Giving Thanks - My PLN

As we approach Thanksgiving, I have to give thanks to my PLN (Personal Learning Network). I should write about the AASL conference, and what I learned and thought about, and I will soon, but today I have my PLN on my mind.
The following diagram illustrates my PLN from the center (the heart), which was also the beginning, out to the also very important periphery, which I check less often but still find very valuable. It represents the layers of my PLN, and although there are some public school librarians and public  librarians I follow avidly (Buffy Hamilton, Joyce Valenza, David Lee King), my coworkers,  local consortium, and other independent school librarians I engage with more frequently about daily issues.

I want to thank the Independent School Library Exchange, ALA's Independent School Section, the Association of Independent School Librarians, and the many librarians and educational technology people I follow, for educating me and engaging in conversation about our profession.

Today I attended a webinar with the educational technologist from my school. David Warlick was presenting at a Linworth webinar about PLNs (he posted his notes about the webinar and handouts), and how to help teachers and co-workers develop them.  Although I feel I have a strong PLN already (thanks!), Mr. Warlick today gave me powerful language to use while talking about the importance of a PLN. He spoke about the PLN as a garden and the need to cultivate it. He acknowledged that fast food (lectures and textbooks) is fine and has its place, but cultivating a garden, an ecosystem with interactions within it, takes time and work to grow better. David Warlick's metaphor spoke to me - I understand my PLN in a new way - I love that! I enjoy gardening, I admire people who find time to garden. I can connect that relationship between gardener and garden to me and the people I follow.
Along with a plan for helping our faculty develop PLNs, the Linworth webinar also gave us a common ground about which to discuss and teach. The educational technologist I work with is relatively new to our school, and I think this webinar has given us place from which to grow together as a team. This professional relationship will need to be cultivated as it is crucial that we, librarian and educational technologist, define our roles and work together well and in a coordinated fashion. Mr. Warlick emphasized the "lifestyle of learning." I experienced it. And I experience it with my Personal Learning Network. Thank You!

AASL 2009

NoodleTools and Blogger: Putting your Works Cited on your Site

One of our History teachers is requiring each student make a blog using Blogger. The students will be informing their classmates about famous thinkers and they will be gathering information from several sources, including books. The students are used to using NoodleTools to take notes and format their works cited.

NoodleBib : Print via kwout

I found that what looks the best is to cut and paste the Works Cited from Word into a gadget. Use the wide gadget option at the bottom of the page and paste the text there. Then no words will be cut off. The URLs will be missing, but URLs are no longer needed in MLA. If the teacher wants the URLs, as our teachers do, students could easily link them in the titles before saving the gadget.
I like how the works cited looks at the bottom of the blog. Also, set as a gadget it will always be there, whether you are looking at the main blog page or just one entry.

I hope this tidbit is helpful to you! I spent time trying out different ways of posting the works cited, and I wanted to share what I think is the best way to do it. Do you have a better way? Or another helpful tip for students using Blogger? Let me know!

The Women's Conference

Sometimes working at a school brings responsibilities and opportunities you just don't get at other jobs. Tuesday I was lucky enough to chaperon several teenagers at The Women's Conference in Long Beach.

The Women's Conference 2009 - Be Who You Are...An Architect of Change. Pass It On. via kwout

I was thrilled when by mid-day I still hadn't heard the term 21st century skills. Nobody urged me to change with my profession (which I am happily doing, by the way), and nobody discussed library Facebook pages. Instead we heard people discuss women's issues and universal issues of leadership, risk-taking, health, balancing work and home, experiencing grief, overcoming obstacles, and activism. It was a good break from the day-to-day issues to have time to listen to and think about broad issues, the big issues that run over, under, and through my daily life in the library. I realized I didn't miss the Internet Librarian conference as much as I thought I would.

The exhibit hall was a unique experience, full booths of clothes, jewelry, snack bar samples, breast cancer information, make-up, and Barbie. But the highlights for me were:

• Hearing Katie Couric discuss the failures and perseverance that led to her success.
• Wishing I could pull up a chair and join the conversation led by David Gregory between Madeleine Albright, Amy Holmes, Valerie Jarrett, and Claire Shipman about balancing work and parenthood, the changes of this balance over the years, and the importance of good communication with your families when choosing this difficult role of working mother.
• Watching retired school teacher Agnes Stevens win one of four Minerva Awards for her activism. She founded School on Wheels, a one-to-one tutoring service (and more) for homeless children in Los Angeles.
• Hearing Maria Shriver speak about her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and through her story, remind me how to support my daughter.
  
• Listening to Jane Goodall imitate the sounds of a chimpanzee.
• Chatting with the teenagers about how "amazing" and "inspiring" the day was, and noticing they had a flicker of feminism in their eyes.

I thank my school for sending me to a great conference!

Jumped - on a Kindle!

photo: Amazon Kindle II by richardmasoner, CC BY-SA 2.0

I finally read a book on a Kindle. I didn't want to like it. But, I found myself wanting to own one. This Kindle we bought for our library, to eventually develop a program where we circulate it (and maybe others) to students and faculty, something many school libraries are starting to do.
I brought it home, added the National Book Award Finalist Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia, and started reading.
At first I didn't like it. But once I fixed the size of the font so that I wasn't having to hit "next page" as often, I felt very comfortable with the size of the Kindle. Angrily, or maybe disappointingly, I slowly started falling in love. Maybe it was the novel, which I did enjoy, but I think it was the Kindle. I didn't miss the feel of the page, or the smell of the binding. I liked not having to prop the book open. I enjoyed imagining my daily newspaper in that little slick device instead of all over my breakfast nook.

But I didn't like the note taking/bookmarking features. I couldn't see using it for margin notes if I were a student is a class at my school - especially because our teachers grade the margin notes. Could you imagine turning in your whole library to a teacher to take care of for a few days while he or she graded your notes?
I didn't enjoy the glare on the screen from my recessed lighting.
I didn't enjoy trying to flip back several pages because I forgot a section I had read too late at night the previous evening. It was time-consuming to skim back as the text uploaded page by page.
Even with the drawbacks, I do love the Kindle. I hope it isn't checked out all the time so I get more turns to download and read books on it.
Now I am even more curious about the other e-readers.
Do you have a favorite reader? Does your library check out more than one type of reader? The current Wired Magazine (October, 2009) gives the Kindle a 9/10. I Agree.

Book Review - I'm Down: A Memoir by Mishna Wolff

I read this book to laugh out loud. Recently caught in a slump of serious books, I needed a comedy. Although I did laugh out loud at parts, this memoir mostly made me empathetic to the many trials and triumphs of growing up different and trying to please. I'm Down is actually quite serious. Mishna is white, as are her father, mother, and sister. However, her father grew up in an African American neighborhood, and he identifies with that culture, wanting his children to do so too. Mishna's sister seems to have no problem fitting in, but Mishna is self conscious of her extreme whiteness. Just as she finds a way to fit in at school, she is sent to the much more white private school, where she is too black in culture and too far down on the economic scale to fit in right away. The memoir explores race, identity, class and privilege. Many of the moments about Mishna's wealthy and yet unfulfilled friends stand out to me, and make me think again about the variety of experiences of our student body. Mishna is overjoyed to go to a friend's house and play Nintendo and eat Hotpockets all day undisturbed by adults, while her friend just wants her parents to pay attention to her. Mishna is embarrassed as she tries not to inhale the warm cafeteria lunches that her wealthy friends look at with disdain. And the section about skiing is enough provoke me to feel what is must be like to be a child on scholarship at one of our independent schools. Mishna's family doesn't understand the responsibilities her school places on her, nor how important these responsibilities are to her. She straddles two cultures and it doesn't always work to her benefit. Mishna is worried, angry, sensitive, scared, but above all, she is hopeful. I highly recommend this quick memoir to everyone in high school through adulthood, but especially to those of us who work with teenagers, many of whom struggle to fit in at home and at school every day.

Overhead Party

We had a little going away party for the overhead projectors yesterday. Don't they look like they are socializing in the conference room? The are replaced by projectors and SmartBoards. I think we are keeping two, just in case (in case what? I don't know). I am happy to see them go. The technology department troubleshoots/fixes the projectors and SmartBoards so we have one less type of equipment to manage.
Goodbye overhead projectors!