blog 1st - Information Literacy...What d'ya think?

Five years ago, I came to Humboldt Senior High School.

The year before, they had decided to "save money" and not hire a Librarian and had instead a series of long-term subs the last of which assaulted a teacher who actually expected service since she had been used to it and the poor assaulting sub was utterly frustrated having a job she knew not how to do. Interesting.

The loss, as best I can figure, was about $150,000's worth of books that walked that year with students and staff and they were the good resources, of course. Terrible.

I threw out all these stored magazines and the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature which shocked some of the staff but I assured them it was all on the computer data bases. Hmmmmmmmm.

The security 3M device was inoperable but the contract had been paid so that was fixed and after it was operational, we security stripped the Library. Better.

I came in with some rules for how the library could be used and had a sign-in book for our customers and had some books for staff to sign up for library and computer time. The staff welcomed some order.

The next year I asked each teacher when signing up to give me an idea of how they were going to use the library so I could be available to help in gathering resources for their classes. No one really did.

One teacher was savvy to how to use me and in her last year before she left Humboldt due to her frustrations with another staff person who is still here, we did a joint teaching unit on world wars using children's literature which portrayed various aspects of war which I gathered from a variety of resources with a lot of help from the Public Library and the staff I had worked with there. That was really fun.

Two years' ago, I touted an initiative whereby I was asking everyone to consider the data bases the District provided as they were always going to be good resources and were much more of a solid, count on it hit than the Googlized resources even if it appeared easier and more user friendly to rely on Google (did you mean.................alternative highlighted spelling). It was difficult to get participation from our staff with the exception of the above-mentioned teacher.
We actually touted the breakdown of a subject that our high school data base provided as a good outline for a paper on that subject.

Now we speak of Information Literacy and we have standards for that and we have money to make deals like this class to involve good staff people like those from my school who know a lot of the technology but aren't necessarily savvy to the reasons why it is good to make the choices suggested. My delight in involving them was due to their abilities to serve as models for other staff and conduct workshops about what we are doing.

In all fairness to staff, the way our educational system is organized, no teaching staff ever has enough time to organize and do their job let alone do it well. Having most of your waking hours devoted to it is a start but the luxury of that is rare for most of us. When staff get whatever they can going for them, they cling tenaciously to it unless they are forced to do it or see their way to a system that makes their job easier. The work that goes into coming up with a term Information Literacy and the work that creates a standard and then the force that brings organization to participants as this does starts change which is "right" but which would be on the roadside without all the other work that brings it to the foreground.

Today we are waking up to the idea of using data bases provided by the District. This is a good thing, is what I think.

Being facile with all the computer tricks available and switching from a p.c. orientation to a mac orientation and a mouse orientation to a finger orientation is difficult when all the classes assume much more basic information than I seem to have and leads to an overwhelming sense of hopelessness in success to be quite honest.

When my district tech can't even help me figure out how to get a pic on my urban planet website, I think turning in my equipment would be the best trick I can do right now.

Poetry Research Unit Assist

Matt McCloud wanted to do a Poetry Research Unit and needed the Library Computer Space as he was "going to use book resources" as well as the computer. The computer lab in the Library was booked. I contacted the teachers who had booked the space when he needed it and found other space for them and explained that Matt needed the books as well as the computers and since they just wanted the computers, they easily were agreeable to changing with him.
Matt asked me to pull the poetry books and I did. He was chagrin. At this point, he showed me his assignment sheet which had a variety of excellent poets about whom we didn't have materials. I asked him when he was starting the unit; it was the next day.
Given:

Matt is such a great young teacher;
he was actually using books;
a high school library can never have enough good poetry books;
our collection is in desperate need of refurbishing;
funds have been made available for refurbishing;

I decided to go out that night to:
Sixth Chamber Used Books
Barnes and Noble

and bought ones to cover his/our needs.

They were entered quickly and used immediately.

Matt used the district data bases for his students to find biographical information about their poets.

When he had a student that was stumped, I found some suitable information for them along with the citation from which the information was taken.

In one case, the student chose a District person as her poet but couldn't find any biographical infromation for her. I contacted her and she was good enough to electronically send such information. I asked if she might be willing to be interviewed by this student for extra credit and Matt and I are considering it for the new year along with the poet.

It's fun to have a teacher who uses books, poets. and librarians!