The talk at the Illinois School Library Media Association conference, last night, seemed to go well. Much was working against me. I’m much more of a morning person, and I’d already done two presentations. I ate a full dinner at the banquet, but rejected the birthday cake (ISLMA’s 20th birthday). The sugar crash that was certain to happen in the audience about 20 minutes into the address also concerned me. But all indications were that it went well.
During the afternoon, I saw the metaphor for school libraries that I’d been looking for become revealed. I watched a presentation by Anne O’Malley (New Trier High School), Carolyn Roys (Lake Park High School), and Penny Swartz (Niles West High School) deliver a breakout session called Print vs Online in the Library. The session was not so much about the difference and preference of print versus online, as much as it was about the qualities of each and how they can and should be integrated into the work of learning.
The best thing about this presentation was that there were three media specialists who were sharing their experiences from three high schools, and what I saw in their work was that they were viruses. It’s not really such an appealing image for librarians. But it’s perfect for today’s schools that are operating in an atmosphere of information, information that’s participatory, infinitely connectible, and abundant. These librarians were infecting their schools with the desire to evolve.
Have some of them been inoculated to prevent infection?
Do we also scar them for life, like smallpox?
Not sure I entirely understand this. I do see evidence of inoculation. So many educators have come up to me in the past weeks, complaining of how they can’t work social networking techniques into their teaching and learning, because social networks are blocked, or policies prevent it. I see these as inoculations against change. Protections is important. But inoculation against change has no place in schools.
I don’t know of the other two schools you mentioned, but New Trier High School is one of the most grotesquely wealthy public schools in America.
Documentaries about the “Savage Inequalities” in American public education often feature “New Trier.”
Check out these links…
http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/1999/02/01/05trier.h10.html
How many schools can claim a community web site such as this? http://www.thetruthbehindnewtrier.com/
Thanks, Gary, for sharing this information about Trier. It was an interesting read, as is anything pertains to Alfie Kohn. But I think it’s important that no sense of a hypercompetitive school environment came across in the presentations. What I saw were school library media specialists who had worked themselves into positions where they were facilitating new ways to use information, to think about information, to challenge information — to integrate contemporary literacies.
I agree with Dave. Educators who are refusing social networking are refusing change and technology. I also believe that both print and online texts both have there place in todays education and one should not eclipse the other.