What's next??

"Every once in a while someone presses the reset button and a new normal arrives" (Abram, 2009, p.32).


After a confused, slow and rocky start to my Web 2.0 course, I have to admit that I've come a long way and although not an expert on these new tools by any means, I DO have a bit of a handle on a lot of them. And I now have arrived at my own 'new normal' world. Web tools and applications that I'd never heard of before, I am now considering their use in my library and my classes. The ones that I've found the easiest or most intuitive are the ones I'm most excited about, such as Animoto, VoiceThread, blogs, wikis and photosharing sites, are the ones I intend to work with right away.

True, I need more time to explore some of these tools in more depth, and as I start to use them and share them, I will be forced to learn more about them. More learning for me will definitely be part of the 'What's next?'. But so will the teaching.

Already I am starting to incorporate the new technologies into my teaching. Today, I was working with grade 11 students on the first of three general and basic research workshops in preparation for their Extended Essay. I started by finding out about their information seeking habits and their knowledge and use of Web 2.0 tools. I was surprised to learn that the students didn't know some of the tools that I named, and thought for sure that a few of them would have been working on or following at least one blog. Not at all. Some even admitted that they didn't know how to use blogs. I was not surprised to discover that all of them had a Facebook account and that most of them posted their photos there. Some used MyPhotoBucket or DeviantArt for photos, and only a couple of the students had a Twitter account, but neither had really used it.

I was kind of excited to think that I may be somewhat of a Web 2.0 'expert' with this group. I had expected that they would have 'been there, done that'. Especially since they are the generation "born with the chip" (Courtney, 2007, p.5) and are our digital natives in this New World Normal.

As part of their Theory of Knowledge course, I asked students to answer the question of whether or not we can find examples of beauty in mathematics, then find at least six images/photographs to support their answer and create an Animoto presentation with them. None of them had heard of Animoto so it was fun to share it with them. (Animoto is a great site for creating slick professional looking 30 second slideshow presentations.) I directed students to my blog and the link to my library tour from my Multimedia posting as an example of what Animoto does. I explained briefly how it worked, including the good points and the limitations. They set up accounts and proceeded to find images to support their answers. They were very focused and involved in the process. Most completed their work in class and emailed me the link to their Animoto video as well as the written answer to the question. The students also had to justify their image choices and record information about the sites that they used. We'll use those URLs in the next lesson on proper acknowledgment and citing of sources with Noodletools.

So despite not having a firm grasp on the new technologies, I DO feel like I have jumped into the start of my what's next? and am embracing my new normal. It was fun and exciting to share something new like that with the students; they were interested in the format and its use. We'll discuss reactions to and thoughts about today's lesson next time we meet.

I also shared my Animoto library tour and my VoiceThread tour with the elementary librarian today. She thought they were 'very cool', and we talked a bit about how we could use them. She wants to learn, too. And I'm inspired to teach these tools. The momentum is there for me and I will definitely keep it going with my students and my colleague. That's the easy part.

But our teachers might be more challenging to convince. Ferriter (2009) cautions that teachers may have a jaded view of professional development since they rarely get to choose their learning opportunities, and have likely been to many sessions run by experts who are pitching the latest trend or craze. It's difficult to get excited or involved in something you can't see the point of or something you perceive as too difficult.

I plan to run mini-workshops after school once a month where I can share a new Web 2.0 tool each time. I don't want to overwhelm staff with too much information. I'm still reeling from my Web 2.0 course, so I know how they might feel! I also know that teachers are busy (perhaps that's an understatement) and I know time is precious, so 'teaser' sorts of sessions, with real life examples, might be the best way to get teachers hooked and involved. Informal. Short and fun. No pressure. No stress. And I'll be honest with them--I'm no expert. I'm still learning how to use these tools, too. That might add to the comfort level if there's not a great gap between our levels of expertise.

The two most fun Web 2.0 technologies to start with that I see great possibilities for using are Animoto and VoiceThread. They are both easy to learn and can be used with elementary to high school students/adults. Animoto is perfect for short visual statements and VoiceThread is an excellent venue for collaborative book discussions, audio-visual journals, interviews and storytelling. I will show some wonderful examples that I've gathered from this course to help them see the possibilities, too. My lesson with the grade 11's would work with the teachers, too. Perhaps if our teachers can get a good taste of some of these tools, they might want to bite off a bit more and try some things in their own classrooms. Maybe hit the reset button for a new normal? Wouldn't that be fabulous? I would also offer a free-time session the following week where teachers can come to practice, ask me questions, and/or get a little tutoring if they missed the 'official' session. Maybe I'll start a blog where teachers can discuss the tool and ask questions. Of course, like always, I will be available in person any day after school to help!

We'll also look at photosharing, blogs and wikis (THE most useful tools according to Ferriter (2009) and Imperatore (2009)), podcasting and RSS feeds and readers. But step by little step. New technology can be frightening and intimidating, and the unknown behind hitting the reset button can be too much to handle.

We are bombarded by so much information every day in the real world and in the digital world, that it is more important than ever to work with all of it in small, manageable bits. A challenge, certainly. We are living in a world that is literally exploding with information. Courtney (2007) points out that the power and capacities for digital information are doubling about every 18 months and Technorati's State of the Blog Report for 2008 indicates that last year there were more than 180 million blogs worldwide! Richardson (2009) says that Google intends to digitize more than 50 million books from libraries around the world, "one of the most transformative events in the history of information distribution since Gutenberg" (p.129). Archive.org plans to do the same with over 500 million volumes in the U.S. Library of Congress. The numbers are staggering. Mind boggling. We can never keep up.

A classmate shared this humourous video with me about information overload:


We need to learn how to manage all the information that we can potentially consume (Richardson, 2009). We need to teach our students and teachers how to navigate in and through the vast sea of information in which we are finding ourselves.

Richardson (2009) outlines 10 "Big Shifts" in how we teach students, and I would add, teachers, in the new normal. In the shifting, we have to acknowledge that the reset button has been hit in many areas. For example, access to information has gone from finite shelves of books to an almost infinite world at our fingertips at any time; access to experts has gone from another teacher in a school to numerous experts in their field anywhere in the world; student work has gone from being independently produced for a limited audience, graded and filed, to collaborative projects that can be constantly updated and improved that reach a world-wide audience who can interact with the students; knowing how to find information that is meaningful is more important than getting the 'right' answer; and writing has gone from strictly textual to a multimedia format. Normal ain't what it used to be.

Teacher librarians have a huge role to play in the new normal. We have a "considerable positive influence in promoting the ideals of lifelong learning...information literacy...and integrate information technologies into [our] work" (Naslund, 2008, p.55). Our libraries need to be social, user-centred environments "rich with technology that is focused on interactivity and collaboration" (Naslund, 2008, p.56). We have to be the change agents in our schools by modeling and teaching Web 2.0 tools and their applications. The best ways for me to do this is to offer the professional development sessions, start and maintain a library blog to post information about the library and the collections, create multimedia booktalks and to work with selected classes to incorporate Web 2.0 tools into the learning. I also want to work with middle school and high school students to create storytelling presentations for younger grades. If teacher librarians can change our schools one teacher at a time, or one student at a time, then that's a great restart.

I think that as I work through using Web 2.0 with my students, we can share those projects, results, and successes with other classes so that they might see what can be accomplished. This will be the year of The Great Experiment for me as I continue to learn and begin to teach about Web 2.0 resources. I hope I can adapt to this new normal before someone hits the reset button again!

References
Abram, S. (2009). Welcome to the New Normal. Information Outlook 13(3), pp.32-33. Retrieved July 20, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journals database.

Courtney, N. (2007). Library 2.0 and beyond: Innovative technologies and tomorrow's user. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

Ferriter, B. (2009). Learning with Blogs and Wikis. Educational Leadership 66(5), pp.34-38. Retrieved July 13, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journals database.

Imperatore, C. (2009). Wikis and Blogs: Your Keys to Student Collaboration & Engagement. Techniques 84(3), pp.30-31. Retrieved July 27, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journals database.

Naslund, J. & Guistini, D. (2008). Towards School Library 2.0: An Introduction to Social Software Tools for Teacher Librarians. School Libraries Worldwide 14(2), pp.55-67. Retrieved July 13, 2009 from ProQuest Education Journals database.

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

State of the Blogosphere. (2008). Retrieved August 12, 2009 from
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere