LM_Net

I realize I am also behind on my LM_Net reading. I usually catch up on the weekend and this weekend there were more LM_Net postings than usual, so I dug in and what I found was that after first starting LM_Net and then leading it for 15 years Peter Milbury and Mike Eisenberg are stepping down and handing over the reins. I have only been on LM_Net for the last 4 or 5 years but it has meant so much to me, especially when I started my first library job 3 years ago. I agree with Doug Johnson who says that LM_Net is the original Read/Write Internet. Peter and Mike were ahead of their time and many other listserves have benefited from the good example of LM_Net. I think the most important part of the announcement this week is that LM_Net is going to continue, and it is a good thing. School librarians are usually alone in their buildings or districts. It can be exhilarating to have that kind of impact on a school but it also can be intimidating with no one to bounce ideas off of, no one to listen to the unique problems of doing the many jobs a library has to do in a single school day. LM_Net listens, understands, and responds. Thanks again Peter and Mike for having the foresight to create a group that has become so special to so many of us.

Digital Divide or Wing Fitting?

Also on my blog reading roll today was “from now on: the education technology journal”. I have been struggling with the terms digital natives and digital newcomers or immigrants. I first heard this term back in 2005 during my library certification classes. I thought it was great at the time buy I have been feeling like the metaphor has been a little overextended of late. I could not put a finger on my uneasiness and then I read Jamie McKenzie’s article: “Digital Nativism
 Digital Delusions 
and Digital Deprivation.” Jamie is the editor of “from now on,” he’s been around education and technology for a while and he hits my frustration, the proverbial nail, right on the head. And I am not even talking about McKenzie’s tirade about video game learning. I think there is something to be said for such learning and we in education are differentiating instruction so much that there may be that group of students that will respond to video game learning, so why not try it? The part that I am especially concerned about is the isolation of children, which McKenzie uses to caption his picture.

“Childhood is shifting inside. Some fear the consequences of sensory deprivation over the long haul with excessive exposure to things digital. A Digital Waste Land is a poor substitute for the rich flavors, smells and touches of the real world. Leading psychologists have signaled their concern in reports like Fool's Gold. FaceBook, MySpace and Second Life are poor substitutes for face to face communities and the playground.”

I for one am the biggest proponent of using the technology we have in the classroom but I do not want it to isolate children. While I still promote technology, I do not want students sitting in front of a computer 24/7 with no human contact. And, if that human contact only comes at school with a teacher, then that is where children should be, in school with a physical, real person guiding them in their use of technology.

Mix this with David Warlick’s new pondering on his 2cents worth blog and we may have a real gem. Warlick likens teaching with Web 2.0 to giving students wings. There is a physical teacher or librarian there guiding them on their journey yet, they are then no longer navigating in a 2D world, adding wings gives a 3D quality to learning. He says we need to prepare our charges for an unpredictable future. He gives a sort of formula for this new learning, “I found this information in this way. This is how I decided that it was valuable. I mixed it with this other information to add this value.” I say “sort of formula” because I do not want to pretend that learning can be boiled down to any one formula. Our learners are diverse and it is my responsibility as a teacher/librarian to help students find the right size and balance for their wings so they can soar with eagles!

Livescribe Smartpen

Just catching up on my blog readings. Wow… was I surprised to read about this new pen on Bernie Dodge’s blog, the One Trick Pony. But then I realized that this was the same pen that was talked about at D5 and was supposed to be out by now. I do want one because if and when this new smartpen from livescribe comes out, it will be great. I am the old fashion type who likes to take notes by hand rather than type through a lecture. (As a former radio journalist, I also like to have my tape recorder going to catch those important quotes!) Last week in my graduate class I tried yet again to type my notes into Google notes during the lecture. I felt like I was disturbing the professor more than I was helping myself but using a pen and paper… I can do that... having that pen be a tape recorder... even better! Still, I was using Google notes in an attempt to cut down on the amount of paper I use. If this smartpen also could use both paper and some type of paperless tablet it may be more appealing to those of us trying to end the paper clutter and save a tree! To extend my pondering on “are bloggers reporters”, if this smartpen lives up to half its hype, bloggers and reporters alike will have no reason to misquote anyone!

It's All About Leopard!!!

Leopard is here… my husband and I spent a romantic Friday evening at the Apple Store. Not to buy Leopard mind you… oh no, we just wanted to be part of the fun! Our family copy of the new Mac Operating System, Leopard, was actually sitting on the kitchen table while we were out partying at the Apple store with other Mac fans… waiting patiently for us to return and install it! My husband had pre-ordered the system from Apple and it was in his hands by 10:30 Friday morning! Woo-hoo!
Leopard is up and running well on our Mac desktop. It is pretty awesome. I love cover-flow with all the files on my hard drive. Way back when we had the Apple II GS we made cute character folders for our children, it is interesting to see them scrolling by… since the rest of our file folders are just boring old file folders!
Do I have Leopard on my computer yet? No. And, to tell the truth, I am not sure I am putting Leopard on my old PowerBook G4. I have just the amount of memory required to handle the new operating system and I am worried that my old slow baby laptop (it is the 12 inch Powerbook G4) won’t be able to handle the new sleek, fast, powerful Leopard! Time to get a new laptop! "-)
Anyway, it was fun to be part of the experience at the Apple Store. Of course, I also was longing for the days when Apple gave away their new operating systems for free! Yes, Apple was different in those days. My family and I would sit patiently at the Apple User's club in Kaiserslautern, Germany waiting for the disks to be passed out to members. In those days back in the mid 80's to early 90's Apple used it's registered user's clubs to distribute new updates and pass out new information... of course those also were the days when only the US military was using the Internet! The Kaiserslautern Apple Users Group met once a month (looks like they still meet). Of course now we virtually get our Mac news from Cali Lewis and Leo Laporte. Hey, the Kaiserslautern Users Group even have a podcast! We met at the Hacienda Mexican Restaurant from 1 to 3 on Sunday afternoons. The owner of the restaurant was a big Mac user and his restaurant is now an Internet Cafe as well. He runs the entire business with Macs. He was our hero.
I remember the day the sad announcement was made at the user's group that Apple would no longer be giving away new operating systems... and Friday night at the Apple store I had come full circle and again was partying and celebrating a new operating system release, not for free but still fun!
Special Thanks to Alex, from the King Of Prussia Apple Store... he told me about Apple Teach... one-on-one weekly sessions to teach all things Mac. I need to learn to use Final Cut Pro.

Sunflower Haiku

The fifth grade class is writing Haiku. My daughter brought up the beautiful, tall sunflowers that used to grow on the bike trail across the street from our house near Stuttgart, Germany. Those sunflowers are a beautiful childhood memory for her. So, here is a haiku in tribute.

Colorful and huge
The sunflowers in Stuttgart
Near the place I play

Haiku is so much fun because it can help you remember something and yet is so simple that it does not take too much time to write. This haiku reminds me of my daughter as a little five year old riding her tricycle to the park and the sunflowers towering over her head. What kind of memories do you have? Can you haiku?

A helpful tool or a way to cheat?

There has been some discussion on LM_Net recently about this website: http://www.ozline.com/electraguide/thesis.html. It calls itself a Thesis Builder and Online Outliner and promises it will help students draft a clear thesis statement for your persuasive essay. It then give students a set of directions to use the site.

I currently have 4th and 5th grade students who need to write persuasive essays. So, I took a look at Thesis Builder Online Outliner to see if it would be a useful organization tool to help them with their essays. First, I am not sure it is a good thing for elementary students that cannot type. But, when I worked at the high school I did have students who could have benefited from using this website to organize their essays. Keep in mind that I am not 100% convinced that it is a useful tool yet. I have used it two or three times using various arguments and it seems to give me nonsense back. I tried to put in an argument regarding episode 82 of Cranky Geeks. The geeks argued about bloggers being considered journalists and therefore entitled to protection under shield laws. The guest was Josh Wolf, a blogger who according to the blurb on the website “received the Longest Content-Related Jail Term of any Journalist in U.S. History--For Not Turning Over a Video” to police. I would love to use this podcast to spur a first amendment discussion in a high school government class. But I digress; when I put in the information into Thesis Builder, I got some nonsense back. They took the information I put into the blanks, and jumbled it around. There were double periods in some sentences and in one spot there was a comma at the beginning of a sentence. If students are looking for correct punctuation, and a way to cheat this site will not give it to them. But, if students are stuck for a thesis statement and want to organize and re-organize their thoughts, I think this is a great site. It is no different than giving students graphic organizers to help them plan out their papers. I think it is neat that it is online, it may appeal to those reluctant to use paper graphic organizers. It could be another tool for teachers to introduce to students. I don’t agree with those who think it is cheating because the students have to plug their own ideas into the blanks on the website. At most it helps them organize their thoughts. Oh, now that I am thinking of it, I wonder if the website wants students to put to leave out punctuation in the blank boxes and then it will put the punctuation in itself. I will have to try that next.
Anyway, if you have not listened to the John Dvorak Cranky Geek episode above, listen and then let me know if you think bloggers should be considered journalists… and if Sebastian is correct that journalism schools are a waste of time. It was a very lively discussion and I found myself talking back to my computer!

Apple Tip I just Love...

I am trying to update the Arrowhead Library website and wiki and add pictures. Usually it takes me a long time to open the pictures in PhotoShop or some other program, not to edit the pictures but just to make them smaller for the web and save them on my flash drive to transport to school. A recent Apple Quick Tip of the Week is now saving me a lot of time. All I have to do now is open the picture in Preview and drag the little icon at the top of the Preview bar into an e-mail. The Apple e-mail application then gives me the choice to resize the picture in the e-mail. It does not change the size of the original picture on your hard drive. I can then e-mail the pictures to myself. And, when I am sitting at my school computer updating my website, I can open my e-mail and ta-da… the pictures are there! I can then upload them to the school website. Of course my school district could make it easier for me if they allowed me to update my website from an Apple but that is another story! The pictures in this post are some of the pictures I e-mailed to myself using this tip.

A How to Video-cast on Creating a Book Citation for a Bibliography or Works Cited Page

School Reporter... oops I mean Librarian!

How cool is it that being a librarian is more thrilling than being a reporter? Of course it helps that a lot of the skills I acquired as a reporter now fit very well into information literacy standards. I am thrilled that I can pass on my love of creating a broadcast quality piece onto students. It is amazing that making a video or audio package is now something being done at the elementary school level! Things I did professionally in radio are now in the mainstream. Reel to reel tape editing is now a push of a computer button. Recording does not need a studio, only a microphone and a computer. The mechanics may be different but there is still an art to creating good radio and television. Telling a good story is still good storytelling even if that tale is put on the computer and not on a broadcast network. Storytelling is powerful and seeing your story on the Internet is powerful. What will that mean for literacy and more importantly information literacy? Stay tuned as we explore this new medium. And here is hoping the students will be as excited as I am, as we wonder together if Marshall McCluhan's words, "The medium is the message," are still true.

I remain constantly amazed that being an elementary school librarian is more fun and challenging than being a street-reporter on assignment! :-)

Blogging in the School Library!

Blogging. It is a new concept for elementary students at Arrowhead. But, we will be blogging for the first time this year. How cool is that? I am excited. I can’t wait to see how my students react to blogging. Students are going to blog on books they are reading and voting on for the Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Awards. To see the blog go to: http://arrowheadstudents.learnerblogs.org. Only students who know the password will be able to blog! They have to ask me for the password and logon. I am hoping this will be as much fun for them as it is for me to do this blog. I am also hoping we will be able to post some podcasts and videocasts on this blog. Stay tuned!

Introducing the Arrowhead Library Wiki

I know now that the link to the MCIU wiki is password protected and you need to be invited to see it. So, if you tried to go and see the page I created, I apologize. But, here is a new link to the Arrowhead Library Wiki.  I am told everyone can see it.  It is very new, so there is not much there yet but I like what I've done so far, if have some suggestions I am open to them.  Check out the wiki at: http://arrowheadlibrary.wikispaces.com/.

Grandma Helen Likes to Fish... again

Ok, so I took a lot of flack because the last video did not have pictures of Grandma Helen actually fishing... I did not have the fishing pictures downloaded or with me in my podcasting class. So, here is my next humble offering... with fishing pictures included. If I can do this on my own, maybe I will be able to use the program with students this year... :-)

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Grandma Helen likes to Fish...

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Learning to Podcast

Please don't laugh... this is my first attempt at making a podcast. It is my hope that I will be able to do Reader's Theatre with my students and make this podcast the first of many. I found the Alphabet Rap Reader's Theatre online. I thought it was very cute and recorded myself. It is not perfect but it is my hope that my elementary students listening will be able to create audio better than their school librarian... here is my first humble effort... now to download it to my iPod! BTW... the picture is of a class pet... Munchy.
:-)

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MCIU Wiki

Have I mentioned how much I love the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit (MCIU)?
Today I am at the IU learning about Podcasting. We are making a Wiki. Check out my page... https://mciupodcasting.wikispaces.com/Janice.