Turning on the Lights:

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Turning on the Lights Key Challenges For
Learning, Libraries And Teaching In A Googleised
World Dr Ross J Todd Director, Center for
International Scholarship in School
Libraries Rutgers, The State University of New
Jersey cissl.scils.rutgers.edu
rtodd_at_scils.rutgers.edu
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KeyAssumptions

• The fusion of learning, information, and
  technology presents dynamic challenges for all
  educators and students in 21st century schools.
• School libraries are essential for addressing
  essential learning standards, the complexities of
  learning, and quality teaching in information-
  and technology-intensive 21st century schools.
• Enabling the transformation of information to
  deep knowledge and deep understanding, and the
  development of personal, social and cultural
  agency is the core of the VELS, and the core work
  of teachers and teacher librarians

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Are the LightsOn or Off?

• Educational Leadership (March 2008, Vol 65, No.
  6)
• Marc Prensky Turning on the Lights P. 40 - 45
• Powering down in school not just devices, but
  brains
• Its their after-school education, not their
  school education, thats preparing our kids for
  their 21st century lives and they know it (p.
  41)
• When kids come to school, they leave behind the
  intellectual light of their everyday lives and
  walk into the darkness of the old fashioned
  classroom (p. 42)

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The Google Generation
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All About Possibilities

• Current research in adolescent information
  seeking and use, and information technology
  presents significant challenges and possibilities
  for schooling
• - curriculum
• - role of school libraries
• - classroom instruction
• - student research tasks
• - professional development
• - schools technology policies

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Key Studies

• Pew / Internet American Life Project (2006)
• Telephone interviews of a randomly generated
  sample of youth 12-17 and a parent or guardian,
  and involved 935 parent-child pairs.
• National School Boards Association 2006
  Creating and Connecting Research And Guidelines
  of Online Social and Educational Networking
• Online survey of 1,277 9-17 year olds Online
  survey of 1,039 parents Telephone interviews
  with 250 school district leaders
• Rowlands, I. Nicholas, D. (2008). Information
  behaviour of the researcher of the future. A
  CIBER Briefing Paper. Commissioned by British
  Library Joint Information Systems Committee.
  Centre for Information Behaviour the Evaluation
  of Research (CIBER), University College London
  (UCL), 11 January. Retrieved 2 February 2008,
  http//www.bl.uk/news/pdf/googlegen.pdf

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The Google Generation

• Using libraries less since they first began using
  internet research tools
• Search engines are the primary starting point for
  information searching
• Horizontal information seeking - shallow / skim
  viewing a small number of pages then bounce
  out, often never to return
• Spending as much time navigating virtual
  libraries as actually viewing what they find
• Power Browse kind of reading scanning rapidly
  targeted to quick decisions, clicking extensively
  and making little use of advanced search
  capabilities

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The Google Generation

• Squirreling behavior - stockpiling content in the
  form of downloads
• Little attention to evaluating the relevance,
  accuracy and authority of information
• Tendency to use simple search strategies that
  miss relevant documents undertaking repeated
  searches
• Having an unsophisticated mental map of the
  Internet as a networked entity of multiple
  providers.
• Behaviors confirmed by teacher librarians and
  teachers

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And Then ComesWeb 2.0
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Web 2.0 asCommunity
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The Web 2.0Environment

• 2nd generation of web-based environments
• Functional rather than transmissive space social
  network sites, blogs and online diaries, wikis,
  podcasts, videoblogs, content creation mechanisms
  eg Facebook, MySpace
• Seek to facilitate community, communication,
  collaboration and creativity between users.
• Extensive engagement with microcontent posts
  and discussion threads, constantly building
  microcontent into new content forms
• Shift in focus from finding locating and
  evaluating information to one of using
  information, creating knowledge and sharing of
  ideas.

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Use of OnlineCommunities

• Rich picture of teens and adults engagements
  with Web 2.0
• For teens, online activities are deeply embedded
  in their lifestyles, and rivaling television in
  terms of time commitment.
• 90 of teens with online access using social
  networking technologies, such as chatting, text
  messaging, blogging and visiting social network
  sites, with many visiting such sites on a daily
  basis
• Majority of online teens have created a personal
  profile online

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Use of OnlineCommunities

• Almost half of 12-13 year olds report posting a
  profile to an online social network
• Girls dominate the bloggosphere boys dominate in
  video watching and video sharing
• Places to reinforce pre-existing friendships
  opportunities for making new friends

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Active, not PassiveInvolvement

• Increasing engagement in content creation
• Go beyond basic actions such as downloading and
  uploading music, photos and videos and updating
  personal profiles
• Engaging in highly creative activities
• - Blogging
• - Posting messages
• - Creating and sharing virtual objects
• - Remixing content into their own creation
• - Participating in collaborative projects
• - Sending suggestions or ideas to Web sites
• - Submitting artistic and creative works such as
  artwork, photos, stories, videos to
  sites
• - Creating polls, quizzes or surveys

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What do theytalk about?

• Most common topic of conversation on the social
  networking scene is education and school work
  (59)
• 50 talk about school work
• Careers / jobs, choice of university, politics,
  religion, morals, learning outside school work
  (sharing / discussing about personal interests)
• They share and dialogue about their projects

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OnlineNonconformists

• break online safety or behavior rules
• have extraordinary set of digital skills
• typically report lower grades in school
• engage in experimental behavior / engagement/
  ideas / creative imagination
• are very active on chat-vines share new stuff
  very quickly (websites, games, simulations, tech
  products)
• learn new software and teach others promoters
  recruiters (getting others to visit their sites)
  organizers of online events very active
  net-workers.

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CyberbullyingCyberharassment

• Low levels of cyberbullying / cyber harrassment
  reported
• Typically in form of
• - pressure by strangers to meet with teens
• - receiving inappropriate content, pictures, and
  language
• - being drawn into uncomfortable conversations
• - forwarding or posting private email, IM, or
  text
• - spreading rumours online
• - sending a threatening or aggressive email or
  message
• - posting an embarrassing picture without
  permission.
• Acknowledge that these are similar to problems
  encountered in everyday life and through
  television and popular music
• More likely to be bullied offline than online

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And the Schools Response?

• Stringent rules against nearly all forms of
  social networking during the school day
• Limited use for collaborative projects either
  with staff or students
• Great potential to help students
• - get outside the box in some way or another
  
• - introduce students to new and different kinds
  of students
• - learn to express themselves better
  creatively
• - improve social skills
• - develop global relationships
• - help students improve their reading or
  writing or express themselves more clearly
• - learn to work together to solve academic
  problems
• - improve childrens ability to resolve
  conflicts.

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What of Learning and Libraries in the Near Future?

• Need to imagine a different information landscape
  and learning environment for young people
• Teens leaving behind the traditional world of
  print
• Teens not satisfied with being passive consumers
  of other peoples information, but becoming
  active users of information to create new
  knowledge products.
• Need to consider how we more effectively
  structure schooling and school libraries to
  provide a rich interactive learning community for
  them, using tools of Web 2.0
• Need to ensure that the deep knowledge and deep
  understanding, not just of learning standards,
  but of their complex information worlds that they
  are drawn into, are achieved.

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Why do school work, especially when ?

• I have to pick another bird, dinosaur,
  planet animal, disease and do a 1000 word
  essay?
• I can go on to schoolsucks.com, phuckschool.com
  evilhouseofcheat.com and get the essay I want?
• I fill out another worksheet, fill in the blanks,
  do another 5 para essay, perhaps a diorama
• Preparation of the drones?

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Major Shift in Instructional Focus

• Kids are running home to open MySpace and other
  spaces and read and react and provoke and argue
• Harness social networking tools in educationally
  meaningful and compelling ways that break loose
  from static ways of learning that often confines
  and stifles creativity
• Instructional program centering on inquiry,
  knowledge construction and communication will be
  the distinguishing feature of schooling and
  school libraries if they are to flourish in this
  environment.

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Major Shift in Instructional Focus

• Provide students with the essential
  knowledge-based competencies
• - critical thinking and communication
  competencies
• - knowledge creation processes
• - developing arguments and positions and
  viewpoints
• - dealing with conflicting ideas and evidence
  (including dealing with unwanted, offensive
  information inputs)
• - constructing creative and meaningful
  representations of new knowledge
• - communicating ideas in thoughtful ways.
• Explore social networking sites, learn and try
  out the kinds of creative communications and
  collaboration tools that students are using, so
  that your perceptions and decisions about these
  tools are based on real experiences.

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Rethinking Pedagogy

• Kids investigate and analyse their lives and the
  world in-depth with authentic resources and tasks
• Meaningful Inquiry learn to ask deep questions,
  seek knowledge, understand multiple perspectives,
  and wonder about the world, draw conclusions,
  state viewpoints, argue positions, to create
  solutions and solve problems, and to use the IT
  tools and resources to create, share and use
  knowledge
• Moving beyond reading as a laborious school
  thing
• Sustain the fire and the light that engage kids
  in their everyday lives
• School libraries as a place where kids power up
  their brains and their devices

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Re-imagining School Libraries

• Need to rethink the school library as the
  schools physical and virtual information-to-knowl
  edge commons where literacy, inquiry, thinking,
  imagination, discovery, and creativity are
  central to students learning in all curriculum
  areas
• Provide intellectual and social tools across
  these multiple environments to foster creativity,
  knowledge creation and production, both
  individual and collaborative, and to foster the
  intellectual, social and cultural growth of our
  young people
• 24/7 environment vs the place paradigm

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Re-Imagining School Libraries

• Library spaces designed for collaborative
  learning
• Flexible workspace clusters
• Flexible collections (20/80 rule)
• Wireless technology / surface computing /
  multiple HD wide plasma screens
• Self-help graphic services, colour imaging,
  audiovisual editing, collaborative production,
  knowledge representation and presentation
  software
• Physical designs functionality, sophistication,
  creativity, inspiration

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Re-Imagine School Libraries Example

• Data/Info Commons - the reference collection,
  building background knowledge, both physical and
  virtual reference
• Knowledge Commons in-depth resources targeted
  to deep learning across the curriculum (flexible
  collection)
• Leisure Commons diverse free-choice reading,
  listening stations, iPod zone, e-zines and
  e-books
• Networking Commons collaborative spaces with
  walls of flat screen monitors for students to
  create, share, compare, display
• Tech Commons for small and large group
  instruction, information searching
• Collective Commons flexible discussion group
  spaces
• Café Commons

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Core Values

• Community
• ?
• Creativity
• ?
• Collaboration
• ?
• Communication