“HAT – Someone write this down and hold me to it: I promise that I will never, ever join another new social network ever again. Ever. God knows I’ve joined enough of them. I joined CyWorld in 2004. I joined MySpace two years later. And then Facebook. And then Twitter. And then Linkedin. And then Google Buzz. And then Quora. Quora, for fuck’s sake. I haven’t even looked at that since the day I signed up, largely because it sounds like the sort of thing a rich hippy would name their dreadlocked, pony-riding trustfund arsehole of a six-year-old daughter. And now there’s Google+, which is different because, um…
Well, it must be different somehow. All social networks have a unique selling point. Facebook is for keeping in touch with illiterate former schoolmates who have gone a bit racist in the last decade. Twitter is for people who hate The Daily Mail but can’t stop reading The Daily Mail. Linkedin is for people who wrongly believe that being on Linkedin will somehow get them a better job. So Google+ must be for…”
Thanks to strong progressive teacher-librarians from the past and from our current staffing, we have tried hard to develop and secure instructional services and nurture participation and collaboration for my large (1800 gr10-12) high school. We have become a valid vibrant learning commons that students, teachers and admin all support but we have a culture to build on that made the library program important. We have 1.6 TL and 1.0 Clerical and ongoing budgeting and engagement but the landscape of the school library is changing so fast we cannot keep pace. Policy, pedagogy , demographics and much more have changed beyond our ability to lead. We do our best and we are strong but change outstrips our abilities and energies. Therefore, when I read in SLJ the role as technology coordinator I rather snickered with cynical zest because that is a role I have evolved into from the start. We are the technology, information AND pedagogy hub. That said, we are given less influence and participation in the policy making and decision-making than we once had. As the demands and needs changed we responded but now the system is too fast and too top heavy to truly DESIGN process or practice. We have become a digital triage center. The irony is that our community still SEES us as a content place. We have not reduced or slashed any sector of our school library anatomy but rather have tried to cope by adding on more limbs and bionic parts. Like HAL we may be losing our sanity. thanks BJH, Al Smith
@buffyjhamilton writes…
“…The new issue of School Library Journal features a cover story called, “Next Year’s Model: Sarah Ludwig left the library, became a tech coordinator, and forged a path to the future.” Unless I have misinterpreted the article, author Linda Braun wonders if school librarians have to leave the library and take on a completely different job title to do the work of a modern school librarian. The thesis seems to be that school librarians taking on job titles other than school librarian, like “technology coordinator”, might be the future of the profession. While I’ve had my own misgivings about the future of the profession, I respectfully disagree with Linda Braun and would argue that such a path will only lead to the demise, not the flowering, of our profession’s future.”…….”We’ve wondered about the future of the profession and the challenges of becoming more immersed as an instructional leader and pedagogy specialist in a current model of school librarianship that is physically limiting in the sense that one person, two at best in most places, is expected to excel in multiple roles for student populations that might vary from 850 to 2500 students and up to 100+ faculty in a building; in some cases, school librarians are being asked to be a teacher, program administrator, information specialist, leader, and instructional partner with no planning period and no clerical assistance.
Shannon Matesky , eighteen year old, from California, rant raps about our willingness to let devices interfere with our face to face human development. ( warning- course language )
“we give up real face to face with one another, for little devices,
because it’s CONVENIENT! “
The girl is spot on and clearly gifted spoken word artist.
It’s been a full day and I am still in shock or grief. A man I never met or maybe never new yet I feel so sad- still. Why? Why do I feel, like millions, so emotionally attached to this loss of a man?
I think it is because he gave us hope of men who aspired to perfection and liberty of spirit rather than just monetary wealth. It may seem ironic, coming from a billionaire but as he has been quoted, he did not matter if he was the richest man in the cemetery. He sought a creative perfection. He aspired to a sense of human creative productivity based on function and form not on profit. We feel loss because we are all afraid we may have lost these kind of men among us. I hope not. I believe he inspired or influenced innovators like Larry Page and Sergey Brin rather than the Wall Street banker types we have recently seen.
Steve Jobs began a journey of creativity and success in a Grade 4 classroom. His Grade 4 teacher lit a spark of inspiration that burned bright until yesterday. He not only gifted the world with amazing tools but he shifted the board office models from suit to turtlenecks. Despite obvious character flaws and conflicts, as we all have too many, Apple led the wave of creative .com enterprises like Google. His CEO leadership gave an entire generation a sense of design, creative potential and imagination. His marketing savvy was only equaled by his keen acumen in understanding engineering and the consumer. Steve’s keynote presentation skills are a thing of beauty. Like the Apple logo itself, Jobs have left us with many iconic gifts.
http://jmak.tumblr.com/post/9377189056
1985
“The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people––as remarkable as the telephone.” [Playboy, Feb. 1, 1985]
1996
“The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.
“It’s like when IBM drove a lot of innovation out of the computer industry before the microprocessor came along. Eventually, Microsoft will crumble because of complacency, and maybe some new things will grow. But until that happens, until there’s some fundamental technology shift, it’s just over.” [Wired, February 1996]
“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.
2005
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
2006
“I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.” [NBC Nightly News, May 2006]
And One More Thing
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
At the closing of last school year I was intrigued by a colleagues blog post outlining a conversation with a community leader. What’s the difference between a teacher and a bureaucrat? The question was not sarcastic. Ms. Grass outlines the thought processes this naive question generated. Given the current technological swing, standardization and centralization of public education, I think we should all read her blog. ( ps. not only is she a very intelligent educated aboriginal woman teaching in Lilloet, she is a progressive teacher I’m proud to say was a grad from MBSS when I was there. )
Why do I return to her post today? Well, because I have spent the past 6 weeks, notwithstanding job action, doing nothing but scrambling to serve students stuck in a school system burdened by brand new state of the art modern technology that was implemented with poor educational design. No fault of individuals I am sure. I’m spending almost all my time with learning or pedagogy but technical triage! Directors, admin and technicians alike are all very hard working and nice people as a rule but the sum total educational reality has been a disaster. I have spent enormous hours interfacing bad system design with frustrated kids who just want to get access. I feel like I am in Haiti. I know it is relative but honestly, I get lectured to be accountable and encourage personalize learning but… how, when the fundamentals are blocked by technical walls? It may not be a conspiracy or censorship but it is a real blockade that my administrators don’t fathom.
What have I learned?
that as a technological competent teacher-librarian who developed a plan centered around service, I became an indispensable bureaucrat
that, paradoxically, as technology gets more powerful and transparent, service desks like libraries get proportionately inundated with demand for inservice
that the more we get motivated by powerful technologies to communicate, that paradoxically, the more we forget the value of content and discourse
the greater the tools to liberate the individual, the greater the pressure institutions want to standardize and seek ‘ efficiencies’
So, what does a professional do when confronted with forces that oppose his sensibilities? I don’t know but whatever I do I’ll resist with every bit of DNA the movement to be a bureaucrat.
Grass, Starleigh. ‘What’s the difference between a bureaucrat and a teacher?’ Blog. June 20, 2011. (Grass, Jun 20)
-good luck with that….
