Professional Blogs to Explore

Joyce Valenza's NeverEnding Search

Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog

David Warlick's 2 Cents Worth

Will Richardson's Weblogg-ed

Alan November's AlanNovember Weblog

Christopher Harris' Infomancy

Jenny Levine's The Shifted Librarian

Michael Stephen's Tame the Web: Libraries and Technology

Stephen Abram's Stephen's Lighthouse

The Life / School Disconnect

Students "power down" when they come to school. (Stephen Heppell: http://www.heppell.net)

"The current loud and sometimes raucous debate on the topic of social networking sites isn’t really different from previous menaces such as electronic calculators, television, e-mail, video games (and their cousins, edutainment titles).

Real and imagined problems, reported anecdotally, almost always push defenders of technology into a hard-to-argue position. No one wants any child to be accosted by a predator."
J. V. Bolkan, Senior Editor, Learning & Leading with Technology

http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/LL/L_L.htm

Ars Technica: Study: Fears over kids' online safety overblown
National School Boards Association: Creating&Connecting.pdf

Time: How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century

How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century.pdf

The School Library Program Can Lead the Re-Connect

The Read/Write Web and David Loertscher's Cornerstones of the School Library Program:

Collaboration: The Read/Write web takes collaboration to a whole new level, for professional learning, collaborative planning  and student activities.

Building Reading Literacy: The Read/Write web offers huge opportunities for matching student needs/interests with online texts.  The library program offers opportunities for developing the new literacies that are essential in the 21st century. (See Big Shifts)

Teaching Information Literacy: New skills and new tools are essential for helping students evaluate credibility of information in a world of pervasive online self-pubishing.

Enhancing Learning Through Information Technology: Technology is the glue that binds.  Technology is now essential for accessing, processing and presenting research.

School Library: Physical and Virtual Space

To maximize effectiveness for 21st century learners, the school library's virtual presence becomes as important as its physical presence.  The new school library not only provides online access to resources, but also access to online learning spaces.

The design of the school library's virtual space can mirror the design of the physical space.  Have a look at a couple of school library home pages that take this notion quite literally:

Springfield Township HS Virtual Library (Joyce Valenza, Library Media Specialist)

Brantford Collegiate Institute Library (Bobbie Henley, Teacher-Librarian)

 A fun look at today's school libraries from Henrico County (Virginia, USA) Public Schools: http://henrico.k12.va.us/hcpstv/vv_library.html

Open Source Information

There's a wealth of new information out there, from blogs to wikis to podcasts to social networks. This wealth of online resources opens up new opportunities for current sources and differentiated learning.

• Find out about podcasts in the iTunes Store directory.
• Find educational podcasts using David Warlick's Education Podcast Network.
• Find links to Wiki Sites

Authentic Voice, Authentic Audience

The Read/Write web provides meaningful opportunities for students to share their learning with the world, and find out how the world will react.  Check out these fabulous student podcast sites:

Radio WillowWeb from Willowdale Elementary School, Omaha NE

Podkids Australia from Year 4/5 students in Perth, Western Australia

 Ontario School Libraries Lead by Example

Talk about building reading literacy!  Silver Birch readers at Woburn PS  interviewed several of the authors over the phone, and posted the interviews as podcasts.  The school library's blog posting about the podcasts got over sixty comments, many from Silver Birch authors, teachers and teacher-librarians, luminaries in the world of school libraries, and from students at their own and other schools.  Talk about powerful learning and reading engagement!  Have a listen!

Woburn Silver Birch Podcast Page

New Challenges for Teaching Information Literacy

Wikipedia, the poster child for wiki-enabled knowledge creation, presents us with new challenges in teaching information literacy.  We need to teach students new ways to assess the quality of information in the world of user-created content.

Consider attending Anita Brooks Kirkland's Super Conference 2008 Session 1717, Teaching Wikipedia

 Learners Today

Big Shifts

Other Links to Explore

http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/

http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage