Skylight and science department greenhouse above the circulation desk adds interest and beauty to the St Peter High School Media Center.
Color schemes, interior designer selected, are carried out throughout the building and media center at Eagle Lake elementary school -top left, top right, center and bottom right. Bottom left photo shows informal seating with warm wood trim in the St Peter HS Media Center.
The respect shown to those who inhabit a building is demonstrated by the attention paid to the appearance, comfort and aesthetic attention given to it. Professionally selected color schemes, warm wood accents, and art work create beautiful, welcoming spaces. Natural light has proven to improve learning, productivity and attitudes. (Although care needs to be taken that UV rays do not unnecessarily harm carpets and book spins, that reflected light does not make computer screens unreadable, and that areas can be darkened when projection devices need to be used.)
Beauty is less about expense than it is about caring during the planning and design process.
Light blue blocks show individual work spaces, lavender blocks show small group areas, and dark blue blocks show where entire classes can be seated.
Students may come to the library as individuals, in small groups or as part of an entire classed. In all likelihood, media centers have all types of user groups doing a variety of activities at the same time. The area should be designed to accommodate each size group. Personally, I like libraries that carve out small niches for quiet reading or study - simple benches at the end of library shelves are a nice way to provide this. Conference rooms (with windows) provide workspaces for small groups. And of course groupings of 6 to 8 tables or computer labs allow entire classes to work together.
Be careful not to provide seating or work areas for more students than the library staff can adequately supervise. It's rare that a single professional can help more than 2 classes at one time.
In the St Peter High School Media Center the busy area near the circulation desk and entrance has high durability tile rather than carpet flooring.
The concept is simple - put the busiest places and noisiest activities closest to the entrance of the library. Put the study and classroom spaces away from the entrance. It makes little sense to walk completely through the media center to return a book or to get a magazine. Entrances to computer labs, reference materials, catalog stations, and casual reading spaces should be near the entrance. Check the location of your equipment storage areas - would you need to push that TV all through the story area to get it to the hallway?
Library media centers should not have areas that are difficult to supervise, even when there is only a single adult in the room. This means no hidden corners, no rooms without windows into them, no high bookcases behind which students can hide. (Note in picture above how book cases are perpendicular to the main area.) And increasingly this means computer arrangements that make monitor screens easily visible.
Floor plans should be carefully studied to determine where kids might be - that YOU can't see.
(I am a big fan of breaking up spaces with walls that include interior windows - noise abatement but easily supervised.)
Any hidden space horror stories?
Eagle Lake Elementary School, Eagle Lake, MN (Mankato School District) showing library entrance to the building.
Fewer than 25% of our community's households contain children who attend public school. Schools must market themselves as community assets, available for public use during the hours and days school is not in session.
Along with cafeterias, gymnasiums and auditoriums, school libraries are wonderful public spaces. Some of the techniques above (outside entrances, etc.) allow the library can used even when the rest of the school is closed.
Community groups ranging from adult education classes to clubs to Scouts to, well, to almost anything should think of the library as "their" space. In smaller communities, the computers in the school library may be the only access some adults have to the Internet and productivity software.
How do we make our libraries "community spaces?"
I went to library school back when God's dog was still a puppy. But there were remarkable teachers even as long as 30 years ago. Mildred Laughlin, at the time a professor at the University of Iowa, taught most of the school library classes including administration and management. ("Leadership" was not the Holy Grail it is today.) Dr. Laughlin's course included a unit on school library facility design and her advice holds up.
This blog post and the next 6 briefly explore the basic school library design principals, as I remember them, from that long ago class...
I am particularly appreciative of the efforts of a group that has been entering our graphic novel holdings into LibraryThing. They've described a little bit about the process on their profile page. Now someone can do a quick search of the tags to find books that the online catalog doesn't index in the same way, like our shojo manga. That's only for starters. Users can link to the "libraries" of others who have similar books, read reviews, post reviews, see author photos and book cover images, and subscribe to RSS feeds so they'll know every time their favorite LibraryThing-ites add new books. Anyway, thanks Eleni, John, and Dillon! We'll take it from here.
It's better to do something than to do nothing. Clay Shirky
I just loved this mini-rant left by Ken Rodoff (The Why of It All blog) to my post about Twitter last week:
Twitter is a thing. Just another thing.
Twitter use may represent a less-than-dedicated employee, but at home isn't it less of a time-suck than, oh, say, SL [Second Life]?
What I find most confusing is how people can dedicate so much time AFTER work hours,AT
HOME! to SL, UStream, WeStream?
Am I the only one with kids? Am I the only one trying to have a F2F with my spouse (I mean, a lot of people sure do love the F2Fs, you'd think they practice them in their homes)? Am I the only one watching Lost? Hell's Kitchen? The Office? Please don't answer those last three...I'm well aware I live, at times, a less than esoteric existence...but I'm watching them with my wife, and we're even talking about them.
And what about reading? When's anyone getting that done?
All I know is that this soporific soul of mine needs / craves / begs for sleep. Begs for balance. Begs for an all-inclusive life, but every time I add one thing, I've jettisoned another.
Take the origin of this comment:
- Log on to Twitter
- Click on Darren Draper
- Click on the link to his blog
- Click on his 'hey, read this' little blue widget
- Read your post
- Think about your point
- Read the comments (okay, only two...wanna guess?)
- Type my comment
Total time so far (Verizon Fios Internet...just thought you should know): 12 minutes.
So, what did I lose over these past 12 minutes:
- The washer to dryer exchange that my load of darks so desperately craves.
- Making lunch for work tomorrow.
- Cleaning something in this house...anything in this house (myself included).
- A chance to talk with my wife as all 4 of my children sleep.
- A peregrination.
- The top of the 9th inning of the Red Sox - Twins game.
- The beauty of disconnectedness
And it's #7 here that irks me most of all because it's the constant addition of things that makes me realize how much I had in the first place.
When I think about Twitter I'm ashamed of myself. When I check Feedburner I'm mortified at who I've become. When I think about what I should blog about I near tears.
All of the aforementioned make me realize I've neglected my children, my wife, and in its purest form, my life.
Maybe I'll blog about it.
Advertise it on Twitter.
And see if my Technorati rank goes up.
Really now, just as Twitter asks: what are we doing?
Thanks, Ken. Your thoughts echo mine so closely it is almost eerie! (However I had to look up peregrination. Good word!)
How we spend our leisure (or at least non-work time) is an interesting question. I was intrigued by Clay Shirky's observation*:
If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time.
And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.
He continues:
Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.
Like Ken, I wonder if I spend too much time online at the expense of other activities. A friend observed that replying to each comment left on my blog:
... a personal comment just to say "thanks" [for leaving a comment] makes me wonder if the blogger actually has a life!
Well, I think I have a life. It doesn't include watching much TV, playing golf, or doing as much volunteer work as I should. While Ken and I both have four kids, the LWW and I are empty nesters. (Whew!) So can we gauge by the amount of time we spend on line if we need to "get a life?"
Subjectively, we could place all our leisure time activities on scale. The low end might be watching Gilligan's Island re-runs (preferably while drinking a beer, wearing sweats, and in a prone position) and on the high end might be tutoring disadvantaged children, comforting lepers, or coaching one's daughter's hockey team. (I believe the last two also qualify one for cannonization.)
Blog writing, commenting, responding to comments is, I suppose, akin to pretending to be an elf. But if feels productive rather than consumptive and is one hell of a lot more entertaining than 95% of television programming.
I guess I would even Twitter before I would watch Desperate Housewives.
Are some uses of leisure time better than others?
*Thanks to Tim Lauer for pointing out this video and transcription.
Entrance to the Dakota Meadows Middle School Media Center
Buildings reflect the values of those who design them. They are, so to speak, philosophy made visible in bricks and mortar.
When the Mankato Schools built its last new building, Dakota Meadows Middle School, in the early 90s, the project team was led by a remarkable educator - principal Jane Schuck. Thanks to her vision, the school had two overriding design principles - the "middle school concept" and "technology-infusion," Those principles are visible yet today in the building's design and program. It remains, in my experience, still the most innovative school building in Minnesota.
What principles will be on display in our new elementary building? I know two, for sure. First, this will be a "green" building. In selling the referendum, we promised that we would work for LEED certification, making sure the project is as environmentally friendly and energy efficient as possible. I am excited about this. Second, there will be increased attention paid to safety. For the first time in our district, the building design process will need to consider things like "lock downs." One of the most remarked-upon ideas from our recent visit to other schools was a entry door configuration that required all visitors to pass through the school office before gaining access to the rest of the building. Sigh...
But what about the educational philosophy behind our new building? Cowed by AYP and other NCLB threats, will our entire building be designed "to raise standardized test scores," as one of the team has already suggested? If so, what would a building like that look like?
From current practices, there seem to be many things the building would not need:
- a gymnasium, art room, music room
- certainly no playgrounds
- probably no library media center
- science classrooms only if science scores start to "count" on state tests
- no stages, no auditoriums, no large group venues of any kind
- no technology beyond computers for drill and practice in math and reading and, of course, testing
Probably small, cube-shaped classrooms with straight rows of desks all facing the front of the room would be just the ticket for extended reading and math "practice." (No thinking outside the box, for heaven's sake.) Lots of space for special education. Minimal distractions. Maximum efficiency of movement for less time off the tasks of direct reading and math instruction.
Until citizens in a single voice stand up and shout, "Being educated is about more than doing well on tests!" test-performance-schools that both educators and kids will detest will be built.
What would your "high-test" school look like?
_______________________
Update May 13 - just released from our DO:
Nary a word about test scores.
OK, school library media specialists who had issues regarding the new AASL Student Standards. Here is your chance to have your voice heard:
The AASL Learning Standards Indicators and Assessment Task Force invites you to review and critique the first draft of Standards for the 21st Century Learner in Action atHere's the deal... If you don't take the time to read and comment on this first draft, YOU LOSE ALL YOUR WHINING RIGHTS about the standards. This task force is comprised of the very best thinkers our field has to offer, but none of them, as far as I know, are mind-readers.
http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslproftools/standardsinaction/standardsinaction.cfm
After releasing Standards for the 21st Century Learner in October 2007, AASL charged the task force "to develop a document to expand and support the new learning standards" with "indicators, benchmarks, model examples, and assessments." Standards for the 21st Century Learner in Action provides support for school library media specialists and other educators in teaching the essential learning skills defined in Standards for the 21st Century Learner. It presents Examples for putting Standard 1: Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge, into practice in Benchmark Grades 2, 5, 8, 10 and 12+.This is the first draft of Standards for the 21st Century Learner in Action. It will be revised based on input from AASL members. A second draft, expected to be posted for comment in September 2008, will include Benchmarks and Action Examples for Standards 2, 3 and 4. You are encouraged to thoroughly examine and critique the contents of this document. Please email your comments to StandardsInAction@ala.org, with "Comments" in the subject line, before June 6, 2008.
If you are attending the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, plan to attend the Open Forum on Saturday, June 28 at 9am to provide your input to the task force members in person.
You are also invited to contribute to Standards for the 21st Century Learner in Action by completing the blank template included in thedraft with your own sample tasks and assessments. Examples you provide will be considered for inclusion in the final publication of Standards for the 21st Century Learner in Action. Please email your completed template(s) to StandardsInAction@ala.org, with "Sample Tasks" in the subject line.
We encourage you to forward this invitation to your school library colleagues and to distribute it widely through your state and local school library listservs and blogs.
We look forward to reading your comments!
AASL Learning Standards Indicators & Assessment Task Force:
- Katherine Lowe, Chair, Massachusetts School Library Association
- Cassandra G. Barnett, Fayetteville High School Library, AR
- Melissa P. Johnston, Silver City Elementary, Cumming, GA
- Barbara K. Stripling, New York City Department of Education
- Dr. Violet H. Harada, University of Hawaii
- Frances Glick, Baltimore County Public Schools, Maryland
Go for it...
Kristin Fontichiaro, <http://blog.schoollibrarymedia.com/> the library media specialist at Beverly School in Birmingham, Michigan and author of the books Active Learning through Drama, Podcasting, and Puppetry and Podcasting at School left this thoughtful comment to last Friday's blog post:
Hi, Doug -- I'm curious to know if your new buildings will have classrooms that are larger than in the past. With so much focus on collaborative work, it would be fabulous if classrooms had a bit more physical space than they did 50 years ago to permit lots of flexible groupings. More space, plus chairs that stack and tables or desks that roll into various configurations can help create learning spaces that can adapt as learning trends and best practices change.
I'd also recommend lots of room for teacher storage. There is often so little room in traditional classrooms for teachers to store the myriads of STUFF, from the Kleenex families bring in on the first day of school to the digestive system model. Wouldn't it be great if classrooms could have lots of storage so those items are kept discreetly out of the way? This could be in the classroom or an extra storage space outside of the room. (Or build an extra classroom that can be used now for storage and for teaching later if the population grows.) If we could minimize the physical clutter in our students' learning spaces, would we also minimize the mental clutter?
What about bathroom space? Is there money for a bathroom or two in each room? Teachers tend to feel that in-class bathrooms minimize interruptions and that hallway bathrooms encourage more chaos. At the same time, fewer bathrooms = fewer custodial hours!)
What kinds of large group instruction spaces are available? Are there other "specialty" rooms where one set of equipment could be purchased and used by multiple classes? (e.g., a single room dedicated to science instead of giving each classrooms a little bit of stuff)? A theatrical space for live performances or video work? A quiet space for podcasting or audio recordings? An outdoor classroom both for instruction and for those students who love to read, write, and draw during recess? A large area set aside for recycling bins in the cafeteria and/or hallways? A few extra classrooms to allow for further growth in the future (or maybe two classrooms without a wall in-between that can be used for large group instruction, kinesthetic learning, or drama activities now and converted to two classrooms in the future)? What about lobby space for parent conversations in the morning? Art walls instead of cork strips for "professional" displaying of student art? Soundproofed offices next to large gathering spots?
Gosh, it's fun to think about the possibilities.
It is indeed interesting to think about the possibilities.
Quite frankly, the classrooms themselves that I saw on our recent tour looked no bigger or much different that any typical classroom from the past 100 years - 900 square feet, square or nearly so. The kindergarten rooms at 1200 square feet, some with their own bathrooms (and itty bitty toilets) resembled what you are describing above.
It seems there are three things most teachers want their wall space to be used for in elementary classrooms - storage cabinets, windows and white board/bulletin board space. However, no matter how the classroom was designed and wall uses apportioned, none of the teachers were happy! Or so it seemed.
While the classrooms exhibited little of the flexibility you describe, Kristin, a common design was to have elementary rooms as a "cluster" with each grouping of 3-5 classrooms sharing a larger common area that served larger groups, had multiple uses, usually had some special education space, and sometimes included a special purpose room like a science classroom.
A popular feature of the common area shared by these clusters was a space for several computers that formed a mini-lab. I have mixed feelings about this. By moving the computers outside the classroom walls, aren't we continuing to send the message that learning happens in the classroom and computer use is something different? (Our middle school has a counter under the windows in each of its classrooms to accommodate up to a dozen classroom computers, and that was the model I had been thinking of suggesting.)
Computer "counter" at Dakota Meadows Middle School, Mankato MN. Note wiring and raceway under counter.
Old picture - yes, we do have newer computers than this.
But then we also saw a lot of laptops being used - both in the classroom and in the clusters' common spaces. And I expect this will be the most common model of computer deployment in schools that can't afford or or unwilling to implement a 1:1 initiative. I can certainly see every cluster in our new school having a COW (Computers on Wheels) full of ASUS Eees or new small, -$500 HP or Dell laptops. An easy transition to a 1:1 program?
How does the design of the classroom influence the design of the media center?
Why do we still belive cubes are the best shape for classrooms? Haven't educators heard the term "think outside the box?"
How do I keep our district from building a brand new 1950s school?
From David Brook's column "The Cognitive Age," New York Times, May 2, 2008
The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). Thanks to innovation, manufacturing
The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S.
Hmmmm, sounds like what I heard on Minnesota Public Radio not that long ago. Maybe if David Brooks says it, people will listen. Or not.
Here is my story about why I became interested in facility design (from "Building Digital Libraries for Analog People: 10 Common Design Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them" KQ, May/June 2000):
I once caught a glimpse of what purgatory must be like for school librarians. While student teaching in the mid-70’s in a small Iowa town, I watched the most hapless librarian I have ever met trying to do her job – which at that time was mostly keeping study hall students quiet and busy.
Her media center was, as are too still many yet today, two classrooms pushed together with perimeter shelving and a high circulation desk at the front of the long room near the door. The floor held just two tables near the circulation desk. The main seating was provided in rows of tall-sided study carrels running in long aisles down the length of the room. (See figure one)
The librarian spent most of the time I observed her running up and down those aisles of carrels trying to detect which students were making the little bird noises they knew drove her crazy. I believe this happened every hour of every school day. At least it was going on each time I visited the library. (That school building has since burned down. I like to think it was the act of a merciful God.)
A few years later when I was a school library media specialist myself, I overheard my principal say that he thought tall-sided carrels would be just the ticket for helping students work quietly in the new media center we were planning. My ears pricked up quicker than a dog’s. I decided it might not be a bad idea to be a bit more involved in the library design process.
Ah, it's good to be able to find oneself amusing. But it's my story and I am sticking to it.
Anyway, a short list of articles and columns I've written on facility design...
- Building Digital Libraries for Analog People: 10 Common Design Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them, May/June 2000.
- Building for Tomorrow [Facility design for technology] St. Peter School Hilites, Dec 1990
- Imagining the Future of the School Library (with Rolf Erikson and Christian Long), DesignShare, November, 2006.
- Importance of Bricks, Head for the Edge, Library Media Connection, September 2006
- A Jolt of Java @ Your Library, Blue Skunk blog, October, 2005
- Some Design Considerations When Building or Remodeling a Media Center (also titled “Questions to Ask When Building or Remodeling a New Media Center”) ERIC ED425609, Jan 1, 1998
- What You See and What You Don’t See: A Tour of Mankato’s Dakota Meadows Middle School Minnesota Media, Winter 1993
This weekend I am re-reading Designing a School Library Media Center for the Future (ALA, 2007) by Rolf Erikson and Carolyn Markuson.
Next up: How does where we place computers in our buildings reflect our philosophy toward technology?
As part of the planning process for the new elementary school we're building, a group of teachers and administrators toured four nearby schools that opened in the past two years. I am still mulling over what I saw, but this is what jumped out at me. Wires. In otherwise, thoughtfully (if not innovatively) planned schools, I saw wires and cords...
After retrofitting hundreds of classrooms in our district (with its oldest buildings from the 1920s) for telephones, computer networks, mounted projectors, interactive white boards and voice amplification systems, I was expecting, nay yearning, to see some beautiful, clean, neat, efficient installations - where technology was transparently integrated into the physical structure of these new buildings. You know, an absence of wire molding, no power cords snaking across floors and down walls, and sufficient electrical outlets where they needed to be.
No such luck.
If the wiring looks like that shown above in my new elementary school, I will be ashamed.
Oh, there is a practical as well as aesthetic reason to be neat. Wires are intimidating. The more wires, the scarier the technology looks. The scarier the tech, the less likely it is to be used. Hide the wires to help for the sake of your technophobes.
This is first in what will probably be a series of continuing ruminations addressing the question: How do I keep my district from building a brand new 1950’s school?
What are the qualities of an elementary school building that prepares kids for the future?
Aliisa's contribution to the current display. Drawn free hand!
Andrew's contribution to Abe. Really spiffs up the reference area.
Fiona's and Lisa's contributions to library security. [Or, what happens when two freshmen get into the recycling box and the library tape.]
Kareem's contribution to the senior auction. [Or at least the winnings from his contribution. And the reason we need security in the library.] Natalie is impressed.
My heart goes out to Myanmar. For a very personal reason. I was visitor there once upon a time and fell in love with the country's people, its beauty and its troubles.
Exactly 20 years ago, my good friend Clair and I left a NESA conference in Bangkok to take a five day tour of what was then known only as Burma. Armed with but a Lonely Planet guide, we visited Rangoon, Mandalay, and Pagan. It was, and remains, the most interesting, exotic and different place I have ever visited.
Clair on left.
Burma in 1988 felt like stepping back into the 1940s. My top 10 memories, now a bit faded, I'm afraid...
1. The Lonely Planet advised travellers to buy a fifth of Jack Daniels and a carton of Marlboros in Bangkok duty-free and sell them on the Burmese black market for enough "kyat" for a one week stay's worth of spending money. It worked. Burma was the only place I have ever done a black market currency exchange. At the time the official exchange rate was 1 US$=20 kyat; the black market rate was 1US$ = 140 kyat. One could buy Burmese currency on the black market and then drink in government run hotels for about $.20 a beer. A stipulation in one hotel was that one needed to buy food with each drink. So the menu would read: Chicken 20K, Chicken wings 10K, Chicken bones 5K. My order - A beer and bones. Hold the bones. Only country I know that had 75 and 35 denomination bills.
2. The Strand Hotel in Rangoon was the colonial equivalent of the Oriental in Bangkok or Raffles in Singapore. But it had never been restored (as of 1988). The rooms were sad - bare wires and tired beds. The bar closed at 9PM. We learned to order a few beers at 8:55. Then sit quietly. 10 minutes after the lights went out in the room, the rats would entertainingly scurry across the top of the bar.
3. Near Mandalay we waited for 45 minutes to cross a bridge that was closed twice a day to let the ox-drawn carts of hay cross first.
Photo - Doug Johnson - Rangoon, Burma - April 1998 - scanned from Kodachrome slide.
4. The Pagan/Bagan temple area encompasses thousands of acres - stupas as far as the eye can see - quite literally. Clair and I hired a taxi to take us around the region and we spent the day clambering through the crumbling temples. At the end of the day, the taxi driver commented, "You very, very brave men." Really? "Yes, Burma has the highest incident of death by snake bite in the world and the temples are full of snakes."
5. Burma was (is) known for its rubies. We were often accosted by small boys carrying metal Sucrets boxes lined with cotton containing "real" Burmese rubies. One boy offered proof that the stone was real by smashing it with a brick. I bought one after negotiating down from $100 to an even exchange for my pocket knife and a ball point pen. On my return to Bangkok, the jeweler confirmed I had purchased colored glass, but I still had the "ruby" made into a tie tack. I claim that I plucked it from the navel of a Burmese temple dancer.
6. Hanging in my home office yet today is a ceremonial "nat" (spirit) hat. It is in the shape of a cow's head with a horn spread of about 4 feet, decorated with spangles and glittery balls. I wore my hat through the notoriously strict Saudi customs coming home. No smuggling one of those babies. I still wear it on hat day at school when in the mood.
7. One had a choice of two alcoholic drinks in Burma - Mandalay beer and Mandalay rum. I've drunk beers from all over the world and found the only really bad beer was Mandalay beer. We regretted not keeping the Johnny Walker.
8. Our hotel in Pagan was about a half mile out of town on a narrow dusty road. I don't remember Pagan having any paved roads at the time. The Lonely Planet offered two suggestions for recreation: the Pagan disco and the Pagan massage. The massage was a tiny wooden shack with a very old man and a kid and a couple benches. I got the old man and Clair got the kid. I have never been so viciously pummeled, poked, kneaded, and bent in my life. As I remember, a very sharp elbow was the main instrument of torture. The disco was what looked like a garage lit with florescent lights, posters of pop stars (the BeeGees, maybe?), and a boombox. Clair, the DJ and I were the only people there. Since Clair is a terrible dancer, we didn't stay long.
9. We stumbled on a village having, we think, a wedding festival. Along the dusty streets passing between wooden shanties, was a parade of brilliantly costumed and gorgeous young women and men riding in carts being pulled by equally brilliantly caparisoned oxen. Every photo we took looked worthy of the cover of National Geographic. (I gotta get back to scanning my slides!)
10. Beautiful sunsets and beautiful people are my two major images of Burma. Wearing a protective clay on their faces, the women were delicate, shy and lovely. The men, small, wiry and smiling. And each evening seem to start with an outstanding sunset. But that was years ago and the world and I have both changed more than a little, I fear.
My rational side says everyone in the world should have the opportunities provided by a Starbucks-Toyota-iPod economy. My romantic side yearns for corners of the world that remain culturally unique. If anything I've written sounds patronizing or politically incorrect, I apologize. I am writing out of fondness and from memory. As a traveller, I never claim to be anything more than a tourist.
I know there is controversy over traveling to Myanmar/Burma today. One's tourist dollars either support a totalitarian government or aid the local people, depending on your political views. For myself, I would go back in an instant, given the opportunity.
Photo - Doug Johnson - Rangoon, Burma - April 1998 - scanned from Kodachrome slide.
A fellow Minnesotan teased me a little about the name of ISTE's special interest group for library media specialists - SIGMS. He teased that MS was a disease, not a profession.
After reading this comment, I began wondering - might it be both? Do we suffer from media specialitis when one reads this on LM_Net:
In our district we have a policy which says that I keep the money tendered for lost books for 2 weeks and then turn the money in to the district treasurer. I had a child return the lost book after that 2-week window. So, I did not return his money. Well, doesn't his mom call saying he should have the book back or his money back. After counting down from 10, I said "okay" and gave him back the lousy $3.99. If it had been more, I would have had the district treasurer deal with
her. But, for that piddly amount, I picked my battles.....BUT I walked right over to the child's classroom and told him and the classroom teacher that the library was not a bookstore! And this is NOT going to happen again!
What a great deal - for only $3.99 this librarian bought at least $399 worth of ill will and bad feelings from a student, a parent and, BONUS, a classroom teacher. If the teacher complains to the principal, this might just be a bad PR home run.
Scott McLeod at Dangerously Irrelevant writes about his "not so friendly library," and reminds his readers:
Seth Godin reminds us that every interaction with a customer / client / patron / stakeholder / visitor is a marketing interaction. It’s an opportunity for us to build or erode our brand, a chance to increase or decrease the trust and goodwill of the people with whom we are interacting.
"Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face" is a trite, but in this case apropos expression.
What are other symptoms of "media specialitis?"
Yes, you can get this image on a t-shirt here. <http://www.strangersinparadise.com/>
The Noah Principal: No more prizes for predicting rain. Prizes only for building arks. Louis Gerstner
One of my favorite educational scolds, Gary Stager, yesterday excoriated "the most popular, hired and prolific members of the EduBlogosphere" for not jumping up and down about the recent findings that showed the Reading First program was not as effective as promised. He writes:
Literacy dominates my esteemed colleague's thoughts about education. Therefore, I find it shocking that there is so little [read: none] discussion of the news that the federal Department of Education has concluded that Reading First, the $6 billion shock and awe approach to literacy education at the core of No Child Left Behind, has FAILED to improve the reading comprehension of American students.
Why the silence among EduBloggers? Is this issue unimportant? Should we ignore the calamity created by Reading First just because it doesn't mention Twitter, Apture, Ning or other made-up words?
Or, are you waiting to be told what to think by Tom Friedman or Daniel Pink?
First let me say that I am positive that I am not even on Mr. Stager's radar, so this did not hurt my feelings in the least. But I have a much different take on whether Reading First was shamefully neglected as a topic of discussion among the bloggers I like to read for a few reasons:
- I too was shocked, shocked to learn that politics and money and cronyism have ever played a role in education in this country. What will they discover next - that politicians have affairs? That governments sometimes spend money on stupid things? Gary takes great pride in predicting Reading First would not be a success. Ya know, Gary, guessing this didn't require the skills of a Nostradamus. Sorry. And while this is a case of politics influencing education, most of us think of ourselves as educators first, political pundits a distant second. Or tenth.
- A great many of us at a school district level simply have not been impacted by Reading First, didn't buy the product, didn't sacrifice other programs. Those bloggers working in schools tend to write and be interested in what they know and what impacts them. On a fundamental level, as long as federal funding accounts for about 3-4% of my district's financing, I will invest about 3-4% of my energy on federal issues. Even NCLB has had less impact on how a state decides to enforce it and district's to have it impact what they do as a result of it.
- A great many bloggers would prefer to write about the positive, offering concrete suggestions about how education can be improved on a daily, personal, school or classroom level. I think we take Emily's to heart when she writes: "I dwell in Possibility-- A fairer House than Prose." We need people like you, Gary, with that 20,000 foot view. It's just that the stuff here on the ground is of more immediacy, more interest, more importance to many of us - even Nings. It's naive, I suppose, to think we can make change by celebrating the positive rather than crticizing negative, but ya just never know.
- As a corollary, many of us have a pretty accurate perception of the limits of our influence (which I explored more fully here), knowing where we can most make a difference. Besides ranting - and belaboring the obvious that politicians (on both sides of the aisle) are clueless and corrupted by special interests - what in the Sam Hill do I have to contribute to this discussion, to urge my readers to do, to act in a way that will actually change a system? I'll certainly share this information within my own district to make better informed decisions about our reading efforts, but what more? Venting feels good, but does it do good?
Gary, I sincerely appreciate YOU writing about this. It does need to brought to all educators' attention. But the world only needs (and can take) so many Gary Stagers!
I like my bloggers building arks - not just predicting rain.
Some of us find interesting ways of expressing it.
A selection of blogs by and for school librarians as noted on LM_NET and other sources. This list was compiled by Christopher Harris from Infomancy as a way to showcase school librarians who are blogging. An additional selection of more general education and instructional technology blogs can be found at http://schoolblogs.suprglu.com.
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