Category Archives: reading

Bookless Libraries?

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That was the headline that was all over Twitter this morning, pointing to a story about a town in Texas that is soon to open a bookless library where users can check out ereaders loaded with their choice of books.

This is going to change everything, according to the local officials:

Precinct 1 Commissioner Sergio “Chico” Rodriguez said, “This is an incredible project that I’m very happy to have in my precinct. I think it’s really going to change the way that our residents begin to incorporate technology, reading and learning into their daily lives.”

Liz Dwyer at good.is points out two of the obvious problems: not all books are available as ebooks and not everyone knows how to use an ereader.

I know several of the geekiest of techno-geeks who simply don’t like reading using an ereader. Should they be forced to change their voracious reading habits when the world is full of analog books?

In fact, two communities that tried the bookless concept–Newport Beach, California, and Tucson, Arizona–ended up adding analog books to their collections at the community’s request.

My own library system has a nice hybrid: analog books on the shelf with a robust interlibrary loan system and digital books available for checkout on your own device. It means I can access library books even when I can’t get to the library. But when I’m in the mood for browsing the shelves, flipping the pages, and looking for other materials like magazines, music and videos, I can head to the bricks and mortar version.

Finally, I hope these bookless libraries will recognize that people use the library for much more than consuming media: my own library has computers and printers, a fax machine, workshops on resume writing, and activities for families. In our quest to do something “cutting edge,” let’s not lose sight of the things that are working in traditional institutions.

 

Create, Connect, Commit in 2013

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Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach described her New Year’s commitments and challenged the rest of us to do the same. As always, she makes a powerful statement and I found myself nodding my head in agreement as I read. Dealing productively with digital and emotional distractions, finding a work/life balance, and pursuing excellent in everything…these are all worthy goals. She sums it up beautifully: “I am determined to influence the world this year rather than be  influenced by it.”

I have three goals for the new year: create, connect and commit.

Make Art Dammit!

This is the mantra from The Daily Create, an offshoot of ds106, a MOOC that originated at the University of Mary Washington. Each day, they post an assignment designed to inspire “spontaneous creativity.” Today’s assignment is to illustrate a decision. Mine is a screenshot of my Kindle app and wondering what to read next…

First Read of 2013?

As part of ds106 GIFfest, I had fun making my first animated gif in a very long time. It reminded me that I enjoy creating:  from crocheted doilies to homemade bread to flower gardens to digital media. And, I have lots of opportunities to be creative, as long as I make the time. Along with Sheryl, I’m going to stop thinking there isn’t enough time…I value creativity so making it part of my daily life is important. In a larger sense, by creating these things, I am creating a life.

Create Connections

One of the great things about doing The Daily Create is that you do so as part of a community. It was a real kick to get positive comments on my animated gif along with suggestions for how to extend the creativity. Creating is fun but being part of a creative community is even more fun. Writing this blog post is part of this goal: a way to connect with others at the start of the new year, a year in which I want to do more connecting. More blog writing, more twitter sharing, more community creating. I have recently started exploring Google+ as well. I do a lot of connecting as part of my work, bringing people together in courses and webinars and conferences, but I want to do it more personally, including getting more involved in the crochet group I joined last year.

Increasingly, our farm is becoming a place to make connections. We have gotten to know many members of our local community when they come by to get vegetables. We have also made connections with other local farmers, and the first thing I did this morning was sign up for beekeeping classes so I can get my hives up and running this year. This past summer, we donated our excess harvest to the food bank in town. I want to strengthen those local community ties, perhaps as part of a local anti-poverty or literacy initiative. Moving to the country has opened my eyes to rural issues. I’m not sure of the details yet but am committed to finding my niche in our new place.

Forge Commitment

When I look back at my reading list for 2012, it is filled with great books. But most of them are fiction. Meanwhile, there is a whole host of writing calling for my attention: get back to Kozol, dig further into the banned book list, spend time with contemporary writers about education and change, and work on the shelf of Wendell Berry’s books. I feel a deep connection to Berry as both a writer and a farmer.

This reading will help fuel my writing. I committed to a daily blogging practice this fall and then life and work got in the way. I am re-committing to that practice as I move into the new year. Writing is a way to both create and connect so offers a foundation for my other goals.

So, a public declaration of my goals for the new year…what about you? Want to join me in any of these endeavors?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old School Writing Reading List

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Tuesday is Twitterverse day and today I met William Chamberlain (@wmchamberlain) who tweeted about speed writing as a way to build creativity with his 6th grade students. I was suddenly back in my own language arts classroom in the late 80s and early 90s where I did similar kinds of activities as I tried to encourage the students to see themselves as writers. I decided to put together an old school reading list for the current generation. I know, in education, we are often encouraged to use more “up-to-date” sources but sometimes authority from the past can be a guide. Here are a few books that guided my practice all those years ago:

In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning by Nancie Atwell: I read the original from 1987 and this book became the centerpiece of my middle school language arts curriculum. With a friendly, encouraging voice, she guided me through the radical act of putting the basal reader on the shelf and pulling out the battered paperbacks. Of putting aside the neat worksheets on sentence writing and letting the kids just write, sometimes even about anything they wanted. The updated version includes lessons learned from Atwell’s years as a teacher. It’s nice to know that she learned along with the rest of us: “I know my students and I will continue to learn and be changed. I am resigned—happily—to be always beginning for the rest of my life as a teacher.”

Writing: Teachers and Students at Work by Donald Graves: This wonderful book about reading and writing and teachers and students now has a 20th anniversary edition. Graves passed away two years ago but his ideas about how we can encourage reading and writing as lifelong skills live on in his work and the thousands of teachers like me who were inspired to open our classrooms to his enthusiasm. When I read the book, I pictured him hunkered down in a little chair, face close to an earnest young writer, discussing the work at hand. He made me want to talk to kids more and learn about their thinking.

The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy McCormick Calkins: Another classic for the writing teacher. I think I gravitated to the focus on the “art” of writing in response to a more grammar-centered curriculum followed by some of my colleagues. Just as with Atwell and Graves, I found in Calkins a kindred spirit who saw the potential for making students more confident in themselves as human beings who could use language to express their greatest dreams and deepest concerns.

Writing Without Teachers by Peter Elbow: A manifesto for getting writing out of the hands of teachers altogether. Elbow advocates free writing as a major tool for heating up the creative juices and argues for writing groups where members share and critique work together. The original was published in 1978 and it seems to have the aura of that time: people breaking out of expected roles and looking for ways to express themselves more freely. This isn’t necessarily about teaching but his ideas can be beneficial for anyone who wants to include more writing in their lives.

It is a testament to the longevity of these writers that their books have come out in updated editions. With the exception of Donald Graves, the others are alive and well and still writing and thinking and sharing. I’m sorry that none of them seem to be blogging but in my search, I did discover that not everyone loves the idea of reading and writing workshops.

Finally, you should definitely see what Mr. Chamberlain is doing with his students…as busy as he is, it is great that he takes the time to use the web to show his students and their work. Right now, he is looking for funding for an after school ukelele class.

 

Why Zero Tolerance Policies Don’t Work

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One of the lessons I remember from the principalship class I took was that zero tolerance policies simply don’t work because at some point, some nice kid breaks the policy for a well meaning reason and you end up with egg all over your face.  Here’s a perfect example: the student who was unable to attend homecoming because of an overdue book. Here’s the policy:

The school’s July newsletter did tell parents that “students must have a zero balance for all fees and fines to participate in some special extracurricular activities or privileges.”

Here’s how it played out:

Dominique’s mother went to the high school to complain. She says the principal, Tracy Perkins, was unwilling to work with her.

“She did not care one bit,” said Dominique’s Mom, Danielle Olmstead. “She asked me what grade she’s in, I said freshman; she said ‘Oh there’s always next year.'”

Dominique is in the accelerated reading program at the high school. Two or three weeks ago she checked out a murder mystery that was overdue when she went to buy the ticket.

She offered to bring the book back that day but the school wouldn’t budge.

“She’s not being punished because she got into a fight or anything like that,” said Olmstead. “She’s getting punished because she had an overdue library book for reading. It’s ridiculous.”

Maybe what’s worse than a zero tolerance policy is continuing to enforce it even when you realize how ridiculous it is.

My New Reading List

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I happened to catch a bit of Jonathan Kozol on CSPAN this afternoon.  He was talking about his new book Fire in the Ashes. I was somewhat surprised to learn this his book Savage Inequalities had been banned in Tucson, Arizona, along with lots of other subversive literary works like Walden and The Tempest.  (Really, Shakespeare?) You can view a copy of the full list here.

The banned books were part of a larger ban on ethnic studies enacted by the Tucson School Board in January of this year.  They did so under threat of losing 10% of their state funding for breaking a state law that forbids “any ethnic studies classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” While auditors did not find evidence of this sedition, but it seems that in the charged atmosphere of Arizona where immigration is a divisive issue, just having a group of hispanic students gather to talk about their history and their families is enough to scare some state legislators.

The Independent Lens video Precious Knowledge is worth a view. The students are experiencing higher achievement as they are drawn into courses where they can find themselves.

Meanwhile, I may make my next 30 day challenge to start working on the banned books list as I have not read much latino literature and it’s time to get back to Thoreau and Kozol and Shakespeare as well.

 

Lest We Forget

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Lisa Petrides at Huffington Post suggests that technological and cultural changes in the 21st century are pointing the way to a renaissance in education similar to the capital-R Renaissance that began in the late 13th century.  While I share her enthusiasm about the sense of being on the cusp of something amazing, I worry a little that she is romanticizing the original Renaissance and thus the current one as well.

Indeed, the Renaissance saw a flowering of arts and sciences as well as the rise of the middle class whose increased income allowed for discretionary spending on things like books and art and music.  Newly found leisure time made is possible to enjoy those things as well and perhaps even to dabble in their creation.

But, there was still a vast population that lived in rural areas, working as serfs or sharecroppers, without access to all the wonders of the Renaissance.  Even in the cities where the great artists and thinkers congregated, poverty kept most people out of this community as they struggled simply to feed themselves and their families. For every Medici who was patronizing artists, there were thousands of unnamed poor people who received no such funding and for whom the Renaissance did very little to change their lives for the better.

So, the original comparison can be and should be expanded and deepened as the disparity between rich and poor is increasing in the 21st century just as it did in the Renaissance. The infographic on the new digital divide from Color Lines reminds us that not all access to the Internet is equal.  And while there are lots of opportunities to learn outside the classroom, studies continue to show that low reading skills correlate with high poverty, and despite the proliferation of media, reading remains a hugely important skill for those who wish to take advantage of open source courses.

I hate to be the negative to Petrides’ optimistic essay as I agree that opportunities for learners are greater than ever, but we cannot forget that while these wonders of education and creativity are more widely available than every before, there are still large parts of our population for whom they remain a distant dream and we won’t achieve a more humanistic and connected world if, in our enthusiasm, we leave them behind.

Literacy in Context

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There’s been an interesting back and forth in Twitter about 21st century literacy.  Tomorrow, it will spill over into an Elluminate session that I am sorry I will have to miss.  I’ve written about 21st century skills in the past, equating them with leadership skills and suggesting that Ben Franklin possessed most of the skills that we now label “21st century.” So, Ben Grey’s eloquent post about 21st century literacies resonated with me:

I believe this is where the whole notion is lost on me.  If we’re talking about literacy, let’s talk about literacy, as in reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  If we’re talking about other skills that people need to be successful in the modern era, then we’re probably talking about skills rather than literacies.  If we’re being specific about these skills applying uniquely to the 21st century, we should probably call them such.  Although, are there really any skills that are being called 21st Century Skills that are new in the 21st century?  Think about it.  The Partnership for 21st Century Skills believes demonstrating originality, communicating, being open and responsive, acting on creative ideas, utilizing time efficiently, accessing information, etc. are all 21st Century Skills.  I’d retort that in reality, these skills have always been in existence and of the utmost importance.  They don’t need to have the 21st Century moniker on them to make them significant.

In another post, he describes how his ideas about literacy relate to a tool like Voice Thread:

The real essence of using VoiceThread, however, is in engaging the true process of literacy.  First, I must either read or listen to the original idea being posted.  Once I’ve gathered meaning by doing so, I can formulate a response.  To respond, I will either speak or write my thoughts.  If I can’t do these core tenets of literacy effectively, VoiceThread will be useless to me.  It is the very act of engaging literacy that makes this process meaningful.

Certainly, Voice Thread relies on what some might consider “traditional” literacy skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening.  But there is another component that puts pressure on that definition: the use of images.  These might be the static images we choose to illustrate blog entries or they might be compiled into slide shows and videos, integrated with audio and text. Both choosing the images and then being able to read them seems to demand adding “viewing” to the definition.  I didn’t really understand visual literacy until I began making movies.  Learning how to let images help carry some of the story was an important lesson for me.

Literacy also has to do with knowing how to use available tools effectively and efficiently.  Learning to write across technologies is something I’ve considered before. Dean Shareski provides a perfect example when he writes about his frustrations with trying to use Twitter for deep conversations:

Certainly a great link can be posted but the minute a tweet engages people in a meaningful way that requires any degree of unwrapping, my immediate thought is “get a room”.  Frustrations mount as complex ideas are squeezed into a simple text messaging tool.

He recommends that people move into new spaces that allow more in-depth reflection:

Many newcomers to social media are trying to cram all forms of thinking and sharing into a single space such as Facebook or Twitter. I don’t think that’s a good idea.  While I always encourage people to start somewhere, I don’t mean for them to stay in one space.  So if you’re new to social media you might want to think about adding another space to your identity.  Take the idea tossed around in twitter and take it deep in your own space. Even if you only decontruct it yourself or have a couple of comments I think you’ll find that a more satisfying experience that trying to follow short snippets of insight. Twitter is great but a steady diet of twitter is like only ordering appetizers. At some point, you’ll want a main course.

His metaphor prompted me to think of one of my own: for me, Twitter is like a cocktail party.  We’re all sort of generally chatting and then a serious conversation takes off in the corner and we can eavesdrop and even got involved.  It dies down and may or may not be preserved but each person can take their bits and pieces and do something with them.  For bloggers like Dean, it might be a blog post.  For someone else, it might be a conversation in the teachers’ lounge. But the point is that different communication media have different languages and purposes and being able to navigate them effectively should be part of the definition of literacy.

And, once again, I reach into history to think about two people who were quite literate: Abigail and John Adams.  Like Ben Franklin, they used the communication media of their time more effectively than most people and their letters are a pleasure to read.  (And thanks to the Massachusetts Historical Society, you can not only read them but also view the originals!)  They hashed over the most petty domestic problems in the midst of conversations about revolution.  Since they spent much time apart, those letters were an important place for them to build their relationship, with over 1100 letters exchanged.  The pace is glacial when compared to our instantaneous world.  Talk about slow blogging!

Adams thought about literacy in his own time.  In a letter written just days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams reflected on how different types of writing require different styles of language:

It is worth the while of a Person, obliged to write as much as I do, to consider the Varieties of Style …. The Epistolary, is essentially different from the oratorical, and the Historical Style …. Oratory abounds with Figures. History is simple, but grave, majestic and formal. Letters, like Conversation, should be free, easy, and familiar.

Abigail seems to take him at his word and her reply shows the easy familiarity of a long-married couple as she chides him for not providing the personal details she longs to hear:

I received a Letter from you by wedensday Post 7 of July and tho I think it a choise one in the Litterary Way, containing many usefull hints and judicious observations which will greatly assist me in the future instruction of our Little ones, yet it Lacked some essential engrediants to make it compleat. Not one word respecting yourself, your Health or your present Situation. My anxiety for your welfare will never leave me but with my parting Breath, tis of more importance to me than all this World contains besides.

Amidst all the lofty thoughts and big ideas, there is the need for simple human connection. How are you doing, she asks?  Whether we’re writing 140 character haikus or multi-paragraph blog entries, we are connecting with others as we do so.  Literacy facilitates that connection and children must be given experiences with all the various communication media so they can make smart choices about how best to make connections.

But, as Ben suggests, there is a difference between being literate and having the skills to manipulate the media.  As part of his contribution to the conversation, Gary Stager provided a link to an article by Seymour Papert from 1993 in which Papert discusses the changes that will take place in the way we communicate.  Papert writes:

But looking forward, we can formulate new arguments beyond the imagination of 19th century thinkers, who could hardly have conjured images of media that would provide modes of accessing and manipulating knowledge radically different than those offered by the Rs. Nor could they have formulated what I see as the deep difference between education past and future: In the past, education adapted the mind to a very restricted set of available media; in the future, it will adapt media to serve the needs and tastes of each individual mind.

He’s right: Abigail and John wrote letters because that was very restricted available media to them.  We face a plethora of media available to us and yet, I’m always struck by the fact that even though I’m staring at a computer screen, I’m doing a lot of traditional reading and writing.  There is some listening and viewing but it’s mostly text-based communication.

So, reading and writing still form the foundation of what it means to be literate.  But technical skills seem to loom larger now since we have to put those basics to work in a complex media world.  We can’t forget that part of literacy is related to navigating that media.  If we too narrowly define literacy, it’s easier to justify the fact that some 50% of Americans don’t have sufficient broadband access to watch Barack Obama’s weekly addresses on YouTube.   As this article from Business Week reminds us, defining literacy is less important than ensuring that everyone has access to practice those literacy skills.   In order to ensure access, we need to make it clear that knowing how to read and write with contemporary communications media does rise to the level of a literacy.  You can apply whatever adjective you wish–media literacy, digital literacy, 21st century literacy–what matters is the understanding that such literacy is the right of every citizen.

Finding Middle Ground in the Reading Debate

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It seems I’ve been reading a lot about reading lately.  A recent article in the Chronicle has prompted several bloggers to consider what reading means in the 21st century.   Will Richardson reflected on his own reading practices and what educators should be doing to foster online literacy.   Sean Sharp thought about what online reading practices mean for online writing practices.

Mark Bauerline, the author of the Chronicle article, is not fan of the digital age.  He is the author of The Dumbest Generation:  How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).  I haven’t read the book and I’m not sure I will since at this point in my learning I am looking for arguments from the center.  Plus, I think we can get a good sense of what he believes from his article in the Chronicle.

Here’s the crux of his argument in one sentence: “We must recognize that screen scanning is but one kind of reading, a lesser one, and that it conspires against certain intellectual habits requisite to liberal-arts learning.”  Bauerline sees himself and others as the “stewards of literacy” who must protect students from themselves by providing them with rigorous reading experiences.  (Even as I write that sentence, I’m picturing the student in one of Michael Wesch’s videos holding up a sign indicating that students simply don’t do the assigned reading.)

I have not found such a conspiracy in my own life.  Web-based reading has expanded my practice rather than changing it.  I continue to read books, both fiction and nonfiction, while like Richardson, I have transferred almost all my more temporal reading such as news and correspondence to the web.  My “books” have changed a bit since I purchased my Kindle.  But my practice is similar whether I’m reading an online text, a Kindle text, or an old-fashioned book. Particularly in terms of non-fiction, I always have a pencil in my hand.  The Kindle and Diigo come with a digital pencil in the form of their highlighting and annotation tools.   And, for Daniel Schon’s book that I just started reading last night, I’ve got a Ticonderoga along with a pack of sticky notes tucked into the front cover.  I do find a growing preference for digital reading as it is easier to search my highlights and annotations.  But there is something worthwhile in paging through an analog book, reviewing what I underlined or annotated.  In the hunt for a particular quote, I often find other useful comments.

The pragmatist in me is looking for common ground in this conversation.  Bauerlein points to it in his article when he quotes Jakob Neilsen, a Web researcher who has written extensively on web-based reading habits.  Nielsen says,

I continue to believe in the linear, author-driven narrative for educational purposes. I just don’t believe the Web is optimal for delivering this experience. Instead, let’s praise old narrative forms like books and sitting around a flickering campfire — or its modern-day counterpart, the PowerPoint projector. We should accept that the Web is too fast-paced for big-picture learning. No problem; we have other media, and each has its strengths. At the same time, the Web is perfect for narrow, just-in-time learning of information nuggets — so long as the learner already has the conceptual framework in place to make sense of the facts.

There is a place for multiple kinds of reading in multiple kind of formats and our job as educators is to help students practice with all those different types.

Living in the Grey Area

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There’s been a theme to my reading this week: technology is neither all good nor all bad.  In the midst of all the amazing discoveries with their potential to increase human knowledge, understanding and community, there are negative consequences that we must take into consideration.

It began with an article in Forbes about Technologies That Hurt Us.  The article draws on the work of David Friedman whose book Future Imperfect: Technology And Freedom In An Uncertain World discusses the potential dangers of a variety of technologies including biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence.  The ultimate danger, according to Friedman, is human extinction.  Quite an unintended consequence, isn’t it?  The article also focused on more mundane negative physical consequences of technology such as the kid who spends the summer playing video games and then heads to the first day of football practice only to get hurt.  Or, the Wii tennis players who don’t get the breaks found in the “real” game so end up getting a much more difficult workout.  The recommendation from orthopedic surgeons is simple: warm up before you fire up the Wii and, if more sedentary video games are your style, be sure to move around now and then.  As for Friedman and his dire warnings, he says that the answer is not to stop technology:

The benefits of owning a smarter computer than the next guy, for example, are just too great. “This train doesn’t have brakes, and from my perspective at least, the main thing to do is not to say, ‘Should we encourage it, or should we stop it?’ ” Friedman says. Instead Friedman suggests two questions: “Where can we guess this technology will lead, and if we get there, what should we do?”

I was reminded of this article when I read Wes Fryer’s post about the end of his game of Travian.  He described an alliance member who spent so much time playing the game that it took a negative toll on his health.  In the end, he didn’t win but he did get a mention in the letter.  I guess only he can decide if it was worth it.

Then, there’s the whole question of whether the Internet is making us dumb.  Nicholas Carr’s lengthy article in The Atlantic described his concerns about how the Internet was changing his reading habits.  It’s something that Will Richardson has also discussed in response to Carr’s article.  Carr recognizes the grey areas in his argument as he describes the skeptics who accompanied every major technological development: Socrates worried about the effect of writing on memory and humanists worried that the printing press would lead to laziness and revolution.  Yet, these technologies have had amazingly positive influences on human knowledge and learning.  In the end, though, Carr comes down on the side of deep reading.  He writes, “As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”  Yet, in a recent New York Times article, Damon Darlin defends the use of Google as a technology that actually frees our mind.  He writes, “Over the course of human history, writing, printing, computing and Googling have only made it easier to think and communicate.” He comes down on the side of the optimists who believe in human improvement.

I am reminded once again that we are living in a grey area, trying to find a balance between the positive and negative effects of the technology that surrounds us.  And, as educators, we need to have these conversations with out students.

Since this post is probably already too long for most of you, I’ll write about my own reading experiences later but here’s a teaser: my own reading still involves books, although they are mostly fiction, and I find that I can still do lengthy reading as long as I can have a pencil, either analog or digital, in my hand.

I Need the Stupid Things

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Just read this essay from Luc Sante in The Wall Street Journal about his book collection. If you read my blog, you’ll understand why it resonated with me. Here’s a taste:

Many books are screwy, a great many are dull, some are irredeemable, and there are way too many of them, probably, in the world. I hate all the fetishistic twaddle about books promoted by the chain stores and the book clubs, which make books seem as cozy and unthreatening as teacups, instead of the often disputatious and sometimes frightening things they are. I recognize that we now have many ways to convey, store, and reproduce the sorts of matter that formerly were monopolized by books. I like to think that I’m no bookworm, egghead, four-eyed paleface library rat. I often engage in activities that have no reference to the printed words. I realize that books are not the entire world, even if they sometimes seem to contain it. But I need the stupid things.

I keep telling my husband I’m not buying any more books. Well, except for a few from Island Bookstore, a great independent bookstore at the Outer Banks (it is a moral imperative to support indie booksellers) and then some from the Book Exchange, which I didn’t really buy since I have credit there.