Profession in practice

I just had the best conversation with a young man in a coffee shop.

Sitting by myself, late at night, reading "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg for my upcoming book club discussion group- a young 19-year-oldish black man asked me if he could sit down and ask my advice. He said he just thought I looked like I knew what I was doing because I was "reading and everything" and he wanted my opinion on where he should go to college.

Now let me say, I have not been asked for advice by many young people, and NEVER by a young black man at a coffee shop at 10:15 on a Sunday night. Why I was at a coffee shop at 10:15 on a Sunday night is a whole other story. So, what do I do? I say, "Yes, of course I will give you some advice. What's going on?" We introduce ourselves and Tim tells me that he is going to Washtenaw Community College right now and is thinking about transferring to either Eastern Michigan University or the University of Michigan. He continues to tell me that he is worried about rejection and failure and doesn't want to apply to Michigan if he might be turned down or if it will be too hard if he does get accepted. Explaining that his grade point average in high school was a 3.7 and he only got a 26 on the ACT- he is worried that he might have to settle for EMU.

Well, son- you have come to the right person! Our conversation followed many different paths. Without being too forward he asked about my experiences- where I went to school (high school, undergrad, and graduate school), what my grade point average in high school was, why I chose my undergrad major, and why I went back to school. The more information I gave about myself, the more I found out about him.

Tim wants to be a psychologist because he "just wants to understand what is going on in other people's minds". He graduated from an Ann Arbor high school and upon finding out that I want to be a school librarian he shared with me his fond memories of his own elementary school librarian and proceeded to suggest school districts that I should apply to.

Before I knew it I was helping him decide on how he should proceed with his life. In the course of 45 minutes I gave him 3 pieces of advice: speak with advisors at both EMU and U of M to have them review his transcript to let him know what type of coursework he will need to complete in order to graduate, I explained to him (supplemented by my entire Google presentation on my iPad of the "College Application Essay" lessons from my last week of student teaching) how his application essay can help his chances to get accepted into college even with less than stellar test scores and GPA, and finally- once he gets into college, how making personal connections with his professors can only help him through more difficult classes. His response, "You mean it's that simple? I'm going to apply to U of M."

He was appreciative, inquisitive, responsive, and a pleasure to talk with. As he was leaving he asked if I had any final advice- I said, "If nothing else, in your application essay share your experience of how sitting down to talk with a strange white lady in a late night coffee shop changed your attitude about applying for college and how you changed her attitude about young men."

Good luck Tim- and go for it. Oh, and don't wear the "DOPE" shirt when you talk to the college advisors.

Week 13 Reading Reflection

"If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.  As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him... We need not wait to see what others do." Ghandi 

(or the bumper sticker version: "Be the change you wish to see in the world.")

This week's readings focused on the demands that change brings to the profession of librarianship (or education).  Some people change with the times and some don't.  The best means of serving our patrons is being ahead of the curve, but it only takes one individual to be ahead of each curve- developing multiple experts in one organization.  Each expert can help others become experts- and take turns doing so.

Semadini 2010

The focus on differentiated professional development is what struck me in this article.  I can't tell you how many times I have heard teachers complain that a professional development day was a waste of their time.  If a majority of teachers in a district feel this way then what good is the traditional standard of professional development?  Semadini's description of the Fusion method of professional development seems like an excellent way for teachers to become self-motivated to participate in differentiated instruction.  This is a huge focus for preparing lessons for students- it only makes sense that schools should provide the same opportunity for their teachers.

What really surprised me though was the commitment by the school to allow teacher's the time to do the learning and conduct the workshops during class time.  Now that I think about it, if you added up only the hours of all the teachers in a district having just one day off for professional development and spread that out of time for individualized learning, it would probably all even out in the end.

Blowers & Reed 2007

Change management?  I want to be a change manager- actually I have been one all my life.  Nobody ever told me I could get PAID for that!  It's brilliant that Blowers and Reed discuss the need for librarians to develop core technology competencies.  I see this everyday at school.  Some teachers are on the cutting edge of technology and integrate it daily into their classroom, while other teachers come in the the library because they can't change the margin on their Pages document.  Somewhere along the way (in some districts) administrators dropped the ball on making sure that all teachers had some core competency skills on even basic computing methods.  This is where the Media Specialist can come in and fill the void- as long as that librarian 1) has the skills, 2) is given the time to teach, 3) has willing "students" to teach to, and 4) understands what skills those "students" bring into the lesson.  Maybe integrating a little bit of the Fusion method into teaching core competency skills to teachers would go a long way in providing every student the same opportunity to use and learn from teaching methods using effective technological tools in the classroom.  An MP3 player wouldn't hurt either, or an iPad- whatever;)

And I'm going to keep these tips right here so I can refer to them often.

Thinking about creating a Learning 2.0 program for your staff? These are some best practices:

• Design the program for late bloomers.

• Allow participants to blog anonymously.

• Use 1.0 methods to continually communicate with participants.

• Focus on discovery and offer optional challenges.

• Encourage staff members to work together.

• Remember, it’s not about doing it right. It’s about exposure.

• Practice transparency and radical trust.

• Continually encourage staff to “play.”

Fontichiaro 2008

It is so important to think about how others learn (as WE have obviously learned this semester) and Kristin does a good job of explaining how simply this can be done.  By allowing teachers to understand how different tools can be used for their own personal use AND in the classroom, she is tapping in on the teachers' intrinsic motivation to learn.

My takeaways from this article:  

• Don't just tell teachers what they need to learn- find out what they need, tell them how it can help them, and how they can use it every day.  
• Encourage mentor relationships so teachers can help each other when the "expert" is unavailable.
• Allow "students" to experiment and make mistakes.  They will better understand a tool- if they attempt to navigate through problems on their own.

Week 12 Class Reflection

 "Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore"*      

                                                                    "Dorothy" in The Wizard of Oz

*First, an apology to the state of Kansas:

So, yes- maybe we shouldn't have tried to be humorous in selecting the title for our webinar (Rule #1 in distance programming: "Don't use regional humor").  We just thought the pop culture reference would outweigh the offense felt by Kansans (though I should have asked my friend from Kansas first).  Anyways, the point was to help rural librarians understand that they are not alone in their efforts to help their student patrons find information and resources necessary to help make college decisions.

On to the class reflection.

The discussion about Twitter opened my eyes to the many opportunities it offers.  I plan to use Twitter only for professional purposes, but I really like the idea of my future "organization" using Twitter to connect to its patrons.  I've seen lots of business do this (first through Facebook) and I have found the pitfalls of using Twitter as a marketing tool are:

• Bombarding your patrons
• Deciding what all followers need to know (maybe different @'s for different aspects of the organization for patrons to follow would solve this)
• Keeping up with it

The benefits of using Twitter are:

• Direct marketing
• Simplicity of use
• Free
• Easily broadcast to a large number of followers (if you have a large number of followers)

It all depends on how much YOU use it- and then how much your patrons respond to it.  Which is where social media management systems come in.  I am totally going to use HootsSuite to organize my Twitter feed.  I like how visually simple the interface is. My housemate also told me about Vizify.  Different than HootSuite, it's a social media management website that collects and organizes your social media "life" and represents it graphically- literally creating a virtual resume.  You have control of what social media sites it's collecting information from and you also have the power to edit the content of your profile.

I need to work on generating my professional learning network- maybe I will have a "virtual spring cleaning day" after graduation to get my virtual life in order.  I need to update all of my professional profiles and decide who I want to be mentored or informed by.  I think I might even create multiple PLN's considering job type, whether I know them or not, and the frequency in which I work with them.

It's all a lot to keep track of.

I've really enjoyed and been impressed with the webinars I have participated in this week.  For not having experience with Blackboard (and how complicated it is), I think we all did amazingly well.  I tuned in on webinars about providing services to homebound patrons, ideas for getting teenage boys interested in books, and understanding Creative Commons licensing.  They were very informative and I have ideas from all of them that I can use in my career.  Thanks for sharing everyone!

Week 12 Tweeting Reflection

Too many Twitter twabs

I've been on Twitter for about two years- only because all the other kids were doing it.  I tweeted a couple of times... then didn't for a very long time.  I only started up again when I went to the MACUL (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning) conference last month and realized what a powerful tool it was for sharing information.  I had only really thought of it as a conversation tool- somewhere on the spectrum below Facebook, but above smoke signals.  WIth all the retweets, hashtags, followers, following, links and @'s- it seemed to me at first that everyone was just sending thoughts into the void.  Now I have decided that it's a powerful way to disseminate new thoughts and ideas that show up somewhere else on the interwebs.

As a result of following my bloggers I realized that you really need to trust and understand your sources of information.  It's not about just retweeting something- as a responsible tweeter (if there is such a thing) you need to understand that what you say can be retweeted again and again.  So make it count and think before you tweet.

My main use of Twitter in the future will be for professional purposes.  It's a quick way to gather a lot of good information from sources that you trust (assuming you are following trustworthy sources) about topics that you are interested in. Though I can't expect to keep up with everything my group that I'm following is tweeting about, I can find a lot of new ideas conveniently and in a very short time.

Week (What are we on now?) 11 No-Class Reflection

I take back everything I ever said about crappy webinars

Ummm- this ain't gonna be so easy!  My webinar group met last night and I am so glad we worked out the kinks (I hope).  Starting out our meeting we weren't sure how much or what we should accomplish.  Though by the end of our meeting, we had created our webinar title and description, fleshed out our presentation slides, and did a dry run of our webinar.

Let me tell you friends- if you haven't figured out how to use Blackboard yet- do so.  Immediately.  We must have spent a good hour or more just trying to get ourselves in the same "room", getting our PowerPoint slides uploaded, and executing a dry run (just clicking through the slides) to figure out the glitches- of which there were many.

Here are some things we learned:

1. To upload your PowerPoint slides you must QUIT PowerPoint (and possibly save them as a .ppt file- not a .pptx file)
2. It might be wise to only use one computer.  If you do use more than one- even if you make give everyone moderating control- only the computer that created the room has ultimate power.
3. Avoid feedback- mute your microphones on all computers but the one you are talking to (if you and your group members are in the same room with each other).
4. Create a draft email in your favorite email service (better than using Blackboard's email interface) with all of your participants as recipients- so you can just copy and paste the invite to the "room", send it, and be on your way.
5. Have a paper "script" to follow along with- technology drains your powers of concentration quickly.

Anything else Elizabeth?

P.S. I see from the syllabus that Kristin is going to give us some extra time in class before our webinar starts- whew!

Good luck everyone!  I'm looking forward to it:)

Week 10 Class Reflection

Can you hear me now?

I'm excited to work with my team members to make our group's webinar.  It will be interesting to see how everything falls into place in the planning and the recording of it. By interesting, I hope "catastrophe" is not a word any of us associate with our webinars.  Again, Kristin is giving us lots of practical experience with each project we complete for this class. I just updated my e-portfolio and everything I have included on it are projects from the classes I have taken with her- SI 638, 624, 641, and now 643.  During class Kristin gave us many tips on how to make a successful webinar- I especially liked her suggestion of typing "Can you hear me know?" in the chat box;) 

Our group has chosen to focus our webinar on underserved populations, specifically high schoolers in rural areas.  Our goal is to provide information to both public and school librarians to help them assist student patrons with making college-bound decisions.  There will be a lot of advance preparation for this task- probably a lot like preparing a 3-hour lesson plan, right Amber?

Week 10 Reading Reflection

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"

George Bush- Florence, South Carolina, January 11, 2000

How People Learn, Chapter 7

What I found most interesting about this chapter is that none of the teachers interviewed felt that they were done learning.  This is great, but also quite daunting.  I had a sense this morning that not only do I still have so much to learn, but I will always feel the need to constantly learn more.  Returning to college after many years has jumpstarted my brain and I am up for the challenge.

Every teacher has to have expert knowledge of the content they are teaching to effectively teach it.  I was thinking as I was creating my resume and preparing for interviews- that I should only present and express what I know and not what I am trying to remember. As a teacher, the most important gift I can give to my students is to enable them with the ability to make sense of the knowledge being presented to them.  All the facts in the world do not make you any smarter, allowing you to figure out how things work and apply these concepts to satisfy your own needs.  A good teacher provides students with a launching pad built of content knowledge and the tools to make sense of that content knowledge.  I can know everything, but if I don't understand it- then I am only a really good Trivial Pursuit player.

Large class sizes can be a deterrent to interacting with students on a personal level , but solutions to providing scaffolding instruction in a large class setting have already been applied in blended and online learning scenarios.  Our own beloved CTools is an example of how teachers can give individualized responses (and sometimes) instruction and additional instructional tools to help differently-abled learners achieve to the desired level.  Also, our creation and responses to our blog posts helps use to cover a lot more ground that we would if we only had the lecture as our platform for discussion.

This chapter helped me to begin to formulate a model for excellent teaching in any content area (as long as I have the expert content knowledge to present it): 

• Let students drive the direction of the curriculum through questioning and suppositions (guess what- this means you curriculum has to be flexible from year to year)
• Understand the barriers for your content area and know how to help students move past them
• A fun classroom can still (and should) be a learning classroom
• Apply content knowledge to real-life situations to help students understand why this information is important
• Never stop learning and impart this idea to your students through modeling your own experiences

Matos, Motley, Mayer 2010

The term "embedded librarian" is so misleading to me.  To me, "embedded" indicates something that is hunkered down and ready for an upcoming apocalypse.  Anybody ever watch the show "Preppers"?  Maybe a better term for this would be "integrated librarian"?  I can see how both types of "embedding" can have advantages and disadvantages depending on the department that the librarian is serving.  As the article states, the most important issue to consider when developing an "embedded" program is how and where your patrons will actually use you.  Whether online or in person (or a combination of both) the librarian (AND the library administration) need to understand the needs of patrons.  Some librarians try to figure this out through direct contact with students, but I feel (as do others in my blog cohort) that the most effective means of integrating yourself into a curriculum is through teacher contact.  Working with students (through collaborative efforts with teachers) groups at time instead of individually increases contact exponentially and can only lead to an increased use of your services and resources down the road.  Go where your users are, approach them on their terms, and prove yourself invaluable.

Montgomery 2010

As Montgomery points out, webinars are a perfect means to embed library instruction into a teacher's curriculum- providing easy accessibility to library services and resources.  Most of the information provided in this article is pretty obvious- students use the Internet so libraries should be more accessible via the Internet.  This is no surprise, but what I found unique about this article is the focus on webinars as the preferred interactive tool.  Much like chat with a librarian services the webinar provides students with the opportunity to ask questions in order to be provided with a tailored learning experience.  The only problem with webinars is that they usually cannot be provided "on demand" the way a chat service can be.  Would a video chat service make anymore sense?  I'm not sure librarians (or anyone for that matter) would be willing to be "on camera" all day- but providing visual clues to assist with understanding the content of the lesson is always a helpful addition to learning.

Readings

How People Learn, Chapter 7

Matos, Motley, Mayer 2010

Montgomery 2010