Alice in InfoLand

Check out All Together Now: Learning 2.0, led by Michael Stephens and sponsored by SLJ. It’s an opportunity to work with SLs all over the world, as we — jointly — explore 12 “Read/Write” web tools and figure out how to use them with(in) our library communities.
I’m signing up: I may be retired, but I’m never too old to learn…and play with some new toys!

Hmmmm… a current Job Description for a K-12 School Librarian, as imaged by *http://www.wordle.net*
Do you agree or disagree with the proportions? Why?
What isn’t there that should be included?

[school+librarian]
[school+library]

at last, a mathematical formula to help you figure out when the NEXT Leap Year will be:

(from the Mental Floss blog: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/11693 )

aka How to cook a  20 lb. bird in 2 and a half hours
 Although this recipe sounds unlikely, trust me.  I’ve been using it for over 20 years, with success EVERY time.   The turkey comes out perfectly done — both white meat and dark meat juicy and tender — with plenty of flavorful juices/broth for making gravy and stuffing.
Ingredients:
15-20 lb. UNSTUFFED, COMPLETELY THAWED turkey
2 cups (16 oz) water or broth
Optional:     1 raw onion or 1 raw apple
assorted herbs and spices
Large, heavy-duty roasting pan (if using disposable foil pan, put it on a cookie sheet or baking pan for stability)
Aluminum foil
Directions:
PREHEAT oven to 450 degrees.
Put UNSTUFFED, COMPLETELY THAWED turkey into deep roasting pan.
        note:     if turkey is 20-25 lbs., just add 15 minutes to last hour.
                     if turkey is 10-15 lbs., subtract 15 minutes from last hour.
Optional: put 1 raw onion or apple into the bird’s cavity: it adds flavor, and reminds you to make sure that you already removed the turkey innards!
Pour 16 oz. water or broth into bottom of pan.
Cover turkey with aluminum foil (Tented, not sealed).
Put turkey into hot oven, set timer for 90 minutes, and walk away.
(Do NOT keep opening oven to look; that bird isn’t going anywhere.)
When timer rings, after 90 minutes, take foil tent off turkey.
Lower heat to 400 degrees, set timer for one hour, and walk away.
(Get stuffing ready ***, prepare other side dishes, set table, etc.)
When timer rings again, take turkey out of oven and remove from pan to rest on cutting board (gathering juices/thoughts) for 15-20 minutes before carving.
Use turkey juices in pan to make gravy.
 
*** I prepare stuffing in separate pan.
When turkey is done cooking, I use some of the turkey “juice” to moisten the gravy, then cook the stuffing in the oven while the turkey is resting and then being carved.
The stuffing is perfectly cooked by the time the turkey is carved and ready for serving.
 
 Enjoy!
 

This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively.

• with prospective library students, to give a very brief history of the changes in librarian responsibilities,
• with classroom teachers, to show why students need to develop effective information-consumption skills,
• with school administrators and BoE members, to explain why librarians — as information mavens — are still/always needed,
• with… anyone who thinks that kids already know everything about how to ‘find stuff on the interweb.”

Turn strangers into friends.
Turn friends into customers.
And then… do the most important job:
Turn your customers into salespeople.”
—Seth Godin. “Flipping the Funnel” in Small Is the New Big, 2006.
(found via Marylaine Block’s http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib306.html )

IOW: you need to support them before they’ll support you.

*Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash* — a news report from The Onion.
(found via The Committed Sardine)

I’m heading south tomorron morning to the ALA conference in Washington DC, for four action-packed days of learning, laughter with friends, and l o o o o o o t s of lengthy exhibit aisles, hotel lobbies and convention center corridors filled with more-than-you-could-ever-imagine ideas and possibilities for library-land. I’ve got my schedule of programs (more than one in each time-slot) to go to, vendors to see, and an extra bag for swag to send home.
Then on Monday I head even further south to the NECC conference in Atlanta, for two more days of learning and looking at new tools and toys in the ed-tech world. There will definitely be overlaps — in fact, I’m somehow on a panel at NECC (!!), talking about the 21st Century School Information Center, along with (much wiser) panelists David Warlick, Will Richardson, Larry Johnson, Joyce Valenza, Doug Johnson, Lisa Perez, and Brian Kenney.
(Unlike Doug Johnson, though, I’ve gotten NO paperspam from NECC exhibitors. I guess they don’t know me… yet.)

If you’re at either conference and run into me (literally OR figuratively), please say hello!

I haven’t posted here in a while because I’ve been dealing with my 93-yo mother’s increasing frailty.  She’s been living in an apartment in a  “lifecare community” for the past few years, but in March we realized that she could no longer live independently.  Her mind was ‘dis-integrating’ (her own apt word) more rapidly, causing not just memory loss, but confusion and even occasional danger to herself.  After much to-do and travail, she’s now in what’s called “residential health care” in the same community, where she is much safer and well-supervised.

In the process, however, we had to pack up her apartment and dispose of whatever wouldn’t fit in the new room.  Here are some lessons I learned from that experience, and plan to apply to my own home:

1. Do not save/stockpile grocery bags and/or plastic containers. They multiply when you are not looking.
2. Label ALL photos, with names, dates, and locations.
3. Weed your closets every year. If you haven’t worn it in a year, get rid of it.
4. Three sets of sheets for each bed is plenty: one in use, one in the laundry, one in the closet.
5. Sample sizes of shampoo, etc., are meant to be used, not hoarded.
6. If it’s broken, get it fixed or throw it out. It won’t self-heal with time.
7. Do not expect charitable organizations to be charitable to you.

 A word to the wise (and weary): stop stockpiling!  You’ll probably never use all that stuff, and it only means more for your kids to have to throw out later on.

as per the 5/18/07 article by Mat Homan on Wired: *Hijacked Disney Characters Explain Copyright: “Disney lawyers’ heads must be spinning over this one. A movie posted on Stanford University’s site called “A Fair(y) Use Tale*” mashes up all your Disney favorites to humorously and effectively explain copyright law. The ten minute movie, directed by Eric Faden, came out of Stanford University’s Fair Use Project Documentary Film Program. Stanford’s Fair Use Project—to which Stanford Law professor, Copyright guru, Creative Commons advocate and Wired writer Lawrence Lessig contributes—was founded last year to “support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of fair use in order to enhance creative freedom.” And, well, the movie is damn sure creative, and certainly seems to take the boundaries of fair use about as far as they can go.”
FYI: Eric Faden teaches Film Studies at Bucknell University.This 10 minute video can be viewed online at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society or YouTube , and is also available on DVD from The Media Education Foundation

Ironically, the video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License, which must be driving the Disney lawyers nuts, since the Walt Disney Company is extremely protective (to the point of ridiculousness) about allowing anyone (like, say, a library) to use any of their images anywhere (on a program flyer or mural, perhaps) without prior permission and payment. (BTDT, can you tell?)

Enjoy and share: Bembo’s Zoo — “an abecedary of animals made entirely from Bembo letterforms and punctuation marks — nothing else” — created by deVicq de Cumptich.

(found via Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project)

The cover story of the March issue of American Libraries was “Mattering in the blogosphere; observations from the well-connected.”  Unfortunately, although school librarians constitute one of the largest divisions of ALA, the association’s official journal treated us like … chopped liver.
After a barrage of angry letters-to-the-editor, that omission is being rectified with a follow-up article about school librarians who blog.  FWIW, here are my responses to the questions from the AL editors:

What differentiates blogging for library media specialists from writing for the generalist biblioblogs?
There are three general kinds of biblioblogs:

1. Practical: links to useful info and reviews of new resources
2. Philosophical: essays exploring controversial issues and new information technologies
3. Point-of-view: reports of events and happenings in a local library

Examples of those different blog-genres can be found across the biblioblogosphere.
 
School librarians, however, work under very different conditions than public, academic, or corporate librarians.  School librarians are considered educators first, librarians second, and their customer base is a primarlly captive (even occasionally hostage) population in a space that is often co-opted (often on very short notice) for non-library purposes.  
Given those constraints, it’s important to recognize the difference between:

• school librarY blogs, which usually function as a venue for practical and local info, and
• school librarIAN blogs, which are often more philosophical discussions about information literacy and curriculum issues, educational policies and procedures, technology and collection management concerns in the face of limited funding and understanding by administrators, and school politics.

For links to an assortment of school library/librarian blogs, see
http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links/index.php?title=School_libraries
And
http://teacherlibrarianwiki.pbwiki.com/Links%20to%20our%20blogs
 
What are your professional objectives for blogging?
To keep myself current, and to share ideas and issues that tickle my professional and/or personal fancies.
 
How much time do you devote to blogging?

• Keeping up with a wide variety of other professional and special interest blogs via Google Reader: 2 hours per day.
• Managing the AASL blog: 1-2 hours per week
• Maintaining the aliceinfo blog:  varies greatly, but probably averages 3-5 hours per week, depending on what’s happening in my personal life and/or the profession and/or society in general.
  

How does having a professional blog impact your work with students?
N/A, since I’m retired from building-level work.  Now my ‘students’ are adults taking grad courses to prepare for a career in school librarianship, and one of their assignments is to explore the edu/biblioblogosphere for current information and insights.
 
What are the pitfalls for a school librarian to be writing a blog?
Many school librarians can’t even access (much less read) blogs at work, because anything with the word “blog” has been blocked by their district’s filters, so writing a school-based blog may require dealing with all kinds of technological hassles.  School bloggers need to understand that community members may be reading their blog, and thus be circumspect about what they post.
 
How does blogging affect your interaction with nonlibrarian colleagues?
My personal blog reflects my somewhat cynical take on life in general, not just libraries.  It’s just another publication format for sharing my values and reflections of the world around us.
 
What has been the response of your faculty and/or administration to your blog?
N/A:  I’m a free agent these days.  I can — and do — say anything I want.
 
What is the greatest benefit to blogging about school libraries?
Because so many school librarians are running one-person operations, librarY blogs are a fast and flexible way to maintain a virtual presence for your facility.  LibrarIAN blogging combats isolation, offering a way to share ideas and issues with like-minded colleagues without geographic or time constraints.
 
How do you see the evolution of blogging (i.e., the growth of online video) as intersecting with the job of school media professionals?
The Read/Write web is drastically changing the way our world functions.  School librarians are responsible for teaching students how to be effective information consumers and producers. We need to know how to use these new formats and technologies so that we can continue to be effective and vital elements in the educational infrastructure.

Andy Carvin is initiating a Stop Cyberbullying Day this Friday, March 30, 2007, on his PBS Blog in reaction to the terrorization/bullying that has been done to Kathy Sierra. Kathy’s Creating Passionate Users blog explores and explains “how the brain works and how to exploit it for better learning and memory… and how to recognize when someone else (including one of us) is applying brain-based techniques to get you to do something.” Her posts are frequently praised and quoted across a wide variety of industries and interests: marketing, technology, education, libraryland, etc.

In school-library-land we know how important it is to alert students, parents, teachers, and administrators to the realities of the Read/Write Web. We advocate for social responsibility and fight against censorship. We want — nay, need — our future citizens to know how to conduct themselves appropriately and ethically at all times, whether face to face or online.

Bullying and social cruelty is hateful behavior, no matter what the format or the age of the instigators. As educators, it is imperative that we do whatever we can to make sure that it does not happen to anyone, child OR adult.

http://cyberbully.org and Nancy Willard’s Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use provide excellent resources for you to use and share with your students and colleagues, while Vicki Davis suggests several ways for educators to take action on her Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

What will YOU do to prevent cyberbullying in your community?

(cross-posted on LM_Net, and on the AASL blog)
cyberbullying, AndyCarvin KathySierra socialresponsibility cyber-ethics internet_safety

I just got a request for a “short bio — under 50 words” from one of my consulting connections.
He said that he already had the long version of my bio, but would rather I did the editing, to make sure that it included whatever I considered important. So I sent him this:
“Alice Yucht is a short woman with a big mouth. Deal with it.”

Too succinct?

FWIW, how would you describe me? Use this Johari Window for ‘mapping personality awareness”: http://kevan.org/johari?name=aliceinfo. I’ll analyze the results and report on the putative accuracy of my public persona!

Note: want to know more about the Johari Window Model for self-awareness?
Read all about it at http://www.businessballs.com/johariwindowmodel.htm
Now THAT’s an interesting domain name!

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or dehumanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist, philosopher and scientist.

Lizanell Boman asked me “Was this not Hiam Ginott? It is only one word off from his quite often quoted version…” so I did some digging.
Haim G. Ginott (1922-1973) American teacher, child psychologist and psychotherapist. In Teacher and child: A book for parents and teachers, (Collier, 1995), Ginott wrote: ““I’ve come to the frightening conclusioin that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.”

Goethe is an icon of Western civilization and culture.
Methinks Ginott should have credited the original author of those phrases.