grown up than I am. They have certainly experienced many more things. The very nature of our society pushes adulthood on them so early that pretending they are innocent will only hurt them. We speak candidly in class about everything from STDs to hate crimes to birth control. They are more mature than most people expect and when word gets out about what we discuss it is inevitable that other teachers ask me how I handle it. The answer is that I don’t have to. They are so grateful to have an adult to discuss it with them without hiding anything that I never have maturity issues. With all this in mind, I think the library should reflect the mature nature of our juniors and seniors. After all, if the student feels uncomfortable with a subject, they can just not check out a book. There have been many times that I needed books or videos for my class that our librarian would not purchase due to content. I couldn’t even get a copy of the Lawrence Fishbourne Othello because of the cover! I ardently think that the library should contain all knowledge and be run by someone who is willing to speak candidly and openly about those subjects with kids who are curious.

Another point I would like to comment on is the persistent issue I keep reading about the high-stakes testing in schools. True, it is negative that so much rides on a test that can in no way truly evaluate learning; however, I disagree with Woolls when she states that, “rote memorization will replace critical thinking unless media specialists can help them understand the value of assignments...” (164). Perhaps Woolls has not ever seen the new EOC tests, but they are the exact opposite of rote memorization. In fact, they can only be passed if kids can critically think and apply basic skills rather than simply regurgitating them. We do not even test over what was taught, but concepts in our school. The tests are all cold-reads (like the ACT, so it’s a double benefit) where they have to apply what they learned (for example, identifying character motivation and development) rather than simply defining.

LM_NET
Honor Zalewski posted to LM_NET on 8/24 a request for help in terms of teaching students about plagiarism and citations to high school students. This post was actually a follow up from her own earlier post asking for ideas from others. I found it interesting that she said she did not get as many suggestions as she had hoped for and only mentioned one suggestion as a good one. She then proceeded to post a long list of citation websites that students can put info into and the site will generate a citation for them that they can just copy/paste into their works cited page. As a senior English teacher, I face the issue of citations and plagiarism all the time. I certainly understand that not many people posted back to Zalewski’s original post for help. People do not spend much time on plagiarism and even then it’s the boring, icky part of English. I myself am tempted to allow students to use the citation generators and it certainly is a better than nothing approach depending on the group of kids you have. Generally, if you have a class where none of the kids are going to college (we actually have a class designed for non-college-bound kids at my school) then it does seem like a waste of valuable time to spend hours on correct citations when the main point is that they credit their source. However, I teach the upper-level kids who often are resourceful enough to use the citation generators without my ever telling them. I still insist that college-bound kids must do the citations from scratch by using a (GASP!) book citation guide. I have found that with the way MLA changes and errors in websites that generate citations the safest bet for a perfect citation is for the kids to look it up and plug in the info themselves. At the risk of sounding like an ogre, it also can’t be too bad for kids to practice their looking-up skills. As a librarian, I expect it would be impossible to tell the college track kid from the non-college track kid so I think that making a handout with a few of the more common citations would be helpful, but we really should continue teaching the old way of doing the citations from scratch.

Cindy Jett posted on LM_NET on 8/24 with a concern about the book The Dirty Cowboy that her principal had asked her to remove from the shelf without any explanation as to why. It is a children’s book and it can be assumed from her post that the reason was not that parents had complained since the principal actually asked if she had two books and she only had the one on her shelf. Had it been a parent complaint, the principal would have known it was on her shelf and he wouldn’t’ have asked about one she didn’t have. Her post was really only a few lines that requested the thoughts of others on the book and its appropriateness. I think the bigger issue that this generates is who is really deciding what kids should and shouldn’t read. I don’t think I will be able to be complacent about what goes on and stays off of my shelf. After all, isn’t it a parent’s job to observe what their kid reads and discuss with them what they don’t find appropriate? Furthermore, even if a parent or principal deems a book inappropriate what on earth gives them the right to say others shouldn’t read it? I have come across this in my experience as an English teacher since I have chosen to teach Harry Potter in a relatively rural school district. Here’s the thing, in my opinion, if parents raise their kids with a certain set of beliefs then nothing I have them read (or, in the case of a librarian, simply have available for them to read) is going to change that belief system. Furthermore, kids are smart, smarter than they are often given credit for. By the time they are in high school they can make reasonable decisions and if a book, any book, is going to permanently damage them for the rest of their lives, then perhaps there is another, larger issue going on that should be addressed. Cam books generate bad ideas? Of course. But the whole point of education is making ideas of all kinds available and allowing kids to think about them and make their own analysis of them. Yes, I know that this particular soap box will probably make me unpopular later in life when I’m a librarian; after all, it’s already made me unpopular as an English teacher. Fortunately, I’m not too upset when others think I’m not doing something correctly.

On 8/23 D’Anne Easton posted a question on LM_NET about how to create a map of the library so that when kids walk in they can go straight to the section they need. She claims to be a bad artist and wants a cite to help her and that the small signs get destroyed (I assume that based off that she’s in an elementary). I’m not sure big, hanging signs wouldn’t work since the kids couldn’t’ get to them and they’d have high visibility (I’m thinking the Wal-Mart-type signs). They’d also be cheaper than making lots of copies of a map to hand out to people. I think the overriding issue here is that the kids feel that going to the library is an easy, painless event. Good for D’Anne for trying to make it smooth and simple. I think that often (and I’m quite guilty of this) since we are natural organizers and have been in libraries our whole lives we forget how foreboding the library can be. It is often large depending on the school district (I assume this is her problem) and the sheer volume of books that kids see when they walk in is overwhelming. (Here I will insert my push for as much downloadable content as possible since kids are already comfortable with it). I had never even considered having a map for kids, but I can see that it would help those students who get overwhelmed easily.

Blogs

Library advocate has a post on 8/26/2010 called “Banned Books Week Machinima Contest” that promotes a contest for students to make a Machinima video on the topic of “think for yourself and let others do the same”. According to the post, “Machinima is filmmaking within a real-time, 3-D virtual environment like Second Life.” As a high school librarian, I think that this is just the sort of thing that should be introduced to promote kids’ interest in reading. Nothing gets high schoolers more upset than being told they can’t do something. I used to teach a banned books week unit to my sophomores where they had to read some of the most commonly banned books for elementary kids and then evaluate why the books were banned and turn their thoughts into an advertising poster advocating the book. Almost all of my students got into this project and really enjoyed doing it. It was also interesting to see them get upset about not being able to read. It was a nice change! As a librarian, I think I could try to make this a part of the English curriculum or a part of advisory with a pizza party or something for the winning group. Kids often don’t think about how much they are limited simply by other people deciding what they are and are not capable of handling.

On 8/24/2010 School Library Journal posted a topic called “Teens use Facebook, Twitter to Spot Back-to-School Deals, Trends.” Though the post was mostly informative and focused on how social networking is becoming a mina part of kids lives that is more important than parents’ views (after all, haven’t we known this forever?), the post did end with an interesting thought: “’ TV is potentially a more immersive experience, whereas social media has the capability for greater personalization, hence more emotional engagement with the customer."’ It’s the emotional engagement that I think is key in education. As a librarian, it would be lovely to connect with kids through Facebook and Twitter in order to promote reading and new books and activities at the library. The medium of transmission of the information alone would promote more student reading due to the emotional engagement and personalization provided by Facebook and Twitter. I’m not sure how logical this would, be in light of the issue in Florida now where teachers have been communicating with current students on Facebook. The school board ruled that all teachers had to remove all current students from their Facebook pages since it was “inappropriate” even though the teachers were communicating with kids strictly about the classes they taught. For example, teachers would check their Facebook on Saturday and answer any questions kids had about the homework over the weekend. If possible, this would be a great way to integrate the library into students’ lives.

On 8/26/2010 Brian Herzog posted on Swiss Army Librarian “Ahmadinejad Classification System”. His concern was that that according to the Dewey Decimal system a book on the holocaust was shelved between two books about imaginary places and events. Naturally, this appears to make the holocaust seem trivial given its shelf space. I too have experienced this even before as well. Often the shelving in the Dewey Decimal system does seem odd and without logic. Personally, I am not a huge fan of the system anyway (though I’m sure that will offend some people). It doesn’t seem logical that we shelve non-fiction under a funky number system that is never explained to use after fourth grade and is forgotten by the time we actually need to use it for research essays. Why not shelf the non-fiction as we do the fiction: by author’s last name? Or perhaps the books could be shelved by topic? Either way seems better to me and as librarians are always encouraged to change what they don’t think is working, I think I might give this one a go when I get my own library. If the goal of a high school library is to be a user friendly as possible for teens, then it makes sense to change a fairly antiquated system with something that kids will be able to navigate easier.

Podcasts
This week I listened to my first Library 2.0 podcast. This one was aired on 5/16/2010 and focused on a program called RFID which seems to be a program that libraries can use to create self checkout and check in as well as a serve as a book tracking system. One of the clear advantages of RFID is that it allows for the reduction of clerical staff. Though cutting jobs is not really a positive thing, it does allow for the library to continue offering other programs, such as subscriptions to databases, after school programs, etc. since the services the library offers are really the focus, cutting clerical staff while allowing the services to continue or even be enhanced seems like a sensible decision. From personal experience, I certainly see the push to self-checkout as a main concern for libraries. The branch of the mid-continent library that I frequent the most does not offer self-checkout and this has often resulted in an aggravating, tedious waste of my time when all I want to do is check out a book and the person in front of me has some long drawn out issue that takes 15-20 minutes to resolve when I am quite capable of scanning my own book. Perhaps more interesting and functional than just the self-checkout is that RFID is a built in book tracking system. Once books are coded, the librarian can tell where it is exactly in the library which would result in a more effectively managed library. Often a book gets mis-shelved and then disappears forever depending on the size of the library. RFID would prevent this issue as the librarian could always locate the book. Additionally, there are several programs that can be added onto RFID that would be very helpful to patrons. One program that is being developed allows patrons to scan a book they are interested in front of a flat panel screen and then a list of reviews will pop up that will allow the patron to decided if they really want the book or not. Part of the discussion of RFID in this podcast centered on the lack of cohesive development of supplementary programs and really a lack of working out the kinks of the original program. All were in agreement that libraries have really lost sight of what needs to be done in regards to the circulating collection. Program developers aren’t getting solid feedback to work on, so the programs aren’t being adapted as they need to be. This issue seems to stem from the sudden push toward electronic collections. There is a massive push for downloadable content, but it seems to be coming at the price of the circulating collection. Librarians seem to be so focused on the electronic content that they are no longer concerned with how to make the circulating collection more efficient. This strikes me as a sizable problem. Though I am a huge advocate of the electronic content, there are many people out there who are die hard bookies and will not switch to electronic devices. There are even more people out there who haven’t the money or resources to make a Kindle, Nook, or iPad logical or even feasible. Though RFID sounds expensive, from what the podcast alluded to without giving numbers, it seems the benefits outweigh the negatives and, more importantly, a strong case could be made for it in terms of finances.