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 I definitely don't believe that my role as a librarian is obsolete, though.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).