I'm in love with a big, blue frog

Glasses? check
6' 3"? check
Rhythm? check
PhD? check
Best of all: he loves me!

So of course I had to buy this for my father:


(don't know the song? for shame!)




(And, ST, you can't possibly top this for an earworm)

What kind of fool am I?

(which could also be read as "when I go on vacation, I really go on vacation")

Tonight Thing One and I were dining and it started to rain - neither of us had brought an umbrella (he'd left his at home; I'd left mine in the hotel). So we asked the waitress for the whereabouts of the nearest store.

As we walked there, I thought I saw the store ahead. Thing One said, "no, that's not it" and shot me a very strange look. As we got closer, I realized it was a library: stacks, computers, etc. all in plain view of the street.

You'd think that, as a librarian, I'd recognize one a little quicker than I did tonight.

ALA Roundup (part one)

Conference fatigue has set in and I'm really looking forward to getting on with the next phase of my life: vacation. There are so many posts I'm mulling over: the authors I've heard... the exhibits... AASL v. YALSA... the people... the programs...

All to come in the days ahead, I promise. For now, I leave you with the thought of 27,000+ librarians loose in the city of Chicago. And the thought of me, tired as all get out, because I stayed out too late last night so I could go to Neil Gaiman's Newbery Medal speech.

Links Galore

• Love Jazz? Want to hear some of the original interpreters? Go to A Jazz Anthology and listen/learn. (þ: The Scout Report)
• Liven up your travels with Atlas Obscura (þ: Neat New)
• Great GoogleMap mash-up of the TV Sitcom Universe
• Oh.My.God. I want this Right Now. (þ: 1-2-3 Get Organized)
  

Beyond Lazy

One of the things I've been thinking about (or working on, depending on your point of view) is who I am. Some definitions are easy: daughter, sister, catMommy, school librarian, colleague, etc.. But what do those mean? And - more important - how do those on the other side of the relationship see me?

Recently one of my oldest friends needed help with her mother's house. When I was in school, we'd spent several Saturdays getting the house ready for spring or winter (putting up storms or screens, taking care of the gutters, etc.). Since the house is about two hours from where I live now, of course I volunteered to come do what I could. We haven't spent much time together since she graduated (a year ahead of me) but we do occasionally e-mail or leave Facebook messages. What would this reunion be like?

It felt like we'd seen each other just yesterday. In a way, that's good, right? But in a way it's bad. Am I the same person I was "back then"? Is she? The ease of conversation made me question all that. Let's suppose either of us has changed - did we then regress to our teenaged selves, or had the other changed in a parallel fashion, or were the changes not as great as we'd expected or hoped? I found myself reacting to her in the same way I'd done decades ago and wonder if she found the same on her side.

The same holds true for another reunion, this one with someone I hadn't seen in even longer, but with whose life I'd kept up (thanks to our parents close friendship). Again, it was easy talking to her. Was it a "best behavior" meeting? Or was this who we really were?

There are other friends I have that have changed - one of whom has changed in some not-quite-subtle ways that make me not want to spend time with her. Perhaps spending more time with my "recently regained" friends would lead to the same feeling on one or the other sides.

Years ago I worked for an executive recruiting firm. Two of the tools they used to identify and help clients were the Birkman and the Myers-Briggs. While the former is a little too complicated to explain, the latter boils down to 16 behavior types. Turns out, depending on the day, I'm an INTJ or and ENTJ. Neither are the soft, warm fuzzy types. Do these friends sense the lack of warm fuzzies? Do they care? Or are they comfortable with that because they aren't warm-fuzzy either?

The same questions arise when I go to conferences - my friends, my colleagues see me in one arena and have certain thoughts and expectations of what I will be like. Am I really that person, or is that just the Conference Me?

All things to ponder as I spend this summer at conferences and catching up with my lazy life...

NECC09 Roundup (part two)

Continuing to look for gold among the dross...

Second Day Keynote: Are Bricks-and-Mortar Schools Detrimental to Education?

• This "debate" felt forced: the pro side gave same-old/same-old constructivist arguments without explaining how a school building was problematic
• No one talked about the need to inculcate basics before allowing students to explore
• On-line learning was lauded (no proof that it works best, and the socialization that occurs is not the equivalent of face-to-face)
• One-liners:
• Students need schools to "get together to learn something" (Jupp)
• Problem isn't a physical space, it's old-fashioned practice (Stager)
• The things that make schools viable and useful are the first things to be stripped from the budget (Stager)
• We need to rethink education to include both face-to-face and on-line - go global and local (Lemke)
• Schools need to become part of the K-90 community (Lemke)
• Students do not start off self-directed - connected students do better on-line (Lemke)
• Learning is not just 8-hours/day (Thompson)

SIGMS Forum

• Lots of promotion of the Ning and wiki
• Challenge One: how do you turn your website into a giant conversation? (allow students to help - "if they build it, they will come"; learning is 24/7/365)
• Challenge Two: how do we get parents/teachers/etc. on board? (need to expose students to proper use of tools; consider the PBS Kids Web License)
• Challenge Three: [forgot the words] check out authorstream, and "powerboosting" your lessons
• Challenge Four: how can you live in the cloud? (Chris Harris at his provocative best, but can others without his power actually get these changes made in their school/district? )

Supe My Content! Creating 21st-Century Digital Learning Objects

• One big promo for PBS Education, very disappointing
• Best line: "we're teaching 1st century skills with 21st century tools" (AMEN!)

Overall, this was not a stellar conference. Much of the "innovation" had been discussed at ALA/AASL before - the question that immediately posed is where's the disconnect between teachers, technologists and librarians? How can we combat this??

Another observation (from a friend): can we put a moratorium on the phrase "21st century skills"? Why? Because 99% of the time it's used, there's no discussion of what those skills are, or how they differ from the 20th century (or 19th century) skills - without explaining what they are, it's just a catch-phrase and thus meaningless.

NECC09 Roundup (part one)

I've already blogged about the Opening Session, and those that follow me on Twitter know how excited I was by the PowerPoint presenters. Despite that, I went into each session hoping for the best and expecting to learn from the presenters.

Enable Reading with 21st Century Skills

• The skills mentioned were nothing new: digital reading portfolios, graphic organizers, iPods, gaming and webchats.
• audio capture allows students to hear their progress (great for beginning readers and auditory learners)
• graphic organizers (my thoughts: what about using a wiki?) show connections between characters, plot, events and choices.
• the presenter is spending most of her budget on iPods because "it's what the kids want most" - she wants students to read along with the audio, underlining the words they don't understand so they can look them up later (yes, you read right: underlining in library books - and students aren't expected to erase so that others can see that they're not the only ones to not know the word)
• CranuiumCore was heavily promoted as a way to really grab reluctant readers (among other plusses, the set-up forces students to defend their answers/choices)

Best Practices for Encouraging Learning 24/7: Models that Work!

• This was one of those sessions that did not live up to their billing: rather than talking about extending formal learning beyond the school day, the presenters talked about more informal learning (like gaming) with no real connection to the curriculum.
• Best piece of advice? Don't implement change during the school year, hold summer sessions instead.

Effective Leadership in an Era of Disruptive Innovation

• My vote for best presentation/session at NECC (my thoughts: if you're not reading Dangerously Irrelevant, you're missing out)
• Book to buy/read - Clayton Christensen's Disrupting Class
• Organizations that don't "get" change will disappear - you can't retrofit the 'new' into the 'old'
• Shift is difficult - you run into the realities of the present day
• What's going on?
• personalized learning
• existing model is not a given
• shift will sneak up on school organizations
• Massive changes will be here by 2019 - we've got ten years to get it or get out
• 1/2 our classes will be on-line
• we need to understand the natural laws of change and start moving now
• the winners will be those that appeal to niche groups now and build beyond "too much"
• winners should start competing with existing organizations today
• Biggest problem? K-12 education is stuck in "good enough" and "business as usual"

Notes from Mt. Bookpile

Another banner quarter with 66 books read - at this pace, I should hit over 200 books this year (a personal record!). All reviews are over on Lazygal Reads.

Biography
Milk: A Pictoral History of Harvey Milk; Dustin Lance Black
Leaving Glorytown; Eduardo Calcines
Duchess of Death; Richard Hack
A Round-Heeled Woman; Jane Juska
Hold On to Your Dreams; Tim Lawrence
In Hanuman's Hands; Cheeni Rao
alibaba; Liu Shiying

Children's/Young Adult
Chains; Laurie Halse Anderson
Murder at Midnight; Avi
What I Saw and How I Lied; Judy Blundell
Beige; Cecil Castellucci
Catching Fire; Suzanne Collins
Tombstone Tea; Joanne Dahme
Candle Man; Glenn Dakin
Metamorphosis: Junior Year; Betsy Franco
Secrets of Truth and Beauty; Megan Frazer
Inkdeath; Cornelia Funke
Angel in Vegas; Norma Howe
Back Home; Julia Keller
Sahwira; Caroline Marsden
Exposure; Mal Peet
Jimmy's Stars; Mary Ann Rodman
Immortal; Gillian Shields
Horrid Henry; Francesca Simon
How to Say Goodbye in Robot; Natalie Standiford
Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell in Love; Lauren Tarshis
Food, Girls and Other Things I Can't Have; Allen Zadoff

Fiction/Literature
The Children's Book; A.S. Byatt
The Winter Vault; Anne Michaels
The Moviegoer; Walker Percy
Goldengrove; Francine Prose
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society; Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle; David Wrobleski

Horror
ghostgirl:Homecoming; Tonya Hurley

Mystery
The Kill Call; Stephen Booth
Sworn to Silence; Linda Castillo
To Kill or Cure; Susanna Gregory
Midnight Fugue; Reginald Hill
The Blood Doctor; Barbara Vine

Non-Fiction
Totally Awesome Money Book for Kids, Revised and Updated Edition; Arthur Bochner
Other Powers; Barbara Goldsmith
Eco-Barons; Edward Humes
Three Cups of Tea (Young Readers Edition); Greg Mortenson
I Used to Know That; Caroline Taggart

Science Fiction/Fantasy
City of Ashes and City of Bones; Cassandra Clare

Books left on Mt. Bookpile: 326
Books added: 53
Net gain/loss: -13 (yay!)

Annotated Webclutter

Another in this occasional series of posts:

• Ypulse posted a real shocker: "Gen Y Learns There's No Clocking Out When You're Always Plugged In" While some of my friends disagree, I have to repeat my concern that all this On Line All The Time stuff isn't good - for Gen Y or anyone else. When I'm in a meeting (or dining with Thing Two), I expect to be the focus of attention. Increasingly I'm not, thanks to the siren call of the iPhone/Crackberry. One might even claim that this is to blame for the current mess in Albany. What happened to courtesy?

• The whole idea of decluttering is so soothing, and this list of areas that I could simplify make sense. What I need is time - time to sort through things (like the personal products and paper) and get organized (so errands don't become more clutter). All I know is, with each batch of stuff that I take to Goodwill or toss, I feel lighter and lighter.

Things I hate about conferences

For years, I've been hearing about the annual NECC conference: all the cool people went... it is the conference to go to for computers/education... you're going to learn soooo much at NECC... etc. Unfortunately, the timing often competes with ALA's Annual Conference, and many of us are forced to choose between the two (not to mention forced to try to convince our schools/districts/wallets that we can afford to go to two conferences in two cities so close together time-wise). This year, ALA is later than usual, and NECC is close enough to NYC that I decided to bite the bullet and attend. Expectation levels are, of course, very high... higher than it was for ISE2006.

Yesterday was the opening event, the Member Welcome/Conference Orientation. I'd found Kristin Fontichario as I was heading in to register, and we decided to check the event out together. Luckily, we think a lot alike, so the following reflects one's comments/thoughts as amplified by the other:

• The set-up for the room was auditorium-style, with a Big Screen up front. On the screen was an Oscar™-style card and Oscar™-style music was blaring from the speakers. K and I wondered if ISTE had paid for the rights to all that... and wondered again when a StarWars theme appeared (the music, the opening crawl, the MC dressed as Darth Vader). We weren't just being cranks, it was honest concern about copyright and fair use and the conviction that we, as leaders in our schools, should be doing the right thing, not the convenient thing. (sorry, Doug, but that's just how I feel).


• Unfortunately, the space was not large enough for the crowd, and the Twitter feed had a number of comments from people that were turned away at the door. This has happened at a number of different conferences and I just don't get it. An opening event, a popular speaker, an information session for newbies (not to mention ticketed events with pre-sold tickets): how do you not plan for overflow crowds??? Organizers, listen up - you're creating bad will from the get-go when you do that stuff.
  


• One of the goals of this event was to introduce ISTE's leadership. Great! Would it have been too much to ask that these leaders spent a little time looking at their speeches, so as to not appear to be haltlingly reading from their scripts? Or that someone coordinate the scripts so that the same information wasn't repeated over and over redundantly? It's a quick, easy way to lose audience interest.


• We kept hearing about the great ISTE presence on social networking sites - but nothing that made it easy to find them. How easy it would have been to say "we're ISTECONNECTS on Twitter", etc.. And there was an over-heavy, over-promotion of Second Life and the ISTE Ning. Now, I'm not opposed to either of those social sites, but I'm not going to go there, either. Why? Because at some point, you have to say "enough". I read a lot of blogs and other professional literature. I'm on Twitter and Facebook. I'm involved in my local and national associations, and I'm keeping up with the help of a great PLN. And I just don't have time, energy or desire to add different Nings to that mix (I can think of four that I'm "supposed" to be active on, including this one). There are only so many hours in a day, and I've allocated all I can to this thing I call being a school librarian. If that makes me a bad person, if that means I'm not one of the cool kids, well... I'm totally ok with that.


• While I understand that many attending a conference may not have the same comfort level that I do with technology, that they may be newbies to the conference, and that they may need a little hand-holding, there are certain limits. One basic expectation should be - must be that attendees can read and follow directions. (And don't throw ADA at me, ok, I'm talking about the vast majority of attendees and not the few that have legitimate problems). If a group of teachers, administrators, technology personnel and librarians cannot be expected to read what's on a slide, well, I just give up. Kill me now, ok? Yet time and time again, that's what happens. At this event, to increase audience participation, they had remote voting devices and at several times the MC would say "pick up your response card and vote for..." and then read the words on the Big Screen Overhead. Maybe it's me, but if the majority of people in that room couldn't read, education is just doomed.


• Finally, and perhaps most important, there was a lot of talk about past-tech and future-tech (eg., a few minutes spent comparing StarTrek's technology to the stuff we used today, or asking how many remembered Atari). But there was nothing - nothing - about assessing technology, reflecting on its use. Technology is not a goal, it's a tool. Our role is to help evaluate the tools, deciding which will work best in our particular circumstances (Kristin, for example, works with elementary students and her needs are vastly different from those of my Upper School students). To celebrate technology "just because" is doing us all a great disservice.

Ok, that's a pretty long rant/tirade. My hopes and dreams are that the sessions I've planned to attend are filled with interesting ideas, provocative thinking and inspiration. One opening session does not a conference make, right?

NECC09