Summer in Berlin- Travel Back in Time

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For the past two years, I have been working with fellow librarians on virtual library projects that allow participants to “enter” a virtual exhibit or simulation.  The first exhibit we developed was Virtual Texas, which featured the Alamo.  Next, we worked with a virtual world builder who designed a rescue simulation called Virtual Tornado.  The third virtual library project was created in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Washington’s Certificate in Virtual World, which built Maya Island.

Now, in the summer of 2012, we present Summer in Berlin!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer in Berlin will be on display at the Community Virtual Library Exhibition Area in the virtual world of Second Life. This virtual experience will give participants the opportunity to enter an historical simulation of Berlin, Germany in the 1920’s- complete with music, art, literature, and historical attire (which will be provided).  The Berlin project was created by a woman in the Netherlands who is an historical consultant specializing in the era.

What’s the purpose of these virtual exhibits?  The Horizon Report, and current research on best practices in education, show potential and predicted growth in serious gaming for education. Librarians realize the importance of not only embracing emerging technology trends, but helping users prioritize them through teaching critical evaluation of content.  Several librarian colleagues have worked together to acquire virtual world resources in the same way librarians acquire the best physical resources available for community libraries.  In the future, it may be possible not only to “read” the book, but to “enter” the book through an immersive virtual experience in 3D.

 

The Value of Your Full Attention – read this between tweets

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On the other side of the digital revolution, as we clean up the rubble left from the toppled hierarchy of information, we stand and gaze in awe at where we now live- survivors of some kind of information disaster that we haven’t quite yet realized.  Are we in denial?  Is it similar to awakening after a natural disaster?

The old rules no longer apply.  Interconnectivity was once a quest that we never could achieve.  Now, Joe Grobelny suggests it may be quite the opposite.

 

Reading his post made me think about how rare it is to give someone my undivided attention.  We message, tweet, post, and cruise our devices simultaneously while communicating with each other.  As physical things become less important than virtuality, I have an idea that giving someone our true focus- completely- may soon be as valuable as gold.

 

Golden Traits of 21st Century Learning

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21st Century Learning

That’s one of the phrases I keep hearing – along with “user-generated content” and “participatory culture”.  Yes- the old hierarchy ( I know you are tired of hearing me say this!) has toppled.  We can’t trust “the media” because information comes from the bottom up now, instead of from trusted published and peer-reviewed authority.

 

So,  my top priority as a teacher librarian today is teaching responsibility for critical evaluation of media and teaching what the ALA standards call “a disposition in action”.  This includes curiosity, a personal quest for meaning, ethics (they are not dead!) and an appreciation for all genres- surprise! literature is alive and well.

This makes us ask, what  is the difference between these new 21st century standards and the traditional standards for learning throughout the past centuries?

Well….the old standards valued the linear timeline of acquired knowledge and skills. The new GOLDEN traits for the future are adaptability and flexibility.  After over 20 years experience in education, I can attest to the importance of these traits today because every time I get a new skill down pat- version 6.7 comes along and I have to start all over. 

Listen to this tip (I repeat),  if you want to succeed as a learner in the future:

 

The golden traits of 21st century learning are adaptability and flexibility (assuming you actually want to learn).

New position in librarianship: Infoculturist

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A well-respected colleague recently requested help writing a job decription for a new librarian role: Publisher of Community.  I couldn’t help but think about content creation and user-generated content.  I have been creating content for my school library for 20 years, through producing a weekly edited news show called “EETV” for Ethridge Elementary TV.  The show has evolved from old VHS format to DVD and mp4 (among other file types). So, content creation has been a part of librarianship for decades.  However, user-generated content shared online has been growing like crazy since Youtube launched.

The core values of librarianship promote acquisition of the best content available and much of the user-generated content we find online today hardly qualifies as even watchable.

Our culture is becoming, we all know, a participatory one.  The library stacks are no longer perceived as top dog in information.  What Melvil Dewey called “man’s heroic deeds” in the literature of the 800 section has been pushed back behind Pinterest and Instagram.

I enjoyed the blogpost from Michael Stephens contemplating new roles for librarians. The online name I chose for myself, Valibrarian, is out-dated but (I hope) remains quaint.  We do need new titles that emphasize services we provide with better nomenclature!  One of my favorite metaphors for a library is that of a garden. One of Ranganathan’s 5 laws for library science stated that “a library is a growing organism”. I am remindeed of how the gardener plants and weeds.  So, I thought about the word horticulturist or agriculturist.

Here’s a nomination for a librarian job title:  infoculturist.  Whaddaya think?  Any more ideas?

2P + CD = Rapport

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Working on a panel presentation for the Texas Library Association Convention (Creating Alliances with the Overlapping Fields of IT and Librarianship) has given me a chance to contemplate the jurisdiction battle between these two perspectives.  For decades, I have listened to people argue about the “L” word and the “I” word.  (Library and Information– am I a librarian or an information specialist?  Do I work in a library or in the realm of information whether physical, digital, electronic, or augmented?) Librarians have found it imperative to embrace information technology, but we can’t all be experts in IT.

This week, my son told me about an encounter with an IT guy that really hit home.  As a computer program implementer, Ken has to install and teach individuals about an entirely new application on a regular basis.  Sometimes, the program installs and runs perfectly.  But, other times networking issues and numerous other problems arise.  Well, on this particular day, he installed the program and it didn’t work.  He tried the common troubleshooting methods, checking the networks for the particular client.  Suddenly, a guy who he hadn’t noticed came over and offered to help.  This IT guy just happened to be nearby at the moment.  Instead of having to place a work order and wait for help, the IT guy saved hours of wait time.  My son ended the anecdote by saying, “the guy was really cool.”

As I thought about how we all have our skills sets and areas of expertise– and yet we all rely heavily on the IT department, I asked Ken what made the guy cool.  He explained that the guy simply had a helpful attitude.  It was his disposition.

That word comes up in the 21st Century Learning Standards put out by the ALA American Association of School Librarians.  Learners today must have a disposition toward adaptation, critically evaluating content, and persistence in seeking ethical interaction in information communication.  The bullet point (1.2) is called Dispositions in Action.

The word disposition is a good choice.  In other words, our attitude still matters and always will!  Having knowledge and skills is essential, but equally essential is being willing to share and collaborate. So, I came up with an equation for building rapport with IT- or with anyone for that matter.  Two perspectives plus a collaborative disposition equals rapport.

2P + CD = Rapport

 

No ROI for me on social media

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ROI (an economics term)

I find very little Return on Investment with the time spent on Facebook.  I have never accomplished much scrolling through the contributions.

Now Pinterest and Instagram are bidding for the attention of those of us uploading photos. Digital archiving is tricky.  Flickr was one of the first to provide a space for our photos. But, I still forget sometimes where I have placed my digital content.  Is it on Flickr, my phone, my flashdrive, my hardrive, my laptop, or ….(add digital device here)?

Maybe we all need librarian skills today!  We have to choose what to archive- what to put on our devices (not just photos but all of our digital files). We decide what to put in file folders or in the cloud.  Someday, it will all be available, so I suppose we need not worry.  If the Dewey Decimal System is dead (but still a great exercise in thinking critically about information systems and cataloging) and everything is available at the touch of a finger…what is important is choosing very wisely.  We must choose what is valuable because what is available will be overwhelming.

Trivial clutter adds nothing to my life- in fact it subtracts from my time.

Then, I must ask myself, what does add value to my life?

The essentials of being human—even though I know I have become a cyborg.

Poetry, Music

and maybe just taking a walk without anything digital at all.

The Way the New Transliteracy Era Works

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1. YOU are in charge of your learning.

What does that mean?  In the old hierarchy mode, an authority figure was in charge (the teacher, the press, the library, the institution).  Today, crowd-sourced content is top dog and the media news broadcast is a talk show over coffee.  Which means, you must critically evaluate all the information that is bombarding you on the web each day.

2. You must participate.
This can be problematic. Most of the experts (whom I respect greatly- see my recommended reading list) warn of the “dumbing down” of our youth through convenient internet browsing for answers and through narcissistic social media participation.  Like it or not, however, there is no going back to the old hierarchy where accuracy and authority were more important than popularity and personal interest.  Barlow and Leston end their book, Beyond the Blogsphere (2012), by stating, “When a collective force as ubiquitous as the internet continues to grow at alarming speeds and when most of its energy is wasted, some sketches of understanding need to be made so that we can begin to better understand this growing, pulsing, emerging organism called the internet.”

3. You MUST credit.
Surprise!  Plagiarism still applies! Amazingly, I see both students and teachers who do not understand that you cannot simply take a picture off a website and use it in whatever manner you choose.  The common misconception is that if someone posted it online…it’s mine!  Perhaps the rapid evolution from print to electronic media created confusion about intellectual property. But, in my opinion, the blurry line between professional life and personal life is more likely the culprit.
That’s another topic- one which I imagine others are currently contemplating.  Social media encourages the “fuzzy line” between professional and personal communication.  For the past year or so, I have been thinking that entertainment and triviality make up about 98% of social media, leaving only 2% for educational use.  In other words, you really don’t have to give  credit when the communication is just about the pizza you are eating!  (Why does eveyone love to post pictures of food?  I guess it is just part of being human. And, by the way, you must credit even the pizza picture unless you took it yourself or it is copyright free.) That 98% I mentioned is, metaphorically, a giant pizza.

Photo retrieved from http://www.public-domain-image.com/food-and-drink/pizza/slides/pepperoni-pizzas.html

Over Here!!!

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I feel like we are all shouting from the rooftops. “Over Here!”

As the social media delegate (no name yet for the position; but, as a school librarian, I feel responsible to be the hub of the school) for my campus, I can observe the goings-on as “the Ethridge Eagle” and not as “me”.

Let me clarify the personas:

The Ethridge Eagle:  I choose to use the profile pic of the school mascot as the voice of the school.  Some librarians have their own library Facebook page, but the way I see it…if the library is the “hub” -why have a second page that is separate?  I mean, the voice of the school is not about me but about the whole school.

Me:  Who am I?  I am a wife, mother, librarian, scholar,citizen, life-long learner, hiker and so on.
So does that “me” have a social media presence?  Only an obligatory one.  The wife and mother is a private thing.  The librarian/scholar is the public me.  Hence—- Valibrarian is my public voice.

How have I handled these various voices?  It is no secret (since whatever you put online is pretty much forever) that I am not a fan of Facebook.  I am beginning to understand that one of my reasons for disliking Facebook is the difficulty in speaking with so many different voices.  Wait– isn’t that what we do when we speak in different languages?  If I am going to speak in different voices, I need to develop the perspective of one who speaks in many languages.  I need to practice thinking in different voices and clarifying the words I need to translate before speaking.

On the other hand, translation of language is not really the same as speaking with a different voice to a different audience.  The point of language translation is to keep the voice as close as possible with the same context and connotation.  I speak to my young nieces in a different voice than I speak to my co-workers and colleagues.  Sharing personal photos and anecdotes to every significant person in my life, simultaneously, seems to me to be bombarding their spheres of information intake with even more clutter than they must already face each day. When I post to everyone, I am shouting from the rooftop, “Over Here!  Look at me!  I have something to say.”

Just sayin’

Extra! Extra!

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Have we all become newboys shouting “Extra? Extra? Read all about it!” in reference to our own personal lives through our social media?

 

 

 

Seth Godin says we all now “spout and scout“.  I have been estimating that 98% of this spouting is triviality adding to the clutter that I call “the sea of chaos”– but I certainly may be way off in my calculations.

 

I failed at my quest to “like” Facebook and I will now openly admit that I do not.  I am trying very hard to embrace content creation with sites like Pinterest.  So far, I am finding my calculations of 98% triviality to be fairly accurate.

 

What to do about this tsunami of nonsense?

 

I am reminded of the anti-drug slogan — Just Say No!   I am no longer going to “friend or follow” trivial nonsense.  Please don’t take it personally (my dear nieces, co-workers, long-time chums).  This is not about friendship. It really isn’t. How we communicate defines us as a species.

 

This is about the future of humankind.

 

 

 

Serving up books and stories

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“The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” reminds me of the years I have spent surrounded by books and stories. I am grateful to have been in the position of sharing words, stories, books, and their incredible power and beauty. I cannot imagine a more beautiful way to have spent my life…other than perhaps in my mother’s kitchen.

 

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.