Drowning in the Information Tsunami

Throw me a life raft! Or floatie! Linton Weeks said: ""In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us to swim." Yes, but sometimes we librarians could use some floaties, too!

Ten years into my career as a high school librarian, I find that I have collected an overwhelming number of helpful web pages, programs, links, apps,  pathways, documents, and so on and so on. But more and more in the chaotic "personal learning environment" I call my library, I find it hard to put my hands on what I need when I need it.

Where is that article about Google Scholar and impact factor software that would be helpful to the AP U.S. History class embarking on their research project? Who recommended that cool, free, easy to make website that looks like a poster and would be perfect for collecting student projects and displaying them online? Hmm . .  . starts with a B and rhymes with frog? OR was it starts with an F and rhymes with . . .? What was the name of that app that helps you collect web pages as you "surf" the web and quickly comment on them, store them, and organize them later?

 Librarians locate, analyze, and collect an amazing amount of information, then organize it for students and teachers. When those resources are focused on a single topic or research project, we call the organized list a "pathfinder," and those pathfinders can take many forms.

The simplest form of a pathfinder is a handout, with a list of print sources in the library, some suggested databases, and some well-selected links to quality online sources. That still works, and when a teacher lets you know at 7:30 a.m. that their class is coming in at 9 a.m. to do a new project, hey, a quick one page pathfinder and a run to the copy room is a better start for the student researcher than an unfocused web search!

Over the years, I have created, edited, and tweaked over 100 of these "paper pathfinders," pretty good resources overall, and I post them on the library web page when classes come in for those projects that tend to be repeated year after year.  But let's face it, emailing links to myself  from home to work just isn't working -- 997 emails in my work inbox as of one pivotal Friday afternoon, probably some real gems in there back on page 12 of my email. Will I ever get to them, click, remember what was so great about that site, and get it on my web page? Probably not. There has to be a better way.

As is my custom, I jotted down my needs, as I perceived them, before starting to search:

• a process for capturing links to resources as I search for them online (other than emailing them to myself, or putting links in a Word document)
• a way to organize those resources by categories (and what are the categories?)
• a place to park resources I don't need yet, without losing track of them
• some kind of content organizer that can use all different media - video, audio, graphics, web pages -- and yet not overwhelm the students accessing it (a web page? a wiki? a blog? is there something else out there?)
• a way to connect to social media, such as Facebook and Twitter
• a quick way to access the web sites I use every day, and hey, if I could get to it on my phone that would be even better

On top of organizing information for my school, I also need help organizing my time, my library staff, and the facilities, such as computer labs. 

And, I need resources that will work with the way my mind works: very visual, better with a bulletin board than a filing cabinet, color-coded is good, But whatever IT is, it has to be easy to use and not "take over" -- it has to support me, not run my life. What what and where is IT??!!

Stay tuned . . . Teen Read Week is upon us, but my quest has begun, and I will report back soon on what I find,and suggestions are most welcome.

 

New trends in YA Literature

   I predict that YA Literature in the next few years will broaden its scope and appeal and we will find realistic fiction again on the Top Ten Lists for teens. Yes, I am aware that Catching Fire,  based on the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, is a box-office hit this Thanksgiving weekend, and I am sure that the last book in the series will be just as popular with movie-goers. Next up will be Victoria Roth's trilogy: Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant.  The teens I know either hate or love the ending of Allegiant (no spoilers here).
   Fantasy, science-fiction, and dystopian literature will always have their place in YA literature, but well-written realistic fiction is making a huge comeback. A few examples:
   John Green's The Fault in our Stars, the story of two kids who meet at cancer camp and fall in love, has been the biggest book of the fall for teen book clubs, including my own Puma Readers. "Don't forget to be awesome," is the memorable line from that story that you may see on posters, in blogs, and probably soon on t-shirts (abbreviated as dftba).
   John Green always delivers a great story and real characters. He totally deserves the promotion and attention this book has received, both in literary reviews and by the big-box chains such as Barnes and Noble. The success of The Fault in our Stars has also revived interest in some of his other titles, both recent (Paper Towns) and "classic" titles (Finding Alaska). What other author inspires young adults to look you in the eye and tell you that this book changed their lives?
   National Book Award finalist Carrie Arcos visited our school for Teen Read Week to promote her first book, Out of Reach, about the impact on a suburban family of a son on drugs who is "out of reach." Don't look to this well crafted YA novel for happy endings, but teenagers loved this book,with word-of-mouth propelling this book from hardcover to paperback in its first year of publication. Carrie Arcos has a second book coming out in 2014 . . .  stay tuned. She's young, lives in a multicultural neighborhood in Los Angeles, has a great ear for dialogue, and is not afraid to tackle serious subject matter honestly.
   The success of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, about a high school freshman so traumatized by a rape at a party that she cannot speak, struck a chord with teenagers a few years ago, and is now on many high school reading lists. Be forewarned: boys and girls react very differently to this book, and you may be shocked by the reaction of many young teen boys.
     On the other end of the realistic fiction spectrum, Janet Tashjian continues to delight with her humorous fiction. Vote for Larry and The Gospel According to Larry languished on my shelves for a few years but are popular again. In the same genre are Jerry Spinelli (Star Girl), and the delightful Rachel Cohn, prolific author of Gingerbread, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, and many other great YA titles.
   YA publishers, take note! Don't send humorous and realistic fiction to the slush pile, and stop trying to clone the fantasy/dystopia titles that have won such huge followings. None of these recent realistic fiction successes are "quick reads" or "high-low" books -- they are beautifully written, with characters that teens can identify with, but challenging reads. Good books always find their audience, and the YA audience is turning once again to real stories with real characters with real problems, funny or serious, and they will reward authors who don't talk down to them. 

Puma Readers Club hosted science-fiction author Tom Kirkbride during Teen Read Week at Chaparral High School, Temecula. Tom is the author of the Gamadin series, available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or at his web site.
   We loved the story line -- So Cal surfers ditch school one day and rescue an alien princess whose ship has crashed in to the Pacific Ocean. Think Star Wars meets Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure! Anyhow, there are four books in the series now, a fifth in the works, and they are a lot of fun.
   The boys will love the technology and adventure, the girls will love the romance, something for everyone and "young teen appropriate." There is talk of a movie deal, so our autographed copies may be very valuable some day! Thank you, Tom. Here are the books in the series:
Book I, Gamadin: Word of Honor: "Sixteen-year old Harlowe Pylott and Matt Riverstone are body surfing the gnarliest waves of the new century when their fun is interrupted by a yacht capsizing off the Newport coast. After rescuing the famous movie star Simon Bolt and the half-alien socialite Leucadia Mars from certain death, Fate sends them on the greatest ride of their lives. Robobs and the undog are only the beginning! Dakadude killers have swooped down from the heavens looking for the galaxy's most powerful weapon: an ancient Gamadin spaceship named Millawanda. If the Daks cannot capture Millawanda, they will kill her while she is still weak and unprotected . . . along with the Earth and anyone else who gets in their way" [from Amazon blurb]
Book II,Gamdin: Mons
Book III, Gamadin: Distant Suns
Book IV, Gamadin: Gazz

Our other author event during Teen Read Week was with Melinda R. Morgan, who spoke to the reading clubs at all three Temecula high schools at Barnes & Noble (thanks Regina, B&N super community relations manager who arranged this!). The first in a series about a young woman who discovers that she has a guardian angel and a destiny to fulfill:


"The cold rain drummed the memory of the horrible crash into my mind-mom dead, my hand ruined. Then a year later, coming out of a coma to realize my full-ride scholarship was gone and I'd never play the piano again. But the worst of it was nobody believed me-the voices, someone holding me in the mangled car, mom being ripped away from me.So here I am in Anderson, Wyoming, living with Uncle Connor while Dad's on assignment in Europe. School started and I met Jonathan, amazingly handsome Jonathan. He made me feel like life was beginning again-until I discovered that mom's death wasn't an accident, that a supernatural realm was trying to draw me into a coterie hundreds of years old, and that my friend Eric wanted to destroy me.Not the easiest way to begin my senior year.." [Amazon blurb]

Week 9, Thing 23 Reflections on the Journey

Real learning should change the learner, not just fill their head with content or teach new skills, and Learning 2.0 has changed me in some unexpected ways. I am now critically aware of the need to structure the library experience of my students and faculty to their needs as "users," which means that if it takes too much "training" for them to be able to acquire the information and experiences they are seeking in my library, I'm doing something wrong (see comments on article by Michael Stevens in previous post)! Consequently, I met with the head of the English department and we are revamping the way we do freshman library orientation. I met with my IMS guy, and we are revamping my library web page (once fiber optics is up and running, supposedly in April). I am going to actively participate in the freshman academy at my school so that I can be a part of creating a learning experience for the students that isn't the "same old, same old" in a block schedule. My main goal is to use technology to create active learning, collaboration, and engaged readers in my library and beyond in my school. Can you tell that I LOVED Learning 2.0?! Thank you, 2.0 team! I hope to be able to thank you in person at CSLA in the Fall. P.S. -- A quick apology to the readers who kept up with me for inundating you at the end -- my online exploration and learning were ahead of my blog postings, and when I realized that I was going to have to finish by April 1st, I had to catch up on the postings. ANSWERS to the 6 questions, in reverse order:
#6 - My learning experience in one sentence: The format of this online learning experience allowed me to explore web 2.0 applications at my own pace and on my own time, integrating them into my life and my library as I learned.
#5 -Would I choose to participate again? Yes, definitely - bring it on!
#4 - How could the format or concept be improved? My only suggestion would be to make the Weekly Tips portion interactive by posting it on a Wiki where others could quickly post answers to questions (technological difficulties) which sometimes slowed me down, especially when working from home.
#3 - Unexpected outcomes from this program - a shift in my perception of my role as a librarian from "user friendly" to "user centered", and new confidence in myself as a "techy" person
#2 - How this program has affected my life long learning goals - I now have at least a beginning familiarity with a whole online world of knowledge, reflection, commentary and interaction which will allow me to take charge of my own learning experience and collaborate with others as I grow.
#1 - My favorite exercises or discoveries on this learning journey - it was very fun and confidence building to acquire the skills to use these web 2.0 applications on my own and see that I could make them work, so I did enjoy the practical "how to" exercises where I actually created something (my blog, my igoogle page w/ reader, a flickr account, a zoho account, my rollyo search bar, etc.). But I also very much appreciated the inclusion of thoughtful reflection and commentary on these applications, reading online articles, journals, and blogs about them. That balance made this a very worthwhile journey for me.

Week 9, Thing 22:Audio books and e-books

Many of the sites for downloading free books seem to be using the same sources: 1) so called public domain books whose copyrights have expired (the “classics,”), 2) online computer and technical information, and 3) books being created online specifically for an internet audience, many of them collaboratively. Now audio versions of public domain books are being pod cast on Librivox, many of them originally published by the Gutenberg project. What a great collaborative project! This has immediate applications for my own school's special ed and EL populations. Audible, Audiobooks and Itunes seem to be the biggest sources for commercial audio books, and many people just download right to an MP3 player. Barnes and Noble has gotten into the audio book business, and Recorded Books (one of the biggest sources for libraries) will now “rent” as well as sell. Right now in my own library, 100+ titles from Recorded books go out regularly, so I know the “market” is there. I have not had the online space to offer e-books from my own library, but that may be changing. The disadvantage is that, like a regular book book, only one user at a time can “check out” an e-book. The biggest controversy in e-books and online audio books, of course, is copyright vs. “the right to know/read/hear.” Google has run into a lot of controversy with its plan to begin scanning and sharing whole university libraries, but it makes sense to me, especially when one or two libraries hold a few rare volumes. The most blatant case of scholarly stinginess in the last fifty years was the small group of scholars who held the Dead Sea Scrolls hostage, not sharing their work for almost forty years, until a graduate student obtained photographs and a journal published them, forcing the controlling group to open up access to the documents. As a beginning freelance writer, however, I clearly see the other side of the story – the importance of protecting and being paid for your work. We have indeed entered a brave new world! Of all of the online e-book and audio book providers, I liked NetLibrary the best, probably because it is connected to a trusted library group, OCLC, and that is the service I will use when bandwidth permits in my own library. Hmm, I'll have to rethink that "no ipods" in the library rule, won't I?

Week 9, Thing #21, Podcasts

Finding and listening to interesting pod casts is easy; most of them have RSS feeds so you can subscribe to them and have the information come to you on your iGoogle page or blog. I toured Yahoo, Odeo, PodcastNet, and PodNova. On the EdTech site I found a beginner’s lesson in Morse Code and a great educational pod cast site, www.edtech101.com, where I listened to a pod cast on scanning. They recommended a web site, www.photorepairshop.com, which has a “scanning calculator” to calculate the proper resolution to scan any particular file so that you don’t overload your Smart Board, for example, with an image that is too dense. But publishing your own pod cast takes a few more steps. I added the edtech101 pod cast to my iGoogle home page, which I will be able to access from school (until IMS catches onto this possibility). I also read the entire How to Pod cast tutorial pod cast tutorial – this requires a pretty sophisticated set-up. You must have a web domain, a web host (to store your audio files, which will take a lot of bandwidth), a blog where your listeners can contact you, make comments, read your notes on your episodes, view photos, etc., and RSS feed. The tutorial recommended not using a blog site, since the URL will be hard to remember, but apparently Blogger and Libsyn will allow people to register a web site for about $10 a year. A web host with good technical support is a must, and you need at least one gigabyte of storage, and at least 24GB of transfer bandwidth a month to get started with an audience of about 300 people. The tutorial recommended using Feedburner as the web host, Blogger as the blog site to accompany the pod cast, and OurMedia to store the broadcasts. For the “hobbyist” pod caster, the tutorial recommends Lybsyn. For the serious pod caster, the tutorial recommends Wordpress for the blog service and RSS Feed and Powweb or Globat for web storage. As far as pod casts go, for now I will definitely be a consumer, not a producer, of pod casts, but there are some great sources out there for educators, and again, people collaborating to share knowledge and ideas.

Week 9, Thing #20 YouTube

Here's a fun library video I found called Why We Love the Library, apparently made by some students for a contest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQMtp_yr-J4
It's about four and a half minutes, "stars" two students, with background music and short video interviews ("the library has lots of books"), no props needed except the actual books and computers in the library and the building itself. Very reminiscent of what our high school video crew produces every day for their TV announcements, which has morphed into a kind of daily talent/commentary/can you out do this? show which now gobbles up more than fifteen periods of class time (but I dare the teachers to turn it off -- the kids love it!)Now, the amazing connection - my new library TA is in the video class, and one of his assignments for me now is to produce some cool videos for our library. The first one he did demonstrated some do's and don'ts of caring for your textbooks (DON'T use your textbook as a hat in the rain but DO wrap it in a grocery bag). If we're smart about this we can build up a "library" of videos to show on the announcements and also perhaps link to our library web page on all kinds of topics.