Transcript Slide 1

Turning on the Lights:
Key Challenges For Learning, Libraries And
Teaching In A Googleised World
Dr Ross J Todd
Director, Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
cissl.scils.rutgers.edu [email protected]
Key
Assumptions
The fusion of learning, information, and technology
presents dynamic challenges for all educators and
students in 21st century schools.
School libraries are essential for addressing essential
learning standards, the complexities of learning, and
quality teaching in information- and technologyintensive 21st century schools.
Enabling the transformation of information to deep
knowledge and deep understanding, and the
development of personal, social and cultural agency is
the core of the VELS, and the core work of teachers and
teacher librarians
Are the Lights
On or Off?
Educational Leadership (March 2008, Vol 65, No. 6)
Marc Prensky “Turning on the Lights” P. 40 - 45
Powering down in school – not just devices, but brains
“It’s their after-school education, not their school
education, that’s preparing our kids for their 21st
century lives – and they know it” (p. 41)
“When kids come to school, they leave behind the
intellectual light of their everyday lives and walk into the
darkness of the old fashioned classroom” (p. 42)
The Google Generation
All About Possibilities
Current research in adolescent information
seeking and use, and information technology
presents significant challenges and
possibilities for schooling:
- curriculum
- role of school libraries
- classroom instruction
- student research tasks
- professional development
- school’s technology policies
Key Studies
Pew / Internet – American Life Project (2006)
Telephone interviews of a randomly generated sample of youth 1217 and a parent or guardian, and involved 935 parent-child pairs.
National School Boards Association 2006: Creating and
Connecting: Research And Guidelines of Online Social and
Educational Networking
Online survey of 1,277 9-17 year olds; Online survey of 1,039
parents; Telephone interviews with 250 school district leaders
Rowlands, I. & Nicholas, D. (2008). Information behaviour of the
researcher of the future. A CIBER Briefing Paper. Commissioned
by British Library & Joint Information Systems Committee. Centre
for Information Behaviour & the Evaluation of Research (CIBER),
University College London (UCL), 11 January. Retrieved 2 February
2008, http://www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf
The Google Generation
Using libraries less since they first began using internet
research tools;
Search engines are the primary starting point for information
searching;
Horizontal information seeking - shallow / skim viewing a
small number of pages then “bounce” out, often never to
return;
Spending as much time navigating virtual libraries as
actually viewing what they find;
“Power Browse’ kind of reading: scanning rapidly targeted
to quick decisions, clicking extensively and making little use
of advanced search capabilities;
The Google Generation
Squirreling behavior - stockpiling content in the form of
downloads;
Little attention to evaluating the relevance, accuracy and
authority of information;
Tendency to use simple search strategies that miss relevant
documents; undertaking repeated searches;
Having an unsophisticated mental map of the Internet as a
networked entity of multiple providers.
Behaviors confirmed by teacher librarians and teachers
And Then Comes
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 as
Community
The Web 2.0
Environment
2nd generation of web-based environments
Functional rather than transmissive space: social network
sites, blogs and online diaries, wikis, podcasts, videoblogs,
content creation mechanisms eg Facebook, MySpace
Seek to facilitate community, communication, collaboration
and creativity between users.
Extensive engagement with microcontent: “posts” and
“discussion threads”, constantly building microcontent into
new content forms
Shift in focus from finding locating and evaluating
information to one of using information, creating knowledge
and sharing of ideas.
Use of Online
Communities
Rich picture of teens’ and adults’ engagements with Web 2.0
For teens, online activities are deeply embedded in their
lifestyles, and rivaling television in terms of time
commitment.
90% of teens with online access using social networking
technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging
and visiting social network sites, with many visiting such
sites on a daily basis
Majority of online teens have created a personal profile
online
Use of Online
Communities
Almost half of 12-13 year
olds report posting a profile
to an online social network
Girls dominate the
bloggosphere; boys
dominate in video watching
and video sharing
Places to reinforce preexisting friendships;
opportunities for making
new friends
Active, not Passive
Involvement
Increasing engagement in content creation
Go beyond basic actions such as downloading and
uploading music, photos and videos and updating personal
profiles
Engaging in highly creative activities :
- Blogging
- Posting messages
- Creating and sharing virtual objects
- Remixing content into their own creation
- Participating in collaborative projects
- Sending suggestions or ideas to Web sites
- Submitting artistic and creative works such as artwork,
photos, stories, videos to sites
- Creating polls, quizzes or surveys
What do they
talk about?
Most common topic of conversation on the
social networking scene is education and
school work (59%)
50% talk about school work
Careers / jobs, choice of university, politics,
religion, morals, learning outside school work
(sharing / discussing about personal interests)
They share and dialogue about their projects
Online
Nonconformists
break online safety or behavior rules;
have extraordinary set of digital skills
typically report lower grades in school
engage in experimental behavior / engagement/ ideas /
creative imagination
are very active on chat-vines; share new “stuff’ very quickly
(websites, games, simulations, tech products)
learn new software and teach others; promoters; recruiters
(getting others to visit their sites); organizers of online
events; very active net-workers.
Cyberbullying
Cyberharassment
Low levels of cyberbullying / cyber harrassment reported
Typically in form of:
- pressure by strangers to meet with teens
- receiving inappropriate content, pictures, and language
- being drawn into uncomfortable conversations
- forwarding or posting private email, IM, or text
- spreading rumours online
- sending a threatening or aggressive email or message
- posting an embarrassing picture without permission.
Acknowledge that these are similar to problems encountered
in everyday life and through television and popular music
More likely to be bullied offline than online
And the School’s
Response?
Stringent rules against nearly all forms of social networking
during the school day
Limited use for collaborative projects either with staff or
students
Great potential to help students:
- “get outside the box” in some way or another;
- introduce students to “new and different kinds of
students”;
- “learn to express themselves better creatively;
- improve social skills”;
- “develop global relationships”;
- “help students improve their reading or writing or express
themselves more clearly”;
- “learn to work together to solve academic problems”;
- “improve children’s ability to resolve conflicts”.
What of Learning and
Libraries in the Near Future?
Need to imagine a different information landscape and learning
environment for young people
Teens leaving behind the traditional world of print
Teens not satisfied with being passive consumers of other
people’s information, but becoming active users of information to
create new knowledge products.
Need to consider how we more effectively structure schooling and
school libraries to provide a rich interactive learning community for
them, using tools of Web 2.0
Need to ensure that the deep knowledge and deep understanding,
not just of learning standards, but of their complex information
worlds that they are drawn into, are achieved.
Why do school work,
especially when …?
I have to pick another “bird”, “dinosaur”, “planet”
“animal”, “disease” and do a 1000 word essay?
I can go on to: schoolsucks.com, phuckschool.com
evilhouseofcheat.com and get the essay I want?
I fill out another worksheet, fill in the blanks, do another
5 para essay, perhaps a diorama
Preparation of the drones?
Major Shift in
Instructional Focus
Kids are running home to open MySpace and other
spaces and read and react and provoke and argue
Harness social networking tools in educationally
meaningful and compelling ways that break loose from
static ways of learning that often confines and stifles
creativity
Instructional program centering on inquiry, knowledge
construction and communication will be the
distinguishing feature of schooling and school libraries
if they are to flourish in this environment.
Major Shift in
Instructional Focus
Provide students with the essential knowledge-based
competencies:
- critical thinking and communication competencies
- knowledge creation processes
- developing arguments and positions and viewpoints
- dealing with conflicting ideas and evidence (including
dealing with unwanted, offensive information inputs)
- constructing creative and meaningful representations
of new knowledge
- communicating ideas in thoughtful ways.
Explore social networking sites, learn and try out the
kinds of creative communications and collaboration
tools that students are using, so that your perceptions
and decisions about these tools are based on real
experiences.
Rethinking Pedagogy
Kids investigate and analyse their lives and the world indepth with authentic resources and tasks
Meaningful Inquiry: learn to ask deep questions, seek
knowledge, understand multiple perspectives, and wonder
about the world, draw conclusions, state viewpoints, argue
positions, to create solutions and solve problems, and to use
the IT tools and resources to create, share and use
knowledge
Moving beyond reading as a laborious “school thing”
Sustain the fire and the light that engage kids in their
everyday lives
School libraries as a place where kids power up their brains
and their devices
Re-imagining School
Libraries
Need to rethink the school library as the school’s
physical and virtual information-to-knowledge
commons where literacy, inquiry, thinking, imagination,
discovery, and creativity are central to students’
learning in all curriculum areas
Provide intellectual and social tools across these
multiple environments to foster creativity, knowledge
creation and production, both individual and
collaborative, and to foster the intellectual, social and
cultural growth of our young people
24/7 environment vs the “place” paradigm
Re-Imagining School
Libraries
Library spaces designed for collaborative learning
Flexible workspace clusters
Flexible collections (20/80% rule)
Wireless technology / surface computing / multiple HD
wide plasma screens
Self-help graphic services, colour imaging, audiovisual
editing, collaborative production, knowledge
representation and presentation software
Physical designs: functionality, sophistication,
creativity, inspiration
Re-Imagine School
Libraries: Example
Data/Info Commons - the reference collection, building
background knowledge, both physical and virtual reference
Knowledge Commons – in-depth resources targeted to deep
learning across the curriculum (flexible collection)
Leisure Commons – diverse free-choice reading, listening
stations, iPod zone, e-zines and e-books
Networking Commons – collaborative spaces with walls of flat
screen monitors for students to create, share, compare, display
Tech Commons – for small and large group instruction,
information searching
Collective Commons – flexible discussion group spaces
Café Commons
Core Values
Community

Creativity

Collaboration

Communication