Janice’s Adventures in Web 2.0

It is nice to be able to attend a conference “in my pajamas” without having to leave home. The presentation I viewed from the K-12 Online Conference 2008 was in the “Leading the Change” section, Beyond the Stacks: Using Emerging Technologies to Strengthen Teacher-Librarian Leadership.  I definitely like the online, anytime delivery option for professional development. I think it is good, if possible to hit a happy medium on this, since actually physically attending conferences also has a lot of value. I just returned from the Association of Jewish Libraries Convention and besides the actual sessions, the networking and discussions that I had face to face at convention were also incredibly valuable and would not have happened to the same extent online. So, I definitely recommend that one does both, attends at least one actual conference each year, but that one also takes advantage of the podcasts, videos, etc. available online, since of course we do not have the time and money to attend all the conferences out there we would like. It is great that we now have the opportunity to learn and grow professionally online as well!

The session I attended online was about what is for me one of the most burning issues as a media specialist, or as they are called in Saskatchewan, Canada, “teacher-librarians”, how can we make our libraries relevant for our digital natives? What is our new role in the 21st century? I loved the name the two session leaders, Donna DesRoches and Carlene Walter have given themselves-”disruptive innovators.”

Some of the main points discussed were as follows: now that students can learn anywhere, anytime, what do they need our libraries for? Donna and Carlene referred to their library as a place of “organized chaos”, where students can come to collaborate with each other on computer projects, as well as seek the assistance of the librarians. They mentioned again the recurrent theme that our students are perfectly capable of using the internet, online resources, etc., but are they using these information resources effectively?

Donna and Carlene shared the bare bones of a professional development course they presented to teacher-librarians in Saskatchewan, Canada entitled, Meet the Stars: Books and Web 2.0.I plan to go back and look at the details of this at a future date. The course involved learning and using a variety of social network tools such as wikis and blogs to promote the Canadian Willow Award books to their students.  The students were involved in reading the award books and writing book reviews, creating movie trailers about their novels, etc. via blogs and other tools. The course also discussed information literacy skills, and how we teach those skills to our students. I would love to see our school media center get more involved, especially in the middle school with a similar project where the students read books, and use a blog or wiki format, and other technology to share their thoughts on these books with other students in the school. If I get some of my hours reinstated that I just had cut, this is one of the activities that I might like to be involved with in the middle school.

I am coming into this course with very little knowledge about the world of Web 2.0 so it is hard for me to even imagine how I will use my new tools for my own professional growth and with my students.

After reading Steve Hargadon’s article about Web 2.0 and the “future of education” I can see some major themes. One of the exciting aspects of Web 2.0 is that it will help our students to be more active rather than passive learners. They will be engaging in interactive learning and the sharing of ideas, rather than the traditional mode of education, where the teacher provides new information that the students need to absorb and spit back. It will also be one of our goals as teachers to help students to learn to surf more effectively through the tidal waves of information on websites, blogs, etc. We will also be needed to help our students to learn to collaborate online and offline with others as a means of learning and growth.

• I envision an easier and more effective way than the listserve in my future as a way to collaborate with other professionals and share ideas.
• I am not sure yet how I would use these new tools to engage today’s “digital learners.” That is one of my goals for this course.
• I definitely feel it is important to have our learners more participative in their own learning.
• I plan to interact with other people taking this course to help each other and to learn from others in order to enhance and support my own learning.