Deep Thinking

Just thought I’d share a photo taken by one of my three faithful volunteers, Michael Tyler. Michael volunteers in the library 3-5 days a week and is a gifted artist. We have such a creative atmosphere and are fortunate to have Michael capturing images this year of “happenings” in the library. For example, here is a photo he snapped of a first grader who was so excited about the book she had read that she had to come to the library before going to class just to take the A.R. test. Beyond the test, she wanted the opportunity to talk about her book.

Students want to share. Who is there to listen? Well, we are. The librarians. We want to talk about learning, new ideas, new technologies, favorite books. If we weren’t interested in someone else’s learning, we wouldn’t be in a school situation. Those moments of student excitement are what refuel and revive us.

So are you maximizing your opportunities for student choice and sharing? Are you creating an atmosphere to encourage this? Do you have an environment to inspire others to ask questions and think?

One of my volunteers, Charlene Smith, is called Nana by 99.9% of the school community. We have a deal where at least once a week we both address each other by our first names (just so we don’t forget what they are. ) Nana is also a talented artist who retired from running a company’s printing department so she can explain everything about different weights of paper. This has come in very handy for our mobile preparation. I believe that we have created an atmosphere where our volunteers have the say-so in our artistic environment and I have noticed a more cheerful attitude among the faculty and students this year. I will be posting photos of the library throughout the year so you can see how we continue to change and be unique. Thank you to Michael and Charlene for your hard work this year. I also want to thank Ms. T for volunteering Tues & Thurs. mornings. Ms. T is the site-director for our before and after school YMCA Fun Company program and graciously helps keep us focused and practical. Ms. T is the one who reminds me when we have run out of bookmarks and she patiently cuts hundreds apart weekly because she knows there are students standing on the other side of the desk waiting for their own bookmark. Thank you, Ms. T.

ALA/WO presented David Lankes in Second Life Thursday. I still stumble all over in 2nd life, but I’m working on it. At least my avatar has my freckles! Once Mark helped me sit down and not feel like I was standing on the bench dancing for the class, I enjoyed the presentation. Due to technical difficulties I had to log in 3 times and finally ended up giving up part way through. Fortunately I could go here to read the transcript. I encourage you to also do so. I did blog about David’s work from his presentation during ALA Midwinter and I believe we need to be part of the conversation. Second Life needs to continue to involve and become easier for first-time users to navigate. The learning curve is so steep that the desire to master Second Life has to increase greatly to overcome.

Videos are viewed constantly in my house using the computer, PSP, Xbox, and more. Seems everyone has one or more videos downloaded to their flash drives. While my husband sticks with YouTube and the boys have moved on to some amazing sites all over the world, I am the dull one still playing with Google Video. We have started creating some videos of student work and are determining how we are going to post these for sharing. Our Mac server no longer seems up to the task. One of my very favorite videos was actually used during AASL’s Vision Summit. You, too, can go here http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7281108124087435381 and view a 2020 Vision of schools. I believe it was originally created by Karl Fisch at his Fischbowl blog . I wish I could join with more people in discussing these ideas. Any takers?