My Personal Mission Statement

My mission as a teacher-librarian is to provide learning support and leadership to my community. I will seek and provide resources, electronic and print, that reflect the diversity of my community and the world. I will support readers and non-readers alike, with materials that support their questioning, problem-solving, and collaborative meaning-making. I will create an environment in the learning

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

commons which respects and honours the rights and diversity of our community. I will work with my colleagues to provide resources and opportunities to increase information literacy for all. I will advocate for the learning commons and the resources needed to support learners equitably, including access to technology. I will ensure that the learning commons is accessible, inclusive, and  welcoming during school hours. Learners will have access to my services any time they need support.

Freedom

It seems odd to value failure, yet it is so important to look at where you have not successfully met goals and move forward from that. This spring has been a test of what I believe about goal-setting, achievement and failure. 

I'm a member of the Leadership Development Program in my district. It's an honour to be chosen, as it is an interview selection process. For two years, the district gives your school release time to allow you to act in a leadership role and support the administrative team. You are asked to attend workshops and take two courses at the local university, as well as take on various responsibilities. Some people choose this program to develop their leadership skills; some use this as a stepping stone to administrative roles in the district. This year, the district changed the process of hiring principals and vice principals from individually posting each new job, to a pool of possible candidates. 

I was short-listed, but unsuccessful in my application and I was very disappointed. In the weeks since the interviews, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on what I can learn from the process and my interview. Here's what I think I will work on for the next interview I have: 

• sustained positive energy (perhaps I was too subdued)
• refining my examples of professional practice
• smiling more

That's all I can think of - that my answers weren't what they were looking for and that I wasn't energetic/positive enough. In my darkest, most unlikely thoughts, the things that weren't "enough" are beyond my control - my gender, my appearance, my age. I can't control those things.  I can only control my thoughts, beliefs, and effort. 

I know from all my previous experiences that I have the ability to be a successful, capable leader and will make a very good administrator when I'm given the opportunity. I simply need to keep the faith and seek the right fit! This is the thing that I am wondering about now: is the right fit in the community I've lived in most of my life? This is not a bad thing. This is an adventure and an opportunity to reach out for my dreams of living in some other communities that I love!

The other thing that I know without a doubt is that if I am a teacher librarian and never given the opportunity to be an administrator, I'll lead from where I am. It's never a hardship to do work you love, and I love being a teacher librarian!! Getting to work with new technologies and promote great literature, solid inquiry practices, and involving myself in the intense conversations of learning is nothing but joy. 

Either way, I'm a very lucky person! Failure is simply part of the cha-cha of life!

Optimism

To paraphrase the inimitable Dorothy of Kansas (with apologies to Frank L. Baum: "New curriculum, PBL, leadership - oh my!"  The Learning Commons has never been more never been more essential to the growth of a school. As the central host for many of the Presentations of Learning in our building, it has been a privilege to witness (and support) excited students from Gr. 1 to Gr. 12 collaborate, create and present to parents and community members. It has been a lot of work to gather a wide variety of resources and begin digitally organizing them for educator and student reference and research in support of the new curriculum. The project I am proudest of has been the One Book, One Family of Schools: I am Malala Project. When I first heard about the One Book project hosted in Chicago a few years ago, I was very curious about how that project could be replicated in a school district. While I broached the topic with my fellow teacher librarians a couple of years ago, the idea got traction last spring with my Principal, Sean Lamoureux, who realized it would be a great Innovation Grant project.  Sean wrote up the proposal using my initial information, we received the Innovation grant and then I went to work finding the resources we would need to ensure that our Family of Schools (our four feeder elementary schools and us) would all read I am Malala or a primary picture book/easy reader related to Malala Yousafzai's life story. Over the course of this year, classes have partnered together to create projects on personal identity related to Malala, created book trailers, discussed in classes and then, proudly watched as Malala received Honourary Canadian Citizenship in May of this year. Sitting with a grade 8 class, watching live as Malala spoke to the House of Commons was one of the most emotional moments of my year. 

This experience has been one of many powerful leadership opportunities this year. I've worked with more colleagues on projects (science, math, self-assessment, social studies, english, Allied Youth, Global Citizens, languages) than ever before. My experience with coding increases and is widening to include Edison robots to go along with Sphero's and Code.org projects. Digital citizenship continues to grow in our building with steps forward and backward. More international students are reading from our Hi-Low collection and there have been thrilling moments when students who self-reportedly never read discover they love a book or series we've recommended. 
For me personally, the greatest struggle this year has been my own perception of my abilities and self. I spent much of the school year believing that my work had little to no value and that I was not perceived as a valuable member of the school team. Self-perception is a tricky thing, and it took me a while to realize that I needed some support. Having received that, I am able to look at things a little more clearly and recognize that I have no control over others' reactions or perceptions. I can only serve as best I'm able, treat others well, and do my best to be gentle with myself as I do the leadership and library cha-cha!

PBL, High Tech High and Learning Commons

Right before Spring Break of last year, I was grateful to be part of a team of 6 teachers who visited High Tech High in San Diego. My principal, Cale Birk, travelled with us to continue the exploration we began back in the spring of 2014. The question being considered was whether Project Based Learning could help us as we lead students towards developing the attributes of a Sa-Hali Secondary Grad: Creativity, Collaboration and Resilience. After experiencing High Tech High, the simple answer to that question was YES!

Now, some 6+ months later, much of that work is being reconsidered, re-evaluated and reworked. The trip to San Diego stirred up animosities on staff and created an active "resistance" to the ideas of PBL, and the on-going work to build learning activities that would lead to "CCR." While the baby isn't being thrown out with the bathwater, the bathwater is being drained a bit and new warm water put in to clear out some of the dirt. With a new administrator, there is a sense that we need to make these ideas truly our own, instead of being heavily pushed forward with someone else's vision firmly in place. We have stopped our PLC collaborations because there is a serious divide on how effectively that time was being used. We finally discussed CCR at our last staff meeting and all initiatives generated in the last two years have been quietly implemented in some classes and ignored in many others. When we discussed it at the staff meeting, the resentment and frustration in the room was loudly voiced by small group, while many in the room were quiet. There is still a long way to go in creating a commonly held vision.

How this impacts the library/learning commons, though, is fairly positive.  With a new administrator comes a new sense that the building is overdue for physical plant renewal. The space will finally be receiving the updating that has been 7 years overdue. Also in the near future is a revamping of curricula, so discussions around resourcing and the future of the materials organized and collated by the library must happen at a staff wide level. I look forward to these discussions, as I've already started finding resources that will help teachers/students make learning active and integrated with the real world. Presentations of learning are happening regularly in the library/learning commons space - a very exciting use of this space. We've had several secondary/elementary partnership projects happening in our space. Also coming soon are meetings with the feeder elementary schools as we co-plan innovation projects and work on professional development.

Will we look like HTH - no, but our space will reflect our community and students as they learn deeply and share their projects. Ultimately, that's what the trip was able to inspire - a vision of how to make learning come alive in community.

Reflection, imitation and experience

Now that I'm settled into the routine of the school year, it's time to look back at the last two years. I'm back full time in the library at my school after two years of being a District Coordinator for a particularly unpopular online course required for graduation. The school district reconfigured Distributed Learning and my position was rolled into a different position for which I was not considered. I understand why and while I was disappointed by it, life rolls on and I was returning to a position I truly enjoy!

The two years were very challenging and I've been happy to let go of the mess that continues to exist and will likely continue until the course is erased as a graduation requirement, likely at the end of this school year or the next. It's very satisfying to redirect colleagues to others by saying it isn't my responsibility anymore. It's also lovely to simply be honest and say what the problems are without having to worry about being PC.

I loved the opportunities to work around the district in various buildings and see what works in various schools. The feel of each building is unique and reminds me that my own school's culture is not the "be all, end all." There are many wonderful teacher and administrators working to help students and there are some amazing students finding great solutions to the problems they are encountering. I learned a lot about strategies to listen to angry people without taking the anger personally. I learned to breathe through emotions and listen carefully. This was important for me.

The damage done in the last two years to my confidence, however, has been harder to live with and heal. Even knowing the behaviour patterns of a particular leader and having that leader claim that lessons had been learned about the implications of those patterns, I fell into my own personal trap. I believed that I could protect myself from those patterns and even more arrogantly that I wouldn't mirror the worst of that behaviour. I acted badly with the colleague who supports me most closely, in a vain attempt to promote myself and believed that acting on the "every person for him/herself" thoughts encouraged by this school leader would get me further ahead. Ahead of what, I'm not certain now.

I do know that at the end of the two year period, I am happy to step back and leave pursuit of school administration work to people who seem to be ok with the dichotomy of school politics: business model vs social service.

It's great to be back to promoting literacy, digital citizenship, social justice and just interacting with students and being myself.

Bringing Big Ideas North

Big Ideas Fest 2014

Getting onto the plane to head to San Francisco to attend Big Ideas Fest in Half Moon Bay was something I had anticipated for three years. I happened across a mention of this conference via Twitter a few years back.  The images, tweets, website and speaker list made my heart race.  I'm a big picture thinker, so to encounter a conference where social justice, education, technology and the arts merge to address problems facing education made my brain explode. I knew absolutely, that I would find (to quote Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables) "kindred spirits." I immediately tried to figure out how to attend the following year.

Alas, it was not to be. Financing a trip to San Francisco to attend a conference that happened during the work week meant finding money to fly, get accommodations, pay the conference fee and cover my substitute teacher costs. It wasn't until this year that I discovered the possibility of a bursary and then I knew I could make this conference happen for me.  I would have to tweet and write about my experiences and reflections, but as I tend to be a writer anyway, this wasn't a real hardship! In  fact, spreading the word about this conference and its unique method of getting a wide variety of people to collaborate in problem-solving is rather like being asked to proselytize. I'm happy to spread the good news!

Big Ideas Fest is a conference founded by Lisa Petrides of ISKME, to break down the silos between various levels of education and to foster collaboration and design thinking in solving the problems facing education today. With a solid grounding in Improv thinking, IDEO-founded design process and social justice, participants from the world of business to Kindergarten teachers to University professors to technology gurus hunker down in small groups to shed usual modes of problem solving to "move to provocation" and think beyond. I knew I'd be inspired by the "rapid-fire" speakers who each have 15 minutes to present their stories of real world solutions. Surprisingly, I hadn't looked at the pictures of the conference site until about a month before departure. When I saw pictures of the Ritz Carlton and Half Moon Bay, I knew I was heading to a transformational event.

Enlightenment seemed to be my key word upon my arrival. My flight got in during the Sunday afternoon, so I missed the first keynote speaker and the opportunity to create a luminary with the Artist in Residence. I did, however, arrive just in time for dinner.  The food was truly artistic in presentation and unbelievably delicious, but that was topped by the fun and stimulating conversations with educators from K-University, architects, and tech business owners. For a table of 10, we spanned the globe in home locations and ranged from teen to senior citizens. After a delectable creme brule, I headed off to my first workshop and then headed off to my home away from home to check out the fabulous bag o' swag from registration.

The next three days were a bit of a blur:  good food, amazing speakers, the hard/fun work of loosening up our reserves and imagination via Improv activities, thinking, talking and creating.  Highlights for me included:

•  making a new friend from Washington, DC at breakfast on Monday morning, then walking on the beach, 
• feeling excited to use improv strategies
• create a luminary, 
• chatting around the fire pits with educators from around the US
• finding kindred spirits from Guam!
• having my question chosen for Action Collab work on Tuesday
• connecting with a Collab group colleague who will continue to work with me (making BIF local connect between British Columbia and North Carolina)

The question that continues to plague me a little though, is how I'm going to use all of the great things I experienced and learned to truly make education better in my part of the world or in other parts of the world. I've started by trying to bring the Action Collab process into my building for my staff's on-going work in professional development. I am looking forward to presenting a workshop on the Action Collab process at my district's Professional Development Day in February.  The experiences were so rich and densely packed with strategies that I know I need to repeat it to revisit and deepen my understanding. Perhaps I could come back as a Collab leader, so I'll be investigating opportunities to get training in leading Action Collabs. 

I'll also be looking into Canadian OER (Open Education Resources) to make educators more aware of these resources. As a teacher-librarian, this type of resource truly appeals to me for both its generosity of sharing and its potential to use technology for a high purpose with no or low cost. On returning from BIF, I discovered the following OER resources that are Canadian hosted:

• CARL http://www.carl-abrc.ca/en/scholarly-communications/open-access-resources-for-students.html
• Open School BC (hosted in my home town of Kamloops) http://www.openschool.bc.ca/k12/oer.html
• BC Commons ( a new project) http://www.bccommons.ca/

And of course, the BIF promoted OER Commons: https://www.oercommons.org/

There is a lot to do, and so right now, my focus will be on finishing my writing, organizing the workshop and beginning the next phase of redesigning the library commons at my school - encouraging everyone to have some input!

Big Ideas Fest - I'll be back!!

New Paths

Robert Frost's famous poem, The Road Not Taken, has been on my mind a lot lately. I love road pictures. They lead me to imagine destinations and possible futures. This has been a lovely source of daydreaming, but lately, I've been working towards making dreams real. I want to make some significant changes in my life. I want the chance to make a difference and to create and lead in ways I don't get to do now. I am writing more and have a personal project on the go. At this point, my focus is simply on getting something written. Where it will take me is something I don't want to try and imagine right now.
I'm also watching a colleague whom I respect a great deal do what he has spoken about often. He's walking away from teaching for a while to examine his life and his options. We have often discussed our frustrations with the public education system and our cynicism has increased over the years, even when it appears we could be on the cusp of some significant changes.  Will the changes benefit children and youth? Hard to say. In many ways, I'd like to join him in his exploration of what lies beyond this career path I've been on for so many years. The path I've been on is definitely not the "road less travelled." It's a well worn path. That's part of what is frustrating me. I'm seeing patterns repeated and know where they'll likely lead, but the young who have not been on the path as long, see it as new ground. There are so many snake oil salesfolk on this path, too. Everyone has a cure for what's ailing the system. I guess part of the journey is sour grapes, too. I've done the things I've seen be successful for others and yet what keeps coming clear on this path is that those who have powerful friends on the journey get ahead faster or just travel more comfortably. Because of that, I want some control. I have very little in my current role. I'd like to explore my creativity more. I'd like to have the opportunity to lead. I'd like to see where the other path will take me and who I'll meet on the journey.

My Capstone Project for my Masters in Education Technology

I'll admit to being both vain and proud! I realized after I looked at my Weebly site statistics, then Google searched for my ePortfolio, it wasn't a simple find. I hope this will make it easier.
http://cecilemcvittieporfolio.weebly.com

Secret Books & Public Spaces

Have you ever read a book you didn't want anyone to know about?

Flickr image CC 2013

It was racy or forbidden and you didn't want your parents to know or your friends to know? Perhaps it was to answer a question that you desperately needed answered or to find your identity in fiction or reality - to know you weren't alone? If you've been a teenager, you've probaby answered yes to that question. And for all that the internet makes finding information easier and more private than ever before, sometimes, you need a book to answer questions in greater detail than you are finding in your searches. Perhaps you've read an article by an author who promotes her/his more extensive writing. Either way - books still need to be on shelves in libraries to help readers find the answers to their personal journeys. That's why getting rid of all books in a school library can be a huge mistake. This is particularly poignant for teens who are struggling with deeply personal issues of gender identity or self-harm or family problems. While reaching out to find others who struggle with the same thing on the internet can be useful, some teens aren't quite ready for that outreach.
 

A rose by any other name....

Today, a teacher-librarian colleague from another district shared a recent blog column by Joyce Valenza (my idol) entitled "Do I really have to leave the library to do the work of a school librarian?" Even though I had course work for my Masters degree I needed to attend to, I made the time to read the article. You see, I transferred from a Teacher Librarianship program into a Masters in Education Technology program. I have been a huge advocate for the thoughtful use of technology in school for learning and teaching. I believe my role, as a teacher librarian, should include expertise in technology for educational purposes. I definitely don't believe that my role as a librarian is obsolete, though.
   Just before Christmas, students at my school completed the Tell Them From Me survey, a survey of student perception of academic achievement, social engagement and responsibility. Under the open-ended question asking what would make our school better, I was pleasantly surprised to see the response "have more books in the library" not once or twice, but several times. The students at my school are relatively well-off in a socio-economic measurement, so to have requests for books surprises me. I'm often told that our students will buy their own books rather than wait for us to get new titles on the shelves. Yet, for the first time in a few years, I'm seeing a rise in circulation statistics in fiction. Non-fiction - that's a different matter, but a topic for a different blog post. Students are reading and want paper books, audio books and digital books. They want to read! My reader advisory work is paying off!
   That's not my only role, though. I am the technology trouble-shooter for staff and students. I am a co-planner and finder of resources for staff who will allow me to assist them. I would love to do more of that work, but it is difficult to convince my colleagues that I am a resource for them. The silo mentality looms large in my building. I am a curator of resources, digital and physical. I am a demonstrator of new teaching strategies which incorporate technology. I could, if asked, demonstrate how I evaluate which technologies are best suited to certain learning environments and pursuits as I plan lessons and units. I manage the limited budget for resources as capably as I am able and advocate for more resources and apply for grants when I can. I am a professional development leader, a website builder and designer, a course designer and am working hard to develop a culture of professional learning and collaboration, as well as a culture of formative assessment and inquiry. All of these are what I consider to be part of my job as a teacher librarian.
    Despite this, there are administrators who do not see the value of the title or the role. Is it because they have never had the experience of working with strong, capable, positive teacher librarians? Is it because they see technology as a way to make a personal mark in their own career paths and will shape programs to differentiate themselves from other administrators? I don't know.
   I know that I am proud to be a teacher librarian who is a strong advocate for thoughtful education reform and use of technologies in support of sound teaching and learning strategies. Ultimately, it is people who make learning and teaching happen. Eighty years of research has demonstrated that media and technology make no significant difference in learning. Achievement and student success are the result of asset building, good mental and physical health, socio-economics and people who actively care about and interact with young people to build them up by challenging them and supporting them. School libraries can be at the heart of a school community if given the opportunity and the resources (people and artifacts) to help students and staff. I hope I get to continue in that role as a teacher librarian, but I'll do that no matter what my title is! Shakespeare (as always) got it right.

The Mob vs Collaboration

It's funny how a quote can get  your back up, if you're in a mood. "None of us is smarter than all of us." did that to me this morning. It got me thinking about individual responsibility to act in ways that are morally correct, for some reason. While collaboration is critically important in helping solve problems, there are times when the individual and the sense of personal resolve stand in the face of mob thinking.

The American election process comes to mind. The vitriol being spewed by media-seeking pundits (Ann Coulter's use of the R-word to describe Obama is the latest example.) borders on hate speech, sometimes. How is the group identification, in this case, an example of intelligence? Sometimes, the individual's buy-in on group values or group belief seems to suspend intelligence.

Another concern I have is the increasingly rapid-fire discussion on education reform. Why has this become increasingly urgent. Are we losing students from our schools in record numbers? Do we have more drop-outs? More failures? Fewer suitable candidates for university and the world of work? Yes, reform is important, but why is there a sense that public education is a complete and utter failure and must be changed NOW! Not tomorrow, but immediately. How is this smarter than the individual teacher in his or her classroom dealing with the children in that room? The sense that the person who is actually working with the children is being asked about the reforms is not present. It is yet another thing being "done to" teachers instead of giving teachers time to explore how they want to integrate the good research, practice and ideas that are being thrown at them almost daily. When teachers finally are freed from administration "pet projects", as they are sometimes called in my district, perhaps the reform will happen in a way that sustains both teachers and students.

The Elephant in the Room

I had the terrific opportunity to participate in my local principal/vice-principal's association professional development with Alan November today.I was both grateful for the opportunity and very excited, because as a teacher librarian, I've been using November's strategies and tools to become more information literate and help students for a few years now. I was so surprised and disappointed to see such a limited turn-out for a respected leader in technology, information literacy and education reform. The upper administration of our district and senior staff at the BC Ministry of Education have made no secret of the fact that education reform that will use social technologies is the direction education is moving in this province - indeed, it's moving that way all over the world.
Having just finished reading Will Richardson's Why School? and Michael Fullan's Stratosphere!, I'm a little fired up on change. Add in my current course work on Learning Theories and Education Technology and I'm sure I can be positively irritating. (I'm holding onto the irritating tag - pearls are produced from grains of sand that irritate clams. Yup, I'm irritating!)  I agree with November, Richardson and Fullan that technology alone is not the panacaea for the challenges facing education today, but Fullan certainly makes a case for incorporating new pedagogical strategies along with technology and change theory to implement necessary changes more quickly. Richardson is also absolutely correct that vilifying teachers will not solve problems, either. All three of these leaders see a need for leaders to lead by example and today, while I saw some leaders trying new things, I also observed skepticism, inertia and a reluctance to engage - almost a mirror of the problems I've heard teaching colleagues speak about when working with students.
I find it somewhat ironic that November calls on systems to value and use the skills that qualified and trained teacher librarians can bring to schools. For several years now, many of my t-l colleagues have been using the tools that November demonstrated at this workshop. Not all my teacher librarian colleagues have mad technology skills and information literacy skills, but the elephant in the room was that many of the people in the room today seemed to be very ...tired? Nervous? Cautious? Reluctant? It was a quiet room. It seemed that November had to work hard to get responses and the responses were (from a technology early adopter's point of view) disappointing. It seemed from an outside observer position that leadership in technology use is not even close to being a priority in this district for school-based leaders. If our leaders aren't going to demonstrate to staff and students what it means to be a technologically capable educator, then it becomes really hard to require staff to take on the skills that students and parents are hoping to see in our buildings. If principals and vice principals are too busy to use technology tools, then our buildings need teacher librarians as part of the leadership teams. Teacher librarians must be pro-active in demonstrating to students the skills necessary to be web-savvy and information literate. Unfortunately, the places that most need more teacher librarian time are our elementary schools and those are the places that have seen the greatest loss of teacher librarian time. It's a vicious cycle and one that needs to be addressed by all the stakeholders in the system. It's time to start some pilot projects because doing nothing isn't going to make our current system any better. The elephant needs to start moving!

Bring Your Own Device(BYOD) - equitable?

Since the BC Government came out with it's new "education plan," the tweetosphere has been abuzz with discussion and speculation. Proponents are quickly trying to slam the brakes on folks who question the benefits of the government's vision with calls for "out of the box" thinking, implying that those of us who ask questions are Luddites who don't want to see improvements for students and reform of the system we currently have. I will give the government credit. At least we're all finally talking about what the Liberals want to see, not just speculating. It's still pretty vague, but at least it's public. This morning, @MrWejr posted a tweet calling for discussion on @bkuhn's post on Equality or Equity. I'll bite, because I'm a teacher librarian who gets to play the equity/equality game on a daily basis. The whole reason libraries exist is to share knowledge and advance discussion. Today, that means trying to help students deal with accessing knowledge on the many devices that they bring to school (and I do mean many!) and try to assist in troubleshooting when the devices don't access. It also means trying to get up to speed on every new system that comes along. I spend my days discussing how to get Apple devices and PC's and Androids to work with a Linux system. I have to stay on top of the increasing number of apps that become available for various devices to be able to recommend learning tools for students and staff. I won't even begin to discuss what a nightmare e-books are when you're trying to decide whether to subscribe to Overdrive or use Follett's ebooks or just stick with an epub option so that students can read PDF's. (Apple's lack of Flash on iPhones/iPads drives me nuts!! - personal rant moment) I teach at a small high school with a generally middle-class population. Access to broadband at home generally isn't an issue, but it does exist. At least 10% of our school population doesn't have access to a home computer with broadband. Most students don't have their own laptop. Most have phones or iPods, but many of the phones aren't well set up for data use and don't have touch screens. I repeat, I teach at a school that is relatively well-off. What about schools where that isn't the case? What about our rural schools? What about First Nations communities? What about our students with disabilities? I don't know if equity will exist in a Bring Your Own Device world. When @bkuhn suggests that school districts simply need to be responsible for infrastructure (wireless networks, bandwidth,etc.), he ignores the increasing financial strain on families. I have significant issues with lost textbooks and library materials that cost the district thousands of dollars a year. Despite a supposed textbook deposit, which is ignored by most families, we still lose textbooks and don't recoup those losses. At our school, we still loan graphing calculators with deposits, so that all students can have access to a good quality device. If we supply devices to even 10% of our population to even up the digital divide, we have to be prepared to accept financial loss. Families struggling to make ends meet will often ignore costs they know they won't be accountable for. Teachers also have to be prepared to spend a significant portion of their time with students dealing with device "issues". We currently see our district tech support person every other day. The rest of the time, issues are dealt with by teaching staff who do simple IT troubleshooting off the ends of their desks. What the government appears to be proposing is that schools and students that are located in places which can provide easy access to devices and bandwidth (the Lower Mainland, larger communities on Vancouver Island and the mainland) will do well in a 21st century model. Families who choose to reside in rural communities will be choosing to accept that high speed access may not be possible. Families with financial issues will have to be prepared to accept rental or loan of a "standard" device with deposit. Students with special needs already have to wait significant amounts of time for experts to feel they are "ready" for certain devices. (We've been told my daughter needs to wait to be old enough to benefit from an iPad, despite the fact that she uses one at home at home with specific apps for learning. We don't send it to school because the whole family uses this device.) Despite my reservations about this, I think solutions are possible. I do want to think outside the box, but I believe in social justice. We need to make sure that our families and students who need the help, get the opportunity to access the technology that will make collaboration and connection possible. I think Library Learning Commons are the heart of the solution. If the basic premise of a library is knowledge and conversation, it makes sense to ensure that IT support, knowledge searching experts and teaching support staff are located in a central place which serves as a teaching and learning hub. Accessible resources for sharing and experts available to help when needed - the 21st Century School Library. Andrew Carnegie would be impressed.

Future Tense: BC's 21st Century Vision for Education?

Now that I'm finished my Web 2.0 course, I can pick my topics and write as I choose - a better Christmas present, I can't imagine! I've been busier on Twitter and playing with my new smart phone, so my blog has been sitting idle, but it hasn't been forgotten, gentle reader. With a colleague busily working the blog scene with her grade 10 students, I'm working to show her (and them) how blogs can be more than response sites. It has kept me thinking about what I want to do next.  Last night, my inspiration arrived via Twitter - the Premier's Technology Council released its' document "A Vision for 21st Century Education." This is local to British Columbia and a little political background is probably necessary.

Our provincial premier, Gordon Campbell, is in the last throes of his leadership days. He recently resigned, but won't step down until a successor is chosen by his party. This is the same premier who was arrested for drunk driving in Hawaii and hosted the Winter Olympics while waving around red mittens. All that stuff aside, he's also known for wanting BC to be "the most literate" or "best educated" place in the world.  Rumours have been flying for months that the Ministry of Education has been focused on John Abbott's teachings and has received multiple training days on 21st Century education. Now we know where the push for change has come from.

The Premier's Technology Council released it's vision document yesterday afternoon and already it's being read, dissected and discussed. This isn't the first document they've released, but this is the first time they have addressed education. It's interesting to note that not one of the council members has a background in public education, however they consulted with a large group of education administrators and post secondary folk. It's an interesting document and refreshingly says that the present system is not in crisis, but that it needs to reform and adapt.

Union City H.S. New Jersey

As a vision that imagines what could be if there were no constraints, it is powerful and compelling.  I like to think like that way, too. I imagine my library working as a Learning Commons - open spaces, great furniture so that people could work in a variety of settings as needed, great bandwidth so my digital resources could truly supply the needs of staff and students, enough equipment (including e-reader devices, netbooks, digital cameras and Flip camcorders,) and time to teach Guided Inquiry - something more like the KSS library in Kelowna - an exemplary learning commons. It's amazing what can happen when you have control of funds, a clear vision and community support.

It's the community support piece that will make this vision document soar or fade. The question I have is whether the powers that produced it truly want the general public to have that discussion? Given that Ministry of Education officials and Superintendents recently were at a conference glowing about privatized British and American schools leading the way in 21st Century education, while ignoring the Finnish model, I have my doubts about the government working hard to help build a strong public education system and funding the changes that would need to occur in buildings, equipment, teacher training and curriculum. My front line experience of the last 20 or so years warns me to be sceptical.

One of the premises that the Vision document and other reform advocates keep repeating is that students need to be ready to adapt to all the changes coming, so we need to change the system to help them be prepared. While the public school systems of North America aren't perfect, they certainly prepared most of the current CEO's, politicians and advocates to function very successfully in today's world. They are literate, numerate, civic-minded, cooperative, collaborative and creative. They learned these skills both at school and in the real world. Some of them also learned these things in their adolescence without benefit of computers and a wired world.  Many of the skills being touted as 21st C. skills are basic people skills and require strong families and communities that encourage and support children. If societal change is to be the foundation of  a model being called 21st Century education, then we need to talk about working families, single parent families, poverty and consumerism. We also need to talk about tax structures that benefit large business and unfairly burden students and working families with the cost of a shift to a knowledge society.

I support many of the ideas of the Vision document. I applaud the Council for creating a discussion document. Now - who will propel this document into the broader community for the discussion about what kind of a society we truly want in the 21st Century? I'd like to be part of that, because my elementary-age children will either benefit from a truly remarkable public education or be victims of another private enterprise push to own the schools of British Columbia under the disguise of creating 21st Century schools.

Sailing a Small World's Seas

"It's a world of laughter, a world of tears.
It's a world of hopes and a world of fears.
There's so much that we share, that it's time we're aware,
It's a small world after all."

I really enjoy playing with technology, so I was excited to sign up for EDES 501 (544): Exploration of Web. 2.0 for Teaching and Learning. I was mostly excited  to meet the objectives of demonstrating my proficiency with new technologies and developing an understanding of ew and emerging 2.0 technologies. I was also quite anxious about how much time would be absorbed by this course and whether it would overwhelm me at a time when there was a great deal happening in my professional life. I've experienced the laughter and tears, hopes and fears of the famous Disney tune over the course of the semester. I've learned many new things and deepened my understanding of things I was somewhat familiar with, but the best thing I've come to realize, is that the world is much smaller, thanks to web-based technologies and that by connecting with others who are interested in the same topics, I can enhance my learning and professional practice. There's so much out there, it's challenging to stay afloat when other issues are pulling at you. The tides of change on the small world are shifting rapidly right now and so this course has been as much about navigation, as it has been about the sea of Web 2.0

Trenches and Wave-surfing in a Small World

The ocean trench of this course for me was realizing that my own perceived level of capability was not nearly as high as I believed it to be. While I was familiar with many of the tools we were asked to explore and become proficient with, I hadn't explored them in depth or with great regularity. Pushing myself to go deeper with a tool was sometimes a real headache, because I knew that my colleages and students were so far behind me that trying to encourage their use of these tools was not something I would be doing any time in the immediate future. (I'm still trying to encourage most of them to open up their email more regularly.) Despite this, it's been a good experience to become a better blogger, tweeter and user of multimedia tools, particularly when envisioning how these tools can be used to deepen student learning, because my own learning has involved more analysis, and synthesis.
Times that I've felt like I'm riding the crest of a wave have been the times when I've worked with a new tool that is fun (Vuvox) or coming to a strong realization that my writing can improve in new ways - particularly blogging. Internalizing Will Richardson's list of blog uses (Richardson, 2006) challenged my writing process for the better. Reading "The five elements of a perfect blog post" re-affirmed Richardson and all the blogs I had read throughout the course. These are experiences I'll return to and work more with in the coming months, personally and professionally. Blogging, in particular, has drawn me in - both in reading my Google Reader feed every day and writing for professional discussion purposes. I know this is something I will keep up, particular around the passionate discussions of education reform.

Small World Tools for Sharing


Tools that I'll be encouraging my colleagues to use more are tools that will benefit them in their own professional/personal growth and a couple of simple tools to make student work easier and paper-free.

Blogs and Aggregators
Having Google Reader set up to give me RSS feeds of the blogs I follow has been an incredible help professionally in keeping me up to speed on broad education issues and technology discussions. I know this can help my colleagues - particularly the colleagues who aren't familiar with aggregators.  Blogging has been a challenge, but has made me a better writer and better learner. Blogging is a tool that will benefit my colleagues and our students because of the higher level thinking that happens when the the standards for posts are high and writers begin to think about how to share with the audience in a way that is unique, entertaining and thoughtful.

Twitter
In terms of links to professional tools and discussion, Twitter may be one of the best of the web's tools. It has grown significantly in the education community and for good reason. The use of hashtags, ease of use across several platforms and streaming make this tool a "here-and-now" means of professional development and discussion. For my colleagues, support tools like Tweetdeck or Twicca will allow them to organize the various streams of information in a way that can make "tweeting" manageable. Until our school district allows use of personal devices in classrooms, students will have to wait for use of Twitter, though.

Evernote & Diigo
To ensure students have opportunities to share pages and links, both Evernote and Diigo will be easy to demonstrate and get quick "buy-in" thanks to ease of use. Both of these tools work well on the Linux OS, and on both Apple and Windows, so users across all operating systems should be happy.  Because our school is currently dealing with significant budget cuts, any tools that move us towards using less paper (the most significant cost in our budget), the better it is for all departments seeking to purchase technology.

Glogster and Voicethread
Both Glogster and Voicethread have a significant "cool" factor that appeals to young adults. Glogster has immense visual appeal with the various bubble tools and stickers. For the teachers who like to assign poster projects at my school,  this has become popular as a paper-free version that is easy to present and email. The down-side is difficulty in presenting to the school community, but great Glogs embedded in the school web-page could become the new bulletin board of the 21st Century.
Voicethread's cool factor comes from the ability to record voice in a variety of ways to go along with images.  Voicethread's ability to combine visual images and voice, while being somewhat easier to use than podcasting, makes it a winner for many teachers and students. It is particularly nice to have a simple tool that can be used at home for independent use, as many students at the secondary level are required to do. Podcasting may require skills and tools that are beyond younger users, particularly when trying to find someplace to upload recordings to that can be easily accessed by Linux servers.

Follett's Destiny "Quest"
Follett's Destiny library automation software has set high standards for excellence in service, database building and ease of use. I'm fortunate to work in a district that has used Follett's products for many years, but the newest version of Destiny incorporates a social networking tool called Quest which uses the school database to allow students to "friend" each other in order to discuss and share reading lists, rank and review books. Much like Shelfari and Library Thing, users can create their own usernames and passwords (which can be changed by the system supervisor, if necessary) and create "shelves" of materials that have been, are currently or will be read (or viewed or listened to). Patrons can review and rate materials, as well as put items on hold. Top ten lists are generated and students can also see what new materials have arrived in the system. Patrons can also change their backgrounds, add images and generally personalize their work space. While Quest is proprietary and private, it takes the place of Shelfari and Library Thing in a safer way for school communities, and gives students skills that will allow them to move to similar web-based tools when they are ready.

Navigating to future destinations


Because my school is particularly focused on technology over the next three years, using various tools and staying abreast of developing trends will be an on-going job. This course has inspired me to look at a means of ensuring that students are acquiring information literacy and technology skills in a more direct method. I'll be creating a proposal for a pilot project and course for the 2011/2012 school year that will use tablets (either iPad or Android) to use blogging and the Inquiry Method as a means of completing independent research projects. Because course proposals for the coming school year need to be presented to administration by mid-January, my time-line for write-up and research will be very short. Equally challenging will be finding a sponsor to provide tablet technology for students to use in the project. It has been rumoured that Apple has approached our district to see if a pilot project with iPads would be possible, but barring that, the new Android tablets will be available in the spring and would be equally interesting to use, considering our district is one of only four school districts in B.C. to use Linux as its primary operating system. Of greatest interest to me is how tablets and blogging would benefit the inquiry process, particularly the new BC Teacher Librarians' process called "Points of Inquiry." 

Learning from each other in a Small World


Fellow students who have been particularly inspiring and given me much food for thought this semester have been Lissa Bonnell Davies and Kristie Oxley. Lissa's humour and love of science fiction have kept me chuckling, while admiring her ability to be "on top" of her work and posting regularly. One of her posts that really kept me thinking was about learning and using technology. "So the question to ask is "how can we effectively incorporate inquiry and technology within our given parameters". I think of the the " nudging toward inquiry" article we read in the summer, and I think therein lies our answer. When we use baby steps with inquiry and with technology, we can help teachers and students." (Discussion, Nov. 8)  My own impulse is to leap into something and learn from the leaping.  I realized Lissa's baby-steps would probably be more successful, both from a time-management issue and to ensure that those taking steps along with me would be somewhat reassured.
Kristie Oxley's blog and comments this semester have been impressive, but her blog post on social networking inspired me with it's overall connection to the TV show Bewitched (one of my childhood favourites). I aspire to be able to write with such great icons and metaphors. It was Kristie's post about the book The Landry News that got me thinking about public persona in a slightly different way. Kristie wrote, "Anyway, I loved the message, or at least my interpretation of the message: let the teacher be a teacher in the class and don't spoil the illusion by intruding into the rest of the teacher's life." (Discussion, Oct. 28) As a former elementary teacher, I could completely understand the sentiment. I had recently experienced the somewhat jarring experience of having secondary students so comfortable with me as a person that they called me by my first name (outside of a school setting). It took me a while to realize that these students were gently teasing me and even asked if this was OK with me. Once I realized that I hadn't lost their respect, and that during school  I would still be "Mrs.", I was fine with it. They had seen me with my daughter and husband - as a mom and wife, and I had acted like a mom for them while we were far from home. My on-line persona is much like that. Students at the secondary level are probably far more comfortable than we are with differentiating roles and for them, respect is something they are generous with when they feel respected themselves.


As the Small World Turns


The connections made during this course will hopefully continue thanks to the blogs we've started and our tweets. I've learned a great deal and the world will keep turning and learning and sharing. The goal will be to stay afloat and keep paddling!

Blogging is like an onion (with apologies to Shrek)

With profound apologies to screenwriters, Ted Elliot and Terry Rossi, (and not forgetting the original book author - William Steig) I have come to believe that, like an ogre, blogging is like an onion - it has layers. Perhaps I should use Donkey's metaphor of parfaits and layers, but, like onions, I've found some of my blog posts "smelly", while writing blog posts occasionally makes me cry. Parfaits are just far too sweet and don't reflect the struggle that are part of critical thinking and metacognition. Onions are a fabulous metaphor - for ogres and blogging.


Learning about blogging


Personal Learning
My initial experiences with blogging began in February of 2007, when I created an account in Blogger after attending my District-wide inservice day. The keynote speaker, whose name escapes me, talked about the benefits of blogging in a general way and I thought I'd give it a try. Like many beginning bloggers, I began on the surface level by journalling about my family and particularly the experience of living with a child with Down syndrome and then living in the country. At the time, I was on parental leave and we were living on a acreage with a heritage farmhouse in a very small town beside Shuswap Lake. I didn't really want to post too much, for fear of putting too much information on the web and I'm a sporadic journal writer on paper, so I carried that habit into the blogosphere. I started reading other blogs, particularly those of other parents and educators whose blogs were recommended by others, but I hadn't discovered RSS feeds, so I didn't develop habits of returning to blogs on a regular basis. I didn't post to other people's blogs, either, as it felt intrusive at the time. Most of the questions that I wanted answered as a parent of a child with special needs were answered as part of a Yahoo Group of Canadian parents, so blogs weren't an effective way for me to gain insight into parenting or visioning what life will be like for daughter as she gets older. I was also very busy writing professionally for a regional magazine and so I needed to ensure that I was spending time with my children and not developing a significant relationship with my home computer screen. When I have time to blog on a personal level again, I will approach it in a significantly different way. Linking to the blogs and writing of others, while incorporating the life experiences we've gained along the way, as well as visioning a future will be much easier and much more important than before. 


Moving from Personal to Professional


When I moved from working in an elementary library to a secondary library, I peeled away a layer of surface level interaction with technology. I needed to become more capable and confident in my use of various tools and decided to create a blog to support a colleague who was working on a Social Studies project with his students. Every year, his students create propaganda posters about Napoleon Bonaparte. They research to discover who interacted with Napoleon, what the nature of the relationship was and possibly what individuals may have said about him. Based on what they discover, they create a poster either praising Napoleon or villifying him. This blog works well as a project page, although had I known about wikis I would have chosen that option. I learned a great deal about linking to other information in this project, but Will Richardson would tell me that this is a web-based project page - not a blog. (Richardson, 2006.) Although I had peeled a layer back, I still had much to learn about blogs and blogging. 
The impetus for learning more about blogging came at Tech It Up in October of 2009. After listening to Doug Johnson, I knew I had a lot more to learn and based on various discussions during the course of the day, I began reading Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms when I had spare moments - infrequent as those were. Because of my need for practical information, I skimmed for information that was applicable to my needs of the moment, rather than the foundational reasons for blogging.  Like most busy educators, I needed a solid reason for engaging more deeply with the topic of blogging and going deeper. When I registered for this course, I knew I would finally have a reason to peel back another layer. Despite this, one of the things I've discovered about blogging is that a topic needs to be something the blogger is passionate about or is choosing to explore in a more critical way. It is very difficult to blog at Richardson's highest levels (7 and 8) in what Davies and Merchant describe as "well-written and concise posts (are) most likely to be read to the end..." 


From Professional Practice to Professional Learning Networks


As a teacher librarian, reading the blogs of excellent practitioners in my field (and related fields) and blogging about my own learning and practice has allowed me to expand my network well beyond my district and even my province. Being able to refer others to posts about 21st Century Librarianship (Valenza, 2010.) or literacy and blogging (Hamilton, 2010) for further discussion, while incorporating that learning into my own practice has changed how I view professional development. While I have been an early adopter in many things, I feel dangerously behind in my skill set because of my reading of blogs. There is a new urgency in my need to ensure that I am exemplifying best practice, not only in my school, but in my district and beyond. I recognize that by blogging, I open my professional practices to scrutiny in a way that I don't even get a chance to do in front of teacher librarians in my own district. While I may be ahead of the curve compared to some, I have much to learn from those ahead of me. I am reminded of the Desiderata (a poster I saw frequently in my teen years) which encouraged readers to remember that comparing oneself to others is fruitless because there will always be those ahead and those behind. (It's timely that a DigiDesiderata has come out recently.)Really, blogging is about the web which I named the blog after - a connection of threads creating a beautiful whole. Perhaps I'm reaching a deeper layer after all.


Introducing PLN's to Students


What has me most excited about blogging is the possibilities for use with senior students. Because of the increasing push for "21st Century Learning" in all its varied meanings, opportunities for changes in practice are beginning to emerge. Recently, a major technology company approached our district to see if we were interested in using a new product for pilot projects. This would be a very exciting development. Immediately, I was struck with the idea of using this particular piece of hardware as a blogging tool for a year long research project that would incorporate the BCTLA's new Points of Inquiry. As blogging is an ideal means of allowing learners to reflect over a long period of time about "the progress of research, emerging processes, the aggregation of links or references and observations or reflections that develop over time," (Davies & Merchant, 2010) teaching students the Inquiry Process, while giving them time to work on a project that would be part of their final mark across two (and possibly more) subject areas seemed a timely idea. By building a "community of bloggers", students are able to "learn(ing) through social participation." (Davies & Merchant, 2010) Because the students would be choosing the research topic, it could incorporate at minimum, Social Studies and English and possibly other subject areas. Using tablet or slate devices could be a benefit to this process by allowing for easy access to RSS feeds and aggregators.  I am eager to develop this idea further, in the hopes that I could be part of a team piloting a project like this. Blogging can encourage students to develop their own network, and take responsibility for their own learning - the cornerstone of most discussions about learners in the 21st Century. If effect, by learning about, and working to improve my own blogging practices, I may be planting onions as well as peeling back the layers of my own and really, that's the heart of why I became a teacher - to improve myself as a human being and hopefully influence others by being the best person I could be. 


Retrieved from Flickr: Creative Commons image by Al Ibrahim

Works Cited

Davies, J. & Merchant, G. (2010). Web 2.0 for schools: Learning and participation. New York: Peter

      Lang.

Ehrmann, M. (n.d.) Desiderata. Retrieved from http://www.inspirational-short-stories.com/desiderata

      poem.html. (2010, November 28).

Hamilton, B. ( 2010, October 27). Assessment and metacognition: Blogging research reflections.[Web log 

     comment]. Retrieved from http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/10/29/assessment-and-

     metacognition-blogging-research-reflections/. (2010, November 25).

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts andother powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand

    Oaks: Corwin Press.     

Valenza, J. (2010, October). Manifesto for 21st century school librarians. Retrieved from 

     http://informationfluency.wikispaces.com/You+know+you're+a+21st+century+librarian+if+.+.+..

     (2010, November 25).

                       

Twitter: Smaller may be better

My grandmother, a retired teacher and avid naturalist, called me "Chickadee" when I was a little girl. I talked all the time and could never sit still for long. I was curious about everything and needed to investigate and share what I was learning. Twitter may be the app that was truly designed for me, because it allows me to engage with a wide variety of people, find new and interesting information that can be shared, receive great professional tools and information, and I can use it while I'm on the move. How apt that it was named for a bird sound!
I started using Twitter in 2008, because I kept hearing about it in the media and was curious, particularly when it was described as the next Facebook and that many celebraties were using it to connect with their fans. Twitter was created by Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams as a spin-off from Odeo - a podcasting company. Dorsey described the naming of the site in a very appropos way:

"[W]e came across the word "twitter," and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds." And that’s exactly what the product was."
Because it was based on SMS (short message service) for mobile devices, Twitter needed to be simple and began as a text based system, but it quickly expanded to include much more than simple text-based information. Today, Twitter allows for quick links to photos, blogs, data, news and almost anything that can be created on the web.

I set up my account in early March of 2009 and started following a number of people and news feeds. Within a few days, I found an interesting librarian in the U.S. to follow and began discussing professional issues, including reviewing books. I discovered my favourite music social site, Grooveshark, thanks to Twitter and occasionally posted a "tweet" about Down syndrome or politics. I enjoyed posting to the site, but wasn't getting much feedback, despite messaging others and retweeting, which is the equivalent of forwarding email. Sometimes others shared useful or fun links, but mostly folks were writing about the mundane aspects of their lives or using it as a marketing tool. I wasn't seeing images of people and the links being provided were mostly trivial or irrelevant to my needs. When I started getting lots of porn spam, I really got frustrated and decided that Facebook was pretty much the only social networking site I needed and I left Twitter alone for quite a while. I started using it again this summer as part of Joanne de Groot's Resources course and discovered a few good educators to follow who shared some interesting articles. It wasn't until this course, however, when blogging and tweeting linked up that I began to see the potential of Twitter as an educational tool - particularly a professional development tool.

Microblogging

Because Twitter limits posts to 140 characters, writers have to be concise. Statements need to be very clear. Thinking needs to be distilled. I know I have edited posts for clarity and brevity, sometimes four or five times. For bloggers and those who have more to say and share, though, linking to other sites seems to be the most effective way of sharing. The 140 character limit can still be a problem for lengthy URL addresses though. Thankfully, sites like bit.ly, which take long URL's and condense them to shorter formats have allowed microblogging to advance significantly. Twitter has also built in a URL shortening tool to ensure that web addresses don't eat up the entire 140 character limit.
Adding photographs to Twitter became another feature that enhanced the social nature of the site and websites like Twitpic made it easy to upload photographs. In the last week, I upgraded my phone from a Blackberry Pearl to an HTC Desire (Android platform) and wanted to ensure that I could easily add photos. After completing a Google search to see what application was most recommended, I found Twicca. I had already installed a QR code reader, so I scanned the QR code on the website with my phone and it directly installed the program. I was able to take a picture almost immediately,add a comment and then post it. As a tool to share family events, this is amazing, but the educational implications are also staggering. Privacy, though, is always on my mind because of the number of incidents I had of people trying to "follow" me, who really were posting pornography links. My settings do not share my location and I only share information with followers, not the entire Twitter universe. I know that locations can be viewed by some programs and do not wish to let potential thieves know I'm away from the house. The Twitter universe is large and diverse and does not guarantee ethical use by all its members.
Indeed, because of the popularity of Twitter, developers have created ways to organize and evaluate tweets and followers, link to other popular social networks and the ever-present Google, as well as see tweets in user-organized ways.  Twitter Fan Wiki lists many of the most popular "apps" or applications for Twitter and organizes them by operating systems, so that users can tailor their apps to their system.  At this time, I don't need all the possible applications for analysis and data collection, though. While I follow many of the educators at the forefront of educational reform and school librarianship, as well as leaders in activism and politics, I have not seen many of my students or local peers engage with this tool.
At the October B.C. Teacher Librarians' conference, I tried tweeting using a hash-tag (the #symbol to denote a particular stream of tweets)  to see who else was posting from the conference. I was very disappointed to see only a few other posts from the day and no one engaging in discussion about what presenters were sharing. Perhaps everyone was fully engaged with the real-world discussions, but I wondered if more thinking could have been shared that day and more people engaged in pedagogical conversations had the hash tag been posted and people encouraged to share. The same is true in my school district. I can name all the teachers and administrators who regularly post to Twitter and I know I am at the beginning of building a personal learning network.  I am pretty sure that there are fewer than 50 in a school district of over 1000 teachers.
A 5% ratio is is a small group and indicative of a few things. First, there are some teachers who still don't know what Twitter is. Second, there are teachers who are somewhat engaged with technology, but choose not to use Twitter for a variety of reasons. Third, the district's technology policy is antiquated and many teachers are waiting for changes that will allow for use of cell phones and other devices that will make using Twitter feasible. Finally, most teachers in our district have not heard of the term "personal learning networks" and can't see the benefits of being in a broader group which shares learning, resources and reflections for mutual growth. That change is still on the horizon, as the recent cuts and restructuring in the district have many teachers simply trying to focus on managing their classrooms.
Interestingly, Twitter is recognized by many as an excellent means of building personal learning networks and a source of professional development. Michelle Davis interviewed leaders in the Twitter education world  in the most recent edition of Educational Digest and noted that Tuesday night "Edchats" on Twitter are becoming increasingly popular. (2010)  The creator, Thomas Whidby, has found the discussions so popular that a second chat has been added in the morning to allow international educators the opportunity to participate in discussions. It is not surprising that Twitter is only mentioned briefly by Berger and Trexler as a possible social network to use in class, as this tool is still predominantly used by people over the age of 30. The examples they give of using Twitter to emulate a diary of a historical figure is clever and entertaining, but would be difficult to replicate in school systems where phones are still discouraged. If students can all be at computers and have either Twitterfall or Tweetdeck set up so that they can group the tweets they are viewing from classmates, it would be possible to use it as a discussion tool or a way of giving feedback during a discussion or presentation. It would also be interesting to observe what happens when students are required to find an expert opinion or artifact that could be retweeted to a class for discussion and evaluation purposes.
It will be a long time before my children or nephews use this tool, but in the meantime, it will be useful as a professional development tool and to follow politics, current events and activists. Small projects over time may change how Twitter is perceived by students, but in the meantime, the small community of educators using this tool will continue to reap the benefits of building great learning connections.

Works Cited

Berger, P. & Trexler, S. (2010).  Choosing web 2.0 tools for learning and teaching in a digital world. 

     Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Davis, M. (2010).  Social Networking Goes to School. Education Digest, 76 (3),  14-19.