Auntie Librarian: professional development

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Henry Jenkins, Kristin Fontichiaro and Barbara Jansen helped school librarians develop a better understanding of transliteracy and reading in a participatory culture in a warm collegial atmosphere at the AASL Fall Forum this past Friday and Saturday. David Lankes had an emergency that forced him to cancel. He was missed.

Here is a list of general big ideas, quotes and resources that I came away with and you might find useful too.

*Henry Jenkins’ definition of Participatory Culture – “1. Relatively low barriers for engagement. 2. Strong support for sharing creations with others. 3. Informal mentorship. 4. Members believe their contributions matter. 5. Care about others’ opinions of self and work. Not every member must contribute, but all must believe that they are free to contribute when ready and that what they contribute will be appropriately valued.”

*Transliteracy Definition - I latched on to one of the definitions that Kristin Fontichiaro had in one of her slides: “Transliteracy describes a set of skills to “read”, create, negotiate, interact with, and understand content in many genres or formats and the ability to move between them.” Visit her blog to view her slides. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know what transliteracy is!

*The Chicago Public Library’s You Media does an excellent job of facilitating learning experiences and mixing books and technology. School librarians can get plenty of ideas and inspiration from the YouMedia programs and physical space.

*School librarians are in the perfect position to “bridge the gap of participation” in reading and online communities. Participating is creating.

*Check out the You Tube Video of the Professor and Participatory culture and the Project New Media Literacies website –Lots to get here! http://playnml.wikispaces.com/PLAY%21

*Jenkins’ Four C’s of Participatory Culture = Collaborate, Circulate, Connect, Create

*Fontichiaro re-mixed the Four C’s above into six, adding cogitate and comprehend

*Check out the Harry Potter Alliance at http://thehpalliance.org/

*We can learn a great deal from remaking, mashing up and rewriting. An excellent example of this is Ricardo Pitts-Wiley’s work with incarcerated and at risk youth re-writing Moby Dick. Read Henry Jenkins’ blog post to learn more about this and check out MC Lars’s Moby Dick Rap, “Ahab.”

*An idea for active novel reading: give each student a photocopy of a page of a book and let them annotate and illustrate it.

* Teach students that Wikipedia is a process not a product.

*Check out Google Glasses! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSnB06um5r4 and Google car

*If a student’s only audience is his/her teacher, authenticity and learning potential becomes limited.

* Charles Friedman’s definition of Informantics is person plus computer is greater than person.In this same spirit, student plus computer plus school should be greater than student plus computer. Are we using technology in a way that makes this true? Is technology use in education enhancing our students’ content knowledge? Fontichiaro asked: “How far have we come in using computers to promote cognitive growth in the past 35ish years?”

*My understanding of the culminating point that Fontichiaro made in her presentation is that Vigorous learning with technology should: focus on content and curriculum, move students toward synthesis, be authentic and meaningful to the student, require a strong understanding of the genre or format being used to demonstrate learning, be as student-centered as possible, be greater than or enhance what a student could do without the technology.

*We looked at an entertaining YouTube video of a student’sHamlet report and discussed whether there was evidence of any of the elements above. Can you spot the learning?

*What does a good technology project look like? Attendees worked collaboratively in three different states to explore this question. See the documents here : http://bitly.com/bundles/activelearning/4

Barbara Jansen and Henry Jenkins wrapped up the forum together. I appreciated their uplifting and thoughtful messages. My head was spinning with all the learning! I know my students and faculty are going to benefit from everything I learned from this experience.

I went to the SCASL conference this past Thursday and Friday. The conference was awesome. It was time and money well spent. I am up to my ears in technology at school and I have been neglecting the book part of my job. I chose to attend sessions without a technology focus as a librarian-chakra balancing prescription. I think it worked. Here are a few of the tools, ideas, tips and tricks that I will be returning to and sharing with my fellow teachers.

At the Reimagining Education @ Your Library session with Janet Boltjes & Valerie Byrd-Fort:

Check out the Bud the Teacher Blog. Wow. (I needed a Kleenex for his provocateur video.) The post the presenters featured, Safe Places and What is Yet to Come is about School Libraries. I think I may have to dedicate a post to this article. Powerful Stuff.
Reimagine Ed, coolness! Check it out.
Libraries need to be the place where students go when they want to create something.

Improv rules can help you. The ones I learned about at this conference are: 1. Listen, 2. My idea is good, your idea is better, 3. Say YES, AND. 4. Ask What if? 5. Agree. (Game Changer!)
Marker boards as creative spaces in the library
A stage in the library? Hmm. Cool idea.
Must get furniture sliders!

At Martha Taylor's session, "Feeling Overwhelmed? Apply the KISS Principle"

A way to practice citations with class check outs or orientation is to have students create simple citations of one of the books they are checking out. Put names on the citations slips, use them in a drawing.
Book citations can be exit slips
I need to be using student and teacher evaluations for every unit I teach with one of my colleagues. This documents what was taught, and the results, and gives feedback for improvement. I can see where this would be very helpful for advocacy efforts. (instructional evidence)
After working with a class, look at students finished products and determine the percentage of students who used high quality sites in their research. (instructional evidence)
Provide a generous circulation allowance for non-fiction items.
Check out those live scribe pens.

At "Research, Welcome to the Big Easy" with Connie McClanahan & Denise McDougal

Think about offering a proofreading service to my students. Require papers to be submitted 24 hours in advance. At least offer bibliography checking.
Try starting with books first when researching because the information is limited and not as overwhelming. This will help students select a focus and refine what they want to discuss in their paper or project.
When collaborating with teachers on class research projects we must teach the research process.
We need to go back to "old school" style research projects and require note cards to discourage plagiarism.
Copy four note cards on a piece of paper to eliminate the lost note cards problem.
Consider limiting students to one sheet of paper per source.
Students can cut up the paper and organize note cards into topical sections when writing.
Check the source cards and then let students go on to the next step.
I think I'll use these suggestions with my "mini research paper" and see what happens.

At Dr. Berkowitz's Keynote, "Change or Start Looking for a New Job"

We should discourage overuse of topical research.
Librarians should keep a lesson plan book.
Document and report the student work that was done in the library.
Use assessments to evaluate successes of instructional strategies.
Programs should be defined, predictable, measured and reported
"We teach success.", "We teach process."

Donalyn Miller's Keynote - check out the slide share. How do you get your students to read over 6,000 books using no extrinsic motivation (grades, AR, incentive parties)?

Dr. Shannon's introduction of Donalyn Miller made me cry.
Donalyn Miller is coming out with a new book called Reading in the Wild!
Great idea, have students make signs at the end of the year with the number of books they have read.
Krashen - The single most important factor in reading skill is independent reading.
University of Oxford study - Reading books is the only out of school activity for sixteen-year-olds that is tied to getting a managerial or professional job.
Reading fosters empathy
We need more reading time beyond SSR.
During SSR, everyone needs to do nothing but read . That is not happening.
Allington - higher achieving students read three times as much as lower achieving students
To carve out more reading time: eliminate bell ringers and fast finisher activities, make explicit reading plans.
We must increase students access and exposure to books. Don't look at classroom libraries as threats.
Reading doors - great idea. All faculty makes one showing what they are reading.
Donalyn Miller helped create the Nerdy Book Club! Look for my post in April!
I need to read The One and Only Ivan. ( I needed a Kleenex just listening to her talk about it.)
I also attended one of her sessions and met a couple dozen new books that I can't wait to tell my students about.

I love my job as a middle school librarian. Middle School students are energetic and entertaining. But, I was feeling lousy about work and things have been different since my mother passed away. Overwhelmed and disenchanted, I was depressed at having my assistant cut, wanting to be a good librarian, but feeling uninspired and worn out. How in the world would I be able to keep this energy level up in the library when I now have so much more work? The students have come to expect a certain level of customer service and I enjoy bringing that energy and level of excitement to my students everyday. It is what makes me love my job. It is contagious.

Not knowing how I would be able to make it all work, I put on a happy face and kept on with the daily grind. I spoke to my friend and colleague Ruth, who teaches English, about feeling so blah and passionless only to discover that she was feeling the same way. She said she was struggling to reach one particular class, and having frustrations getting them to write for her. We have done countless projects, presentations and parent nights together over the years and we feed off of each other's creative energies. I said to her, "I saw a call for presentations e-mail and felt terrible that I am not doing anything worth sharing!" She said she felt the same way. What to do? Usually when a teacher tells me he or she is looking for a new way to teach something I have tons of ideas to suggest, and enough energy and excitement to reel them in. Honestly, this is what happens when you don't go to conferences for two or three years.

The same day I chatted with Ruth, Cathy Jo Nelson sent out a reminder that there would be a T&L Virtual Cafe Webinar on Monday October 3rd. Ah, Cathy Jo! She has been my inspiration on several occasions. Her Facebook and SCASL listserv posts are great. Amazingly, she never stops pushing it out. The voice of Cathy Jo sounds something like this to me: "Hey! Check this out! Look! Over here! A great article, blog or app! You should try THIS!" A GURU-COACH, that is what she is for me.

I go to the T&L Virtual Cafe Webinar that Cathy Jo posted about. Tamara Cox and Tiff Whitehead knock my socks off. There's a great vibe going on there, and I needed that. Joyce Valenza was there! She inspired me at ISTE in Chicago years ago. I have been a big fan ever since. At this T&L Virtual Cafe webinar, one of the many awesome things I am introduced to is Comic Life. Wow! Such amazing graphics! So visually appealing! I can't wait to tell Ruth! That night, I could not sleep. I was too excited and inspired!

On Tuesday I sneak out of the library and burst into Ruth's classroom with loud excitement (during her planning time) to tell her I have found exactly what we need. I can tell she is a little skeptical because I am acting like a wide-eyed, sleep deprived, coffee fueled spaz talking fast and excitedly commandeering her computer. She looks at me like I am crazy. I show her Comic Life. Although Comic Life has been around a while, it is new to us. And, we're excited about it. We schedule the lab for her classes. The students love Comic Life and now not only are we both doing something exciting and worth sharing, but we are planning more exciting things like presenting our experience with Comic Life at the Spartanburg Writing Project's Fall Conference, and making cake pops at family write night at the library! The great thing about this inspiration is that it impacts not only me, but also two other teachers (so far) and ALL OF THEIR STUDENTS. Since I work with the entire student body, this inspiration will probably reach even more students. Everyone wins.

I still don't know how I will be able to make it all work, and maybe I won't be able to make it all work. That's okay. Things are changing. I am taking it one day at a time. Because of T&L Virtual Cafe and my collaboration with Ruth I FEEL better and my work feels more meaningful and worth sharing. And that's a start!

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Auntie Librarian

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Notes from the AASL Fall Forum

What I Learned at the SCASL Conference

Good Stuff - School Libraries: What's Now, What's Next, What's Yet to Come

School Libraries: What's Now, What's Next, What's Yet to Come

Be Contagious: The Power of a T&L Cafe Webinar

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