Posted on February 25, 2009 by fpentlin
I have to say that was very disappointed to find advertising stuck in my student’s blog this morning. It was the first time that I had seen this although there has been quite a discussion about it on LM_NET, and evidently in many blogs as well.
To see those links embedded in the student’s posting was just miserable. I have to say that I will no longer be recommending Edublogs to my students. What a disappointment. I’m not sure where I’m going next, but there are a number of good articles out there discussing the alternatives.
One posting in particular from December 2008 (I am behind) highlights the big three free hosting sites: Edublogs, WordPress, and Blogger.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2008/12/choosing-blogging-platform-and-why-i.html
I will be looking around. Has anyone had any problems with EduSpaces? It was mentioned in other postings. I would really like to stay in the educational atmosphere for my postings and those of my students.
It was interesting to read that some people are staying with Edublogs because it is the only blogging software that isn’t blocked by the school filters. I assume that can be handled at the district level. While that isn’t my problem at the university level, I would like my students to work in the environment they would most likely be involved in at the school level.
Guess there is no free lunch.
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Posted on February 23, 2009 by fpentlin
A research project by Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg was published recently entitled, Finding Context: What Today’s College Students Say about Conducting Research in the Digital Age http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_ProgressReport_2_2009.pdf has some interesting things to say about how college students go about their research. It might have equally interesting things to say to high school librarians as they prepare students for that next level of research at the academic level.
It is not a surprise that students find academic research more difficult than personal research. After all, it is pretty easy to Google and to Wikipedia our most casual questions (although many students reply that they consult Wikipedia for their course-related research as well.)
Some interesting findings
- students have a lot of trouble with language. If the students are unable to find information on their specific topic, they struggle to find the correct terms that describe their topic. The more technical the terms, the more difficult it is. (p.8)
One can’t help but wonder that we are so accustomed to casual searching through the Web that our ability to think in terms of categories and “subject headings” has waned a bit. After all, don’t we more often keyword our way through the catalog?
- Students in the report did value libraries in spite of our profession’s continual concern about our loss of the library’s importance in the research process. Because there is simply so much information available, librarians were valued as “navigational sources” and “information coaches” and the library Web site was valued as a place to go to databases. (p 10).
This is certainly a comforting finding. However, another part of the study shows that
- if students didn’t get the help at the point of need, they quickly went another direction. (p. 11)
In other words, “we want it now” whether it is online or face-to-face help. If I can’t get it now, then I’ll go some place else to get it. This reminds me of my previous discussion about the need for 24/7 access to information. Doesn’t it make the digitization of print material by Google even more something that students will be turning to? For those school libraries that don’t have a Web presence yet, this means your information is becoming more irrelevant as each day passes.
Another point made in the report, and one that librarians have been discussion quite a bit is that
- formal library instruction does not have much value for the student — particularly is the instruction is too distant from moment the technique is needed. (p. 11)
Yikes! How much time do we spend on library instruction? Does it make a difference when the elementary level students are learning everything about the library versus the high school student who is looking for specific information?
Interesting stuff. Be sure to read the entire report. There is so much more there than the couple of things I picked out today.
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Posted on February 20, 2009 by fpentlin
“This is what I have to work with, these are my resources, and this is what I need for a final product. How can I make this work.”
“Learning to Change, Changing to Learn – Kid’s Tech”
http://www.schooltube.com/video/21838/Learning-to-Change-Changing-to-Learn–Kids-Tech
I love this video. It bespeaks the technology revolution that some of our students are involved in and demonstrates the tailwind created by their activity.
The mind just roils at all of the things librarians must do to continue their push to involve the LMC and its services into the dynamic creative life of students in order to remain relevant.
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Posted on February 19, 2009 by fpentlin
Steven Cohen on his blog Library Stuff points to a posting made by Owen Strachan’s blog posting “Where do Libraries Go to Die?” which has the following quotation:
I feel for librarians. This is a tough age. Trained to share a passion for one of the sweetest specimens of common grace, books, today many librarians find themselves as little more than Internet monitors, reduced to pulling up pages of vacuous celebrities to kindle even the slightest spark of interest in their students. This spark, of course, cannot possibly last for more time than it takes a synapse to fire. The librarian–what does that term even mean in this digital age?–is thus a mere custodian of the hyper-short attention spans of her students. Ironically, she was trained to be the very opposite, to be one of the few voices in youth culture that urges “reading” and “thinking”–technical terms, I know–on youth.
Yeow! That hasn’t been my experience at all. At the high school level as a librarian, I have never experienced a more dynamic and exciting time than when we allowed technology into the library media center. At no time did I ever feel that I was a mere custodian. School librarians have the opportunity to engage students more than ever and at more levels than ever. Not only has our educational role increased – particularly in the area of literacy – but we have the opportunity to enable students to produce information requiring a broader range of intellectual and creative intelligences than in the past — and all with the potential of an international audience.
Still, the whole reading thing is a concern. Every new study that comes out seems to mark a new low in reading scores and interest in reading in the “traditional” forms. As much as I love reading blogs and surfing the Web there isn’t any way that I can convince myself that I’m reading at the same level that I would be if I were reading David McCullough or William Faulkner.
Nevertheless, I’m not convinced that Google is making us dumber. I think we are still figuring out how to get through the novelty factor of whizzing through the enormous trough of information that is the Web. I do think that while the digital world has made our opportunities greater to interact with students and teachers, I think it is also giving the library profession the opportunity for renewed vigor in enouraging our teenagers to read beyond the latest shenanigans of our musical celebrities.
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Posted on February 16, 2009 by fpentlin
Sara Kelley Johns in her blog, From the Inside Out has posted a discussion and a link to a great New York Times article on school librarians, “In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update.”
It is a terrific article with pictures and a video. Yee-hah! We need these rays of light amid so much discouraging news about underfunding of library budgets and library jobs going unfilled.
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