The School Library Journal Leadership Summit is probably my favorite conference, because of the baseline presumption that everyone is sort of with-it when it comes to technology, and all the exciting backchanneling and just generally top-notch attendees. That was doubly true this year, as everything dealt with the shift from print to digital.
I spoke on a ebook panel, a first for me at this event and a tad intimatidating given the fact I knew and stood in awe of so many in the room. I was a little leery about the whole thing, frankly, because I don't want people to copy my sometimes half-baked strategies wholesale, because I think every library is very different. And I had to follow Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, so no pressure there. But it was fun to share a model that wasn't about the big ebook players (sorry, vendors), but about leveraging student devices and using the simplest hardware to access public domain works. And to hear Chris Harris say, "Do what Wendy is doing. Buy hardware," was a bit surprising, but very validating.
Other highlights included the amazing Brian Selznick sharing the process for Wonderstuck, his latest, and screening the trailer for Hugo, the upcoming Scorsese movie version of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which looks so much like the book it's eerie. Evidentally, it's being called Hugo Cabret in France. It was a sort of strange flashback to this same weekend last year, when I'd seen Brian at the Center for Puppetry Arts as part of the ALSC Institute in Atlanta. And I finally met Laurel Snyder, who I'd been looking for that night last year but never found. And I actually got the first signed copy of her new book, Bigger than a Breadbox.
I'm staying over for the National Book Festival, but the forecast is for a rainy Saturday, which makes me happy it's also Museum Day.
is the perfect camouflage for your computer! My husband said he catches himself wondering what that very old book could be. I just like the meta aspect, myself...
I felt as if I spent all last week away from the world during my administrative internship. This week, I scrambled back, only to have the rug yanked out from under me again next week, going back to another school to finish up those certification requirements.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dangerbird/
Being unplugged made the time at the K-6 school much more immediate. I was definitely registering more stimula than I do sitting working at the computer (and now often at two computers, since I have the kiosk going for the catalog and printing and email and troubleshooting). It was actually a relief not to be swallowing whole raw information about ebooks or social justice or machine intelligence or whatever else I'm obsessing over at the moment all day long.
But, in some ways, I need that distracting stream of content to keep me focused. My acuity decreased, I lost hours of time offline once I went home. I found it almost impossible to write anything much all week. I can usually crank out copy, so the mental effort it took me to readjust was a marked change. All that reminds me of the AASL 2011One Conference, One Book selection, The Shallows. Minneapolis looks like a great conference...
With this internship wrapping up next week and the Praxis on September 17, everyone wants to know what is going to be next. After this certification, all I am concerned with is finishing my dissertation. I keep saying I won't commit to much else, and probably have been better about parsing back and getting rid of clutter, like deleting Google+ and cleaning out my file folders from 2003. There are aspects of my job from which I continue to derive great pleasure, but I can't say I'm not scanning the horizon for the next thing.
A local superintenedent with a mere year of educational experience crows about his cost reductions in using a temporary service for instructional support staff, so they didn't have to be provided benefits. Paying people starvation wages and then expecting them to nurture our most vulnerable children is unrealistic, especially when you don't even support them with basic needs like health care.
I didn't think it was possible for me to get more upset than I was when I wrote about similar issues for the Future of Libraries ebook project spearheaded by Kristin Fonticiaro and Buffy Hamilton, but I am very worried that as a society we have abandoned any pretext of equality. And without that undergirding, we might as well just fight hand-to-hand.
And, really, I feel like our students (and their families) need really fundamental survival training now.
Being in the middle of two different grad programs simultaneously has been making me a little nuts, but last night something rather incredible happened.
I had comprehensive exams for the educational leadership certificate. We had to prepare a position paper on a controversial topic, and I chose school libraries materials challenges. Frankly, I wanted a little soapbox to talk about libraries, because they hadn't come up at all in the coursework. Not even one sideways mention of school libraries. If I had a nickel for every mention of coaches, or even yearbook sponsors, I'd be heading to Starbucks, but not one little utterance, from professors or practitioners, about the librarian and the media center. And, otherwise, the curriculum has seemed both pragmatic and exhaustive. So I wrote about materials selection policies and the importance of school libraries as laboratories for intellectual freedom and the wisdom of following an objection procedure to mitigate your chances of appearing in Censorship Watch.
In an intersting pedagogical twist, we had to describe and defend each other's papers. Anyway, after we completed the exam portion, the director of the program, who happens to be one of those indefatiguable educators, in his 70s but still energetic and incredibly thoughtful, said, as he wished us well, "I realize now we have two holes in the curriculum, libraries and counseling. We should cover those."
Gratifying.
Now I have a two-week internship, a week each in two elementary schools in my district, then the Praxis next month...and then I can focus entirely on getting my dissertation proposal together for my other grad program...
