Minor Musings

Books, Reading, Etc.

• Interesting article asking How can we redefine the book? Where does the “book” stop and the “application” begin?. On the other hand, if it’s an app like this Discworld Mapp… And SassyLibrarian ponders what Untraditional Book Formats Mean for Digital Collections.
• Nicholas Carr worries about the death of deep reading (not sure CCSS will change this, even though it tries to)
• A must read: Barbra Fister on curation and discovery
• Worried about using an e-reader because of the distraction factor? Unclutterer has a guide to low-distraction readers.

School Life

• I’ve never been convinced that iPads are The Answer, but ZIS’ iPads in the Classroom program might change my mine
• As I’ve been going through my E-Learning and Online Teaching coursework, I’ve wondered about the role of the library.  Turns out, CHE has been thinking about libraries and MOOCs.
• A new addition to the self-defense arsenal: your smartphone.
• How can school libraries learn from these 20 Great Public Library Websites or the 100 Libraries to Follow on Twitter?

Tech Related

• When we insist on social media in schools, let’s not forget most of  these (mostly very understandable) 8 Reasons Behind Social Media Ban in Schools and be a little more understanding of those that don’t/can’t.
• Looking for new tools to use or explore over the summer break? Easel.ly, MindNode, Infogr.am and Swipe might be the answer.  So might one of Joyce’s recommended interactive video tools. Or you could use Bamboo DiRT to find something.

Why spend the money?

The other night at dinner a friend mentioned a conversation she had with a former classmate.  My friend is one of the Class Agents for her small liberal arts college – in other words, she calls classmates and asks them to give – and she approached her classmate for this year’s donation.  That classmate’s response went something like this:

I live in [far away state].  My husband and I make a decent living but… we make too much to get good financial aid to send our daughter to [alma mater] and too little to afford to pay full price.  Why hasn’t [alma mater] started to move more into the online world so our daughter can get the [alma mater] education without having to be on campus?

Hmmm…. Ok, I see some of the point.  There’s been a lot of talk about MOOCs and their role in education, with several liberal arts schools (Wellesley, for example) starting to join in.  Rumor has it that “liberal arts colleges are scared of MOOCs“, while other articles talk about the challenges posed to the classic liberal arts education by MOOCs.  I can also understand who someone would want their child to have the wonderful college experience they had, but given the price of tuition (not including incidentals!) be concerned about affording it.

Minor Musings

Books, Reading, Etc.

• I’m loving the Three Things to Read, Watch and Use blog – what a great idea to get students and teachers to share theirs
• Jessamyn got a Kindle and has some interesting ideas about how to use it (and change it).

School Life

Tech Related

• Google’s How to Stay Safe Online information (something we need to share with teachers and students) via @harbeckc
• On the Day of Digital Learning, the NYTimes ran a piece asking Who Are You Online? great food for thought.
• While this list of 20 Great Public Library Websites is about public libraries, there are ideas we in K-12 can emulate
• Carolyn Foote’s Apps for Libraries slides. ’nuff said.

Attention Deficit Disor – Hey! Is that a pony?

The other day I was chatting with two friends who were colleagues at a school.  This school has, over the past few years, undertaken a few really impressive initiatives, ones that really have a meaningful effect on the students there at the time, and an impact on the community around the school not to mention a potential impact on the world at large.  The sad thing is that none of those initiatives have stuck; a program would be done once, then dropped.  Both teachers expressed sorrow at this, and wondered about the newest set of initiative – would they become part of the larger world? would they last long enough to really change students, the alumni community, the outside community, etc. or would they, too, briefly blaze in the school’s life and then fizzle out?

What about the jobs that exist now?

Recently (within the past two weeks) I saw someone on twitter repeat the statement that we need to train students for jobs that don’t yet exist.  Oooookkayy.  I guess.  Here’s the problem: why aren’t we also paying attention to the jobs that not only currently exist but have existed (albeit using different tools, and with perhaps different foci) for millennium.

What jobs?  Doctor.  Teacher.  Author. Reporter. Artist. Repairman. Banker. I could go on.

When we talk about “jobs of the future” we’re talking about things we can’t see – someone 150 years ago could not have possibly imagined “web designer” or “social media director” because the technology needed to support those jobs didn’t exist.  Given the pace of change in technology tools, it makes sense to wonder what jobs our current K-12 students will have available to them and to do our best to help them become comfortable with technology and change so that they can fill whatever positions emerge.  But are we doing this at the expense of training students for those important jobs that exist now, that will continue to exist in the future?

When we push STEM programs, we neglect the arts and humanities.  Without those, we’re going to lose our doodlers, our poets, our authors, dancers, and deep thinkers.  Not recognizing that there is incredible value to reading works of literature from different cultures and learning the history of our, and other, countries and peoples is short-changing our next generation of politicians, reporters and thinkers.  Already we overuse the words “fascist” and “Nazi” (really, that Soup Nazi character – which, admittedly, I’ve never actually seen because I disliked “Seinfeld” – was not a funny idea).  Students don’t understand the Cold War, and how that still affects our daily lives (doesn’t the STEM push come from our Sputnick fears? I think so…).  They see our current gridlock in Congress and the culture that leads to lack of cross-party discourse and see that as normal.  How are we going to show them that it shouldn’t be that way, that it can’t stay that way?

When we cut arts programs, aren’t we showing students that “culture” doesn’t matter?  That no one cares about music, or art, or theatre? Those aren’t as important as computers and science and all those subjects, right?  What we tend to forget about Steve Jobs is that he was not the Big Computer Geek that Woz or Gates were.  Instead, he brought an aesthetic sensibility to the process that led to the cool, “sexy” look of Apple products – where will the next Jobs come from if we’re pushing people away from calligraphy in favor of coding?

All this isn’t to suggest that we drop math and science in favor of arts and humanities.  It’s to say let’s not forget about the current jobs, the current professions and that educating well-rounded K-12 students now (they can specialize later, in college) is critical to our nations health and well-being, let alone all our futures.

 

Minor Musings

Books, Reading, Etc.

• News readers still turning to printed, numbers suggest  (at least, in Canada; wonder if this holds true for US)
• Why a 17th-Century Text Is the Perfect Starting Point for Reinventing the Book  (YES! Need more of these!)

School Life

• Great site with a timeline of the history of information, from cave paintings to the internet!
• Why Writing With Our Hands Is Still Important  and Why handwriting matters (get out and buy yourself some stationery)
• The Atlantic Wire asks: No Teachers, No Class, No Homework. Would You Send Your Kids Here?  (I have a friend who sent her daughter to Sudbury Valley, and there are some definite benefits)
• The Globe & Mails’s advisory panel on how students learn (not the full conversation, but still very interesting)
• I know the “sounds of learning” are what we say we want/like in a library, but Salon makes a good argument for us to bring back shushing librarians: Library users plead for quiet places
• Following up on my post about What’s In a Name, @mytweendom pointed me to this link ‘Girls? Ladies? Folks?’ Here’s A Visual Guide To What You Should Call That Group Of Individuals.

Tech Stuff

• Tricks to keep your twitter archive fresh (plays into the whole personal digital archiving motif).
• Is RebelMouse a better curation tool than Scoop.it, LiveBinder or other new tools?  You decide.
• If you’re a Flipboard fan, you might find this list of 15 uses helpful.
• 12 of the World’s Most Annoying Technologies
• The Financial Times talks about Life after TED (“intellectual jazz” sounds more interesting than many TED talks!)
• Enter a virtual art world with Wondereur app  (could be great in so many cities! what about getting students to create one for theirs?)

My paper problem

The past year I’ve spent a lot of time scanning in documents (tax returns dating back 30 years, for example, as well as more current things like recipes I want to try and professional development and program ideas).  I’ve started using Instapaper to send long blogposts and articles to my Kindle, Evernote has become a trusted tool.  For a while IFTTT helped track posts in my RSS that I wanted for a Minor Musings post, but Twitter isn’t playing well with IFTTT any more (there is a workaround that works… somewhat).  Dropbox and Carbonite save all my documents (Carbonite for everything I don’t want to share with other machines, like those tax returns, Dropbox for anything professional.  And photos of my cats.)

Since presenting with Ellysa Cahoy (and poking around the PDA 2012 videos) I’ve become even more aware of my digital archiving and my workflow.  There are several workflow solutions out there, and as with all things, what works for me may not work for you.  One concern is remember where I’ve saved things: was it placed in a LiveBinder? perhaps I Scooped it? was it a Delicious link? or did I simply Diigo?

And therein lies the problem: how do I effectively aggregate all that digital content so I can find it again?  And what about paper?

Yes, paper.

I’m in the middle of guest editing the May/June issue of Knowledge Quest magazine – the one promoting the November National Conference – and while I can safely say that I know where each and every e-mail and iteration of the articles is, I still produce paper.  Maybe I’m old.  Maybe I just don’t know the right tool.  But when I get something I need to edit, I need to print it out before tackling it.  Part of me says that’s ok, because a few pages here and there isn’t bad… part of me wonders why I’m still so wedded to that way of editing things.

Thoughts?  Solutions? All gratefully accepted.

Minor Musings

Just in time for Winter Break!

Books, Reading, Etc.

• Publishing Personalities Advise on Designing the Bookshop of the Future. Some of this applies to libraries, too.
• We all love arguing with lists, so here are two from The Guardian (UK): 100 Greatest Fiction Books of All Time and 100 Greatest Non-Fiction Books of All Time.
• So cool – a map of Literary Manhattan.
• In addition to all the lists we usually see about Best Books, here are Granta’s Books I Read This Year lists and Bloomberg’s What High Profile Readers Like article.
• The rise of e-books means more than the loss of marginalia!
• Looking for a vacation timesuck? Storyverse.

School Life

• Critical thinking is important, right?  Here are six short films that may help teach why.  Then use Joyce’s post exploring Four Tools for Determining Web Cred.
• Parents always wonder/worry about internet safety.  These 26 Tips should help (or at least start a much needed conversation).

Tech Stuff

• Rapid Learning E-Tab in PowerPoint or explore these Online Presentation Tools.
• Thinking about on-line security? Tips on how to manage secure passwords.
• We all “know” about 1:1 programs – or do we?

Top Library Trends

Yesterday I was incredibly honored to have presented to the SSLA. They asked that I talk about library trends, so I did (I even included a “trendlet”):

Top ten trends from Laura Pearle

The problem, of course, is that every time you do one of these presentations you start to wonder, “what did I miss? am I catching the right stuff?” so I’m opening the question up to you: what trends are missing?  what do you see on the horizon for 2013?

Minor Musings

Thanksgiving edition: various websites, apps and links that have caught my attention over the past few months.

Books, Reading, Etc.

• Are you in LinkedIn?  I was just pointed to the Plain Language Advocates (great debate on the one or two spaces after a period issue!)
• Apparently, according to The Atlantic, there’s a new term for readers, cross-unders (those of us who read YA books but aren’t YA ourselves).  When I look at their list of Types of Readers, I fit several categories but that’s the one I resent. No one called me a “cross-over” reader when I was a teen and reading adult books, so please don’t insult me now by saying I’m a cross-over reader. (Thanks to LizB for the wrap-up).
• The beauty of Penguin Books.  ’nuff said.
• Considering getting an e-reader for your kids? What Parents Need to Know.
• I use BookCollector, but if you haven’t cataloged your collection, Book Crawler looks nice (see on the #Alan12 feed)

School Life

• This article reports on a study that posits that K-8 schools are better at preparing students than the K-4/5-8 model, and that we should close middle schools.
• And what about colleges preparing students for higher education?

Tech, Tools and Other Stuff

• Rather than carry a large second wallet filled with loyalty cards, I’m using KeyRing (note: I don’t get the ‘rewards’ or ‘deals’, but it’s a great way to lessen wallet load!)
• Have you thought about personal archiving?  Watch the LoC’s Mike Ashenfelder’s presentation.
• If you weren’t affected by Superstorm Sandy, this Hertiage Preservation App may be really helpful for future planning. And if you were affected it may help now.
• Not sure how this fits with Twitter’s rules, but MyTweetMag is pretty nifty. (via Joyce)
• What a neat publishing/curation tool: Yumpu.  So many educational uses.  And for presentations/self-directed learning, try MentorMob.

And finally, because it’s Thanksgiving, step away from your keyboard and take a cyberbreak.