Where am I going?
I want to demonstrate 21st Century Teacher-Librarian traits. I want to ease out of the "old system" I'm still partly perpetuating of print book, worksheet driven resources, and a "sage on the stage" lecturer who dispels her fountain of knowledge into relatively passive vessels. Will Richardson describes the old model as "... students work independently ("do your own work" ) and produce that work or content for a limited audience - usually just the teacher giving the grade and perhaps the other students in the class" (150-51). He invites us to redefine how we teach asking us to be connectors, content creators, collaborators, coaches (mentors and motivators rather than owning the information at the front of the classroom), and change agents (154-55). I think many of us have and still exercise those types of pedagogy, but certainly Web 2.0 makes collaboration and creation not only easier, but also far more creative and fun. Nevertheless, I still need to move away from the lecture style more and perhaps use the following:
AND
Flip the Classroom to give the basic instructions and framework for inquiry learning.
Pause. Reflection. What about the power and value of personal connections and school culture gained and accrued from physical interactions. Hmmm. Or is it more likely that it's myself, colleagues and parents that need to trust where Web 2.0 users suggest they could take us: students self-directed, stylizing their differentiated learning either in or away from school? I don't know yet. While convenient, creative and collaborative traits come with Web 2.0 philosophical teaching, my 2012 hunch is that flipping classrooms at Parkview Elementary and many schools will have more success if there is a strong connection and trust with the educator setting it up.
Sounds common sense-like doesn't it? Until you learn about options and success stories such as the Khan Academy: With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,600 micro lectures via video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history,healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history,macroeconomics, microeconomics, and computer science.[4] Khan Academy launched a computer science module in September 2012.[5][6] Khan Academy has delivered over 200 million lessons.[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_academy)
Khan's vision combines self-directed learning with physical attendance at school: "Khan has stated a vision of turning the academy into a charter school: This could be the DNA for a physical school where students spend 20 percent of their day watching videos and doing self-paced exercises and the rest of the day building robots or painting pictures or composing music or whatever.
Oh my.
Pause. Reflect.
What about kids with no computers or poor to no internet access? What about kids with special needs and learning challenges? What about the gifted, bored student who may thrive with these learning options?
Options. Reflections. Trial and error. Refining, revising, listening. Caring. Positive. change.
So where does the Ardent Librarian start? Specifically, where do I start as a non-enrolling teacher (no assigned warm bodies attached to a marking ledger) wanting to shift into the creative potential of Web 2.0 tools and the pedagogy of collaborative, inquiry-based, process learning?
Image source: http://www.how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.com/cartoon-swimmer.html
My brain is still swimming with all of the new data I have in it and after reading Jim Collins' article "Good to Great" (cited in course reading Think you’re a Digital Immigrant? Get Over It!), I'm yearning for a hedgehog idea to present to staff and students.
Collins talks of disciplined thoughts through hedgehog rather than fox ideas. "Picture two animals: a fox and a hedgehog. Which are you? An ancient Greek parable distinguishes between foxes, which know many small things, and hedgehogs, which know one big thing. All good-to-great leaders, it turns out, are hedgehogs. They know how to simplify a complex world into a single, organizing idea—the kind of basic principle that unifies, organizes, and guides all decisions."
How Am I Going to Get There?
While I don't have the clarity for a hedgehog idea yet, I do know I will turn to my colleagues for help formulating a group one. Good old fashioned face-to-face discussion will be appreciated by my colleagues and enjoyed by me, but I also look forward to joining existing internet dialog. Through this course and the (BCTLA) conference I've realized the Web 2.0 and educational best practices discussion has been going on for awhile. Thus, the BCTLA Ning, T-L and educational wikis, Twitter, blogging and RSS will also be my exciting and rewarding communication venues.
The next logical step today is goal setting. Thus, below I've revisited and revised my September goals.
Immediate Goals
- building my personal learning network: locally, BC, Canada, and - yummy - the world
- weekly professional reading
- LM_net
- BCTLA Ning
- Tweets by educational leaders
- RSS feeds of educational blogs
- Diigo social bookmarking
- Intermediate Classes: use Edmodo weekly for extended learning, introduce/teach specific information literacy skills: netiquette, Google ninja, Easybib; collaborative invitation to grade 7 teacher re inquiry project for ancient civilizations
- Primary Classes - continue working with Karen Quinton, grade 1/2, to infuse technology into our teaching and collaborate on teaching provincial learning outcomes, as well as district initiatives such as Daily Five, and Reading and Writing Power, and our school goal of Character Education.
- Revise SD83 T-L wiki - it needs jazzing up! I so related to Ben Koning's blog thoughts that his colleague wiki was text heavy and may not engage his readers: "I think my choice of going for a less novel presentation tool [wiki] may work against generating interest. I think what I ended up with was a rather text heavy explanation of my vision. It is a bit of information overload and does require a reader to be pretty jazzed about teacher-librarianship to read the entire resource through. What it needs is a greater variety of media that provide illustrations of what I am envisioning as my role as a 21st century teacher-librarian and provide alternate ways to provide input besides just text."
Let's confer Ben!
Short Term Goals - B4 End of June
- Accept David Loertscher's, professor of library and information science at San Jose State University, invitation to explore the Ontario Learning Commons vision and work towards making our BC "Points of Inquiry" more of a live/participatory document.
- develop and maintain the brand new Parkview Library Facebook page
- continue my weekly blog post(s) for the Parkview Library and Ardent Librarian
- learn more about Twitter and eventually start educational, professional development-type tweets
- podcasts of gifted students' writings published in a district compilation & post them on the Parkview Library blog, in my Edmodo classes, and on the district homepage.
- PAC presentations and connections
- Library Management Goals continued
2013-14 School Year Goals
- for now - more of the above!
Which brings me to what I now believe is the biggest question and the one to continually nurture: who is going with me?
Image Source: http://www.naset.org/2380.0.html
Who's going with me?
Jim Collins postulates Disciplined people: “Who” before “what”
You are a bus driver. The bus, your company, is at a standstill, and it’s your job to get it going. You have to decide where you're going, how you're going to get there, and who's going with you.
Most people assume that great bus drivers ... immediately start the journey by announcing to the people on the bus where they're going—by setting a new direction or by articulating a fresh corporate vision. In fact, leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances.
Astute, positive, enthusiastic SD83 district teacher-librarian Geri Davey encourages baby steps. "I start with one person who wants to collaborate with district initiatives &/or information literacy and away we go. People see our successes and then another person wants to try, and another, and another."
Geri thank you for creating buses that teachers, and students want to get on and which emulate best practices for the rest of us to learn from.
Karen Quinton, Parkview esteemed grade 1/2 teacher, thank you for getting on the bus.
And all t-ls may we go forth in the right direction and entice a few more to join us.
In Closing
Yes education is going to, ... no IS transforming. Let's all move in a positive direction with caring intent, deep thinking, astute questioning, and dialog - with the world. Hmmm. The Ardent librarian will be on that world-view bus ... no matter what.
Image source: http://www.kerrvilleisd.net/pages/Transportation
LIBE 477 Readings: Richardson, Will. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts.: Chapter 9 and Epilogue
