Teaching and Learning Celebration

Channel 13 did it again! I had heard about this wonderful conference, but this was the first year I was able to attend, thanks to Pearline Everett's good fortune to win two free passes and her kind generosity in responding to my strong-arming tactics by agreeing to allow me to have one of them. Thanks, Pearline!

I started the day with Will Richardson. Many of you are familiar with his work on blogs and wikis (TCHRS 371.33 RIC: UHS Library). Apparently he is also a wikispaces devotee. You can visit the site he created for the conference at http://willrichardson.wikispaces.com/. He believes that the ability--and prevalence--of publishing to the web is the single most transformative happening that has emerged from the technology revolution. The capability for all of us, most notably our students, to be participatory journalists is a heady and empowering change. Take a moment to visit his wiki and consider his timely message about connections.

Speaking of connections, one of the amazing things I learned at this conference is how the learning truly doesn't end because of the opportunities literally at our fingertips! Did you know that many universities now have free open courseware? For example, you can take a course of your dreams at MIT, Tufts, U. C. Berkeley and many other institutions here and across the globe.

On that note, Tim Magner, Director of the U. S. Department of Education, explored 21st educational trends and how learning is now location-independent. He introduced us to GELC (Global Education Learning Community) where educators can start or join projects and take advantage of resources. We were challenged to consider that while everything in our world has changed so markedly, why are schools still the same? As educators, we have to create our own transformational toolkit, work with our communities to prepare our students for the world that awaits them. This world features, in a very short list, collaboration, "loose" boundaries, the accessibility of information over a variety of platforms, and connectivity in more ways to more people than ever before possible or imagined.

I had a chance to stop by the Apple workshop on podcasting which also supported the concept and recurring theme of the celebration to create work for a global audience. We can facilitate this by giving our students a voice and the tools they need to make themselves heard. Myriad resources are available on the iPoddess site. Click on resources. (Reminder: the workbench wiki has extensive links to help you get started with podcasting.)

When Jane Goodall walked to the podium for the keynote address, the standing ovation she received was heartfelt and admiring of her lifetime devotion to her passionate interests. Her talk glossed over the work she has done up to now to focus on Roots and Shoots, a program that engages and inspires young people through global community service. She left us with this thought to ponder: "While we all need money to live, we don't need to live for money." She certainly has modeled her life after this mantra.

All this caused me to reflect (surprise :)) on what role librarians play in this evolution/revolution, and what should we be doing in Uniondale to ensure our students leave us, minimally, with the comfort level needed to navigate the new information landscape and, hopefully and with great effort, with the expertise in hand to ask the right questions and discover appropriate resources to lend clarity to whatever bewilders them. Certainly we can line our shelves with books to pique their curiosity and interest, to entertain and delight, but we are also uniquely positioned to infuse student learning with the skills necessary to be informationally literate in the broadest sense, to put into practice what David Warlick emphasized when he spoke of knowledge integration.