Reading and Books

I’m trying a new A.D.D. medication. My doctor things that I am too old to be taking Ritalin. So I feel a bit like I’m speaking out of somebody else’s head. It’s kinda weird and not very comforting — and I may just delete this part 😉

It’s my nature to try to factor things down to their fundamentals. This is not always good, because many things owe their value to their complexity. But, as a communicator, I try to bring concepts down to three bullet points, something that people can remember and then hang their own experiences and insights onto — a tune that people can hum.

All of this discussion about librarians and wikipedia is a gross simplification in itself. We are all struggling with an information revolution that is much greater than just the Wikipedia. I really like the word wikiphobia used by a commenter from yesterday’s mobile-post. I think that it is a matter of context, and the boundaries of these contexts that we speak from form in many ways. Perhaps the simplest way is time.

Of course this too is fuzzy, but before the proliferation of networked, digital, and overwhelming information, the job of education was to

teach children to read

and to

teach them what to read.

In today’s information environment, this is impossible, and even dangerous. When we are surrounded by information that can be presented to us by almost anyone for almost any reason, it is essential that while we teach students to read, we must also teach them to wisely, effectively, and responsibly make their own choices of what to read. The information that they encounter and use will be their choice, and if we continue to choose for them, then they will not learn, and we’re going to have a real mess. It’s literacy!

What’s even more disturbing to me, is the number of educators who have no idea that all of this is going on!


Image Citation:
Patrick, Michael. “Waiting to Go Back In.” Michael Patrick’s Photos. 24 Sep 2005. 2 Nov 2006 <http://flickr.com/photos/michaelpatrick/46220722/>.

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6 thoughts on “Reading and Books”

  1. As a librarian, ( I heard you speak last week at MAME), and a technology director, and just an observer of teachers, I think the core of this discussion is the whole idea of ownership of information. The concept of shared or collaborative information is foreign to librarians because we traditionally are the guardians and filters of information – we focus on quality and relevence and authority – based on authorship and copyright date and etc. – All of that is turned on it’s head by things like Wikipedia – where it’s hard to determine who is responsible for the information. Similarly, teachers have tradiitonally been the providers of information to their students – either directly or though the text book or resources they direct students to. The concept of creating shared information is so foreign to how we have traditionally operated – and is foreign to the idea of state curriculums and standards testing and etc.
    As educators, this is a huge shift to us – instead of the keepers and providers of information, we need to become the facilitators of producers of information – and quality control experts to help our student create and use information in postive and ethically appropriate ways.

  2. Tim,

    I agree but rather than use the words of librarians as guardians, I have seen my role more as the “promoter” of quality and relevance and a promoter of students’ rights to know.

    I posted more about this on the previous thread, but I think it’s an exciting time, because it’s like everyone is a librarian now, in a metaphorical way. And librarians do have the tools and processes to help guide students and teachers in coping with this overflow of information and to cope with authority of sources and what that means, etc.

    But it does seem that information is becoming one big “mash up!” and it will become harder and harder to sort out original authors or authority, in a way.

    Lots to think about.

  3. The point is that we must look at what students MUST BE as much if not more than what students MUST KNOW.

    Students must be assimmilators of information who can sort through the good and the bad THEMSELVES. They do not want nor will they listen to gatekeepers anymore. The “Berlin Wall” of information has come down and now they have access to the greatest libraries in the world through their fingertips.

    Students MUST BE able to succeed in this world by making sense of it themselves. We train up the students while they are under our care. If students are not given a framework for decision making about information, they will make up their own and it will be to societies harm.

    People who swim against the riptide ultimately drown. The riptide of the information-enabled student will age and engulf us when they come from college and we will feel the repercussions of our mistakes now.

    The teachers and educators who prioritize information literacy and teach students who they must BE ethically and procedurally will be the ones who are recognized. The Big Brother types who tried to filter the world will be recognized as ultimately the one’s who did the greatest harm. And you will be hailed as a visionary.

    Keep the faith!

  4. I totally agree with the terrifying level of ignorance as to what is going on in respect of online reading habits. My younger son is 13 and in Year 8. He recently downloaded and printed out great swathes of stuff from the Internet on a topic that now escapes me. He scanned it briefly to ensure that it was on topic, and that was all. The teacher was very pleased with the amount of material he submitted. End of. What? No discussion? No evaluation? What on earth was the point? Unless it was purely to show kids how much stuff there is to be found online (which, please, please tell me they knew long ago), I don’t get it.

    I am currently busy with a Master’s degree and a great deal of emphasis is placed on critical reading. We have been provided with a list of questions to serve as an aide memoire as we read various papers. We spent a whole session focusing on ethics, validity and reliability. The assumption seems to be that this is a new approach that we need to learn, now that we have ascended to the lofty heights of postgraduate study. I can’t help thinking that kids should be learning critical reading skills at school – especially now that they have access to such a vast amount of material potentially from abso-flipping-lutely anywhere, including the kid at the next desk, or some rabid bigot who takes full advantage of this global soapbox (a bit like I’m doing right now, I guess!)

  5. I think it is difficult to lump “educators” into a single group regarding their understanding of these issues. I hope you will tolerate what will initially seem a crassly oversimplified description of where teachers may be on this. Librarians may fit the same descriptors — I am not sure.

    There are those who realize some part of the scope of the sea-change (and hang out here). This group might have stood alongside Gutenberg, awestruck, “Cool! Think of all the things we can do with this! Can I try?”

    There are more who are intellectually intrigued that SOMETHING is going on (perhaps they saw or heard something from someone or saw a workshop title– that they did not attend). This second group will naturally split into those who pursue it (on the web, of course) to find out more about what this “literacy” is about and those who will wait for it to be served up on a platter at an inservice session (to be critiqued in the faculty room the next day as another lame inservice session because it had no practical application).

    Then there is a third group that is blissfully unaware, cutting out letters for bulletin boards or running off papers to make sure kids “can read,” “know the answers,” or “are proficient” no matter what they “teach.”

    I cannot condemn any of these for their intent (except maybe those who are unwilling to TALK in the faculty room about what the inservice might have meant). Most educators want to do what is best for kids, according to their own perception of what that means.

    But how do we help people rise to the cacophony of faceless voices and sources and say, “I want to hear that…and that…and that….and add my own ideas”? It terrifies them, and they don’t know where to start. Add to that the severe deprivation of time to explore something open-ended in a 40-minute block world, and many educators simply cannot or will not even start. It is too massive, and there is so little help in doing so.

    In lieu of proposing an “answer,” I will float some possible strategies. How about these for ways to start? :

    Flag down the blissfully ignorant and move them to terrified. Carl Fisch’s Did You Know did this!!

    Help the terrified feel that we are all in this together, and our children are REALLY in it. If one politician would admit to learning something new today or wondering about source or about an idea, that would be a start.

    Give everybody ACCESS to join in the cacophony.

    Ease the fear through supportive encouragement of baby steps AND giant steps in a given teacher’s repertoire. And make sure that their immediate bosses recognize and participate in the changes.

    Talk about and investigate the stages kids go through in readiness for the wide-open world of information and keep exposing them to as much as they can handle, with the same support as we give their teachers.

    There…did I save the world??

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