More Screens

The mountain of apps is rising
and
under the sparkling blue Internet ocean
is an abyss of the dark web

Will the cream rise to the top
or will I stumble upon meaning
serendipitously?

The wise sage
or the librarian
may be of help

but it is now up to us
as we awake each morning

to recognize our choices
are critical

in an ever expanding universe
of digital life

Revisiting Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: a Tribute to Marc Prensky

Many of my colleagues and I have cited Marc Prensky and his “digital natives and digital immigrants” for over a decade. After spending years striving diligently to keep up with innovative technology trends, I have never felt like younger people knew more or were more adept at technology than myself. I admit, of course, I am a “digital immigrant” when one defines the term to mean someone born before the Internet and digital life became commonplace.

Today, I saw something that re-opened my eyes to the difference between the two– the natives and the immigrants. I had been struggling (between classes , paperwork, and other tasks) to conquer the server issues to start a MinecraftEDU club in my school library. After several attempts and a few emails to the company, I still was unable to get into the MinecraftEDU world. Lacking time, I delegated a 5th grade boy as sidekick to start the club. He eagerly entered the library after school, where we sat down and were able to get it up and running in less than 5 minutes.

Of course, I have experienced the “two heads are better than one” method of troubleshooting technology countless times before. Often two of us can solve an issue simply by tackling it from two different perspectives. So, I am not saying that I am not smarter than a 5th grader! However, I underestimated a 5th grader’s ability to navigate server issues and ip addresses. I stood there in awe as I watched him effortlessly click numerous settings at the speed of light.

I write this post as a tribute to Marc Prensky because it was only today that I fully understood my personal immigration status and that simple moment reminded me that we have only begun to understand the toppled hierarchy of information (and learning) due to digital culture.

This global information community in which we live, continues to inspire, alarm, challenge, and intrigue me each day. Last week, I got a message that Marc Prensky was following me on twitter and I felt honored! It is a small (yet huge) world we live in….a world full of opposites: oxymorons and formulas, scientific facts and wild imagination. Today, I am honored to be followed by the guy who introduced us all to digital natives and digital immigrants and also honored to be leading a digital native who is helping me realize that I am but an immigrant to a new land. I am both teacher and learner. Sometimes we can know something for a long time before we actually comprehend it.

Virtual Reminiscence

What triggers the human brain to reminisce about our past experiences in life? Smells, I am told, are critical to our memories. But, this week, for the first time, I ran across an old machinima that I shot in 2008 and (believe it or not) I found myself virtually reminiscing. Physical space, such as our houses or the streets and shady parks we remember from our youth, cause us to recall personal memories.

Perhaps I am one of the first to discover a personal “pang” of reminiscence in a virtual world. The spaces we live in are moving from physical to virtual. Whether or not we have an avatar is of little consequence.

Beyond the Digital Line- February 13, 2054

Little One, your hands are beautiful
and they hold all knowledge

Move your finger and surroundings change
to your favorite color—
swirls of blue with silver sparkles

Touch your ear and musical harmonies slowly swell
Wave your hand to augment history

Look into my eyes and they will tell you of another time

For these eyes saw a different world
where colors could not change
Only nature held the power
That world was unprogrammed and unsafe

My body was separate from the digital realm
And each person was required
to learn how to think

But you, Little One, are
safely digitized
You have never seen broken things
Books with worn, tattered pages
Cars with flat tires
Bruises or skinned knees
You live in the simulated shell of digital protection

Gingerbread and hot cider appear when you blink
and friends await you at all points of Earth

But now, I want to tell you what I miss
from the world before
the Singularity
I miss…

having to wait.

No Need to Read This

A blog poem

Thousands of posts, millions of voices
sharing thoughts and tips
the important
and the tiny glimpses into tidbits of life

Everyone participates

Everyone has a voice

Everyone is someone and (perhaps) everyone is nobody
I’m Nobody, Who Are You” (Emily Dickinson)

She hid her poems in dresser drawers- not caring who might read them.

May we write what we write

not to market ourselves
not to “go viral”
not to even care who reads
but because

it must be said.

Embedding Content within Content, Hyperlinked to Content to be Curated

Today is Digital Learning Day and I am whirling through tecnology tools and formats (alongside physical resources) in my school library as I seek best practices for teaching digital literacy in what has become “participatory culture”.

My 4th graders are studying poetry and I am teaching them to share through our library blog. I want them to understand the importance of striving for meaningful content, not just posting and tweeting nonstop. Digital citizenship requires us to be responsible for both our consumption and production of information. I sometimes think that because we are so excited about all the cool “Web 2.0” applications that allow us to produce and share online, we forget to emphasize revision and reflection.

Buried deep beneath the clutter, four or five hyperlinked clicks away, is there some really important meaningful content of high quality or aesthetic appeal? For years, I have empasized process over product in education because all learning, like life, is a process. Now, in the digital age (as content floods my screens nonstop), I am realizing there has to be balance between process and product. At some point, the author or the artist must say “here is what I have done.” The goal is to say something worthwhile.

My “So Called” Lives (Physical and Virtual) Gangnam Style

We all now live both physical and virtual lives.  If you don’t agree, take a look at how close your digital device is at this moment.  We are networking, connected, and always online. This evolution of networked culture has challenged me to be both a physical world librarian and a virtual world librarian.

Within this past month, I was coincidentally (I am not sure if that is the right word when you realize how pop culture inspired this post) asked to edit a Gangnam Style video in both worlds.

As a school librarian, I was asked to edit a video showing student engagement.  The popular Gangnam Style dance parody was embraced by everyone from kindergarten to our principal, pictured dancing in my library loft.

 

 
Just a few days later, as a virtual world librarian leading an exhibit tour to the Museum of Virtual Media, I was asked to edit another Gangnam Style dance- this time with avatars from around the globe. One of the tour guides, from Argentina, gave the participants a dance animation for the closing festivities. The exhibit was built by the University of Washington’s Certificate in Virtual Worlds Class of 2012 and features the evolution of media from ancient cave paintings, through radio & movies, into the future. Being asked to produce a video by two completely different patron communities fascinated me.

We all hear every day, as educators and librarians, about how we now live in a participatory culture. Spending time editing such diverse groups, in both physical and virtual worlds, made participatory culture clear to me in a way that I had never before experienced. Learning theorists, like Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey, proposed that learning is social in nature nearly a century ago, way before digital culture took hold. Witnessing this human desire to be part of a social experience through the global phenomenon of a popular dance video illustrated a new frontier in constructivist learning.

Disposable Media and Intellectual Junk Food

Smart phones and mobile devices, equipped with high quality cameras and global networking, have made unlimited transfer of the documentation of our daily lives quotidian (a new word I picked up from Hello Avatar: the Rise of the Networked Generation by Beth Coleman). I wonder, dear reader, if you are beginning to feel (as I am) that you have seen enough photos of day-to-day life to last a lifetime. Various entrees, potty training, new shoes, and cute animals may be interesting to those involved, but become meaningless with exponential increase.

I see a trend toward disposable media, such as the Snapchat app.  The raw, unrevised information uploaded every second could be described as “intellectual junk food” which does little to nourish our minds.

 

Bruce Sterling, media futurist and design geek, predicts that augmented reality may soon congest the world with 3D spam (geolocative information trash) (Coleman, p.153). AR may have purpose for historical documentation, both personal and global; however, some people view the mixed reality heading our way as a kind of “reality hack” that blurs boundaries.  An example, is a ghostly overlay of the twin towers created by Wikitude.  The towers, through augmented reality, may be interpreted as an historical and symbolic icon.  Yet, advertisements and a barrage of 3D images may soon compete with historical data, current events, and personal user-generated content.

 

How are we preparing ourselves for the “X-reality” evolution described by Coleman(p.65)?  Currently, educators and librarians are gathering strategies to prepare 21st century learners for information literacy in unforeseen territory.  The young adult fascination for the “zombie apocalypse” may have some interesting symbolic interpretation!  Get ready…who knows what lies in our future. As we navigate the information sea of chaos, each individual becomes responsible for information intake.

Beware!

Choose wisely-  both your sources of information and your personal network.

 

Welcome New Year: Garden or Garbage Dump

Welcome 2013

I’ve always enjoyed the metaphor of a library as a garden. The librarian tends the garden by planting and weeding. In Texas, the CREW method (continuous review, evaluation and weeding) proposes an ongoing way to promote a healthy library which Ranganathan defined as a “living organism”.

The Internet may be viewed with a similar metaphor and may certainly be defined as a “living organism”. However, there is no weeding method for maintaining the health of the Internet and one might compare it to a tangled forest of overgrowth or a continually growing monstrosity. Rather than a garden, the web seems more like a garbage dump with treasure buried under mounds of rubbish. Of course, there are reliable databases and sites, such as the Internet Public Library, but how many people go beyond the first page of Google hits or beyond Youtube for how-to’s on just about anything? Close-enough is sufficient and convenience trumps quality, authority, and reliability. With thousands of images at our fingertips, who really cares where they came from (other than librarians and a scholars)?

Beautiful Trash
My son and I once glimpsed something truly stunning outside the window of the parlor car on a train: a junkyard filled with cars, each with the hood up. The sun was shining at a angle that made the cars sparkle in many colors and we thought it looked like a garden. There is beauty everywhere- there are poems hidden under leaves and in my purse. Who am I to question where and how anyone finds what they seek? I suppose, a career in information science for over 20 years allows me just a bit of knowledge on the subject; yet I keep referring in my blog to the “toppling of the information hierarchy”. My professional role has been to help others find the best quality in information resources in any location or format (whether in a garden or a garbage dump?).

Thrift Store

Thrift Store creative commons photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/orinrobertjohn/500212463/



The Old and the New

As a thrift store shopper, I understand that the “old” can sometimes be the “new”. I have found lovely clothes and treasures hidden in thrift shops. Often the newer articles are cheaply constructed and not worth the cost. Instead of comparing the Internet to a garbage dump, perhaps a better metaphor is a giant thrift store full of treasures mingled with crazy crafts and user-generated gadgetry.

Currently, I am reading Hello Avatar: the Rise of the Networked Generation by Beth Coleman. The book discusses how we are witnessing the moment of crossover into pervasive media technologies (p. 41). Ubiquitous computing has arrived and we can choose to perceive the change as frightening (Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together) or investigate ways to adapt to the three C’s: communication, community, and collaboration (p.23).

A gardener can work alone among the flora and the weeds; but we need each other to uncover the buried treasure (physical, virtual, digital, and augmented) in the gigantic tangled cyberworld in which we now live.

Hey Webmaster, Tie Your Shoes

Emerging technology trends (often called Web 2.0 for educators) can sometimes be overwhelming to teachers. For example, my Assistant Principal has been working with me in the library to share new tech tools with teachers at a “lunch and learn” session. Teachers bring lunch to the library and my Principal covers recess duty. That shows commitment to teachers learning technology!

MOOCs & Intimidating New Trends
Last week, I shared my recent exploration of a MOOC (massively open online course) with a group of kindergarten teachers. MOOCs are mostly used for higher education, but the Anne Frank MOOC, which takes place online as well is in a virtual world, is designed for middle school learners and is a great example of how education is changing. I felt kindergarten teachers should be aware of where students are headed. When one kindergarten teacher saw the virtual world avatars, she became overwhelmed and stated in exasperation, “WHO has time for that?”

She paused, looking as though she might cry, and then said, “We need to be teaching our kids the basics.”

Then she said something that really made me stop in my tracks. She asked, “Why should I teach a kindergartener to build a website when he can’t tie his shoes?”
I completely understood her frustration with keeping up with technology. I was reminded of the popular essay “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” by Robert Fulgham. For the rest of the day, this idea and the overwhelmed expression of the kindergarten teacher, whose face usually appears patient and calm, kept coming to mind. I felt a need to answer her question, not directly to her because the session had other technology tips that were useful and applicable to kindergarten and she left feeling a sense of accomplishment. I needed to answer her questions for my own peace of mind.

1. WHO has time for that?
Who has time to keep up with all of the educational technology trends, applications, upgrades, and online tools as they rapidly change? After several years of trying, I often say that nobody could keep up with them all. The only way we can utilize them is through personal and professional networks. I could stay up all night every night and never conquer all the new apps, online sites, user-generated content tools, and sharing sites. But that does not mean that I don’t need to be aware of them. I think it is important to make time for the networking with the goal of awareness of education on the other side of the digital revolution. Building a “go-to” network of other educators has become crucial.

2.Why should I teach a kindergartener to build a website when he can’t tie his shoes?

Have you watched a kindergartener lately? Any 5 year old can pick up an iPad and use it and I see toddlers every day in the mall, at a restaurant, or with parents after school, using digital devices. The world has changed since the “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” essay. What has changed our world? Everyone’s world? A kindergartener’s world?

digital life