This is also how I feel about Creative Commons licenses. If you’re polite and give me clear guidelines, it’s easy for me to be polite back and respect your work. As Erin said, I like that CC focuses on the positive aspects of what you can do with a work. I think that if it’s explained that way, students might be more willing to give it a try. And this carries over into instruction as well… I think that students should definitely use a CC license for some of their work. That would really bring the point home. I think the guidelines should be posted and clearly explained, maybe at the beginning of each school year (you can’t expect someone to follow guidelines if that person doesn’t know what they are!). And the expectation should be clear: Here are the guidelines. Follow them and respect the work of other people, and respect that you are smart enough to do your own work. I think the quickest way to lose kids (and teachers) with copyright issues is to focus on the don’ts. Give them positive alternatives and be clear about what they CAN do. There’s too much negativity about the topic– it’s already overwhelming, and people will just give up if you don’t show them what they SHOULD do instead. We need some positive energy so people will want to do the right thing. Too much stick and not enough carrot.

And this feeds into what I don’t really like about Turnitin. Anyway you look at it, it’s negative. It’s an “I’m checking up on you because I don’t trust you” service when students have to submit their papers there, and it’s a “you probably did something wrong so fix it before you get caught” service when students run their papers through before turning them in. Don’t assume they’re going to cheat… but don’t wait until there’s a problem to correct it, either. I think we need more focus on positive expectations. I recognize that I’m an optimist, but, well, I prefer it to the doom and gloom.

Twitter has also grown on me. Part of it is that I like seeing what other people are posting–it’s a little window into someone’s day, which is nice in the online world. I also like the challenge of fitting an important message into 140 characters.

Moving on to other, less-selfish thoughts… I’m a little torn about if/how to use texting in a school or library setting. I don’t know how much back end work it takes to get a text/SMS system like the one Google has up and running. I’d be curious to know, though–and also to know how much people use it. Mostly my thought is that if we can keep in touch with users and make them see the library as a valuable resource, that’s a good thing.

I worry a little bit about the lack of decent grammar and writing skills that people have nowadays. Not just students, either– as an editor, I have read many many really bad documents from very senior people who should know better. Give them a forum where it’s encouraged to use abbreviations and slang and improper grammar, and how is that helpful? There’s a lot of writing that goes on in the real world. Being able to communicate clearly is one of the most important skills you can develop.

However, I like the idea of getting to the essence of the message. I think that’s a goal that goes along with clear writing. I liked the “Messaging Shakespeare” article– what a creative way to get people to understand and summarize complex ideas. I think it would be really interesting to use text messaging in a poetry curriculum. Many students don’t like poetry, but I wonder what they would think about comparing it to text messaging? In a limited amount of space, every word counts. I wonder if we could breathe some new life into poetry by having students create text message haikus… an interesting thought. I can also see using it in an English or religion class, especially in college. I had a religion professor who used to make us write a one-page paper about the reading for every class meeting. I wonder what would happen if you asked students to text you the main point, or something they learned from the reading, or a discussion point? It would have to be something that they could answer in few characters, so the questions would have to be pretty controlled… but it would be an interesting experiment.

Yet this whole visual learning/Inspiration/Kidspiration thing I don’t get. I can’t visualize a useful concept map. I think that’s a little weird considering how much I like to have things visually in front of me. But I like outlines and hierarchies, not free-form items (unless I’m brainstorming). I’ve had trouble following all the examples so far except for the Venn diagram of birds that swim vs. birds that fly.

One problem is that I don’t like clip art and I like things to be parallel (too many years of editing). I don’t like things like the concept of a wave map (example of a concept map on the Inspiration site) where the levels do not denote hierarchy and the text is broken up into chunks. I don’t understand how writing things in bubbles is different than writing things in a list except that it’s not organized logically (I recognize that this is a personal preference and that my struggle with this is probably other people’s struggle with outlines… but I still don’t get it). I am having trouble visualizing things that aren’t visual. The concept of a wave is not visual, and I am having trouble creating a visual to fit onto a piece of paper. People seriously prefer these things? They don’t get lost and overwhelmed by looking at the examples? I certainly do.  

Off to coach and ask my co-coach (a third-grade teacher) if she uses Kidspiration or concept maps. I know she did a unit on rocks and minerals and they made toothpaste. I should be able to get an interesting map out of that… if I can figure out how to represent it visually!

But for all the hype from Richardson and the SLJ article, I’m not a fan of PBwiki. I helped create a PB wiki today for LIS483, and my teammates and I were underwhelmed. I expected more. I don’t like the design (the sidebar is weird and the text is badly aligned on the page). I don’t like sharing a password (which partially defeats the point of collaborating to create a history if you can’t see who changed what). I don’t like the big PBwiki information at the bottom. I miss the ease of the MediaWiki interface for creating new pages with brackets, and I miss the table of contents that MediaWiki creates for you. However, I will admit that I really like the MediaWiki software and I’m used to that, which could be part of why I wasn’t entranced with PBwiki. 

 I just tried JotSpot (www.jot.com) and it turns out that Google has taken over it! Seriously, is Google trying to rule the world? They just bought GrandCentral too. Yikes.

Oooh paydirt! It looks like Wikia is free MediaWiki software. That would be my ideal! However, it says that wikis must have a large potential audience and individual schools aren’t encouraged. Humph.  (Also interesting to note: Wikia used to be WikiCities. Will Richardson’s book is copyright 2006 and it’s already behind!)

Seedwiki.com looks more promising– it has better design and looks easy to set up.  It also has editing codes and instructions right on the homepage– much more straightforward than others I’ve seen. I’d try that one first if I had to create another one. Enough for the moment– on to finding the link for my podcast.

Linda remarked that technology supports research but it doesn’t mean that students no longer need the process. This resonated with me because I had already been thinking about it in terms of writing. I’m hoping that teachers won’t think that blogging replaces the good old five-paragraph essay. I know I’m biased because I’ve spent nine years as an editor. I’ve seen a lot of bad writing. And one of my concerns about blogging is that it’s SO easy that people will do it without planing it or understanding its structure. Just because you can post something quickly and efficiently doesn’t mean it’s good. Often, if you just sit down and pound something out without a lot of planning, it’s really bad! Students still need to understand the structure of formal writing because a lot of the rules (topic sentences, theses, logical flow, etc.) still apply to blogging.

This is also to what I was referring when I pulled the quote from the Librarian in Black’s blog for the Jott entry in the tech encyclopedia. Sometimes just because technology makes things EASIER doesn’t mean it makes them BETTER. The Librarian in Black said that when she used Jott (a voice transcription software), the “content is a lot more superficial, a lot less coherent, less formal, and a lot less structured… so it ends up being a little bit rambley and miscellaneous (kind of like this post, which was written with Jott).” (Librarian in Black blog, http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/, 6/18/07). The technology made it easy for her to write, but it was less analytical, less structured, and less profound… which to me is a warning.

I think that encouraging kids to write blog entries could be very powerful. Blogs are easy. They’re fun. They look professional with minimal effort, and they look official because everyone can see them. Yay for easy distribution and a sense of accomplishment and teamwork for the kids (important developmental assets!). However, students have to learn (and teachers have to understand) that there is still behind-the-scenes work to be done in planning them out so they are effective.

Will Richardson speaks to this idea a little bit. He noted that posting is not the same as blogging. You can write about what you had for lunch, but it isn’t blogging unless it’s analytical and ideally includes different links (p.32 in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms). I appreciated that he recognized the behind-the-scenes effort that goes into making the technology work.

I think that Karen must have more than 24 hours in her day. Really. With all the teacher support she was doing, her daily Website emails, and the training sessions she designed, she must have put in a ton of hours. Finding good information is time-consuming! Designing good training is time-consuming! And she manage this in her first year?? Wow. I’m impressed with the way she really worked to connect students and teachers and make the library a central learning space. But, since I already mentioned that I was a “how-does-this-work” type person, I’m wondering: How do you balance the technology needs and high-level curriculum support with the daily grind of checking in books? Maybe this is where RFID comes in handy? Or, more realistically, parent and student volunteers? How much money did she have to make this work? She had access to several databases and the whole school was wired, so there must have been a decent amount of money.

Another article documenting some of Karen Oberstein’s other projects and her work at another Florida school–it also has some interesting ideas. I especially liked how she got the student volunteers involved:

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showstory.cfm?ArticleID=391

When I was searching for podcasts, I came across one on NPR about using laptops instead of textbooks at a high school: http://tinyurl.com/yr6fxh. NPR reported that there was no significant difference in test scores between the school that used laptops and other schools that used traditional textbooks. One explanation is that students might not know how to use the technology even if you provide it. As the Educause article says, “Even such digitally fluent students need to learn to manipulate their multimedia languages well with conceptual and critical acumen” (p.5). Even though students are familiar with the Web and various technologies, they have to learn to use them appropriately. They still need to develop analytical and critical thinking skills in this new context.

So the questions I was thinking about were, how much training do students need? What’s the best way to train them? How much can you assume that they know? The Richardson book reminded me that a good strategy is probably to start small. Get people using the new technology– introduce it slowly. Then, once they’ve gotten used to it and are intrigued by it, teach them how to use it. The Technosavvy blog provides an interesting perspective in the entry, “Tricking administrators into using technology” (blog post 5/5/07, http://tinyurl.com/ywnsx8). The author, the Director of Technology for the school district, helped administrators use podcasts to pool applicant interviews. This was something they really wanted to do. Once they were familiar with the technology, he told them how easily they could make podcasts using the same technology and encouraged them to blog and create podcasts for the next school year.

So really I think it’s more than training… Introducing people to new technology is also about selling it to them. I had originally planned on taking Storytelling as my elective, but now I’m wondering if I should take Marketing the Library!

Okay, I’m definitely way ahead of my mother. She is the reading and language arts coordinator at a school in CT. She’s an excellent teacher… but she hadn’t heard of a blog until I told her I was writing one, and she doesn’t understand why people use e-mail. Hmmm… which brings me to a challenge of a SLMS: staying current with technology yet leading people who aren’t as current with technology. I am hoping to get some insights about that through this class, if only through my own experiences trying to figure out how things work!

I will admit to being a little nervous and a lot curious about this class. The amount of information I’m supposed to know or find out is a little overwhelming at first glance, especially since we only have six weeks! However, I’m sure it will get easier as we get the hang of different technologies (it’s really the blog that has been killing me this afternoon. I never seem to find the settings page in the same place twice. Grr.)

I’m also really curious about taking the class online. At my old job, I helped design synchronous e-learning for a writing training company (they help corporations write more effectively). That company sort of scoffed at asynchronous e-learning. This is partially because we (the instructional design department) sat through many terrible online “classes” that were glorified PowerPoint presentations. It’s also because it’s just hard to teach a soft skill like strategic writing online, especially to busy corporate learners. I think that learning about technology will be a much more appropriate thing to do online.   The workshops my company did were single-day workshops, so if you weren’t meeting people in person you lost a lot of connection and learner interest in the class.  I’m curious to see how well we get to know each other through the collaborative technologies.