Blogging Rules

We have a few kids learning to blog -- they are already quite proficient using MySpace, other social-networking sites, and places like LiveJournal (a blogging-, journaling-space w/ some MySpace-type personalization features). Thusfar, we have set some verbal parameters on the "okays" and "not okays". If they are blogging FOR the library or for a school-sanctioned activity, I let them know that I do reserve the right to "filter" the posts and moderate the comments (as the sponsor). I haven't had to do that very much, but we are fairly new at this. But, when a topic was posted by a student on J.K. Rowling's announcement regarding Dumbledore's sexual orientation, you can imagine some of the comments!

Long story short, we are now writing our "blogging rules". We want the kids to be free-thinkers, discriminating, and learn to [responsibly] navigate, participate, and evaluate the world of information. We also want them to be safe while under our tutalage (and when they leave the 'nest'). I'll post more as we get our rules on paper. I’ve been searching for other sets of rules and have found some great models: one posted in a wiki by Bud Hunt (thanks, Bud) and another from Arapahoe High School, where Karl Fisch is the Director of Technology. Any thoughts? Do you have guidelines, in your school, for student blogging?

Moodle

I just started the Moodle Quicktech Class taught by Bud Hunt. Linda Pedraza is also taking the class (Linda, I'm anxious to hear how you think you might use Moodle).
The description for the class reads:

Moodle is a free online course management software package that allows anyone to build course materials to make available to students. Discussions, web pages, assignments, handouts, wikis and quizzes are just some of the many tools available.

I think that we may have lots of applications, in the library, for this tool. A few possibilities that come to mind are:

• help teachers to set up class pages
• pathfinders for specific class topic research
• a research skills course
• a library "website" that is fairly simple to create and maintain
• Pages for each group (Teacher Librarians, Media Clerks, Media Techs) for collaboration purposes, calendars and events, common projects, etc.)

Anyway, I think that this is another 'cool tool' for us to use. When you have some time, take a look at the site. We may use Moodle for our PST class page. It is easy to sign up, you can access it from home, and there are lots of examples and ways to use it if you go to the Moodle site. I'm sure that there will another Quicktech Moodle class for you to take. I'll keep you posted!

Librarian's Manifesto 2.0

What a great video! ...and what a segue for our PST!

"The Other Boleyn Girl"

"The Other Boleyn Girl" by Philippa Gregory. Truly a fascinating look into the court of Henry VIII. A vivid description of the Boleyn family. Being a woman of the 70's, the the father and uncle using the Boleyn sisters to further their rise in the court was a disturbing fact that I had never before considered. Philippa Gregory's research into this era of history and the insertion of the fictional aspect make this a great read. The dress of the period came alive through Gregory's descriptive voice. One could almost feel the mood of every gathering, taste the food and hear the music. Ultimately knowing how the story ends did not keep me from reading every word and wondering just how this family was going to survive. There is something for everyone in this historical novel, intrigue, scandal, family feuds, sex, love, sacrifice and forgiveness. I await the movie with great anticipation.

Teen Read Week

It is very close to being 'too busy' to really celebrate Teen Read Week. I just wanted to throw a question out to all of you to see how you are marketing Teen Read Week in your library. Are you doing any special events, reading contests, marketing displays, or other celebrations? Are you all using the LOL theme? ...to promote humor?

At Skyline we have set up a display of popular young adult books -- we purchased the LOL poster and bookmarks to hand out. We have been running a 'pages read' contest for the past month; students keep track of the number of pages they have read to win prizes. We are amazed how many kids are really into keeping track of their pages read. We made a poster and bookmarks and have been promoting the 31 Flavorite Authors (31 YA authors are chatting on MySpace during the month of October) campaign from YALSA.

What ideas and promotions are you using during Teen Read Week?

"A Brief History of the Dead"

In this futuristic, apocalyptic tale, Kevin Brockmeier tells the story of The City, a place where all recently dead now reside. A great pandemic has wiped out most of Earth's inhabitants. It is quite possible that Laura Byrd, while on an expedition in Antarctica, could be the only survivor on Earth. As Laura strives to survive and find other survivors, she keeps herself going by free-associating and remembering all those people who have touched her life.

In The City, the inhabitants begin to suspect that their very existence is Laura remembering them. Once the last person remembering a City inhabitant dies, then the City inhabitant, too, ceases to exist.

The premise of this story is intriguing and has so much potential. I felt that the character development could have been so much more -- I wanted to know the inhabitants. I also felt that he had to wrap up the story too quickly. All in all, I enjoyed the book and it sparked some linguring thought and contemplation. I will recommend this book to our readers -- I think our students will like it and find the story quite unique.

How many people have touched your life? One hundred? Five thousand? More? Do they still live in your memory?

Professional Study Team (PST) Feasibility and Interest Discussion

I've reviewed the requirements and guidelines for PSTs -- now we need to refine our needs and goals in forming a PST. Here's a brief summary of what we need to consider in doing a PST:

1. Consensus on our Topic. I suggest that our PST be titled "School Library Learning 2.0" or even my original suggestion of "Media Clerks 2.0". Depending on the class time we want to devote to this PST, we will have 23 Web 2.0 "Things" to learn. How much we want to learn, use, and apply these skills will determine the amount of time we need to commit.


2. A minimum of four participants are required to set up a PST -- I would suggest that we need at least 6 to make the final project manageable and meaningful.


3. All contact hours must be off-contract time. An example: We could meet once a week for 1.5 hours for the class time. .5 hour/wk could be spent individually, also off contract time. One suggestion has been that we meet for 1.5 hours, once a week, at different schools starting in January. Our class would be finished by Spring Break.


4. Our PST can be restricted to library media clerks as our goal will be learning Web 2.0 technologies and applying them to our specific job function in the secondary school library.


5. Professional Development guidelines specify that our total hours must be 2/3 class time and 1/3 can be individual work time (must be documented). The program on which we will model our PST is the Learning 2.0 program developed by Helene Blowers. A deviation would be that we would examine each 'thing' with an emphasis on how it can be used/implemented in our respective schools/libraries. If we concentrate on 2 'things' each week, we would need 12 sessions. Twelve sessions @ 1.5 hr = 18 hrs. 18 hours of contact class time + 9 hours of individual work time = 27 total hours. District approval would have to be obtained for this number of professional development hours. That may be too much of a commitment for you to make -- it depends if you want to gain more than 50% of your professional development credit with one class. Personally, I would want to make a commitment to this topic and aim for the higher number of PD hours.


6. This blog would be our communication medium, and documentation, of the collaborative efforts of designing and implementing this PST.

The structure of the PST would be:

• Weekly contact class time to be held at participant's respective school library computer labs. During this time we will learn about one (or two) new Web 2.0 topic(s) followed by Discovery Exercises to practice the new technology.
  
• Homework will include practice of the Web 2.0 skill, a networking application of the new skill (blogging will give us the forum for communicating ideas, questions, discoveries, research results, feelings, and new found skills), and contributing one practical way to use the Web 2.0 skill in the library. This will also serve as a participation log and reflection for receipt of credit.
  
• The final project will be a collaborative WIKI to publish the Web 2.0 tools learned, supporting resources, and application of the skills.

The application process, approval procedures, and documentation requirements can be quite an arduous process in setting up this PST. Before we start this process, we need to determine feasibility. Please provide feedback on the following items:

1. Given the above description, would you be willing to commit to this PST? If not, what changes would make you want to participate in this PST?
2. Given the description of the content, how many hours would you be willing to commit? What time of the year do you want to begin this class? What Day of the Week, and what Time of the Day would you be willing to meet?
3. Do you have a preference as to where the classes should be held? We could meet at one school for every session, or we could meet at a different school for each class. Schools should have the Media Station provided by DMS, access to the necessary number of computers and district network, and permission of the building principal and teacher librarian.
4. Considering that not many of the clerks frequent this blog (at least they don't post or comment), do you think a survey would be a better means of determining participation levels, topics suggestions, and details such as time and place? We need to log the collaborative nature of our design of this PST and the blog is a perfect medium.
5. What SPECIFIC requests, recommendations, or suggestions do you have concerning this PST?

Read Any Good Books?

All members of this blog have the ability to post subject topics. Why don't each of you post a review of a book you have read. We'd love to hear what you think and if you recommend the book for the rest of us to read.

If you are unsure how to post, just click on the NEW POST link in the upper right-hand corner of the page. After that, it is fairly self explanatory. This is a good way to practice this medium.

Anyone?

Lets Plan a PST! Media Clerks 2.0?

In the responses from media clerks, a great many of you expressed an interest to learn more about Web 2.0. I think that would be a great place for us to start, but I'd like to tweak it a bit and make it a Library 2.0 PST -- specifically a MediaClerks 2.0 PST. In other words, how do we apply the vast amount of technology out there, which is growing exponentially, and really use it in the library.

Of course, to really get a grasp of available learning technologies we can use in the library would take a long time. But, we can touch on those technologies, practice them in context to what we do, and take one more step in establishing ourselves as a necessary, and valuable, part of the information literacy team in the library and the district ETIL plan on the whole.

I'm estimating that the PST, if approved, would be between 15 and 25 hours of contact time. The PST we did on Genreflecting, two summers ago, was 15 hours of credit and, speaking for myself, was a great deal of fun. It was useful, meaningful, and a great networking (social) time with the clerks. Lynn, I'll need your help here as I don't know where to begin to seek approval for a PST... Some initial thoughts (PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE comment with your thoughts on doing this PST):

• Are enough of us interested in the topic area to do a PST?
• When do we want to start? To be honest, I think this information is too valuable NOW to wait until next summer.
• How many contact hours would all of you be willing to commit?
• I would suggest having our 'class time' at Skyline... or, we could have it a different schools' library computer labs. We really do need to have access to computers and I would prefer a school using SynchronEyes so that we can use our time most efficiently. Where should we have the contact class time?
• What should our content be? I'll throw out some topics: Blogging, Wikis, RSS feeds, using photos and imaging, tagging and social bookmarking, online productivity tools, podcasting, videos, and audio, using our multi-media stations in the library, file management (transporting files, saving, working with)... other ideas?
• There would be homework! There is no way to really learn these things without some individual time practicing -- my guesstimate would be at least one hour of 'homework' time for every hour of contact time. But... HONEST, it is fun stuff to work with and I'll bet that you will want to spend more time than that learning about all the things you can do!

If this isn't what you had in mind, or if there is a topic that the majority would like to pursue, let us know. We can all work, collaboratively, to come up with a valuable, meaningful, and (library specific) useful PST. Let's start...comments? ...ideas?