At the core of working with our communities, I think we must must keep in mind, that sometimes we must initiate the conversations. As a school librarian, it means that you not only need to assess the needs of the students you serve, but also the teachers. School librarians need to seek opportunities for collaboration and participatory partnerships with the teachers in their school in order to create programs and provide services that we have the greatest impact on their students. Whether helping to embed technology into the curriculum, collaborating on a means of integrating literature into the content areas, or facilitating new knowledge being created by students, school librarians need to keep an open channel of communication going with the varied members of the community you serve. If a particular teacher seems reluctant to work with you, find out why. In all likelihood there is a barrier (i.e.,technology intimidation) that can be broached and mediated.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Communities
"No one ever changed the world by waiting to be asked for help." David Lankes (IST511, July 19, 2011)
Monday, July 18, 2011
Access. Knowledge. Environment. Motivation.
As I read this thread in the Atlas, I tried to apply the concepts to my desired future role as a school librarian (I've given up typing "school library media specialist" every time, and I'm not even sure that is still an appropriate term...note to self, look that up!). If "access" includes building a bridge between conversants, then who are these conversants?
- student - teacher - artifacts - materials - tools?
- student - teacher?
- teacher - librarian?
- student - student?
- teacher - teacher?
- school - community?
- student- community - mentors?
- student - author - illustrator -experts?
Using knowledge to empower. Knowledge provides the structure of the bridge between the people having the conversation. A student wants to converse with other kids in a blog format around a curriculum-related topic, well first they need to know how a blog works. A teacher wants to connect her fourth grade classroom in Oneonta, NY to a classroom somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, then the school librarian gives her the knowledge to Skype or video chat in order to bridge, facilitate, empower that conversation. A student wants to research an explorer, teach them and give them the power to search OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) and the web to find appropriate sources.
Facilitating knowledge creation in a safe environment. I think of this in a school setting in a couple of different ways. As students get older, sometimes as early as the fourth grade, in my experience (admittedly limited), you see students transition, from a place where their biggest influences are their parents, guardians, teachers, etc., to a place where their peers and their peers' opinions are central. It gets harder and harder to make learning and inquiry "appear cool." Fostering a culture in the library where there are no "dumb" questions, curiosity is key, and creativity is rewarded are just some of ways to begin to build a safe environment where students can take intellectual risks. The other way of thinking of a safe environment, in my opinion, is educating students on how they can use the internet safely and responsibly. Internet safety, cyberbullying, and digital footprints are all huge topics in public schools today, and school librarians should be at the core of these conversations with students.
Motivation...do they care? How do we motivate students to engage? In a public school, the advantage we have potentially, is that students don't have a choice about using the library. We have a captive audience that we try to inspire and engage in a conversation with, but let's face it, without the requirement of having to be there, many of our members would choose to be out on the playground! As students get older, we see things like reading for pleasure fall off dramatically and their draw to the conversation weakens. Librarians need to expand their programs, meet students where they are, capitalize on their social nature, and use their current interests to invite them to the conversation. For example, if you knew "Justin Beiber" was someone that your intermediate students were interested in, you can use him as a focal point to study biographies or to introduce how social media tools are often built around shared interests by highlighting blogs, interactive fan pages, etc. My point is that you find those intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, and you use them to apply knowledge as means of kick-starting conversations.
Lankes R.D. (2011). The Atlas of New Librarianship. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Knowledge is Created Through Conversation
This thread in the Atlas reminds me that as librarians (for me, school librarians), we mustn't forget that these conversations are at the core of our success. With so many digital tools available to create and share knowledge, it could be easy to hide behind them and "pretend" to be engaged in the conversation. A school librarian (school library media specialist) might be asked, "How do you intend to communicate with students, teachers, parents, colleagues, or staff?" And that librarian might reply, "Oh, I will create a great web page with lots of information, including a newsletter about what's happening in the library, and I will host a blog." Is that really a conversation? Is that really knowledge creation? Well perhaps the reader of your website or blog will engage in a conversation with themselves, that will encourage them to act or create a response, but to truly improve our communities, I think we need to ask ourselves, as librarians, am I fulfilling my end of the conversation? Am I inviting feedback? Am I providing the right tools to create new knowledge? And what might those tools look like?
A recent example of initiating a two-way conversation between the school community and the greater community comes from an internet-safety assembly recently put together at my local high school. The committee of teachers, administrators and staff who organized this assembly knew that high school students were really apathetic to the message trying to be delivered centered around the theme, "Use Common Sense, Think Before You Post" (http://www.oneontacsd.org/technology.cfm?subpage=1296680). Students, being naturally self-involved at this age, just didn't seem to get that what they posted online, their digital identity, had real-world consequences...both potentially good, or in a lot of cases, potentially bad. So to address this apathy, the school invited in employers, college admissions counselors, and coaches who all looked to social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, to gather impressions about potential employees, college students, and athletes, and a conversation was initiated. For the first time, students were engaged in the conversation, and while I haven't heard the results of the survey conducted post-assembly, the impression the organizers received, based on informal feedback, was that students were going to change some of their behaviors in order to better represent themselves online.
A recent example of initiating a two-way conversation between the school community and the greater community comes from an internet-safety assembly recently put together at my local high school. The committee of teachers, administrators and staff who organized this assembly knew that high school students were really apathetic to the message trying to be delivered centered around the theme, "Use Common Sense, Think Before You Post" (http://www.oneontacsd.org/technology.cfm?subpage=1296680). Students, being naturally self-involved at this age, just didn't seem to get that what they posted online, their digital identity, had real-world consequences...both potentially good, or in a lot of cases, potentially bad. So to address this apathy, the school invited in employers, college admissions counselors, and coaches who all looked to social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, to gather impressions about potential employees, college students, and athletes, and a conversation was initiated. For the first time, students were engaged in the conversation, and while I haven't heard the results of the survey conducted post-assembly, the impression the organizers received, based on informal feedback, was that students were going to change some of their behaviors in order to better represent themselves online.
Mission
"The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities." (Lankes, 2011)
When the Atlas of New Librarianship (Lankes, 2011) arrived in the mail over a month ago, feelings of dread flooded over me. I've never been a non-fiction, love to read textbooks kind of girl. But after reading the first thread, "Mission," I see that the Atlas is profoundly different than any textbook I have read (and this is my second round of graduate school people)! The Atlas represents a movement. A movement to change the library profession and to change the way the librarian thinks of their role in their profession and in society. A mission to change the memory maps associated with the word "librarian." I, for one, am on board, ready to set sail on this mission. It is at the core of why I am pursuing my degree.
In my prior role as a career counselor, I saw my role as a facilitator between the student and the career information they needed to be successful, whether that meant teaching them to create a resume or cover letter, connecting them to internship or job opportunities, helping them to network with an alum working in their field of interest, etc. In many ways, my profession mirrored the library profession much more than it did the counseling profession. I was in many ways, a career librarian. So when friends and former colleagues hear that I'm pursuing my MSLIS, I am surprised to hear them say it is such a radical departure from what I was doing. When I explain to them that the profession isn't really just about books anymore, they look at me with blank stares. We really have some eye-opening and educating to do!
Sure, I love a great picture book as much as the next budding librarian, but what excites me more is guiding kids to discover new ideas, information, and helping them to use those discoveries to better themselves (the worldview). I'm hoping to help facilitate teachers to integrate diverse forms of information and technology in order to enhance their teaching and to find creative ways for students to express what they've learned. I am passionate about facilitating students (and teachers) to use their power to create new knowledge in a socially, and personally responsible way. And I am now motivated after reading the Atlas to think broader, to look outside of my library, my school, my district, to find ways to better my community and yes, change the world.
When the Atlas of New Librarianship (Lankes, 2011) arrived in the mail over a month ago, feelings of dread flooded over me. I've never been a non-fiction, love to read textbooks kind of girl. But after reading the first thread, "Mission," I see that the Atlas is profoundly different than any textbook I have read (and this is my second round of graduate school people)! The Atlas represents a movement. A movement to change the library profession and to change the way the librarian thinks of their role in their profession and in society. A mission to change the memory maps associated with the word "librarian." I, for one, am on board, ready to set sail on this mission. It is at the core of why I am pursuing my degree.
In my prior role as a career counselor, I saw my role as a facilitator between the student and the career information they needed to be successful, whether that meant teaching them to create a resume or cover letter, connecting them to internship or job opportunities, helping them to network with an alum working in their field of interest, etc. In many ways, my profession mirrored the library profession much more than it did the counseling profession. I was in many ways, a career librarian. So when friends and former colleagues hear that I'm pursuing my MSLIS, I am surprised to hear them say it is such a radical departure from what I was doing. When I explain to them that the profession isn't really just about books anymore, they look at me with blank stares. We really have some eye-opening and educating to do!
Sure, I love a great picture book as much as the next budding librarian, but what excites me more is guiding kids to discover new ideas, information, and helping them to use those discoveries to better themselves (the worldview). I'm hoping to help facilitate teachers to integrate diverse forms of information and technology in order to enhance their teaching and to find creative ways for students to express what they've learned. I am passionate about facilitating students (and teachers) to use their power to create new knowledge in a socially, and personally responsible way. And I am now motivated after reading the Atlas to think broader, to look outside of my library, my school, my district, to find ways to better my community and yes, change the world.
Reference:
Lankes, R. D. (2011) The Atlas of New Librarianship. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Social Networking in Libraries
My parents were the first to have their VCR’s clock programmed correctly in the neighborhood. I don’t know why, but I could always figure that kind of stuff out. I liked figuring it out. Fast forward to modern day, and the kind of stuff (technologies) that we need to figure out is growing exponentially. I dabbled with a blog almost four years ago for personal fun, played a bit with Google Reader in my former career, bookmarked a number of Wikis that were related to my current position and established both my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, but none of these things were at the core of my life or work, until now. These days, social networking and other web 2.0 tools are no longer fun technologies to “dabble” in, they soon will be at the core of how I stay current in my profession, network and share information with my colleagues, and engage the members of my library and greater community. It’s why my blog was almost called “Shannon 2.0” until I found out that that was the equivalent of saying, "Golly Gee Daddio, I'm Shannon!" Thanks Professor Lankes for saving me! And here I thought I was progressive...I guess it's all relative!
Social networking in libraries is essential to carrying out the librarian’s mission to “improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities” (Lankes, 2011, p. 10). In addition to facilitators, I also think that librarians should think of themselves as mentors in this digital age, especially to children and teens. The ability to create and instantly share new knowledge with infinite numbers of people, comes with a responsibility to do so in an ethical and socially responsible way, and librarians are in the perfect position to model the etiquette and ethics of cyber citizenship.
Reference:
Lankes, R. D. (2011) The Atlas of New Librarianship. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
About Me
My name is Shannon Forbes and I started this blog as a way to reflect upon my adventures in becoming a collaborative and interconnected school library media specialist as part of my graduate studies at Syracuse University.
My career path hasn’t always been clear, but all of my experiences have contributed to my decision to go back to school, for the second time, in order to pursue my Masters of Science in Library Information Science with a concentration and certification in School Media. After graduating with a BA in psychology from SUNY Geneseo, I went on to study school counseling and received my MS in Education from SUNY Oneonta in 1995. After getting my degree, I worked in the field of career development at Hartwick College, a small private liberal arts college located in Oneonta, NY for over eleven years. I gained fabulous leadership experience at Hartwick, worked with phenomenal people, met hundreds of great students, and learned that I needed a career counselor as much as the students did!
So, after some soul searching, I left Hartwick, and took entry-level positions as a library aide and a teaching assistant in my children’s elementary school, and the rest, as they say is history! It was here that I discovered that I could blend my love for life-long learning, with my desire to help people, throw in my renewed love of books and reading, as well as my knack for quickly picking up new technology. I discovered that school libraries had changed. They were no longer quiet rooms with bookshelves and afghan-covered rocking chairs; they were now dynamic centers of learning and technology, where students and teachers could collaborate with librarians on multi-media projects, interact with other classrooms around the world, and even create new knowledge and write their own stories. I hope to someday work in one of these libraries, to create one of those libraries and to be a facilitator of knowledge and a digital-age mentor for children.
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