My, oh my, oh my! I realize this is a very inelegant way to start the final reflection of this eye-opening course but I am finding it very difficult to manifest myself in any other way. Right now, at this moment of my life I am swamped in all directions. I have assumed my position as Head Librarian but because of complicated logistics I am still the IT Coordinator in what has been the start of a very stressful school year. While one teacher whines about sound distortions in YouTube, I discover that four grades worth of student information had never been entered into the library automation system and I can't seem to figure out which key opens which DVD cabinet while yet another disapproving teacher glances at me with an evil stare. Yet through all this not-so-gratifying chaos, I listen to the echoes of those wise musings of my classmates and instructor expressed in those electronic discussions full of the pliant wisdom that comes from experience and it soothes me. A media specialist has multiple roles and must learn to balance. The constraint of older days in which a librarian's focus was only books is gone forever. We must embrace technology and blend into classroom instruction, serve as guides and mentors to teacher and child alike, assume challenges that no librarians at any other period of history have assumed before. We mus innovate and collaborate continuously. Continuously.
So will my present "state of things" always be this frenzied? I hope not but even if this is so, I know now that a generous dollop of strength could be derived by acknowledging that there is a community of media specialists out there that are evolving day to day into academic champions at their schools, making that all important difference for students.
My hands will probably always be full of worries and harried tasks to be done. I will never achieve fortune or fame with this career path but I will rest peacefully at night knowing that my job is a most valuable one, and that, I believe, was my hunch at the beginning of the course but now has morphed into a solidly engrained truth that I proudly call my own.

Thank you, Mary Anderson!

Reflections on Modules 3 and 4

From the moment I announced to the world that I was going to make a career change and become a media specialist, I became the object of a rich plethora of librarian jokes that I had no idea existed! Even my “sweet” children poked fun at me with lopsided grins. It was evident that they all were oblivious as to what role the media specialist should play today in this information society. And here I wrote “should” because I could clearly see that –at least in my surroundings- the media specialist most often does not always partake of his/her (why do we all seem to be female?) responsibility. The most refreshing splash of fresh energy came to me when I saw the quote by the anonymous university professor that you could have any media program that you want to have at the beginning of module three. It was within me to make a difference and to show all those good-humored jesters the pivotal importance that the library should have in our school, in our community and beyond! Then I began to read...good gracious! There were so many ideas about leading change that ranged from interior decorating (Simply Beautiful) to practicing ESP about principals’ information needs and meeting them before required (Increasing Your Influence by Addressing Self-Interest) to reaching out to parents and converting them into our patrons (Outreach to Parents and Community) to dozens of other ideas that sounded equally useful and equally time consuming, that I felt overwhelmed. Weighed down. Yes, it is well documented that if I assumed a role of leadership and change, turned around our stagnant library and evolved it to what it should be, the media center would make a real positive difference for our students. Others have done it before as some of the articles I read commented, but where will I find the time to orchestrate this change? With so many plentiful ideas, one as precious as the other, how could I prioritize them? The answer of course was included in the proposition: leadership. I would have to lead and to be able to “motivate people to achieve a common goal” that included first of all, having a vision which would entail having a mission, goals and a structured plan. This draft of the plan that emerged out of module three, is probably the most precious by-product of this course up to now. Suddenly all of the ideas needed to get prioritized, a few were postponed in time, others eliminated, but the end result was a plan that took the mishmash that my brain had made of the readings and blessedly structured everything into a coherent timeline. Now it looks as if I could accomplish something and I have a tangible reason to schedule a meeting with the directors and principals, an opportunity to sell the media center as a uniquely valuable entity of school learning. Hopefully, this plan will not be cut down too much by the directors and principals because I want a lot of amateur comedians to have to start looking for fresh material.

Module 4 was my pet module, obviously. I think that to have entered this field with my background is a huge advantage because I am not subject to the services the IT department could provide having been –in the most part- the IT department in the past. I would be immensely interested in knowing what percentage of coursework leading to a media specialist degree now has to do with technology in prestigious college and universities, because it seems to be such a core factor.

I think I was surprised that the most commented problem by my fellow students during this module had to do with blocking issues. (I already blogged about the evil aura that the IT people seem to have in the eyes of media specialists and stated my regret at the things that I personally could have done in the past to generate frustration.) I could conjure up reasons for imposing strict control in the elementary but I cannot really fathom why secondary students would not have access to emails, blogs, wikis, and other tools that have the potential to be used so productively in an academic setting. You should not restrict but educate and let the students have the consequences if they use these resources irresponsibly. I think monitoring is better than blocking (but then again, maybe schools have privacy laws that make monitoring not legal in the States).

“Online presence” was most certainly the phrase that stuck me to the core and that personally impelled me to get busy designing the media center’s brand new web page: “Burton B. Fox Library…Evolving into a 21st Century Information Media Center” with blazing letters and flash animation. Probably this was my most fun work up until now and I will be looking forward to actually see it in action. I hope the principal contributors of this site will be the students –through the use of the electronic forums and wikis- and that it will open up the doors of the library to our KCP community 24/7. This was the main by-product of this module and I am grateful for that.

At the end of the day I revisit the reasons that I had initially stated when asked why I chose a career as a media specialist. I remember having said I loved information science and I still agree to that in part. But now, after four modules, I feel that that will only be a tiny fraction of why I will I will stay in love with this career.

It seems I was one of the bad guys...

Yep. I just read through the different scenarios for our Module 4, Activity 2 excerise and found that quite a few of them refer to the narrow mindedness of the tech department! This gives me a lot to sit down and digest. Now looking back to my past, were all those security measures that we took and all that computer swapping that we did really that annoying? I realize now that it probably was to many teachers. In part, as I could discern from the scenarios that give the perspective of the end user, these situations escalated to such negative dimensions because the tech department did not inform the reasons why and maybe the users did not complain enough. The end result was frustration. Now that I am going to migrate to the side of the "good guys" I hope to strive for better communication lines between the tech department and the rest of us!
Maybe my media center position will bring me closer to the educators and students and that will facilitate avoiding scenarios like the ones I just read.

Portfolio Reflections

Pleading to change the perceptions that others have on what libraries are and what role they should play. It sounds like a worthy project to undertake! I am excited to roll my sleeves up and start to produce a webpage targeted toward my fellow neighbors that would let them in on how important and strategic libraries should be in this digital age. I am sure it will assist me in organizing my thoughts more coherently and in establishing a plan for the real defense that I will have to take on in August before the Boards! Even my sons kid me about having switched to becoming a librarian. Being so engrossed in technology as they are, they still do not seem to get that what I did as a Technology Coordinator concerning the instructional objectives are not different with what I will be doing as a librarian. I knwo they will be my first and best critics.

The goal to design a page that has as an audience the people of my city makes me square my shoulders as I see how this project might evolve into something of social significance. The city has made efforts to update its departmental library but I believe the focus has only been on the architectural aspects of the buliding and its interior design. This is the sole library of thousands of children who go to public schools and it deserves to evolve into a 21st century information media center! Perhaps I could personally volunteer some of my time and contribute to this cause with what I am learning now.

Horizons continously expand.

I just finished reading The World is Flat. It is a thoroughly interesting book. It was refreshing to know that a bit more than halfway through the book, the author acknowledges that the world is certainly not flat. It is just flattening. A completely flat world would not have developing nations with the levels of poverty, inequality, and suffering that now exist. My inability to download this book to my Kindle because of geographical circumstance was just a pale, trivial example of inequality.

This book emphasized the need to constantly evolve. To always offer more than just the basic vanilla flavor. As a soon to be media specialist I infer that in our case this could mean -borrowing on the author's metaphor- our vanilla is taking care of our printed collection and promoting literacy, the chocolate sauce could be all we do that is related to developing 21st century information and technology skills in our students and the cherry on the top is our ability to apply exciting web 2.0 and 3.0 online services through Library 2.0 websites and digital libraries.

Stimulating.

Here we are, in the midst of completing our initial introductory phase of our Innovations for Media Specialists course. I am the only participant that is not a media specialist yet. No experience; just here because of the result of acting out on a well-cultivated impulse to spend the last phase of my professional career in a library.
My first impression as I got started is the fact that even though I am tech-savvy and I know the theoretical aspects of information theory and informatics; I know nothing about media centers. As I perused through the first of the suggested readings, self-doubt certainly became prevalent. What have I gotten myself into? But then again so many different resources were pointing me in a direction I am so well aware of. Information is everywhere. The different means for searching for it are evolving. (How many times had I shared Shift Happens with our teachers at school?)The Pipeline articles by Abram reaffirmed the numerous workshops and articles I had written for our staff as I tried to convince them that the collaborative prowess of Web 2.o tools should be harnessed and used in education. But they also introduced me to a cleaner definition of Web 3.0 and suddenly my head started to spin as I began to form conjectures on what that would mean for our classrooms. In my youth I took courses in Artificial Intelligence and now Web 3.0 might just start incorporating many of those principles of natural language processing and knowledge bases into organizing information and into personalization. Mobile is something schools cannot ignore. (Why so many restrictions on the use of iphones and blackberries?) Semantic webs and personalization will direct students into the right or wrong directions more readily. What if students cannot convey to their machines the right way they should search? Good grief! A budding disaster that would probably take eons of time -from a computer's perspective- to correct if personalization really takes hold! Now more than ever it is imperative for us to develop information skills! Web 3.0 might make things easier but it also has that potential to make things much worse if not used "correctly." But from a tech point of view, I still believe that the evolution and maturation of 3.0 is farther away than the hype pretends it to be. Nevertheless as educators we should be prepared.
One of the participants blatantly pointed out how limited we are in trying to keep up with technolgy. Sister, we cannot keep up with it. Not individually. Maybe collectively as this course has proven. I was introduced to at least a dozen more search engines that I had never heard about as I followed some of the readings that in turn led me to go to other cited articles. Question: What search engines should we sponsor at a given time? Has anyone written any guidelines as to evaluating the validity of search engines for K-12 schools? Maybe that is something media specialists have to include within their job description.
Of course the allotment of responsibility for producing digitally competent students is probably greater on the shoulders of the media specialist than elsewhere. A great revelation for me. I seemed to have gotten that point when I read the AALA standards. Now I have to square my shoulders as I try to convey this to the administration. Again I ponder on why I gave into that guarded impulse to work in a library. Perhaps it was because I saw that the library at my school was not being used to its potential and the administration visibly manifested no clue as to how it could really grow into a hub of learning. I have had so much support from them on my technology plans that I am sure they will readily support efforts in this direction. Now with standards in hand, there is a "higher authority" backing me up in what I will have to present at the beginning of the school year. I had the hunch but blessed be the standards and guidelines that "prove" things!
As a non-American I have interestingly viewed from the sidelines the discussion on NCLB and the media specialist cut-down crisis. Those are not realities in private schools here in Colombia and are sadly non-issues in our public schools that rarely have libraries. But the principles used in defending our profession teach invaluable lessons. Media specialists have to be up-to-date, ready for service, nurturing their "customers" and taking actions that clearly state how important they are to developing literacy and 21st century skills. We could never let our guard down!
The experience I had when trying to purchase "The World is Flat" tickled me! No sir, the world is still not totally flat. If you live in Latin America an e-reader such as the Kindle diminishes in its power because of copyright rules. Why? No clue -although I sheepishly confess that I should know this on account of becoming a media specialist. Anyway, to not be able to purchase the book because of my geographical situation blunted the sharp edge and dramatic proclamations the book makes. Not living in America or Europe does give me some a different perspective on knowledge/information acquisition. Here another anecdote:

My parents knew the restrictions that their children would have if they were brought up in Barranquilla, so they decided, when I was a few months old and my brother barely three, to pack up and move temporarily to New York City. They had no family or friends there, just a wish to expose us to the world in our childhood years. The plan was to return once we became adolescents and live the rest of their lives in Colombia. So we went. In fourth grade I was given a social studies assignment on Antonio Pigafetta. We were on a unit on explorers and conquistadores and each one of us had to write a report, make a poster board and give an oral presentation on a famous historical character. When I received the paper -after having seen Christopher Columbus being given to my seat companion called Chris- and the teacher pronounced the name, I looked at her in disbelief and asked, "Antonio Piga-WHO?" Well, the teacher looked at me uncomfortably and I just sat down. My search began. I went to the school library and Mrs. Cartwright, my hero, looked at me and said, "Antonio Piga-WHO?" No luck there, nor in the local branch library, so my parents had to take me to the adult section of the New York City Public Library. With the help of a team of about four librarians I finally was able to get a paragraph on my man. I learned he was the guy who wrote the diary of Magellan's trip around the world and not much more. So with a lot of imagination -no paintings of him- I researched Magellan's trip and extrapolated. Move two decades forward. I was working in the Information Center of the Universidad del Norte and testing for the first time Gopher on the Internet. I was requested to search for something so I resurrected my pet peeve and wrote Antonio Pigafetta. (Colleagues crowded around me said, "Antonio Piga-QUIEN?") I got more than 100 hits and boy, did I ever smile. When I moved back to Barranquilla, I personally knew how disconnected I had become from the world, now this simple exercise with the Internet made me sleep better at night because I knew that most of my potential queries could be met! My world got flatter! (By the way, I still hold this pet peeve so every once and again I check out Antonio Pigafetta...the last count gave me more than 150,000 references and yes, I have read his diary, taken a virtual tour of his home and seen documentaries on his somewhat exaggerated allegations).
I have used this anecdote in the past to illustrate to teachers how the set of skills that students should develop has metamorphed over the years. I usually turn it into a brainstorming section where everyone lists the skills that a ten-year old is faced with today given the same assignment. Ummm....it seems I have been partially playing the role of a media specialist without knowing it all along!
Let's see what other discoveries I could make as we advance along this course!