Alas my blogging quest has come to an end. I must admit that it wasn’t so bad! This did turn out to be an enjoyable assignment even though I did have my reservations about it. Even if no one reads this other than myself and presumably you, my professors, that’s fine since I had the opportunity to reflect on different things that helped me as a person and as future teacher-librarian.
The best part about becoming a student again was learning about all the new things that are out there in respects to teaching and technology. I thought that I would not enjoy blogging because of all the bad blogs out there, but if it is used properly and effectively, it is certainly a useful tool for learning and expressing ideas.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed my rantings, ravings, and ponderings as I have enjoyed composing them.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Websites can be a horrible sight!
Because I am a T.O.C., I have spent a lot of time on different school websites in my school district to find out the ongoings of the school before I go in. I have seen just about every school website, including many library websites. There is a prevailing trend amongst many of these library websites which is that they, generally speaking, look like a mess! Yes, I know this isn't a popular opinion and it may be not the kindest thing to say, but I think that by me saying this, we can stop this plague of flash animation, GIFs, and the like.
By now, we all know the importance of a school library website. They are one of the main ways we, as teacher-librarians, can advertise our services and relay information to students, teachers, and parents. They can be a great tool for showing off student work, advertising fundraisers, and book fairs. Now, if we want our websites to be used and used often, we have to make them appealing to our users. The tricky part of it all is that we would like to have a wide variety of users including students and the school community. Sure, little children like having cute moving cartoon images too look at, but what is the point of it all? We don't want the only reason a child visits our website to be to see the cute little animation. It will probably lure them in the first time, or even the first few times, but we can't expect that to hold their interest. There has to be more. There has to much more stuff to keep our clientèle coming back.
I am by no means an expert website designer or creator. I have only created a few in my life and one of my first ones was hideous! It was for a homework website and I didn't know what to include in it. I remember using a program called DreamWeaver and because it was such an easy program to use, it helped contribute to my ugly website. It was covered in colourful cheesy backgrounds and I crammed in tonnes of even cheesier moving animations. I was naive in believing that this would make my website "better." My later developments were, in my opinion, nicer. They were clean and professional looking. They had all the information I wanted in it without all the cheese.
By keeping a website clean and clear, I think it makes it more user friendly. Anyone can find what they are looking for with complete ease and little or no frustration. This can also make it easier for the website administrator to update the website (whether it be the creator or someone else) if it is easy to see what needs updating and changing. This leads me to my next point, updating websites.
There are a lot of school library and school websites that don't get updated often enough. I understand that people are busy and that it is so easy to neglect this, but if websites aren't updated enough, they may as well not be created in the first place. I have visited websites that have not been updated in over 6 months. In a school year, that's a really long time because lots of things have already happened that could have been put up on the website.
According to Church, "to survive and thrive in the 21st century, school libraries must rethink collections and services" (2006, p.12). At the very least, online catalogues should be made available to students because "students prefer information in electronic format" (p.12). This will also mean the purchase of online database subscriptions or online encyclopedias, which can be quite pricey as we know from our discussion postings (databases).
Church also states that library media specialists "will be left behind" if they don't address this issue (p.12). This can be a scary thought if we are unwilling to change. Evidence of this fact perhaps can be seen in library cutbacks. If libraries and teacher-librarians made it clear to those making these decisions, then perhaps we wouldn't be one of the first things on the chopping blocks. We must make it clear that we are more than just a person who checks in and out books.
By being involved in an active library website and an active library technology program, perhaps we can save our students from a life with limited literacy (yes, including information literacy).
Remember that just because you can read, doesn't mean you can understand what you've read - just because you can search for something on Google, doesn't mean you can research
Works Cited:
Church, A.P. (2006). Virtual school libraries - the time is now! Multimedia & internet@schools March/April, 8-12.
By now, we all know the importance of a school library website. They are one of the main ways we, as teacher-librarians, can advertise our services and relay information to students, teachers, and parents. They can be a great tool for showing off student work, advertising fundraisers, and book fairs. Now, if we want our websites to be used and used often, we have to make them appealing to our users. The tricky part of it all is that we would like to have a wide variety of users including students and the school community. Sure, little children like having cute moving cartoon images too look at, but what is the point of it all? We don't want the only reason a child visits our website to be to see the cute little animation. It will probably lure them in the first time, or even the first few times, but we can't expect that to hold their interest. There has to be more. There has to much more stuff to keep our clientèle coming back.
I am by no means an expert website designer or creator. I have only created a few in my life and one of my first ones was hideous! It was for a homework website and I didn't know what to include in it. I remember using a program called DreamWeaver and because it was such an easy program to use, it helped contribute to my ugly website. It was covered in colourful cheesy backgrounds and I crammed in tonnes of even cheesier moving animations. I was naive in believing that this would make my website "better." My later developments were, in my opinion, nicer. They were clean and professional looking. They had all the information I wanted in it without all the cheese.
By keeping a website clean and clear, I think it makes it more user friendly. Anyone can find what they are looking for with complete ease and little or no frustration. This can also make it easier for the website administrator to update the website (whether it be the creator or someone else) if it is easy to see what needs updating and changing. This leads me to my next point, updating websites.
There are a lot of school library and school websites that don't get updated often enough. I understand that people are busy and that it is so easy to neglect this, but if websites aren't updated enough, they may as well not be created in the first place. I have visited websites that have not been updated in over 6 months. In a school year, that's a really long time because lots of things have already happened that could have been put up on the website.
According to Church, "to survive and thrive in the 21st century, school libraries must rethink collections and services" (2006, p.12). At the very least, online catalogues should be made available to students because "students prefer information in electronic format" (p.12). This will also mean the purchase of online database subscriptions or online encyclopedias, which can be quite pricey as we know from our discussion postings (databases).
Church also states that library media specialists "will be left behind" if they don't address this issue (p.12). This can be a scary thought if we are unwilling to change. Evidence of this fact perhaps can be seen in library cutbacks. If libraries and teacher-librarians made it clear to those making these decisions, then perhaps we wouldn't be one of the first things on the chopping blocks. We must make it clear that we are more than just a person who checks in and out books.
By being involved in an active library website and an active library technology program, perhaps we can save our students from a life with limited literacy (yes, including information literacy).
Remember that just because you can read, doesn't mean you can understand what you've read - just because you can search for something on Google, doesn't mean you can research
Works Cited:
Church, A.P. (2006). Virtual school libraries - the time is now! Multimedia & internet@schools March/April, 8-12.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands! - Big Brain from Futurama, "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid"
Do you remember the very first major research paper you had assigned in college or university? I had to look up so many books and journals in order to complete my lengthy psychology paper. It was tedious and strenuous and I hated doing it. Main Library at UBC scared me (it was like those creepy libraries where students go in, but not out like in any cheesy college horror film), but I still went there because I had to get my work done. I do know that even though I hated doing it, it was something I could do on my own. I didn’t have to rely on any one to help me to find the references I needed. I suppose I have my grade school teacher-librarians to thank for that.
Students are slowly losing their abilities to use reference books. They don’t think about using the index before delving into an encyclopedia or any other collected works. Instead, they do it all the hard way and look directly into the books for what they might hopefully luck out on coming across the information they need. This is the same for student use of table of contents and indexes in basic non-fiction books. On top of that, some students are struggling with finding books with different online catalogue systems and finding the books on the shelf. Yes, it is sad that some high school students can find a book on the shelf using the Dewey decimal system. Even if they aren’t the greatest at math, they should at least be able to find a book up to the first decimal place. These are all skills that need to be practiced and maintained. “Just like reading more improves reading and comprehension skills, using information-literacy skills more often improves that lifelong skill too” (Abram, 2005, p.21)
I hate to say it, but students are using the Internet way too much and are losing the art of using print materials. We, as teachers, have become lax on requiring students to use books in the library to get a variety of sources for projects. We cannot just show the students a few times in their public school lives and think they can be adept at this. We have to have them practice these skills just as we did as children so that we can be confident that when these students go off to university that they can do this on their own.
Works Cited:
Abram, S. (2005). The top five priorities for school libraries and their districts. Multimedia & Internet@school, January/February, 19-20.
Students are slowly losing their abilities to use reference books. They don’t think about using the index before delving into an encyclopedia or any other collected works. Instead, they do it all the hard way and look directly into the books for what they might hopefully luck out on coming across the information they need. This is the same for student use of table of contents and indexes in basic non-fiction books. On top of that, some students are struggling with finding books with different online catalogue systems and finding the books on the shelf. Yes, it is sad that some high school students can find a book on the shelf using the Dewey decimal system. Even if they aren’t the greatest at math, they should at least be able to find a book up to the first decimal place. These are all skills that need to be practiced and maintained. “Just like reading more improves reading and comprehension skills, using information-literacy skills more often improves that lifelong skill too” (Abram, 2005, p.21)
I hate to say it, but students are using the Internet way too much and are losing the art of using print materials. We, as teachers, have become lax on requiring students to use books in the library to get a variety of sources for projects. We cannot just show the students a few times in their public school lives and think they can be adept at this. We have to have them practice these skills just as we did as children so that we can be confident that when these students go off to university that they can do this on their own.
Works Cited:
Abram, S. (2005). The top five priorities for school libraries and their districts. Multimedia & Internet@school, January/February, 19-20.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
We spent a lot of money on this, so you'd better get real good, real fast, or POW - Homer Simpson
As we've been learning from this course so far is that there are pros and cons to online resources and hard copy books.
Online databases that have user fees can be extremely expensive for schools and districts. With cutbacks on teacher-librarian time amongst many others, it is surprising that some schools/districts have managed to scrounge up enough money to pay for these. In the district I work in, there must be around three or four databases that either the school or school district has paid for. As you can imagine (from the class discussion postings on how much these subscriptions cost), this is a lot of money.
Although there are many useful pay online resources, it is possible to get around paying for these if we teach students how to find reliable online sources or if we, as teacher-librarians, find some for the students to use. I have come across some free online resources that would be useful to students, such as Bartleby, Awesome Library, Fact Monster, The Canadian Encyclopedia, etc. There are also many others that I have not listed here that students can use to help them find useful information for any research project they may have.
Students use the Internet for everything. They use it to find music, look up video clips, chat with friends, and help with their homework. Although they know how to use the Internet, they do not know how to use it effectively. I have noticed that students will often go straight to a computer and search on the Internet before checking what is available in the library when they come in for a research project. According to Geck (2006, p.20) they "often use Google carelessly to determine or measure the significance of a topic or individual, thereby leading to faulty conclusions." What this means is that these students rely too much on Google results to tell them if something is important or not based on how many websites discuss what they are searching for. For example, Britney Spears would likely turn up more hits (almost 3 million) than Emily Carr (less than 1 million) some students may come to the conclusion that Carr is less important than Spears. Because of this and other bad habits, Geck postulates that students are information illiterate (p. 21) (She bases this on ALA's definition of literacy). I would have to agree with her. Often I have heard stories of students entering "bad" keyword choices when they search for various topics on Google. One TL told me that a student of her's entered "I want to find a book about rats" in the keyword search. Another TL shared that her Gr. 7s don't know how to choose appropriate keywords either.
By teaching students to use reliable online resources, we can avoid the false sense of student information literacy and actually teach the students to be information literate. We have to show the students that what they are doing is not effective and teach them the skills they need to use one of the most convenient and useful technology we have, which is the Internet.
Works Cited:
Geck, C. (2006). The generation Z connection: teaching information literacy to the newest net generation. Teacher Librarian, 33, 3, 19-23.
Online databases that have user fees can be extremely expensive for schools and districts. With cutbacks on teacher-librarian time amongst many others, it is surprising that some schools/districts have managed to scrounge up enough money to pay for these. In the district I work in, there must be around three or four databases that either the school or school district has paid for. As you can imagine (from the class discussion postings on how much these subscriptions cost), this is a lot of money.
Although there are many useful pay online resources, it is possible to get around paying for these if we teach students how to find reliable online sources or if we, as teacher-librarians, find some for the students to use. I have come across some free online resources that would be useful to students, such as Bartleby, Awesome Library, Fact Monster, The Canadian Encyclopedia, etc. There are also many others that I have not listed here that students can use to help them find useful information for any research project they may have.
Students use the Internet for everything. They use it to find music, look up video clips, chat with friends, and help with their homework. Although they know how to use the Internet, they do not know how to use it effectively. I have noticed that students will often go straight to a computer and search on the Internet before checking what is available in the library when they come in for a research project. According to Geck (2006, p.20) they "often use Google carelessly to determine or measure the significance of a topic or individual, thereby leading to faulty conclusions." What this means is that these students rely too much on Google results to tell them if something is important or not based on how many websites discuss what they are searching for. For example, Britney Spears would likely turn up more hits (almost 3 million) than Emily Carr (less than 1 million) some students may come to the conclusion that Carr is less important than Spears. Because of this and other bad habits, Geck postulates that students are information illiterate (p. 21) (She bases this on ALA's definition of literacy). I would have to agree with her. Often I have heard stories of students entering "bad" keyword choices when they search for various topics on Google. One TL told me that a student of her's entered "I want to find a book about rats" in the keyword search. Another TL shared that her Gr. 7s don't know how to choose appropriate keywords either.
By teaching students to use reliable online resources, we can avoid the false sense of student information literacy and actually teach the students to be information literate. We have to show the students that what they are doing is not effective and teach them the skills they need to use one of the most convenient and useful technology we have, which is the Internet.
Works Cited:
Geck, C. (2006). The generation Z connection: teaching information literacy to the newest net generation. Teacher Librarian, 33, 3, 19-23.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Wikiality
“Wikiality” was a term I originally came across during The Colbert Report (a television show on Comedy Central) on a segment called “The Word.” This first aired in July 2006. The host, Stephen Colbert, commented on how we can create our own reality on Wikipedia and have that reality be accepted as being true presumably since the general public is so eager to accept the information found on Wikipedia. He also commented that if enough people believe this to be true, then it will be true. (http://broadband.thecomedynetwork.ca/?vid=16386)
Colbert asked the audience to go onto Wikipedia’s site and change Wikipedia to a reality we can all accept. In this case, it was changing information in regards to African elephants. He asked people to change the information to write that the African elephant population has tripled.
This resulted in Wikipedia shutting down that article because of all the inaccuracies being written there.
Colbert has even changed articles, then quoted the Wikipedia articles to show the accuracy of his information. He said that the "G" in Warren G. Harding, the 29th president of the United States, stands for "Gansta" and proceeded to show the Wikipedia article that showed this "fact" and thanked Wikipedia for the data (http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/best-of/#clip60819). This is why checking the citations are important when something seems "weird."
This was all done in jest, but it really pointed out the follies of author bias. If we, as authors, don’t believe something to be true (or false) and perpetuate that belief, then others reading it will come to believe it to be true as well. Isn’t this the case with people who deny the holocaust? We all know that this event happened. There is concrete evidence and proof of it in Europe. Survivors of it still exist and give firsthand accounts of their experiences and what they saw. But what will happen centuries from now and the whole event has become a story in a history book? Will people doubt the truthfulness of it because others doubt it now and spread their beliefs as being reality?
Wikipedia is a great learning tool, because it can be updated and changed instantaneously, but the question we should ask ourselves and teach our students is according to whose reality?
Colbert asked the audience to go onto Wikipedia’s site and change Wikipedia to a reality we can all accept. In this case, it was changing information in regards to African elephants. He asked people to change the information to write that the African elephant population has tripled.
This resulted in Wikipedia shutting down that article because of all the inaccuracies being written there.
Colbert has even changed articles, then quoted the Wikipedia articles to show the accuracy of his information. He said that the "G" in Warren G. Harding, the 29th president of the United States, stands for "Gansta" and proceeded to show the Wikipedia article that showed this "fact" and thanked Wikipedia for the data (http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/best-of/#clip60819). This is why checking the citations are important when something seems "weird."
This was all done in jest, but it really pointed out the follies of author bias. If we, as authors, don’t believe something to be true (or false) and perpetuate that belief, then others reading it will come to believe it to be true as well. Isn’t this the case with people who deny the holocaust? We all know that this event happened. There is concrete evidence and proof of it in Europe. Survivors of it still exist and give firsthand accounts of their experiences and what they saw. But what will happen centuries from now and the whole event has become a story in a history book? Will people doubt the truthfulness of it because others doubt it now and spread their beliefs as being reality?
Wikipedia is a great learning tool, because it can be updated and changed instantaneously, but the question we should ask ourselves and teach our students is according to whose reality?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
An aside: Information Services in everyday life
After posting my latest blog, I decided to relax by watching a bit of television. There wasn't much on so I was just going to skip it. Instead I turned on the David Letterman Show. It turns out that Sen. John McCain had cancelled his appearance on the show. Although Letterman was upset over this and it didn't affect me, I became appalled to hear that he wants to cancel the presidential debates. To top things off, he wants to cancel the ONLY vice-presidential debate and replace it with a presidential debate.
As teacher-librarians, we are advocates for not only literacy but also the pursuit of knowledge. We know that part of the key to learning and growing is through seeking information and the discussion about various issues, which is why we create these blogs and participate in our discussion postings. So I pose the following questions: How can a major election be determined without any discussion or debate of all candidates? Can anyone be truly informed about an issue without proper discourse much less without any information given at all? I am not saying that I am for anyone per say, but I do believe in the freedom of information and when many people base their votes on the ideas expressed in forums like debates, it is preventing the flow of information.
We are educators. Our jobs and passions are based on the education of those who are still learning to think critically and evaluate information. By preventing the expression of ideas, we are halting the process of considering all sides to a problem/issue and making an uninformed choice.
I hope that I am not just overreacting and that you can see how this is a problem. In fact, I hope that the American voters see this and understand the importance of not cancelling these debates instead of falling into complacency over this issue.
All I can say is that it's all absolutely and unequivocally "ridonculous!"
As teacher-librarians, we are advocates for not only literacy but also the pursuit of knowledge. We know that part of the key to learning and growing is through seeking information and the discussion about various issues, which is why we create these blogs and participate in our discussion postings. So I pose the following questions: How can a major election be determined without any discussion or debate of all candidates? Can anyone be truly informed about an issue without proper discourse much less without any information given at all? I am not saying that I am for anyone per say, but I do believe in the freedom of information and when many people base their votes on the ideas expressed in forums like debates, it is preventing the flow of information.
We are educators. Our jobs and passions are based on the education of those who are still learning to think critically and evaluate information. By preventing the expression of ideas, we are halting the process of considering all sides to a problem/issue and making an uninformed choice.
I hope that I am not just overreacting and that you can see how this is a problem. In fact, I hope that the American voters see this and understand the importance of not cancelling these debates instead of falling into complacency over this issue.
All I can say is that it's all absolutely and unequivocally "ridonculous!"
I hear the Internets are a series of tubes...
Although I am not in a teacher-librarian position yet, I do notice the trend of students immediately going towards a computer whenever a class comes to the library for research on a project. There will be trolleys of books ready for them that I’ve searched the library for and many of the books will be perfectly suitable for their project, but these goes unnoticed and often unused even though I have talked to the class about the usefulness of the books I pulled.
The district I work in and the high school I TOC in the most have purchased many online references for the students to use. We constantly remind the students to take a look at these because of the level of accuracy and authority. Unfortunately, many students will just opt to “google” something and use the first few websites that come up.
I do have an affinity towards books and journals (either the hard copy or online version) over the Internet for research even though I do consider myself technologically literate. The most practical reason for this is that in books (generally speaking of course) there is a certain level of fact checking and editing that comes into play. We are typically quite certain that what we are reading has some level of accuracy and if we want to dispute it, there’s a bibliography at the end of the piece and we can look that up too until we are satisfied with what we’ve found. The Internet doesn’t always have this. Many sites are based on personal opinions and many aren’t properly fact checked.
I don’t think that we can change students’ attitudes towards the Internet. In fact, I think it would almost be wrong to change that because we can’t hold back technology and progression. We wouldn’t want a generation of luddites, because we were fearful of inaccuracies in the Internet. Because of all of this, we have to teach the students to evaluate and critically think about the kinds of information they are getting from the Internet.
Perhaps this is what might happen if we don't teach the students about the Internet and technology:
The district I work in and the high school I TOC in the most have purchased many online references for the students to use. We constantly remind the students to take a look at these because of the level of accuracy and authority. Unfortunately, many students will just opt to “google” something and use the first few websites that come up.
I do have an affinity towards books and journals (either the hard copy or online version) over the Internet for research even though I do consider myself technologically literate. The most practical reason for this is that in books (generally speaking of course) there is a certain level of fact checking and editing that comes into play. We are typically quite certain that what we are reading has some level of accuracy and if we want to dispute it, there’s a bibliography at the end of the piece and we can look that up too until we are satisfied with what we’ve found. The Internet doesn’t always have this. Many sites are based on personal opinions and many aren’t properly fact checked.
I don’t think that we can change students’ attitudes towards the Internet. In fact, I think it would almost be wrong to change that because we can’t hold back technology and progression. We wouldn’t want a generation of luddites, because we were fearful of inaccuracies in the Internet. Because of all of this, we have to teach the students to evaluate and critically think about the kinds of information they are getting from the Internet.
Perhaps this is what might happen if we don't teach the students about the Internet and technology:
"Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Why? Because it got tangled up in a big ball with all these things going on the Internet commercially.
[...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material." - US Senator Ted Stevens, June 28 2006
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