Vision-ary Committee

My thoughts were here that we can brainstorm some ways to help better support teachers as they are learning new technologies.  Obviously a few of us cannot do it all ourselves, but can we think of some creative, ingenious or systematic processes to help us all as new “tools” come into play?

I just participated in the K12 Online conference, which was the first education conference held entirely online.    Although frankly I think teachers prefer more face-to-face trainings, I found it really interesting.  Each session was posted online as a video or powerpoint or screencast, and you could pick and choose among sessions.  Plus, each session is saved so if you didn’t have time to view it during the two weeks of the “conference,” it is still there to read later.

I participated in some online discussions that were held during the conference about helping teachers incorporate some of the new web 2.0 technologies into their classrooms.   Joel and I have started a weekly workshop and are sharing things on our blogs.

I have had several teachers request more face-to-face time.  How can we facilitate that–any ideas?   Should we talk to the Staff Development Committee?  (I’ve joined that to help be a liason if we need one).

 Any comments, ideas, etc?

I just returned from the Internet Librarian conference and there was a lot of talk about gaming technology and how “searching” may change in the next few years.   A company called Sirsi/Dynix is working on software which allows you to locate things in the library virtually–sort of a video game format, and you, the customer, are a character moving through the space.  

Other mind blowing topics–a lcd projector the size of a sugar cube, a credit card sized palm pilot device, virtual DVD instead of a physical dvd, etc.

One thing the speaker, Stephen Abrams talked about is how we need to teach kids to wade through information–and that is a vital need right now.  They are already inundated and will be even more so as information continues to grow exponentially.

He presented the characteristics of a Millenial student which is defined by Richard Sweeney in this chart

(see the powerpoint slide link here — http://www.sirsi.com/Pdfs/Company/Abram/StephenAbram_KidsAreAlright4.ppt#19 .

Another good slide showing characteristics of our “future” graduates–

http://www.sirsi.com/Pdfs/Company/Abram/StephenAbram_KidsAreAlright4.ppt#43

Lots of food for thought here–Carolyn

I heard a very interesting session today by Stephen Abrams (who Ian Jukes recommended).   His blog is Stephen’s Lighthouse, by the way, if any of you are interested.

He talked a lot about current brain research, video games and how we can utilize them for student learning, and the importance of students having real life experiences on the internet.

He pointed out that we don’t train them to cross the street with a fake street in a classroom–we teach them on the real street and that we should be doing the same with the internet.

He talked about the importance of students’ publishing on the web and all the ways the new 2.0 web allows for that.  He also strongly felt that the trend is toward “virtual” search environments–that is, a library catalog that is like a virtual experience or game that the student would move through, or a course designed that way. 

What he said had interesting implications for our committee and I am eager to read his blog.  http://stephenslighthouse.sirsi.com/

I am also definitely feeling techno overwhelm, which is definitely a good reminder to me of how teachers and students can feel sometimes.  

I do think, though, that all these tools will become a part of our experiences and then the learning curve will not be the way it is right now.  Stephen Abrams pointed out that our knowledge base has been in a resting period while the web was “sorted out” but now we are entering a stage where things are growing exponentially and so it will be a time of revolutionary change for our students.     I guess our job will be to help them balance all of this.

Time to go walk outside and listen to the ocean and clear my mind a little bit….

Carolyn

I’m on my way to the Internet Librarian conference in San Jose, sitting next to a supply-chain manager for Cisco who lives in California, manages an operation in Austin, and also one in Malaysia, while I look through subjects at the conference in the program.

And by the way, she’s reading The World is Flat!

So far, in looking through the conference program, I have already found sessions on using ipods, blogs, RSS, wikis, and ebooks in schools and libraries, a website about teaching global issues, a tour of social networking sites(i.e. myspace and facebook), and sessions on how to improve webpage design.    Engineers from Google and Microsoft are  part of a panel speaking in an evening session about “academic search” (i.e. searching for scholarly articles) and how that area is being completely transformed because of Google, etc,, and what are the changes ahead for libraries and publishers because of that.    And that’s all only the first day!   I’m going to be learning a lot.

I’ll share what I’m learning as I have time by posting to the blog! –Carolyn