Week 6 Class Reflection

Confessions of a middle-aged woman...ok, not EVERYTHING!

I'll admit it right now.  I have never been in a book club.  Not that I haven't wanted to be in a book club, but I just never seemed to be in the right place at the right time to start or even join a book club.  Wait- I take that back.  A few summers ago some friends (about 5 of us) and I decided to start a poolside book club (sounds pretty great, doesn't it?).  A book was chosen, I read it ("Let the Great World Spin" by Colum McCann), I think others read it- at least one did, we had our first meeting, and we talked about the book for a total of six minutes before we moved on to other topics of interest.  It was our first- and last meeting.

What went wrong?  I quite enjoyed the book and my other friend who suggested the book enjoyed it too, but we never really started a discussion of the novel. We had no leader, no list of questions to ponder, not everyone had read the book, and we were sitting by a pool... any one of these reasons is enough to hinder the progress of a discussion.  SO what would I do differently next time?

After our discussion in class this week and thinking more about what makes a good book club, I believe that a thematic book club is the most inclusive option.  Not everyone in my "book club" was excited about reading the book.  It was only chosen because it was well known and out of lack of enthusiasm for anything else.  Honestly, it was pretty depressing- not a fun, summer chick-lit read.  The concept of a thematic book club avoids the pitfalls of a "popular" book club.  If my club members and I had all brought to the table (aka poolside) a great interest in middle-aged prostitutes, grieving mothers, or hit-and-run accidents we might have been more interested in not only reading our chosen National Book Award-winning novel, but we could have continued our summertime book club with other novels based on the same depressing themes.  This was exactly the problem with the creation of our book club.  As a group we never established what we liked to read as individuals, we only knew that we each wanted to be in a book club.

It will be interesting to read what has been chosen by our book club cohorts for this class, as the only category of book we were given was “short story”.  Though we are all in the same academic program, we all come from diverse backgrounds, with varied interests, and different expectations for what a book club should be, even between my partner and I, we presented quite dissimilar suggestions to share with our group.  I printed out all of our group’s readings today (sorry Marc Prensky) and I look forward to snuggling underneath the covers on this wintry day and enjoying my group’s (at first glance) very intellectual short stories.

And no, I won’t be wearing my swimsuit.

Week 5 Class Reflection

I am a rock, I am an iiiiiiiiii-i-island...

I really like the idea of engaging students with a "hook" as an introduction to a lesson. Our reading last week discussed this method in detail, but in class I began to understand how critically important this is. I saw a quote from Jeannie Fulbright posted on a teacher-friend's Facebook page, "If the purpose for learning is to score well on a test, we've lost sight of the real reason for learning." I don't necessarily agree with this faith-based, homeschooling mom's other views, but I think she hit the nail on the head with that bit of wisdom. I believe that I am a product of "teaching to the test". I can honestly say that I know just enough about most things to be a mild threat on Trivia Night, but I have no real expert knowledge on any topic. School never 1) taught me to think for myself, 2) encouraged me to transfer whatever knowledge of ideas or processes I might have to other contexts, or 3) prepared me for anything other than allowing me to get a pretty darn good score on the ACT. That pretty much pisses me off. Though I always enjoyed school, I never had a passion to learn. This is why it took me so long to figure out what I really wanted to be when I "grew up".

I appreciate what Jane McGonigal is doing- not necessarily because it involves gaming, but because she is focusing on transforming an activity that many people happily engage in for entertainment into something that these same people can learn from and help others with. She understands that learners must be passionate about what they are doing or the knowledge being presented to them will not be absorbed and transferred in order to create any meaning from it. Gaming is her "hook". I need to figure out what mine will be.

Our in-class bonus blog discussion was interesting. As we shared who we followed, I realized that all four blogs that I picked overlapped with other members in our cohort. Haha- what does this mean about me? Interesting. My biggest take-away from our talk was our question of who is the blogger blogging to? It used to be that bloggers had some sort of cache when not absolutely everyone was doing it. Check out this paper on the influence of early political blogs: http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~farrell/blogpaperfinal.pdf

My favorite quote from the paper is “Never have so many people written so much to be read by so few.” (Katie Hafner, “For Some, the Blogging Never Stops,” New York Times, 27 May 2004). I totally agree with this, because for many, blogging is merely a method to "self-publish" in a manner of speaking- forget vanity presses. I have a friend who is blogging about greening your condo association with the goal of publishing his blog into a book- not really a mainstream topic of interest. I am his only follower so far... I think I'm the only one who has the link to his blog actually. Sometimes, as I followed my library land bloggers, I felt that I was the only reader of some of their posts as well. Again, librarians are not very good at promoting themselves, and though some like to think of themselves as "rock star librarians", they are only kidding themselves. I'm not saying that librarians' blogs don't have relevance in the blogosphere- far from that! I have found most of the blogs extremely interesting and informative, but we need to understand that we are a small part of a huge virtual world, and it will take more than blogging about issues in librarianship to other librarians to address real-life situations that affect our daily working environments and our futures.

Week 6 Reading Reflection

Times they are a changing... but we still want to talk about it

As I read Prensky's 2011 article " In the 21st-Century University, Let's Ban (Paper) Books" from the paper copy I printed out in order to easily make my own margin notes (I'm trying not to highlight anymore- cause we ALL know now how horribly ineffective that is) I am struck by the fact that most of my classes here at U of M have been completely digital, yet I have binders of printed pdf's of articles and book chapters. As I read through the article I began to think, "is he joking?", especially with the line about professors having limited time (using student helpers) to convert their personal libraries- including margin notes- to an entirely digital format. That's what GSI's get paid big bucks for I guess.

Though as I finished the article, I came to understand that he is serious... so what do I think about that? I'm not really against it. I think his listed advantages of students having interconnected opportunities to engage in discussions about not only the content of the text, but also any thoughts that anyone every had about the text is brilliant. What effect will that have on higher learning, or maybe- librarians? I'm not sure about that yet. I think the academic world is in for a drastic change as a result of the ongoing evolution of the academic publishing world. Or maybe it is the other way around- is the publishing world changing because professors are no longer requiring texts- or the long-forgotten course pack? What about the role of librarians in a "paper book free" university? I hope that librarians will continue to help improve patron access to necessary resources, but- going back to librarians being some of the worst marketers on the planet- we need to help our patrons understand that even if they are "expert searchers" we can and WILL still help patrons by providing access to finding, evaluating, and incorporating this omnipotent virtual resources to create and share new knowledge gleaned from them.

Hoffert's, "The Book Club Exploded" is the perfect antidote to that pesky question, "What will happen to libraries when paper books no longer exist?" What many people do not understand is that paper books ALREADY don't exist- and libraries (well, some of them) have evolved and expanded services with changing media formats. Because that's just what it is- a change in media formats, but libraries are still a repository of knowledge whatever the medium. Unlike the traditional bookstores that have disappeared from the landscape because they merely provide a product, libraries can still thrive in a digital world because they offer a service- providing access to information. The idea of a thematic approach to book clubs is intriguing, and much like my mentor librarian's approach to a new topic in the media center. She likes to draw students in with a picture book (sometimes nonfiction) to get them excited about what is being studied and then share a more fact-based nonfiction text in a subsequent lesson to help them make connections to the what they already know. This would also be very successful in a book club- inclusive, intriguing, and interactive.

Dempsey's, "The Evolving Book Group", again addresses how libraries can provide services beyond the physical space of the library. Not only can libraries become a social gathering space, but they can facilitate social gatherings outside of their physical space. Many innovative ideas were highlighted in this article. I especially appreciated the cooperation between libraries and local businesses. A town thrives when connected services are offered. If I need to make use of more than one store in my town, I make the effort to go there. If I just need to run a quick errand I will find that service at a place where it is easier to park. If the library expands it's services to provide convenient access to under served patrons, then that is a smart library. It is an excellent tool to open up pathways for discussion among under served populations, create new communities of learners, and build a larger "fan base" that might allow for the next library mileage to pass.

Both Tredway's and Metzger's articles discussed the benefits of the Socratic seminar. I wish I had done this in high school, maybe I would have been more comfortable and confident voicing my opinion in front others- a life skill that I feel is absolutely necessary and simple to develop. I appreciated the personal focus of Metzger's article as she explained her introduction, experience, and modification of the traditional Socratic seminar to her freshmen English classes. What struck me was how her students quickly realized that they could be responsible for their own learning. I think this is extremely critical to the generation of active classroom learning. Not only did her students realize that sometimes their teacher got in the way of learning, but they also identified hinderances to classroom discussions and devised techniques to insure that every student benefitted in an active manner. Using students' marked-up readings as a formative assessment tool is a highly effective means of understanding what each student is understanding (or not understanding) about the text. It also struck me that Kristin has already introduced us to the Socratic seminar through our 643 coursework...pre-reading what is to be discussed in class and "journaling" about it. Nice.

Bonus Blog

Library Land Bloggers

View my quick slide show:
http://www.haikudeck.com/p/3tO8porpUq/library-land-bloggers

Blogs from my specialization

Joyce Valenza ­
“NeverEnding Search”

A high school teacher-librarian at Springfield High School in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania since 1998, Dr. Joyce Valenza was also the techlife@school columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer for ten years.  With posts every few days, her interesting and insightful blog is chocked-full of learning tools for students, teachers, and librarians that she has thoroughly researched and interacted with, providing recommendations and insight on using techno-gadgets, information literacy skills, and Web 2.0 tools.  She also provides insight on other happenings in library land.



Paige Jaeger­  
“Library Door”

Referring to herself a “regular librarian in an irregular world” Jaeger is the coordinator for School Library Services within a cooperative educational service board assisting 31 school districts in upstate New York.  By providing shared educational programs and services Jaeger intergrates the Common Core State Standards through collaborative learning and strong library programs.  Posting about twice a month, her graphic-filled blog provides easily adaptable teaching tips for integrating Common Core State Standards into the curriculum.  She is also a proponent of providing eBook access to all students and encourages other school librarians to develop eBook collections for a new wave of transliterate teens.

Blogs outside of my specialization

Buffy Hamilton ­
“The Unquiet Librarian”

A 2011 Library Journal Mover and Shaker and former high school librarian, Hamilton has been the Learning Strategist for the Cleveland Public Library in Cleveland, Ohio for just a couple of months.  With over twenty years of experience in public education as a high school English teacher, technology integration specialist, and librarian her highly entertaining blog contains several posts a week highlighting her conference presentations, descriptions of activities, displays, and workshops in her former school library, and clever methods to provide media to the masses... “Library on Wheels” anyone?  


Anonymous ­
“The Annoyed Librarian”

An anonymous blogger for Library Journal, the “Annoyed Librarian” has found a soapbox to peddle “her” beliefs on what’s wrong in Library Land.  Though some some criticize “her” for using anonymity as a shield for controversial views and for sometimes engaging in bad online behavior- proponents praise “her” for standing up to the radical right...a radical right in library land?  Sometimes offering suggestions and sometimes not, I believe that the Annoyed Librarian is successful at being the harbinger of bad news, and because we don’t know the messenger- we can’t shoot her.  The Annoyed Librarian is the “kick in the pants” we need to understand how problems like threats to personal privacy, limited access, and lack of funds put libraries in peril and we need be vocal in  our support of libraries and try to do something to save them.

Possible identities of the Annoyed Librarian:

• Michael Gorman- former ALA President (which the Annoyed Librarian “denies”)
• K.G. Schneider-  blogger: “The Free Range Librarian” and University Librarian at Holy Names University in Oakland, California (self-confessed, but probably not)

Trends

• "Ssshhhhh-ing" librarians- Pew report on what patrons want out of their libraries
• Goings on at National Conferences
• Participatory learning
• Integration of Common Core State Standards

Analysis

Librarians are so interesting, yet the common perception is that we sit behind a desk all day long trying to keep everyone quiet.  The blogs that I have been following prove otherwise.  Librarians are dynamic and on the cutting edge of technology- constantly trying to utilize new tools to infuse excitement into participatory learning for all ages.  These bloggers are so adept at sharing their knowledge that I find it disheartening that so few people understand what a great librarian can do and this is somewhat revealed by the amount of comment traffic on each blog.  Both Valenza and Jaeger get very few comments on each posts, and many times there are no comments on a post at all.  This does not necessarily reflect how many people they are reaching, but it does reveal how readers of the blog connect to the information they are sharing.  Hamilton has quite a few more comments on her posts, but this seems to happen when she is commenting about a national library conference and the larger conference audience is reacting to her posts.  The Annoyed Librarian receives the most comments, but many of them are just snarky retorts to the Annoyed Librarians complaints about “her” frustrations with what is happening in Library Land.

What is happening in Library Land?  If the bloggers that I followed are a window into the goings on at most school and public libraries, then everyone must be pretty active.  It seems that all the bloggers have a high interest in the integration of tech tools into a participatory learning setting.  They are also passionate about providing the best library experience for their patrons through creative uses of resources (digital and print).  Where three of my bloggers put a positive spin on the world of librarianship, always seemingly chipper and upbeat, the Annoyed Librarian stands out as being, well, annoyed.  Sometimes I find this refreshing and sometimes I find it terribly disheartening, but it plays an important role in the blogosphere, not everything in Library Land is sunshine and daisies.  We need to understand that threats to libraries also threaten our ability as librarians to provide the creative services and education we are capable of.

Week 5 Reading Reflection

What exactly are we transferring?

I found "Put Understanding First" to be an extremely interesting article and I started to wonder why the obvious is seemingly unknown to the public school system in the United States.  Why can't a student's education help him attain his own goals for college or career readiness?  Why can't teachers focus on what students need to know for a job instead of what they need to know for standardized tests.  In the process of trying to create and assess effective schools, our public education system has deviated so far from preparing students for what they need to know in life.

Wiggins and McTighe's analogy of comparing student learners to athletes or performers is apt.  If I think of students as performers or athletes then the three instructional practices start to make more sense.  DIrect instruction is necessary, but it should come chunked into accessible pieces.   A director would not explain all the dialogue, songs, blocking, and choreography for a musical intending to have a performance at the end of four weeks without even having a run-through of the show.  Just as a coach would not lecture her basketball players on the finer points of dribbling, setting a pick, passing, and shooting in a classroom setting with the goal of playing a game before the players have even set foot on the court.  I know these examples cannot be exactly compared to how subject content learning is transferred by students in order to take a final exam, but the three instructional practices outlined by Wiggins and McTighe can be applied to every scenario.  

Understanding that the application of direct instruction, facilitation, and coaching should not be linear, but cyclical helps me to understand how teaching in the classroom can be more effective.  As the article states, the very first thing kids usually ask is, "Why do we need to know this?", if the teacher engages her students in an activity that reveals examples of the need for content learning, then students will quickly understand the relevance of what is being taught in class.  This will increase engagement and understanding.  Increased rigor (appropriately introduced by the teacher) can follow as students begin to transfer content knowledge more and more easily.  In this manner, students will make meaning in chunks as they acquire the knowledge needed in order to complete the next task or assignment.  Students can then develop an understanding that what they have been learning is all part of a bigger picture- where their new knowledge needs to be applied in order to succeed on their own.

Chapter 3 of "How People Learn" gave me a better idea of how the transfer of student knowledge can be more effective.  It is the transfer of knowledge that we measure in order to assess our students, but students need time to process the information given to them across multiple contexts through purposeful learning.  Motivation is the key to a student's desire to learn.  As WIggins and McTighe pointed out in their "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" vignette, the history teacher does a horrible job of motivating his students as he merely asks them to regurgitate facts back to the class.  Yes, the students were being asked to share knowledge, but it is only when students create new thoughts, ideas, and meanings of their own that they become excited enough to stand up and share with the rest of the class.

In my student teaching experience, I have been trying to motivate my students to learn, by encouraging them to share their thoughts, but the piece I am just starting to realize that I am missing is making sure that my students understand how what I am teaching them will be useful to them- at home and in the classroom.  Beyond that, I need to share with the classroom teachers the content knowledge I am teaching to my students so that the teachers can integrate student skills learned in the Media Center into classroom learning.  Again and again, I hear teachers complain that they don't like to use computers in class because the students don't know how to use a program, or how to log on to their servers, or how to save and print a document- but what I am not always sharing with the teachers is how I am teaching students this knowledge,  If teachers let students share this new knowledge, the students will see that their learning is relevant and is making a contribution to classroom activities.  The transfer of student knowledge from one setting to another (Media Center to classroom) through the application of skills learned in the Media Center to create products based on classroom content knowledge can excite and motivate students.  The more time students have to develop these skills, the more competent and confident they will become in transferring previous knowledge to new contexts. 

This transfer of knowledge based on previous learning is the goal of SI 502.  Students learn the Python programming language in 502 because it is what many other programming languages are based on.  Yes, we were heavily drilled in "while True" and "if/then" statements, but it was in hopes that we would be able to transfer the knowledge we had built in Python to work with other programming languages more easily.  That would be perfect if I remembered anything I had learned (which is most likely a result of not having mastered it), but...maybe if it all had been set to music...?  I know theater was Dr. Chuck's first love.  Maybe we can co-write, "If/then, while True" the musical?  

Nope, then I would just have memorized it and not actually understood it.

Week 4 Class Reflection

If the average gamer plays 10,080 hours by the time he is 21, then my 11-year old must be WAY above average. Let's see, 24 hours in a day, multiplied by 365 days, multiplied by 21 years...is 183,960 hours of total "living"time. So by my calculations, my son has already played about 6,570 hours, at 3 hours a day on average (even though his "limit" is 1 hour a day on the weekend and a half-hour a day on weekdays) since he was 5 years old (when my brother gave him his first gaming device, a Nintendo DS). So, if Evan keeps at the same gaming pace he will have "gamed" for 17,520 hours total by the time he is 21, that will be 11% of his life. I think I'm going to be sick. Of course, AFTER I graduate I will have all the time in the world to be the attentive mom that I was before and restrict my son's screen time to the aforementioned limits, or at least encourage him to play the "educational" games that will enhance the learning he does in the classroom. Yeah, right! He's having the time of his life right now...he will probably encourage me to pursue a doctorate degree after graduation;)

I totally agree with Jane McGonigal's TED talk, many gamers find more enjoyment in the virtual world than in the real world. It is easy to be disenchanted with a world that is not of your own creation, one that constantly puts limits on you, prevents you from getting to where you want to go, and demands things that you can not easily obtain...like credit, time, health, and energy- but this is where we live, in the world and we have to start improving it. Like right now.

Maybe we need to assess the real world in comparison to a gamer's virtual world to understand how we can make our real world a better place. Infinite life? Not so much. Unlimited materials? Nope. Infinite money-earning opportunities that involve simple bodily movements like running through bags of gold hanging in mid-air? That would be nice. Heck, maybe I should up my gaming time from about 2 hours a month and take a virtual vacation. If we could get all the gamers at SI to play the games developed by the Institute For The Future, just imagine what could be accomplished!

Speaking of assessment, I had some interesting experiences at my elementary placement this week. I taught a few lessons that included a student writing component. Every time as each class was wrapping up, students began to hand me their work, and every time I told them, "No, we reviewed it in class- you can take it home with you." During the course of a lesson, as they were doing their work I would ask them to share it with me and suggest improvements if necessary. By doing so, I suppose I was engaging in a type of immediate formative assessment, but I always had the feeling that students wanted more. It could be just a reflex that students expect to hand in their work at the end of the day or the end of a class, but it seemed to me that many of my students were looking for some other assurance that they had completed the task sufficiently. Maybe my quick "assessments" would have been more effective if accompanied by a gold star?

Week 4 Reading Reflection

There Is No "I" In TEAM...

(but let me form a sub-committee just to make sure)

After finishing Chapter 6 of "How People Learn" I realized that in the discussion of the four perspectives on learning environments (learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment center, and community centered) that need to work together in order to promote student achievement  the amount of resources available to teacher and student was never addressed.  This made me wonder how the amount of available resources affects student learning.  We hear time and again that schools have limited budgets- with state funding cuts and higher staff expenditures, but can a high level of student achievement still be attained with limited funding?

Ludger Woessmann, a professor of economics at the University of Munich, conducted a study considering worldwide student achievement reports and asking  if school policy and institutional variation help to explain variation in student performance and if so, which school policies and institutions are most conducive to student performance?  Results of this study were publish in the article, "Why Students in Some Countries Do Better" on the Educationnext website.  (Check out Figure 1- the high achieving countries are not necessarily all rich.  Some are former Communist countries with more centralized governments).  Woessmann states that giving schools more resources is not the answer.  Spending more money on an institution that enacts ineffective policies will do nothing to improve student achievement.  Instead the focus should be for schools (at district, state, and national levels) to coordinate policies for student learning and assessment.  He concludes, "an institutional system in which all the people involved have an incentive to improve student performance is the only alternative that promises positive effects."

I'm not saying that funding for schools should be lowered and I'm not against giving schools more money.  I am sure that a tour of derelict buildings in a poor rural or inner-city school district would have me picketing the State Capitol for more school funding, but I wonder if (sometimes) districts use a lack of funding as an excuse for poor student achievement?   I am personally affected by limited budgets.  Many school media specialists have been laid off in many districts throughout the state as districts contend with ever decreasing budgets as they pare down resources to what is deemed the absolute minimum for learning.  Do I think that a school media specialist can help raise student achievement?  Sure I do... if they are an effective team member- collaborating with staff to integrate the four learning environments discussed in this chapter.  

As Woessmann states in his study, all people involved- teachers, students, administrators, and parents, need to have an incentive to work together to raise student achievement levels.  I think the four learning environments address this need.  If everyone works together encouraging students to contribute their "knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs" within a learning environment that provides the additional knowledge and skills to function in and connect to society with formative and summative assessments that align with individual learning goals then student achievement will improve.  It takes time, effort, and patience to work together to enact policies that improve student learning, but aligning the four perspectives on learning environments will help to achieve that goal. 

Now, on to assessment...

The Sadler reading on formative assessment immediately reminded me of the research class I am taking right now- SI 623.  Evaluating an assessment's reliability and validity as a tool to make qualitative or quantitative judgements about student work is just as tricky as evaluating student work itself.  Just like in developing the appropriate research method to find answers for the questions of a research study, a teacher must consider the many aspects of student learning in order to create the most effective assessment tool.  Despite this effort, it has been shown that student achievement does not necessarily improve "when teachers provide students with valid and reliable judgments about the quality of their work" (Sadler 119).  This is frustrating to me.  Again and again in graduate school the use of formative assessments has been stressed as critical to student learning and achievement, but "students often show little or no growth or development despite regular, accurate feedback" (Sadler 119).  So why isn't a teacher's use formative assessments effective?

I think it is because of the type of formative assessment that is being given and the manner in which it is being delivered.  I appreciated the discussion of the difference between classroom learning environments worldwide.  Going back to Woessmann's study of student achievement in regard to the broad implementation of institutional policies- I think that is the key, the broad implementation of formative assessments.  Across the curriculum students should expect be given formative assessments on a daily basis.  If students know that their daily learning environment will not be passive, they will pay more attention and be more interested in collaborative learning with the teacher and their fellow students.  Daily feedback by all teachers throughout the day is key.  The formative assessments should not be all the same, but the similarity from classroom to classroom is that the student can expect for them to happen.

To make this happen, school buildings need to set standards for learning, understand where each student falls within that standard, and be able to provide differentiated learning experiences to help each student reach the agreed upon standard. Again, this is not easy- but it is possible.  Though as the article states, the student must not be left out of the equation.  Each student needs to understand his own abilities and be able to make self-assessments throughout the learning process.  It may be as simple as a younger student asking himself, "Is this my best work?"  I have tried this in the classroom just last week after a discussion with my mentor teacher about how we can allow our students to become more independent during computer lessons.  Sometimes students need to be told step-by-step how to save or print a document again and again- never transferring knowledge from one lesson to the next.  This is not teaching students how to use a program- it is only teaching students how to follow step-by-step instructions.  Given the tools they need through instruction the goal I have for my students is for them to be able to assist themselves through different processes, gaining more confidence along the way.   When the time comes for self-assessment they can assure themselves that it is their best work, and if it's not... they can fix it and make it better.

Readings:

National Research Council. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition. National Academies Press, 2000. 131-154.

Sadler, D. Royce. "Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems." Instructional Science 18 (1989): 119-144.

Week 3 Class Reflection

The Zone of Intervention... get into it

Ok- first of all, here is a link to a blog post about that ball-sucker-upper-thingy I was talking about in class tonight... interesting post:)
http://www.blyberg.net/2006/03/22/find-the-edge-push-it/

P.S. It IS the result of a collaboration between the AADL and the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum

My main takeaway from the small group discussion of our chosen articles for this week's reading is that information literacy means many different things (or nothing at all) to different types of librarians.  As a group of "librarians" we are not terribly cohesive.  Asking a school librarian to do the work of an archivist would be like asking a civil engineer to do the work of a electrical engineer.  We don't all have the same skill set and from specialization to specialization we all have a staggering variety of different tasks to perform... all lumped together under the umbrella of librarianship.  How can we do a better job of educating the public on how we can help them?  I think the first step is educating ourselves about what different librarians do.  In class, Sarah mentioned that she thinks there is a program in place in the MLibrary system to "job shadow" another librarian for the day.  This is a great way to understand what a person in another department is doing, but I wonder how many librarians take advantage of this?

In my course evaluation of SI 500 last year, I suggested that the class provide an overview of all of the specializations offered at UMSI and take place fall semester.  So, at the very beginning of our grad school careers- we could all understand just what it is that the other specializations actually do- and not just try to remember what their acronym stands for.  It's also the perfect time to change specializations to HCI.  (I'm just KIDDING).

Beyond educating ourselves- as Kristin pointed out, we must connect to our patrons and their interests in considering their instructional needs.  Lessons or instruction that we develop must be relevant to our patrons needs and must provide practical application for future independent use.  Choice matters to patrons- our customers.  If we don't provide what they want in a way they can consume it- then they will go someplace else... like Wikipedia:(

My "a-ha moment" was Kristin's comparing "reading literacy" to "information literacy".  You don't give a Kindergartener a copy of "The Hunger Games" and say, "Read this".  You start small, building your way (over years) through scaffolding tools and instructional methods to develop a student's reading literacy skills.  In the same vein- librarians can't just direct a college freshman to an online database and say "Find an article on tigers", because he might not have the information literacy skills to find or access articles in the database.  The problem with this analogy, is that by the time a student goes to college he is not in the mood for baby steps.  Somewhere around 11 years of age, he might have already developed the opinion that he knows everything- including the most effect search methods, and is not interested in knowing how you might be able to develop his skills.  The instruction of information literacy skills really should shadow the instruction of reading literacy skills.  Reading instructors and Media Specialists should collaborate with each other to develop lesson plans that tie new reading literacy skills with new information literacy- one skill should help the other skill so that student's can immediately benefit and have an "a-ha moment" everyday.  With this type of collaboration the teacher-librarian (and I DO consider myself a teacher) can help students understand that when things get frustrating- THAT's the time to ask for help.  Though my new hand raising rule is: Think about it again, ask a friend, then raise your hand:)  As librarians, we need to help all of our patrons that we work with identify the stage (of any process) that most frustrates them and then be prepared to intervene with appropriate instruction to help them through and help them develop competency.

Be right there and get in the zone.