Library 2010

Library 2010
Originally uploaded by readerreed

Home away from home--my elementary school library

Top 100 Picture Books Poll Results (#1-101)

Top 100 Picture Books Poll Results (#1-101): "

And now, in order and with linkety goodness intact, I bring to you the results of the Top 100 Picture Book Poll of 2009. Please note two chan...

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On Sara Scribner "Saving the Google Students"

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/21/opinion/la-oe-scribner21-2010mar21
The following is from the LA Times, March 21 by Sara Scribner

Opinion

March 21, 2010|By Sara Scribner

The current generation of kindergartners to 12th graders -- those born between 1991 and 2004 -- has no memory of a time before Google. But although these students are far more tech savvy than their parents and are perpetually connected to the Internet, they know a lot less than they think. And worse, they don't know what they don't know.

As a librarian in the Pasadena Unified School District, I teach students research skills. But I've just been pink-slipped, along with five other middle school and high school librarians, and only a parcel tax on the city's May ballot can save the district's libraries. Closing libraries is always a bad idea, but for the Google generation, it could be disastrous. In a time when information literacy is increasingly crucial to life and work, not teaching kids how to search for information is like sending them out into the world without knowing how to read. Instead of simply navigating books and the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature -- an annual index of magazine and newspaper articles used in the olden days -- today's students sift through an infinite number of options: books, Internet sources, academic databases. Much of the time they opt for Google, which is like beingtossed into the ocean without a paddle.

An info-literate student can find the right bit of information amid the sea of irrelevance and misinformation. But any college librarian will tell you that freshman research skills are absolutely abysmal. Before they graduate from high school, students need to be able to understand the phenomenal number of information options at their fingertips, learn how to work with non-Google-style search queries, avoid plagiarism and judge whether the facts before them were culled by an expert in the field or tossed off by a crackpot in the basement.

As even struggling school districts manage to place computers in classrooms, it's difficult to find a child without Internet access. But look closer at what happens when students undertake an academic task as simple as researching global warming -- tens of millions of hits on Google -- and it becomes clear that the so-called divide is not digital but informational. It's not about access; it's about agility.

Most children consider a computer search second nature, so trying to give them instruction or advice can be difficult. Recently, noticing that a sixth-grader didn't know how to search the school library catalog, I tried to show him the steps. "You don't need to tell me," he said, clearly insulted. "I know how to use a computer!"

The issues Ms. Scribner writes about are not rare. I have seen all of these information missteps happen and for children to be able to navigate through all of the good and bad, useful and non-useful, applicable and non-applicable sites, they need to learn some information navigating and evaluating tactics. It is worrisome that many young internet -users think they already are correctly and completely accessing answers to their queries and that the librarians who can teach them these steps are losing their jobs.

Information=Deformation

Method 12: Reflection and Evaluation

A Dozen Ways to Two-Step: Essential Web 2.0 Training for Texas Librarians has been a great way for me to get my feet wet with Web 2.0. I now feel more literate and able to answer questions that my patrons ask about these technologies. I am happy that I will be able to use what I have learned to make my library more efficient and up-to-date. Using RSS Feeds and reading other librians', futurissts, and technologists' blogs will keep me current. Using wikis will help in my collaboration efforts. Delicious will help me to organize the many wonderful sites I find and it will also help me find new sites--I will share with my teachers, students, and parents so learning will be more fun and relevant for my students. Computing in the cloud opens up a whole world of opportunity for me, personally and professionally and will impact my library in ways I have seen in this training program and in ways that I haven't even thought of yet. I would definitely take part in this program if it were offered again. It would be especially helpful to me if there was an extension of this program.

#11-The Wide World of Podcasting

I found a lot of podcasts that I did not find interesting before I found MuggleCast on PodcastAlley.com. This podcast is all about all things Harry Potter and created by guys who even play the movies in their bathrooms. I found factoids that would be of interest to my Harry Potter readers. One such item of interest is that Daniel Radcliffe's favorite movie is Half-Blood Prince because of his relationship with Sirius Black. I am sure that after looking around more and asking my friends and colleagues for recommendations, I will find more podcasts that interest me.
Podcasting will be possible with my students and I already have all the equipment I need to create them. I think, though, for podcasts to be enjoyed by my students, they would have to be vidcasts because many of the children are second-language learners and need the pictures for comprehension.

Method 10: This Wiki World

I enjoyed this method, especially browsing favorite blogs that were recommended on "Library Development A Dozen Ways to Two Step Favorites" wiki. I learned that wikis could be useful in my library, especially with collaboration efforts. I have been trying to collaborate and plan lesson/units with classroom teachers, but due to scheduling conflicts, I have only been able to plan with one teacher at a time. A wiki will be very helpful in collaboration. I plan to use a wiki to enhance collaboration efforts. I will be able to work with entire grade levels, asking the teachers to contribute to the wikis when their schedules permit.