Totally obsessed

With Oculus Rift. I've been carrying around this issue of Wired like a talisman.

They do it, quite literally, with mirrors! The hardware is less than $100 in components, and so superior to anything we've seen. It's so exciting, it makes me a little breathless.

Imagine browsing any library's shelves and seeing the physical page of any book, no restrictions based on your location or the nature of the material -- wouldn't that be a REAL democratizing outcome from the Google scanning project?

I've heard futurist librarians speculate all libraries will shift to digital lending, because of the elimination of property concerns. Imagine if we do shift to digital lending, but it's because of the exponential resources available in virtual spaces. But what we will continue to need in that VR model? Way better metadata, improved funding. Aids, and user instruction at the point of need. We live in interesting times.

I do it to myself...

...I was racing down to Montomgery for our ALLA board meeting yesterday morning when I realized I had already burned two of my nine weeks off this summer. With our state conferences (ASLA and AETC) the week after school ended, then a quick trip to see my bestie and her girls, then the board meeting, a good-ish slice of my summer has slipped through my fingertips.

I'm hanging at home until next Wednesday, when I leave for ALA Annual. UNT's graduate school has announced my dissertation defense for next Friday, the 20th (above) -- it will be via videoconference, so mercifully no travel. In the meantime, I also have to get things together for Freedom to Read Foundation, United States Board on Books for Young People, and Odyssey audiobook award meetings, and prep for a panel presentation on teens spaces at the conference. 

Believe it or not the real insanity begins in July -- Key West for vacation, then leaving for the Annenberg-Newseum Educator Workshop (#anew14) the same day we get home, then the next week at the NEH Seminar on Emily Dickinson in Amherst, then another European excursion before I have to move ALL the books again...new library, hooray!

It begs the question, WHY? Why not just hang around the house? It is one of the perks, and perils, of having a little more than two months off, I guess.

On tap for June

A couple of years ago, I got smart and started submitting very similar session proposals to the state school library and ed tech conferences we have here each June. It has worked out well -- given the mad rush at the end of the year, I can do the prep work for both at once, and enjoy the conferences a little bit more. In past years, I’ve talked about Google's "reading suite," next gen read/write web tools, and digitized primary sources. This year, it’s global learning resources for “around the world in thirty sites.” I presented it today at ASLA and I'll reprise it again for AETC on Wednesday, June  4.

The conference today was terrific -- probably the best ASLA I can remember. The highlight was Tommy Bice, our state superintendent, mentioning having read Beautiful Ruins and The Goldfinch over the last couple of weeks, then talking about building support for school libraries with legislators, in part by writing up a document outlining how libraries contribute to learning to be adopted by the state board.

I was also the grateful recipient of a doctoral scholarship from ASLA. I mentioned my recent volte-face about Macs. I Around the same time, I completely changed my attitude about applying for scholarships and fellowships, particularly for smaller amounts. I read a very persuasive piece somewhere arguing that is a cumulative record of earning funding, beginning with small amounts, that counts in substantiating a record of successful financial support. So I steeled myself to apply and got funding from this professional organization and also UNT this summer. And I feel real gratitude for the $500 towards my never-ending doctoral expenses. It will defray a surprise semester’s tuition, as I have to be registered this summer to file my graduation papers with the graduate school. And I have a date for my dissertation defense -- June 20. 

This far in...

A milestone: I'm halfway to retirement (!), and I have few observations this far into "Education the Profession"....

The size of a school may be the single most important factor determining student success

Well, not the only one, but ...the only school system in Alabama that regularly bests us is larger, but has zero poverty. We have thirty percent free and reduced-price lunch...but we are a third its size. And the school system where I work is truly ideal in that most adults know most students. And our guidance counselors hand-schedule classes. And the classes are tiny. And it works.

In a decade, my last school grew from 800 students to 1500. I spent some time working on a U. S. Department of Ed Smaller Learning Communities grant, a program predicated on creating learning environments of optimal size, which gets at the affective aspects of learning. Sure, the lure of the big and economies of scale are tempting. At 1000 students, high schools in Alabama are allocated a third state-funded guidance unit, a third assistant principal, and funding for a second librarian. But I don't think more people is the answer.

Social services creep is real

And I thought attendance robocalls were creepy... things we have now we didn't have when I started teaching: school nurses, school resource officers. Heck, there are even nurses required to be on every field trip. But it begs the question, what is the role of school?

Obsolescence is often used like a weapon with school librarians, as with librarians in all settings

With the Internet and Wikipedia, who needs a building filled with dusty old books, right? I believe the faculty should be dazzled with your librarian skills, soft skills as well as technology integration and information sources. Show them your hard work. And help teachers get started with the tools that meet their expressed needs. If you can't do that...there's not too much hope for you.

Advance some radical thoughts about technology

Virtual field trips are not field trips, elearning is not learning, current assessment systems are ridiculous. It boils down to the fact that demonstrating the mastery of standards is simply not the same as experiential learning. So let's get back to learning, constructivist, project-based learning. It's what will stick with them.

I should never be the youngest person at the table

I'm excited for more millennial school leaders and their out-of-the-box thinking. I like it. This year, I've shifted to a different way of thinking about hardware... educational technology as an ongoing expenditure, not a one-shot investment. When you really look at the total cost of ownership, it becomes apparent why education likes Mac -- that overpriced, idiot-proofed, walled garden. It shifts costs from manpower to hardware, and Mac even amortizes hardware through leasing. It's access versus ownership, that generational tension again, but I use a nine year old laptop, so I'm definitely not the one to ask...

I love this work, especially watching our seniors graduate and go on to bigger things.

In the midst of one crazy month

I haven't had time to catch my breath since the Alabama Library Association conference wrapped last month. I was immediately thrust into administering the AP tests. We gave lots of them this year, so it was pretty much nonstop, with lots of makeup exams (and a makeup for a makeup, still to come). I really don't mind this, as ours is a small faculty, the test administration does not use the library space, and I like the opportunity to be kind and hopefully ease the stress of the students testing. I have been working on being soothing and trying to calm them, trying to modulate my voice to that end.

In the meantime, the library has been open with various substitutes. While that's not ideal, at least it makes the facility and the collection available to students. I worry that, in many schools, the library as space is going to get repurposed as a computer-based lab, the way AR once took over so many libraries as spaces. I know high school librarians in other states who have described this happening. But I think my school appreciates the role that the library and the librarians serve in supporting student learning. We definitely hear about it when we are away.

In the meantime, I keep looking around our library in the vocational building. Part of the drop ceiling got soaked and fell in last month, and the solution was to cover a bank of bookshelves with heavy duty plastic and rope off that area with caution tape. It hasn't leaked again, but the custodians don't want to remove the tarps yet, "just in case." Now the latest timeline says we won't be able to move into the new space until August 1, but one of the other buildings will be moving into ours in the meantime, so we have to box everything up. It's daunting, to say the least.

Not that I don't have things planned for next month: the state school library association conference, the state ed tech conference, some workshops, then a whole week in Las Vegas for ALA Annual.  Yeah, more on all that after I've boxed up the library.