Some Last Thoughts on the Future of Libraries in Schools

I wrote in earlier blogs about being displaced and "re-placed" to a new library. Like many in the district I will be the only librarian on staff with no assistant to handle the clerical/administrative duties all libraries have.

Many of us in the district are concerned about the ability to bring the level of information instruction to the students and staff that they require and deserve. There is a underlying concern that those at the budgetary levels will feel that the program can be adequately served by a clerk who checks out books and keeps the library looking nice and organized. Only time will tell. All I can say is that I will give it my best and hope for the best.

Three Cups of Tea

I recently finished reading Greg Mortenson's book Three Cups of Tea. If you are not familiar with the book, Mortenson was a mountain climber who became lost after a failed attempt to scale K2 in Pakistan. Separated from his climbing party, he ultimately ended up in a remote village where he was nursed back to health. In gratitude for their care, Mortenson asked what their most pressing need was and when he found out that it was a school for the village's children, he began a quest to fulfill that it. Ultimately this passion lead to the creation of a program called the Central Asia Institute. Mortenson and the CAI have built hundreds of schools in the mountainous regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan to educate both boys and girls.

What struck me about the both the adults and children in these areas is the intensity of their desire and the perseverance to receive an education despite overwhelm obstacles-not only mountainous terrain, but war, poverty, and often a religious culture that discourages the education of women in addition to the teaching of certain subjects. For example in 2003 he took a donation of textbooks to medical school in Khabal, Afghanistan. Until recently the Taliban had monitored all classes to be sure that any pictures of the human body were not displayed even for anatomical reasons and most of their textbooks had been burned as they had been deemed to have unacceptable material.

The book detailed story after story of students seeking education under all types of similar hardships.For example a girls' school in which under the Taliban rule the teachers had to go into hiding. The school was back in operation but the classes met outside in all types of weather. At one point a flight of helicopters passed overhead and the wash from their rotors knocked over and shattered the school's only blackboard. The head of the school had not received a salary in over a year.

What struck me was the juxtaposition between these students and some (thankfully not all) of the ones I saw on a daily basis at my school- "Hall crawling", disruptive in class etc. Or the AP students who blew off the AP tests. The tests in my district are paid for by school district-aka taxpayer-so any student no matter what their financial situation can take the test and hopefully earn advanced college credit. As a proctor I watched a number of them doodle in the space for the free response essay sections, put their heads down and sleep ten minutes into a 2 hour test or simply fail to show up for the test.

Somewhere along the way getting an education has ceased to be important to many in this country. We can throw around all the money we want and have all the greatest and latest tools and programs, but students and parents need to value receiving an education. How sad that with all the resources at hand in this country there are those who do not. It is especially striking when seem along side places like Pakistan and Afghanistan where children will sit outside in all types of weather using a stick and the ground before them as a slate in order to learn. They will walk miles in order to attend school and some of the villages have had to go against ultra-conservative religious leaders in order to have a school in their village so that girls especially can be educated.

If you are interested in knowing more about Greg Mortenson, his life, his accoplishments, and CAI check out this video on You Tube: Q & A With Greg Mortenson

One Adventure Ends, A New One Begins

On Tuesday I learned that my position as media specialist had been cut by way of a phone call from Human Resources. My principal had known for sometime that the position was going to be withdrawn but had been instructed to say nothing as human resources would let him know when he was to contact me. He apologized to me when we talked on Wednesday as HR had never called him and he said that I should not have gotten the notification in that manner.

Thursday was the last day of school and I approached it with much sadness. I have worked at my school for eleven year-8.5 as the media assistant and 2.5 as a media specialist-there are lot of memories and friendships that have built up over the years. To say it was a teary morning was an understatement.

We were in the middle of stuffing envelopes to mail out report cards when one of the assistant principals told me that the big guy himself was looking for me and when I had a chance to stop by his office. When I finally made it up to the main office, he was waiting with a HR rep. to talk with me. After the introductions and the chit-chat, he asked if I would be interested in taking a position at a nearby high school, upon which I burst out in tears. I am sure that that was not the reaction either of them had expected.

After making sure I had heard them right and it really was a high school and not the elementary school with the same name, I explained or tried to explain my reaction. You see when I was first told on Tuesday about the displacement, that evening my husband and I discussed my options and what course I would consider. After praying about everything we really felt lead to pray that either I be offered a position in another high school or I would resign and concentrate on finishing my degree. I had no idea that there would be such a quick answer to prayer. And so now a new adventure begins.

You Have to Wonder

With all the mayhem happening in the school district, I have to wonder what is going to happen to student's ability have access to technology and to learn the necessary information literacy skills. The school I worked at received a grant to install smart boards and four teachers completed the training to be able to use these highly technical boards. Now one of the teachers has been displaced to a middle school and another is being moved to another class room. The smart boards? They are staying in the rooms in which they were installed as it is too expensive to move them. The teachers being moved into the rooms with these boards have no idea how to use them.

English classes next year will have 35+ students in each section. So each teacher will have about 120 students. That not only raises the question of how does one teacher writing skills effectively to that many students-the paper grading alone will have to be staggering-but how do you go about teaching research skills, especially the skills needed to use a computer effectively in research, when the library only has 28 computers in its lab.

So will the smart boards survive, how does one approach teaching how to do an effective Internet search when you don't have enough computers? Well I won't know the answer, as I learned yesterday that my position has been cut and I am displaced with no place to currently go. So our high school will join the ranks of many others with one media specialist and no assistant.

Somethings Never Change

Long, long ago in a galexy far, far away or at least long ago....oops wrong story. Anyway I remember getting a chain letter as kid and it scared the socks off me. Those of you who grew up in the era of cheap postage stamps and no computers probably remember those letters that arrived in your mailbox. They went something like this.....This letter has been around the world three times, don't break the chain. A naval officer in Banga Banga broke the chain and three days later died. Any way you were supposed to within three days send out this letter to 10 people and if you did something good would happen. If you didn't something very something horrible was in store for you.

The letter always seemed to be very lengthy and this being before the ubiquitous photocopiers, had to be handwritten out. I think I got through 4 or 5 before my hand gave out. So I mailed out what I had managed to write out, hoping that at least my bad luck might be a little less even though I had not managed to send out the prerequisite 10. Obviously knowing happened as I am still here.

But what got me thinking about those long ago chain letters was a spate of digital ones I have received recently. They for the most part are more positive-in the next 5 minutes send this to 7 friends and receive a miracle. I guess nothing much has changed except that we can now send our chain letters out faster and with less effort. And fill up more peoples' mailboxes faster.

I Love E Mail Part 2

As the end of the school year rapidly approaches, one of the major focuses of our library is to "gather in " all the items that students and staff still have checked out. Today we ran a list of all staff members who still had equipment, books, videos, DVDs etc. checked out from the library. This year with so many staff members leaving at the end of the year, it is especially important to try to get all these items back in before the end of the school year.

In the past we have printed out the notices, attached them to a memo, and placed the information in the teacher's mailbox. This year we decided that we would take a different approach since many seem to ignore our printed notices. So we went the email route instead.

It was not the fastest way to notify the teachers with items out as we had to type out individual e mails. In fact it probably would have been quicker to print the notices out and photocopy the memo, but I think the impact of the e mails may actually result in more things being returned this year. With in several minutes of sending out some of the e mails, we were hearing back from teachers and within a hour a number had sent the things back to the library. As my co-worker said teachers pay attention to e mails. Hey and no trees were harmed in the process. Maybe a few electrons.

I Love Email !

One of the class reading assignments this week is a thought provoking article entitled "Toolishness is Foolishness". The article has resonated with those who have worked in the education system. But there is one item of technology that my district has adopted that has really made my work more efficient. That is email.

When I started at the school where I work as a media specialist, 10 years ago as a media assistant. At the time only a select few at the administration level had e mail. We also did not have room to room intercoms either, so if the library staff needed to contact a teacher, we either had to walk to the room and interrupt their class or leave a handwritten message in their teacher mailbox. That involved another walk across campus to the teacher lounge.

Somewhere around the 2001-2002 school year everyone got an email account. How wonderful....Now an e mail could be sent instead of walking all over campus. Many of the teachers use email to schedule library time.

I chuckled at Prensky's comment that you are probably a digital immigrant if you call someone to make sure they received the email you sent. With the receipt feature on our accounts, I don't resort to that tactic very often with highly important emails. However, I have learned who on the faculty never check their emails or don't use it. Our financial secretary told me flat out one time that she never responds to emails and if we need something we have to speak to her face to face.

Even with these few quirks...and the volume of funny forwards many feel compelled to fill my inbox with I find that my email makes my work flow much more efficient.

The Sesame Street Generation

Last year I was chatting with one of our science teachers as he was checking out a stack of videos and DVDs. I think he thought I might be raising an eyebrow at the number of such items he had been checking out over the past few weeks, and felt he needed to explain to me what he was doing. As I make it a practice not to question what a teacher is checking out there was no need, but it did lead to an interesting conversation. Over the past weeks he had been systematically working his way through our collection of science videos and DVDs, previewing for use with his ninth grade classes. He told that most of the kids had very short attention spans and unless he presented material in a rapidly changing sequence a la Sesame Street he could not keep them interested for the 90 minute class period which lead to discipline problems. We had a nice conversation about how students of today seem to have more trouble with anything that requires contemplation and how they have to have a constant bombardment of changing formats and information to hold their attention. He wondered how much this was the influence of TV and shows like Sesame Street. I haven't had as much of an opportunity this school year to talk with him, but wonder if his classes are different this time around. You see about mid-way through the year a Smartboard was installed in his classroom and he was trained on it. I know that he is an enthusiastic proponent of the use of Smartboard in the classroom. He may have found an answer to the problem of teaching the Sesame Street generation.

DVD or CD?

Yesterday, I wrote about people, both adult and student , who seem to have bad karma when it comes to technology. I would like to continue in the same vein.

This is not to make fun of or belittle anyone. But hopefully to remind us all as librarians that the people we deal with on a day to day basis come to the library with wildly different technology skills. We can either approach them with an attitude that makes them feel stupid or practice the Golden Rule. Helping someone deal with a techno problem in a sensitive way can go a long way in fostering a positive image of librarians and libraries.

So here is my story of the teacher and the CD. Or was it the DVD? As many of you probably know school libraries, or to use the PC term-media centers, are responsible for most of the audio visual equipment in a school. We also need to be experts (at least in the eyes of the students and staff) in operating, trouble shooting, and repairing this equipment.

At the beginning of the school year, one of the math teachers asked to borrow a CD player since they had received an instructional CD as part of their curriculum. So one was sent off to their classroom only to be returned in a day or two with a note saying the player wasn't working. A second one was sent out only to be returned because the teacher said it wasn't working either. Yet a third player was sent only to return.

The two of us that make up the library staff was quickly becoming concerned and not a little bit dubious. Did we have an epidemic of broken CD players? Was the teacher technologically challenged? Or could there be a problem with the outlets in that particular classroom? With a school as old as ours that is a distinct possibility. After a lengthy conversation with the teacher, we finally asked if it was possible the disk in question could be a DVD. Now I am sure the more astute among you have already considered this possibility, the the teacher insisted it was a CD even thought we offered to sen d a DVD player.

When the forth CD player was sent and returned, one of the staff decided it was time to visit the room (which we should have done at least two CD players ago) with a DVD player to test our theory. Lo and behold it was a DVD not a CD.

A couple of lessons were learned. First that we should have personally investigated after the second CD player was returned. And secondly never send any AV equipment off for repair without making sure it really isn't working like the teacher claims. I imagine our AV repair department wondered why two perfectly good CD players were sent to them for "repair". At least I didn't send all four of the units.

Bad Technology "Karma"

Have you ever met any one that computers and other forms of technology just don't seem to like? Working in a high school I frequently meet both those who would be considered digital natives and immigrants who seem to have bad karma when it comes forms of technology.

One foreign language teacher in particular comes to mind. It would seem that inanimate as they maybe the computers in our library's lab had an aversion to her. No matter what computer she sat down at, it was almost guaranteed to lock up, malfunction or otherwise misbehave. At one point the curriculum specialist from downtown had mandated that all Spanish teacher use a particular site with their students. She spent many a frustrating planning period attempting to just access the programs. While the other Spanish teachers were busy using the web site with their students, she finally gave up in despair.

Now least we think that the problem was because she was not hip on using computers like the younger generation she taught, let me just say that I have met not infrequently students that tell me that our computers don't like them. They will tell you that every time they are on the computer something out of the ordinary happens to them.

The moral of this tale? I think that we all have to approach the people we serve in our library setting whether young or not so young with compassion. Not everyone is comfortable using technology. We need to be careful that we do not make them feel inadequate because they are having trouble getting the computer they are using to do what they need it to do....

And let me also say that this bad "karma" does end with computers. I have met folks especially teachers that copier, overhead, DVD players don't like. I will save the story of the teacher and the CD for another blog.

What Makes a Digtial Native Different From Us Immigrants?

As I was working on the interview paper for the class a thought occurred to me about one of the major differences between natives and immigrants in the digital world. Prensky talks about the fact that natives learn and process information differently. While this may be true, I also think that there are many of oldsters out there that grew up studying with the TV and/or stereo playing so I think the change has been more on the line of a continuum rather than something that happened beginning with the 80's. As an aside, I have observed that my three children all born in the 1980's use the social networking tools to varying degrees.

Where I think the biggest difference between natives and immigrants comes in how much emphasis one places on the importance of many of these technologies and applications in their lives. My husband could probably run rings around many of the average teens when it comes to operating or trouble shooting computers or using certain computer apps. For instance the other day a student using the library's computer lab was attempting to open a document saved on his home computer. He was having a great deal of trouble getting the file to open. In talking with him, the young man had no idea what type of computer the file had been completed on- Mac or PC-or the name of the word processing program he had used.

Where the kids of today especially the tweens and teens show they are native speakers of digital is not in being computer or even information savy but in the emphasis they place on staying connected. While both my husband and I have Facebook accounts we are not on them on a daily let alone hourly basis updating our peers on the least of our activities. Neither do we feel a need to stay in constant touch with our "peeps" as one student termed them via cell-phone and text.

I also wonder how this need to stay connected will play out as they move into the working world. My Facebook, e-mail, and virtual book club posts often languish for days because I don't have the time to be constantly updating. What I place as a priority in my life is different.

Living in the Land of Digital Natives and Immigrants

Working in a school library gives me an opportunity to observe both digital natives and digital immigrants in their natural habitat so to speak. It would be too simplistic however to say that all the students are digital natives and all the teachers are digital immigrants considering that we have fair amount of younger teachers having graduated from college in the past five years.

It would also be unfair to say even the older teachers are not digitally literate. I took an informal non-scientific poll a while back to see how if any of my library assistant-all of whom are Juniors and Seniors in high school-knew anything about Second Life. Not a one of the 14 kids-did I mention this was very unscientific-had ever heard of it. On the other hand several teachers knew exactly what I was talking about and one was even an active participant. This teacher interestingly enough is in his mid to late thirties.

Over the course of the next few weeks I hope to share thought, insights and happenings both funny and sad about my corner of the technology world and its occupants.