Sentiments On Common Sense

I had a nice compliment this week from visiting consultants we had at school. In our debrief with them at the end of an intense week of embedded PD, they noted to me that they liked working at my school because I keep my job focused on the big picture. Hmm… I thought… the “big picture”.   What exactly does that mean?

After it is all said and done, my search for the view from 35000 feet continues to keep me up at night. I wake up suddenly with a start and realize that we had not thought of this or that, and I really need to hone in on that idea further.  One of those is the role of libraries in our effort to provide a balanced digital and print environment to our students.  Yes… that’s right.. BALANCED!  Seeing as how the idea of balance needs to be defined, I was glad to see that one of my favorite blogger authors Doug Johnson (note:this site is blocked in China) has co-authored an article with Joyce Kasman Valenza in the School Library Journal titled “Things That Keep Us Up at Night”. (SLJ, 10/1/09) The article is targeted at librarians, but really has hit home with our administrative team at my school this week as well.  They write…

The future of the school library as a relevant and viable institution is largely dependent on us and how quickly we respond to change.

Libraries are no different than the classroom environment in many ways. The library, like the classroom is beginning to face an identity crisis of sorts.  The role of the learning space is being stretched by always available, always accessible and always relevant resources at the fingertips of the students.  The people who run libraries and classrooms are facing a sea of changing faces, with our students being completely at home in the digital environment and engaged in what seems like so many, many things simultaneously. Some of it good, and some of it bad and some of it useless and some it needing the guiding hand of a

trained professional educator, while other parts of it can be easily mined, harvested and mashed-up and republished.  Johnson and Kasman Valenza note that the challenge of keeping up with these trends will keep us all busy. Again, speaking to librarians they state,

Look around your state conferences. How many of your colleagues graduated from library school more than 20 years ago? Remember what the landscape looked like in 1989? How do we stay one step ahead of our staff and students in information accessing, evaluation, use, and communication in order to be seen as experts and collaborators? Do we know more about current information strategies than our school’s technology coach? No excuses. We must! If we are truly information professionals, we need not only to keep up, but also be on the cutting edge of changes in the search and information landscapes.

My favorite part of the article though speaks to “Advocacy by nonlibrarians”.  Here they write:

Rather than creating a perfect library, we need to reshape our thinking and create the perfect library for our individual institution. We can do this by changing our mind-set from adopting best practices as defined by our own professional organization to adopting a “customer service/support” orientation by crafting goals that support the larger goals of the organization.

Should this not hold true for all parts of our schools?  The best part of this though is that this is librarians thinking about and discussing their craft knowledge and reapplying it to a potentially new setting with a focus on the goals of the larger organization.  This is big picture thinking in action!  No wonder they can’t sleep. This is exciting stuff!

The authors write at the end of their article a bit of a call to action for libraries and librarians.  The word apathy certainly is written here, but I that the gist of the message is that without urgent action educational change, technological change and the variety of political forces in schools will define the role of the library for us.  I agree with the authors when they state their clear warning that:

Our best librarians will evolve, adapt, and thrive in effective
schools. But will they be called librarians? And will they be in
sufficient numbers for the profession as a whole to survive?

From 35000 feet I know that some things will be changing soon.

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Flickrstorm Photo Tagged “38800 FT” on : http://www.flickr.com/photos/20420218@N04/3903688501

Walking down the stairs of the Canadian International School of Hong Kong with my colleage @chinaleish- and if you have never been to this school let me tell you… THERE ARE LOTS OF STAIRS!! @chinaleish had a few things to say about the stairs and I was complaining about @adecardy getting up at 6-dark-thirty this morning to twitter about twittering! (There is probably more of a story there!)

That is when the question came:  “Andy…. How do you have time to twitter?”

Truthfully, during a busy working day, I do not have time and tend to just keep tweetdeck open during my day to check on the people I follow during a lunch break or during a lull in a meeting.  Very seldom do I tweet at all during a day unless there is something noteworthy.  My secretary does the tweeting for the school, but she generally does this in advance on tweetlater. In the evenings at home I often will do a little multitasking (TV, email, twitter, perhaps a blog post, some RSS reading, etc) after my kids are in bed.  It works. It keeps me connected. It keeps me informed.  I learn a little, laugh a little, and relax a lot. It is a little bit of “me” time embedded in my homework time.  Perhaps it may keep me a bit more balanced.

I have often linked posts to the Blue Skunk Blog. Doug Johnson is one of the best educational bloggers out there and if you don’t have this guy on your RSS list, you should link to him today.   He responds to some blog chatter about the issues with being “hyper connected”, which is certainly a concern of mine as well. He links out to Darren Draper(another strong educationally focused blog).  Darren has some issues with Twitter, and fair enough I say.  I would warn all readers that even broccoli will make you sick if you eat too much of it!  ALL things should be used in moderation!

Doug’s post about a PLN Bill of Rights and Responsibilities provides a nice framework for digital leaders to use for themselves, but also to be shared and pushed to their faculty and their students.

Doug’s of R and R’s for PLNs is:

Personal Network Member Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

1. I have the right not to be social 24/7 – either online or in person.
2. I have the right to time for reflection and responsibility for doing so.
3. I have the right to use only the tools that suit my learning style.
4. I have the right to stop using a tool when it is no longer useful.
5. I have the right to not be on the cutting edge all the time or feel I need to always know all there is to know.
6. I have the right to choose those with whom I learn in my personal learning network and responsibility to learn from those with whom I don’t always agree.
7. I have the right and responsibility to disagree and the responsibility to do it professionally.
8. I have the responsibility to become familiar with a tool before sharing it with others.
9. I have the responsibility to share my knowledge with others in my network.
10. I have the right and responsibility to not let online activities keep me from my friends, my family, my workplace, or my community.

So… What did he miss?  What needs to be considered as we look through the eyes of our children? Our family lives?

Thanks Doug for the great post and the help in maintaining our balance!

Doug Johnson, PLN Bill of Rights

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I am sometimes confused by all the new stuff on the web.  I didn’t think I was confused about Creative Commons until my Library / Media / Tech guru, Mr. Doug Johnson took some time to give me (and all of us) a clear lesson on the what’s, how’s and who’s of Creative Commons. The two part blog post is a draft of a magazine article for a school library magazine.  He is sharing his draft in hopes of getting feedback.

He writes in Part 1:

Creative Commons (CC) is an alternative to traditional copyright. The creator can assign a variety of rights for others to use his work – rights that are usually more permissive than copyright, but more restrictive than placing material in the public domain. CC makes sharing, re-using, re-mixing and building on the creative works of others understandable and legal.

In Part 2 , he really gets into the meat of the article.  I am going to have to reread it tonight and leave a comment for him, but my initial impression about his ideas on driving this idea into K-12 classrooms is noteworthy.  What better way to get kids to understand the idea of intellectual property rights than by having them assign the same Creative Commons rights to their own works.  Once the shoe is on the other foot, the students will be able to personalize the idea, and how to have their work shared, enhanced (mashed-up) to create new and bigger ideas.

Nice piece Doug!  Good luck with the article.

Picture courtesy of Creative Commons http://static.flickr.com/61/155031332_3953263b03.jpg

Technorati Tags: Doug Johnson, Creative Commons, Intellectual Property, K-12 Education

Doug Johnson did it for me again in his post titled “One in, One out”.  Doug, I am with you!  That, of course, is true only if that last mint is the horrible cheap stuff served in most eateries.  My advice:  Look for the really good chocolate and savor the power and seductiveness of quality.  Like good chocolate, a quality tool will be enjoyed and savored for a long time!