Librarian Philosopher

It appears that much of the movement forward with web 2.0 tools in a district rely on cooperation with the technology department, particularly the ones that run the network, firewall, filter, etc. This post has some good ideas about YouTube and then some links at the bottom about the whole issue. Hopefully it will help someone to negotiate a little more digital freedom for the educators and the students in their district. I think it is important to ask the technology department who their customers are and what is their main purpose.

This part is an attempt to give some points an educator might use to convince the school district administrators to open up YouTube.

For general information about YouTube look at our 11.5 More Things, YouTube is talked about in Thing #4. http://library2play2.blogspot.com/2009/05/thing-4.html

Below are 5 bullet points that I think make sense about YouTube. I have given the links for background information.

The first 5 points emphasize that YouTube is mainstream (especially number 5 and the fact that President Obama puts his Saturday message on YouTube).

Points 6 and 7 basically say that there are good quality (university produced) educational resources found on YouTube and nowhere else. Number 7 is an example but there are many more (MIT lectures).

Points 8 and 9 make a case for using YouTube for consumption, critique and produce (CCP) is the way for education to go. YouTube is the creative media of our students and will be during their productive careers.

Points 10 and 11 are things SBISD is doing to adequately prepare for the opening up of YouTube.

The negative, points A, B, and C are the things we will need to teach our students how to handle and avoid.

I. YouTube is mainstream

1. There are 70,000,000 total videos on YouTube (March 2008)

http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2009/49-amazing-social-media-stats/

2. Every Minute, Just About A Days Worth Of Video Is Now Uploaded To YouTube

http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2009/05/cloud_computing.html

3. YouTube is the top social media website.

http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2009/02/top_20_sites_fo.html

4. YouTube is web 2.0, we are already moving into web 3.0 (http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2009/06/wb_30_in_plain.html)

5. General Services Administration has also signed agreements with YouTube allowing federal agencies to use the services. Other government Agencies that want the services can sign onto the agreement, which is effective now.

http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2009/05/more_on_20_and.html

II. Good educational resources exist there

6. There are tutorials about things that can found nowhere but YouTube.

http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2009/06/nsi016.html

7. Starting in 2003, the Berklee College of Music started offering free music lessons online. The lessons include guitar, brass, bass and even DJ & turntable training. When you click on the “keyboards” section, you’ll find a list of 12 lessons in either YouTube video format. The videos are about one to two minutes.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-sites-for-learning-piano-online/

III. YouTube is the consumption, critique and produce (CCP) for our students.

8. “We’re trying to help our students learn to express themselves in words and images, and moving images in particular,” says Richard Miller, Chair of the Rutgers English Department

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=1765

9. CREATING & CONNECTING//Research and Guidelines on Online Social — and Educational — Networking

By NATIONAL SCHOOL BOARDS ASSOCIATION

The study encourages the use of social media in schools to help prepare our students for their lives.

http://www.nsba.org/SecondaryMenu/TLN/CreatingandConnecting.aspx

IV. SBISD is preparing to open YouTube.

10. Spring Branch ISD will initiate the I-Safe Internet safety program starting in the fall 2009.

http://www.isafe.org/

11. The district plans to have doubled the Internet bandwidth by December 2009 to be able to handle more video streaming.

V. There are negatives about YouTube that we need to teach our students about.

The negative:

A. Two girls post a cartoon video on YouTube that depict “The Top 6 ways to Kill Piper!” Piper is an elementary school classmate of theirs at Elk Plain Schoolin Spanaway, Washington.

http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2009/05/6waystokillpiper.html

B. If you are registered you might be able to search and find nudity.

C. A portion of the videos are just note worth the time to watch because of poor quality and poor thinking.

Also, find usueful information about moving the district filter in the right direction at  previous blog postings:

TLA 2009 - Several Good Sessions  (number 7)

Facebook and Education

TLA 2008 Friday - Social Networking

Web Filtering Recommendation (long but the best summary) 

The Filter Web Sites Dilemma

Filters/Firewalls

Good Luck,

Barry

The Texas Association of School Library Administrators (TASLA) had there annual June meeting with great success. Mary Woodard from Mesquite ISD (of Top Shelf fame) planned the program. Mary Christmas from Corpus Christi ISD chaired the event. As always, this event is more than worth the time. Below are the blog postings from many attendees:

Using TLA Stats and Docs to Share Success by Mary Woodard

Legislative Update by Mary Woodard

Training for New Librarians by Mary Woodard

National Board Certification for Librarians by Mary Woodard

Alternative certification for school librarians by Mary Woodard

State book awards by Mary Woodard

Promoting the State Databases by Mary Woodard

Second Life by Mary Woodard

TASLA 2009 begins this week by Mary Woodard

TASLA 3rd Morning Session Google Docs, legislative Updateby Vaughn Branom

TASLA 2nd Afternoon Session Training Librariansby Vaughn Branom

TASLA 2nd Morning Session Part 2 Book Awardsby Vaughn Branom

TASLA 2nd Morning Sessionby Vaughn Branom

TASLA Session #3 biblios and Speedgeeking by Vaughn Branom

TASLA Speedgeeking by Vaughn Branom

TASLA Session #2 Peggy Rudd TSLAC / Second Lifeby Vaughn Branom

TASLA Session #1 21st Century Educatorby Vaughn Branom

Back Channeling at TASLAby Vaughn Branom

Session #2 Second Lifeby David Schuster

First Session at TASLAby David Schuster

Denton Library Services: Stretching your mind by Patty Windsor

TASLA09 Skype presentation by Barry Bishop

Of the 120 attendees, about 40% had laptops out during the sessions. So, I suspect there were many more bloggers than those I have listed. If anyone wants to share their blog postings in the comments, I will edit this posting by adding the links.

Thanks

Barry

TASLA is the Texas Association for School Library Administrators. We meet each June for 2 and half days in Austin. This year we have almost 120 attendees.

The first session was a very exciting one provided to us by Kim Cofino of Always Learning Blog. She presented to us over Skype. Her presentation, 21st Century Learner, was very good. Even though we had to reestablish the connection a few time from us in Austin Texas and her in Bangkok, Thailand, she kept all 120 of us enthralled.

Hear is a post about her presentation from one of our two resident real-time bloggers Vaughn Branom and Marry Woodard.

TASLA Session #1 21st Century Educator

Thanks Kim!

The Texas Library Association (TLA) Annual Conference held in Houston, March 31-April 3 was another success.

In addition to some good hall networking, I was able to learn from these sessions:

1. The Google-ization of the Universe - there was some information about how Google and the State databases work together.
2. Gaming for Instruction – a good presentation by Chris Harris (digitalreshift) and Jenny Levine (The Shifted Librarian). Jenny also has a wiki that contains presentations she has made at other places about gaming. One point made was that gaming can start with modern board games and that games definitely support learning and learning state standardized objectives. Board games are easier for teachers and administrator to accept.
3. Michael Stephens Talks Hyperlinked Libraries – I actually did not see this session but this link contains 335 slides from one of the most prolific Librarian blogs around and I wished I had seen it.
4. Top 10 Technologies and Ideas to Improve Library Productivity - Another session by Michael Stephens (Tame the Web). As always Michael gave more than asked. He covered 11 things time 2.
5. Tagging Your World with Jenny Levine – Jenny (The Shifted Librarian) explained tagging history, advantages and disadvantages.
6. Digital Storytelling (pdf1, pdf2)– was a presentation by 2 friends. The theme was about using digital tools (Photo Story) to convey the same things good story telling does. The storyteller was Kimberly Morris. And the digital master was Bernard Robin.
7. Getting to Yes: Finding Web 2.0 in a Filtered World – Chris Harris (digitalreshift) gave another great presentation, this time about how to change the filtering culture in your institution. He had 4 great steps to take.
8. The Librarian in Black’s Strategies for Staying on Top of the Library World – by Sarah Houghton-Jan, digital futures manager, San Jose Public Library. This was another one I did not get to see but wanted to. I heard she was very good as always.

There were many other excellent programs and many authors. The presentation web site for other sessions is here. And I always get a lot out of the huge Exhibits Hall.

Next year another wonderful conference will occur in San Antonio, Texas, April 14-17, 2010.

The 5^th annual Strong Libraries, Strong Scores mini conference for School Administrators occurred as part of the Texas Library Association Annual conference held in Houston March 31-April 3.

We had over 85 school administrators attend. We have already received 2 e-mails unsolicited from administrators that were going to increase the Library budget or rethink how the campus and Library were going to relate next year. Effecting a change in how administrators understand Libraries is very rewarding.

Agenda

Strong Libraries Strong Scores
(mini conference for School Administrators)

10:30 – 10:45 = Barry Bishop welcome

Standards

Welcome from TEA Commissioner by Karen Kahan

PowerPoint

10:45 – 11:30 = Dr. Keith Curry Lance (current research)

PowerPoint

11:30 – 12:00 = Marla McGhee (collaboration with teachers and administrators)

PowerPoint

12:00 -12:15 = break and dividing the group into 3 sub-groups

12:15 - 1:30 = Box Lunch and Breakout sessions (as follows):

Practical applications of Library best practices to benefit campus and principal

Barry Bishop, director, Spring Branch ISD and Mary Woodard, director, Mesquite ISD presented 23 Things: New Technologies Training sponsored by Texas Association of School Librarians on the opening day of the Texas Library Association Annual conference held in Houston March 31-April 3.

We had a packed crown of over 250 standing room only Librarians. Some had never heard of the 23 Things professional development format and some had their own blogs.

All were enthusiastic about the possibility of learning a lot from home. They were pleased to hear that one of the major strengths of the 23 Things is the confidence gained with all technology.

There was a lot of interest in either doing their own 23 Things or to join Spring Branch’s 23 Things this summer.

Mary did an excellent job of presenting a fabulous overview of the program.

My PowerPoint

Abilene Christian University gave each incoming freshman an iPod Touch or an iPhone in the Fall Semester of 2008. The ConnectED Summit was to detail their implementation and to bring together educators who wanted to discuss mobile technology. There were 412 attendees from 144 organizations, representing 64 colleges and universities, 29 K-12 school districts. More than half the states were represented and 7 counties other than the US. Overall 1,773,711 students were represented.

The first keynote speaker was Dr. Stephen Molyneux from the UK. ACU provided coverage of this and other speakers at http://connectedcoverage.blogspot.com/ . I thought it was particularly interesting to me that Dr. Molyneux said basically the same thing our students said about teachers fearing the technology, fearing to look like they did not know, and fearing change (see previous post).

The second keynote speaker was Dr. Eric Mazur, professor at Harvard. He made the point that his physics students began to truly understand physics when he started using mobile technology in the lecture hall for immediate responses. Then if between 50% and 70% of the students got an answer right, he would have the students do what he called peer discussion. He would instruct the students to find someone who had a different answer than theirs and discuss the question and answer. What he found was that someone who had just recently learned a physics concept could sometimes explain it better than a physics professor to whom these physics concepts had become second nature. Anyway, the iPod Touch is an excellent instant response mechanism.

These are some interesting things learned:

• A school district decided to invert their attitude on homework. They sent teacher lectures or presentations home via podcasts. And then the teachers spent class time practicing or discussing what was in the podcast. Families who had no access to the podcasts at home received the podcast burned onto a DVD.
• One school district bought iPods for each student in elementary grades so that students would have access to a vast amount of material created by the teachers in podcast format.

Over the 30 hours of the summit, these were the things that I could figure out to do on the iPod Touch:

• Access the Internet and read text and/or follow the links
• Find current location
• Use developed apps that did things like show me a map of the campus. The ACU staff program apps that would actual take the GPS locator function and plot a path from current location to a desired location with a virtual view of what would be seen along the way.
• Keep a calendar
• Check weather for current location and any other location desired.
• Calculator
• Take notes or access Google Docs and write, calculate, present etc. (warning-it is challenging to edit a spread sheet in Google Docs from an iTouch but it can be done)
• Check e-mail
• Access the App Store and download App (an account needs to be set up and at this point I cannot figure out how to set the Apps Store account up without entering a credit card. However, using a gift card would be safer.)
• Listen to a book or podcast
• Watch a vidcast or movie

The final speaker was an executive from Apple. He shared some inspiring thoughts but also reminded us that the E-Trade Baby will be in our elementary schools in 3 years. He then went on to relate a fact stranger than the E-Trade Baby fiction. His son is 2 and has had an iTouch for over 4 months. He was given the iTouch so that he would stop bothering his parents’ iPhone. The less than 2 year old son can manipulate an iTouch.

In our district we intended to implement iTouch’s in the Library so they will not be assigned to individuals. We anticipate new challenges. Any tips or tricks will be greatly appreciated.

Estie Cuellar, a business economics teacher at Spring Woods High School, got excited about 21^st century learning and then inspired her students. The Spring Branch Library Department will take a small amount of credit by providing Estie with the opportunity to do some innovative staff development in the summer of 2008. We conducted our version of 23 Things (Library2Play) and Estie was therefore exposed to many new ideas to change her teaching. Estie has been and will always be a dynamic teacher. Now she is so with web 2.0 tools and her students’ respect for her as an information broker in their terms.

As a result, Estie became acquainted with the Cool Cat Teacher blog and then from there got involved in the Flat Classroom Project. Nine of her students participated in the project and then 3 of those got to go to Qatar to participate in the first Flat Classroom Face to Face Conference.

Estie’s three students presented their experience in the pre-conference and conference projects to the Curriculum and Instruction Division. All the directors heard the presentation and then got to ask questions. There were some questions about the experience and the effect on the students, but most directors that could see that project based learning with collaboration was a component that they wanted added to their curriculum asked over and over in various ways, “how can we get teachers to go along with this kind of teaching?” The student s wisely said that teachers were afraid of change and afraid that they did not know the technology. A director asked how that made the students feels when a teacher did not know how to use the technology. The students said it did not matter, that it was okay for all of them (student and teacher) to learn together.

Estie and the Flat Classroom Project comes the closest to anything I have seen to demonstrating the power and success of incorporating web 2.0 and social networking tools into a learning situation that also has access to technology and infrastructure to support them.

For more exciting information about Estie’s experience, check out her class Ning and the video created by her students to summarize the experience.

I had the privilege of watching two outstanding presentations on Librarian and teacher collaboration last night from my students at the University of Houston – Clear Lake.

Introducing Collaboration

Are Two Heads Better Than One?

Collaboration between teacher and Librarian is one of the best ways to counter the teacher statement of “I don’t have time to come to the Library because I am preparing my students for the State Test”. And it is one of the best ways to make sure the Librarian has a job from year to year. If the principal hears from the teachers how successful the co-teaching is between teacher and Librarian then the principal is less likely to replace the Librarian with a clerk.

I believe web 2.0/social networking technology engages students and makes their learning experience richer. However, I have not been directly responsible for a classroom or Library since before the web so I do not know first hand. I know teachers like Vicki Davis (Cool Cat Teacher) uses wikis, blogs, and a plethora of other technologies very successfully. But are her circumstances similar enough to my district’s in order for us to replicate what she does? She is after all uniquely talented.

This doubt or not really knowing if the direction we have taken is the right one has not kept us from promoting web 2.0/social networking technology use in our Libraries and classrooms.

All that being said, it is with much gratification that I report of a teacher, Estie Cuellar, whose teaching was changed by our 23 Things staff development in the ’08 summer. She was so impressed with what she learned that she joined the Flat Classroom Project 2008 and has secured permission from the Spring Branch School Board to take 9 students to the Flat Classroom Conference: Leadership Workshop and Student Summit, January 24-26, 2009 in Doha, State of Qatar. And of course she needs donations to help her and her students to make the trip. I have made my donation. If you want to donate and/or contact the teacher click here.

Beyond her success with the Flat Classroom Project are her day to day success with her students check out her blog, her web page, her students’ class wiki, and her student’s flat classroom ning.

All the work we have done in promoting using web 2.0/social networking technologies has been worth it.