LM_NET: Library Media Networking
This is a bigger problem than just study skills i.e. library catalog cards;
the ITBS still uses outmoded standards for addressing a mailing envelope.
The post office for a number of years has asked users of the US Mail system
to use block letters, no punctuation, two spaces between city state zip
code, and to use the standard two state abbreviations as well as the
standard abbreviations for street and so forth. The post office made this
move to better utilize the technology that would read the addresses -- much
like library media centers made a change to utilize technology in the
information arena. (A good source for the mail specs is Gloria
Skurzynski's "Here Comes the Mail" or of course, the US Post Office.) By
US Post Office standards an address would look like:
JOE MILLER
ORVILLE WRIGHT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
1310 HOLLYWOOD BLVD NE
ANYTOWN IA 52233-9588
When the officials at ITBS were asked about this the response was something
along the line of -- "The U.S. Post Office DOES NOT set the standards for
addressing an envelope."
Not only do textbooks perpetuate the "old" standard but so do the tests.
How many other antiquated standards are these tests forcing past their
usefulness?
To put the original question in perspective, I submit these questions to
you -- Would we continue teaching children how to use an Apple IIe (even
though our school has all Macintosh machines) just because some testing
agency continued to quiz the students over the use of the IIe? Would we
continue to ask farmers to learn how to hitch a team of horses well after
tractors became the machine of choice just because someone wanted to test
all farmers in "horse hitching"? Would we require our young people to
learn how to cook daily over an open hearth fire long after electricity-
and gas-powered stoves came into being, again just for the sake of a test?
And finally how many of you were required to learn how to make your own
soap from lard renderings and lye? Or "clean a chicken"? I can remember my
mother telling me that I would have to know how to clean a chicken when I
grew up. "Because that's what people would expect" -- [a test perhaps --
in this case only for females, I suspect :) .] Well, I resisted and
interestingly enough I have never needed that skill. I hope we have the
resolve to resist teaching a skill for the sake of the skill -- especially
when it is as outdated as the technology it represents.
Sharron L. McElmeel (mailto:smcelmeel@cedar-rapids.k12.ia.us)
Library Media Specialist-Harrison Elem. Cedar Rapids, IA
http://www.cedar-rapids.k12.ia.us/Harrison/harrison.html
http://www.aea10.k12.ia.us/literacy/
personal page -- http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/5868/
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