Category: Professional Reading

Wikipedia-shaming – article by Dr Joyce Valenza

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Friday afternoon, low energy, flicking through my inbox cleaning things up. Behold! The School Library Journal digest email – the Wikipedia-shaming line catches my eye.

Dr Joyce Valenza (all around legend in the teacher librarian world and lovely person to have dinner with at EduTech in Brisbane 2014) has written an article about student perceptions of Wikipedia. This has come out of research she is currently pursuing regarding “students’ information choices” (see the article for details).

One of the things I found most fascinating in this article was the graph comparing helpfulness and “citability” against age of the student. Generally speaking these two qualities were inversely proportional, ie the more helpful Wikipedia was, the less likely students were to use it as a reference. The other key point for me was that as students moved higher up the educational ladder Wikipedia became more valuable.
The quotes from the older student participants make it clear that they understand the strengths of Wikipedia very well – it can be great introduction to complex topics, clearly structured, very current and with comprehensive reference lists linking to online sources. The barrier is established attitudes to Wikipedia as a source, which Dr Valenza characterises as a negative judgement of Wikipedia’s brand, whereas a more useful approach would be consideration of the quality of each specific article based on authority, currency, relevance and references.

I am left with some questions – what would my colleagues think of students using Wikipedia? Should they suggest it as an introduction to new topics and a source of references? Should it be used as a lesson in determining reliability of content? In fact it occurs to me that it is probably easier to find references for information in Wikipedia than in many other online sources! Should it be equated with traditional encyclopedias – again giving credibility to the information if adequate cross-checking is evident?

A very interesting article, I am glad I came across it and may well see what reactions I can stir up amongst my teaching colleagues by sharing the findings!

 

Over-correcting?

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I just read an article from the Guardian about YA novels and the effect on authors and publishing of social-media backlash events…

I’m left wondering how it would ever be possible to please all the people – one of the examples was where an author was pressured to change or remove their book because it contained a racist character. (Disclaimer: I have not read the book in question) What I am wondering is whether the point of that character was to illustrate what racism is and how it affects people, including targets, bystanders and perpetrators. I’m not sure how it would be possible to reveal the effects that racism has on a person without having a racist character in the mix somewhere.

I’m also fairly horrified at the tales of online trolling, abuse and death threats targeting authors who have written something that someone else feels is not sensitive enough towards a marginalised group. The use of social media to mob someone is always unpleasant, but I don’t think it solves anything. Another writer noted that rather than being on the attack, these moments of disagreement should be an opportunity for “constructive dialogue”, and I couldn’t agree more. If reading books is supposed to be a way to walk in another person’s shoes, then talking about our different styles and preferences would be a great way to further enrich our shared understandings.

Refreshing Library Services

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I spent some time this morning catching up on my professional reading, and I am mulling over two posts in particular.

8 ways to rescue public school libraries from becoming obsolete

This article discusses environment, services, programs, resources and outreach as methods for engaging young people and remaining relevant.
Library of the future: 8 technologies we would love to see
By contrast this article is about imagining possibilities – digital interfaces that work on your printed page, drone book delivery, geolocation on your library card that takes you to the book you want… and an augmented reality app that guides you through the library.

Old books
With our JS library having a makeover at the end of this year, the idea of reinvention is uppermost in my mind. What kinds of spaces should we have? Should we be changing how we shelve, display and promote resources? Is it time to introduce a makerspace program?

At the same time as looking forwards, I am looking back: scanning the shelves, looking at the state of our non-fiction collection, it is time for a serious re-evaluation of our physical resources in terms of relevance to the curriculum, readability for the students most likely to need them, currency of materials on topics like digital technologies, political issues and modern day heroes. Where do I need to cut back? Where do I need to increase physical resources? Where do I need to develop more comprehensive pathfinders for digital resources?

This is a somewhat daunting prospect for a drizzly Monday morning, but once I plot out a plan of attack, I will feel more confident.

 

‘Twas the night before Term 2, and all through my brain…

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http://pixabay.com/en/neon-glow-glowing-light-design-660989/

beautiful chaos via Pixabay CC0

I’m juggling the chaos, I hope not in vain:

Coming back into the fold

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I wanted some ideas this week about effective, valuable ways to use ipads in K-2 classes, because I am part of the team working on how we will be making good use of these devices when they arrive in classes later this year. For me it always boils down to the practicalities of how something will work in the classroom – I read a lot of philosophical and erudite discussion of enhancing pedagogy and moving through the stages of the SAMR model of technology adoption and integration etc, etc, etc, but when it comes down to helping teachers on the ground, I want to hear what is working for other people in similar situations.

Enter the PLN. I hopped on Twitter on Tuesday night (I am only a sporadic, purpose-driven user) and put the question out there, pinged a few people with direct tweets, and then spent the next little while marvelling at the wonderful suggestions I received.



Since then I’ve added 3 more apps, 2 more people, 2 more blogs, and several articles – oh and a very kind email list of schools to check out!

This is proving to me yet again that social media can connect us to people with the knowledge we need, if you build those networks purposefully. I found that my Twitter network grows most rapidly, and more richly, when I actively seek out people who tweet insights during conference streams. I want to connect with people who have lively, curious minds, who seek out new ideas and information and are so thrilled with what they find that they just want to share their excitement! I want to read about brave new projects, and about what goes wrong, and how they tried to fix it. Fortunately for me, I have just enough people in my PLN now that I can ask a few questions and get some helpful answers back in a reasonable timeframe, and with far less effort than trawling through endless search results in the-major-search-engine-of-your-choice. I guess it comes back to that sense of knowledge being curated information; a search engine can return data, but for a query about how to use ipads effectively in an early childhood setting, the personal responses from experienced educators are exponentially more valuable.

And speaking of gems found in the Twitter feed, just this evening I followed a tweet from @SJBetteridge to discover (on Free Tech 4 Teachers, a fabulous blog!) this lovely little homage to Libraries and Librarians in the Internet Age, by Common Craft:

 

And to get back to the point about PLNs and Twitter being awesome, this week a retweeted link led me to a post on Langwitches by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano about Unpacking a Twitter Conference Feed – this is amazingly helpful for anyone who is new to the whole thing!

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