Moving forward from where we are

There has been lots of discussion this week about what we'd like to do if we could access some of these tools in our schools. David Warlick in a post on his 2 Cents Worth Blog called It Was Good Enough for Me poses a series of questions to consider and actions to take, focusing on what we want children to learn and the relevant and compelling learning experiences we want to create for them not the technology for technology's sake. What do you want our dream classroom to look like and why?

Digital Media and Schooling

In an interview with Henry Jenkins, Rich Halverson from UW-Madison talk about his new book, Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America where he examines the incompatibilities between schooling and technology. In the interview Halverson said, "Digital media provides a path to personalizing and customizing learning that is often at odds with the batch processing model of, especially, K-12 schooling. This has meant that digitally literate young people have come to understand that there are at least two living channels for learning - 1) an institutional channel, and 2) a peer-driven, interest-driven, and unregulated digital media channel." Think about what this might mean for how students choose to learn.

Check out the first part and part two of the interview or look for the book.

WEMTA Wiki

The Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association recently held their annual conference in the Wisconsin Dells. There were a range of presentations dealing with libraries and technologies in K-12 education. The conference wiki now includes handouts from a number of the presentations.

Does technology challenge what it means to be educated and how we educate our youth?

There has been discussion about how web 2.0 tools can support education as well as how our students' changing relationship with technology impact how they learn best. Check out Crossroads in Education: Issues for Web 2.0, Social Software, and Digital Tools by Patricia Deubel (2008) for a discussion about how creativity and collaboration, personalization, and collective knowledge building will impact what we do in schools.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2008/04/16/crossroads-in-education-issues-for-web-20-social-software-and-digital-tools.aspx

Communicating with "Your Tribe"

In the blog Social Media Schools (November 19, 2008) , Darren Alff talks schools and social media. See the exerpt from his posting below as we think about our role as school library information specialist. He describes the role of leader of the school tribe of students, administrators, teachers, and community. This sounds like an appropriate role for use as we help others learn about these technologies as well as support the curriculum.

Should Your School Be Using Social Media?

(http://socialmediaschools.com/should-your-school-be-using-social-media/2008/11/#)

"... I first of all need to be able to communicate with my tribe and reach them in a way that is both comfortable and convenient for them. I need to be able to reach my tribe when, where, and how they want to be reached.

For this reason, I don’t want to rely solely on one means of communication. Instead, I want to be everywhere and anywhere my tribe might be. This might mean that I communicate with my tribe via my website, my blog, my local newspaper, my community websites, magazines, email, postal newsletters, RSS, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Plurk… and anywhere else my tribe might be found."

Sixth Sense

You may have watched the movie by this name, but here's a new technology that changes how we might interact with technology. Think about what this could mean for how we interact with the world in the future. Think about where the information is coming from.

http://necc2008.ning.com/video/ted-technology-entertainment