Sometimes Insightful

I went to the high school library on Friday afternoon. I was there for two hours and didn’t do a thing but get a feel for the collection. I contemplated that the shelves are jam packed, and there were three carts loaded with a sticky note attached that read, “These are still in the catalog, but there’s no room on the shelves.” What now? I have one week of leisure time before I have to punch the clock, and the first days of school are occupied with greetings and meetings. I really want the students to be thrilled when they enter the library, so I have no options but to tackle the collection. Weeding is my LEAST favorite task of my profession and that is exactly what I have to do very first! I have a new job in a different school, minus aide assistance (except for student clerks that I’ll have to train)…stress, stress, stress…aaaaaaah…then I experienced an epiphany, “before anything can improve, change must occur”. I glanced through a few interesting looking books, and checked copyright dates (1962, 1975, and so on). My head was swimming with “what if”s, and “someone might”s, and I remembered a slide I viewed on one of the Reform Symposium sessions (Steven Anderson), about being a Hawkeye, not a Frank Burns. I know I have a lot of tough decisions to make because I value what’s on the shelf…because I care about the person that chose to keep it there…don’t like making those types of decisions, but I love my job. I love the role the media specialist plays in a 21^st Century library, and for anything to improve, change must occur.

My biggest frustration of being a media specialist is that most people I have contact with believe with all their heart that I am merely a keeper of books. That is one reason that throughout our nation, administrators are “retiring” our certified librarians and filling those positions with uneducated, untrained, unexperienced people. Few understand that “media specialist” means that we specialize in all forms of media, including social media. Admittedly, I have a lot to learn, but some self-guided professional development has provided a platform for me to be better at what I do.

This is kind of a crossroads year for me, as I have only been an educator for 11 years, and 4 of those years were spent as the middle school librarian/media specialist, and I will transfer to the high school in the fall as the JHS media specialist. On July 30-August 1, I participated in the first ever, Reform Symposium, and can provide some proof for all of those cynical educators that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a million dollar experience. Through the sessions offered by #rscon10  (the Twitter hashtag reference for the symposium), I have gained confidence in my new role as the upcoming JHS media specialist. I now believe that I have some forward thinking specialist that I may call mentors: Gwyneth Jones, Peggy Sheehy, Kevin Jarrett, Shannon Miller, Edna Sackson…and so many more people I could list, and note that not all of my RS heroes are media specialist and not all of the aforementioned individuals were presenters for Reform Symposium, some were attendees that I followed on chat during the sessions or follow in Twitter now because they used the #rscon10 hashtag. One big lesson I learned through the Reform Symposium experience is that a media specialist should collaborate with administrators, teachers and other specialist in order to be relevant in their positions (I always thought this but wasn’t quite sure how to approach administrators). We should be providing resources for our teachers and students that will promote successful experiences in the learning environment.

I am so thankful for Reform Symposium organizers: Shelly Terrell, Christopher Rogers, Kelley Tenkely, Jason Bedell. You all were so inspired to provide this forum. I now have an idea of how I am going to approach my new principal about integrating some engaging applications, and I’ll let you know how that pans out.

Wow…something unexpected happened! I created a Twitter account a few months ago, and passively watched as incredible ideas and resources passed over my screen. I guess that makes me a Twitter stalker?? Since I am employed by a school district, I have a lovely summer break (try not to envy me)…and I also happen to be a newly-empty nester, therefore, I have plenty of time on my hands. So, I have spent a significant amount of my summer hours following Twitter feeds and digesting ed/tech blogs. I decided to follow  Don Tapscott  on Twitter because of his intriguing insights on our youth, and lo’ and behold, he added me to his following (maybe that was by accident)-which frightened me. I thought that if he is following me, I had better come up with something decent to post once in a while as my current tweets represent very little original thought. So, here we are: day 1 of my blogging career.

I also follow Tom Whitby, who is a genius in the tech ed world. In doing so, I was let on to the Reform Symposium that was held this weekend. I connected to a couple of the presentations (Tom’s being one of them), and one that I will find after the archives are posted that I could not attend. I am here to tell you that this was one of the um…well no words here to express the experience…maybe inspiring, enlightening…. The event was so well organized and the presenters were so well prepared; it all was perfect! Were there glitches? Not to my knowledge; the whole thing was seamless. Today, I am overwhelmed with the amount of information that was presented. In my following posts, I will attempt to share some insights that I have gleaned concerning high school educational use of social media and things like mobile learning devices, PLN’s, PLE’s, hash tags, and teaching in a cave…should be enough to keep me busy for a few weeks until school starts. That is all.