Hello all,
I've been reading this thread with great interest! I missed Jeff's
original post, but I think that I've got the gist of his point.
Our faculty has been having this discussion and there is (in a good way)
tension between two extremes. In a nutshell ... "This is how kids are
today so we should jump in and make school a part of their world" and
"We've always been successful so why do we have to change?" Obviously,
the healthy space is somewhere in between.
I love technology (it lets me communicate with all of you ...), but I DO
NOT believe that it is just about "Handing out the laptops, cameras,
ipods, and questions and let them have at it." (and I know that isn't
what Toni, literally, meant ...).
The world that our students will inherit and live in will be different
than the world we've prepared ourselves for. The traditional thinking
skills, source evaluation skills and all the other good stuff librarians
teach ARE STILL relevant to kids, but it'll be very helpful to our
profession if we make the connection between the "traditional" and the
new (Web 2.0) a LOT more explicit.
Kids need to be TAUGHT what to do with their digital access and tools,
(and how to do it) or they'll just keep turning out drivel and those
horridly designed MySpace pages. I fear that if we don't teach them
what to do with these great tools, that those laptops will just become
$2000 pencils ...
That would be sad ... and librarians will be seen as irrelevant.
My 2 cents.
dave
Dave Wee, Librarian
Harvard-Westlake Middle School
700 North Faring Road
Los Angeles, California 90077
Phone -- (310) 288-3270
E-mail -- dwee @ hw dot com
"You see, I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where
people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of
employing wild animals as librarians."
~~ Monty Python ~~
-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Toni Buzzeo
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 11:16 AM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: [LM_NET] GEN: Vision of students today: Pretty
dismal...TEACHING!
Hey Jeff,
>I mean look: yeah, we all need to stay reasonably hip to the current
>zeitgeist and do our best to tap it. But if a student chooses to spend
>vastly more time attending to superficial digital chatter (and there
was
>really no suggestion of it being anything else) than academic
substance,
>utimately, should that really be my problem?
I think that WAS the point (sort of). Weren't they saying that so
long as they are passively sitting in a lecture hall/classroom with a
teacher using the same old so-yesterday methods, they would rather
attend to superficial digital chatter? But get them actively
involved in their learning, thinking about what they do, what they
think, what they want and WHAMO, you've got involvement, excitement,
and a youtube! At least that's what I took from it. Hand out the
laptops, cameras, ipods, and questions and let them have at it. THEN
you've got involvement, investment, learning.
Toni
Toni Buzzeo, MA, MLIS <mailto:tonibuzzeo@tonibuzzeo.com>
Maine Library Media Specialist of the Year Emerita
Maine Association of School Libraries Board Member
Buxton, ME 04093
http://www.tonibuzzeo.com
Fire Up with Reading: A Mrs. Skorupski Story, illustrated by Sachiko
Yoshikawa (Upstart 2007) BRAND NEW!
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