Tell-tale signs that the school year is coming to a close are everywhere. Seniors are gone, AP exams are in progress, invitations for retirement receptions and faculty/staff appreciation lunches are out. Kids are punchy. So are the adults.
Summer is just around the corner, though, and it’s going to be awesome. There’s lots of making and doing on the agenda. There’s the Constructing Modern Knowledge conference in July. I’m going to revisit MIT’s Learning Creative Learning MOOC. There’s possibly a new roof in my future. Some fascia, flashing, and gutters need reworking too. But most importantly, there’s DS106.
Beat the heat in the DS106 Zone
I found a short clip from “The Midnight Sun” on Netflix. I downloaded the video with Clip Converter and then used MPEG Streamclip to extract the .png files. I’ve used Gimp in the past, and I feel somewhat comfortable with that for animated GIFs. I was getting ready to build my animated GIF in Gimp when I had the idea to change the 110 degrees to 106. I wasn’t quite sure how to do that, so I ended up recruiting one of the art teachers at school for guidance. I switched over to PhotoShop knowing that he was a master of that software. There was a lot of fumbling and trial and error on my part, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
So folks…. these unseasonably cool temperatures aren’t going to last for long. When the heat and humidity is too much to bear, it’s time to find a cool, dark space, and make art, dammit!
The more I think about it, the more I should’ve added this clip from Shawshank Redemption.
Maybe it’s brain damage from the 18 months of sleep deprivation I suffered because my son was a poor sleeper for… well… 18 months. Maybe it’s a result of parenting a full-speed-ahead three-year-old boy. Maybe I’m just small-minded. Whatever the case may be, that scene from Shawshank Redemption runs through my head pretty often while I do my work.
I’m a librarian (in case you’re new here). More specifically, I’m a librarian in an independent school. I find that on a daily basis I experience some kind of work-related existential crisis.
Sometimes the existential crisis is triggered by a conversation that goes something like this:
Student: “I have to write my Honors English paper. I have two paragraphs written. I don’t know what I’m going to write for my third paragraph. I need another source.”
Me: “When is your paper due?”
Student: “Today.”
Me: “Yikes. What are your sources?”
Student: “The book and some education web site.”
Me: [thinking to myself, 'WTF?'] “Have you looked at any of the subscription databases?”
Student: “Like JSTOR? No.”
Picard face palm
My frustration doesn’t lie with this student who has waited until the last minute to write this paper (turns out that it was the rough draft that was due today). My frustration lies in the existence of the research paper. In this case it seems so…. pointless. The student isn’t invested in the topic. The student knows how to game the research paper assignment. An article from The Huffington Post is accepted as a legitimate source. Why go through the hassle of searching a subscription database when you can just throw a couple of words in a Google search and come up with 1000-word McArticle?
I don’t know how I feel about it. One one hand, using HuffPo or The Guardian probably best represents how the average person satiates his/her curiosity in something they’re only mildly interested in once he/she leaves school. Maybe it’s authentic–representative of how we operate when we’re not being graded.
On the other hand, I’m appalled.
I think my main source of friction lies in the traditional research paper. It seems so meaningless. I say this as someone who liked writing research papers in both high school and college. Admittedly all of my selected topics were pedestrian: “The Role of Women in ____” or “How the City is Portrayed in ____.”
My god I could crank those papers out.
It wasn’t the exploration of the literature that I loved. It was the hunt for information. Following the breadcrumbs.
I guess that’s why I do what I do now.
If I can’t find, the article “Prevention of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury in Athletes: a Review” in the school’s subscription databases, where can I get it? How kind is the open web for a request like that?*
Being a librarian is a lot like being a private investigator. Or it’s like being “Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding” from TheShawshank Redemption.
We’ve been known to locate things from time to time. And I’m not just talking about books or academic articles. Librarians are the mother effing Power of Pull. Here’s a broad assumption: if a person decides to go to library school, odds are that person had trouble committing to just one subject area.
OK. The point…. I think….
Librarians are about matchmaking.
Flickr photo by Brandon Christopher Warren (cc license)
Librarians are about putting the person with the right piece of information–the right thing–at just the right time. Sometimes that information/thing is a book. Sometimes it’s an article. Sometimes it’s just showing a student with a little bit of downtime how the Makerbot or a Makey Makey works and watching them play for a little bit.
It’s always about inspiration. Or at least it should be. There is nothing more uninspired than a student jumping through hoops to complete the tired, meaningless research paper. I think it’s time to offer more options.
I’m having a hard time making a point.
Here’s what I’m trying to say:
While I believe in the traditional roles of the librarian–embedding information literacy and information seeking within the curriculum (just to name a few)–I think students are better served when teachers and librarians collaborate to tap into the resources that engage the student.
As Erin White so eloquently tweets, the librarian is uniquely positioned to match people with information, technology, and other people. The librarian can bridge disciplines.
@indieschoollib Library/ian as matchmaker. Uniquely/centrally positioned to match ppl w/ info, tech AND other ppl. Bridging disciplines.
If a student is writing about science in Cat’s Cradle, maybe it would be more interesting to let that student contact local scientists and technologists and find out their opinions on science for science’s sake or science with purpose and then compile those interviews into an edited documentary or audio essay.
At the end of the day, this is what I want for the students I work with and my son who will one day be going to school somewhere: (1) an environment that encourages the exploration of passions/rabbit holes/questions (2) an environment that allows for choice (3) an environment that provides time, a place for solitude, and a place for collaboration (4) an environment that that understands and values the significance of stocked knowledge, information flows, and networks and one’s ability to navigate and pull from those very different pools at just the right time.
*Turns out, not very. Though I did eventually find the article. Because I am awesome.
This was from Sunday’s episode, “This Sorrowful Life.“ It’s a favorite scene. Mainly because someone was clever enough to choose Motörhead as the soundtrack.
It was a good week. A positive way to ease back into the routine after a leisurely spring break.
The DIY/Maker kids wrapped up their independent projects and presented their process/projects this week. The projects included a puppet show, a matchbox pinhole camera, a board game, a couple of video projects combining spring break footage with music, baskets made from found cardboard and yarn, and a photography project that involved taking photos of students’ and creating collages from those portraits like this image by this Mike Marrero (I think).
pinhole came
We spent some time talking about process versus product/outcome, a point of conversation inspired by Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.
I asked if Mau’s statement was true. Is process really more important than outcome? The opinions were mixed, and to be honest I’m really undecided. No, maybe it’s less about being undecided and more about responding to the question with, “It depends.”
In my efforts to learn Scratch, something I’ve been doing as part of MIT’s Learning Creative Learning MOOC, process matters a lot. I’ve been paying close attention to what works for me as a learner, especially as a learner of something completely new. What causes friction? The process has been insightful and has maybe provided some “data” I can use the next time I take on something new. However, the more I roll it over in my head, the more I think that reflecting on the process IS the product or desired outcome. The point isn’t to necessarily master Scratch, but to consider how I learn and what it means to be a student and/or self-directed learner.
But here’s the thing… if someone is paying me to create a product or get something done, a bunch of navel gazing and half-baked blogging about “process” isn’t going to make many people happy.
It’s the process where we learn from mistakes and where we learn what works well. It’s the process that teaches us how to create that awesome product. It’s the process that toughens the mental and physical resolve to get after it… to get things done.
Or maybe that’s all hippie BS.
The class consensus was that it was indeed the product/outcome that was most important. However, one student–a puppeteer–boldly admitted that he could’ve cared less about the final product. It was the process–the making of the puppet show–that was the most fun… the place where the memories were made.
Truth. The process lends itself to memory making. Maybe those memories involve laughs with friends, but those memories are also, “X works for me.” and “I suck at Y.” All useful insights to have when moving on to the next product or outcome.
I have a thing for shoes. But it’s not what you might think.
It’s easy to like shoes… to want shoes… to find shoes… if you’re a size 7 (women’s). If you happen to wear a 10 1/2 (women’s) resign yourself. You’ll never find anything good. 10s are too small. 11s are too big.
Eight years ago I found a pair of pink Chucks on the sale rack at DSW. Today we part ways. My new black Chucks have arrived.
black and pink chucks
These pink Chucks and I have walked a lot of miles together.
Here I am in 2009 three-months pregnant (and tired) in San Francisco in my pink shoes:
pink Chucks in San Francisco
You know what’s not good for A LOT of walking? Like MILES of walking (because you don’t know how to use public transportation)? Chuck Taylors. I finally figured out how to read bus routes on this trip (btw).
I don’t think I’ve felt this sad about changing out shoes since I replaced my Doc Martens, which became unserviceable my senior year of college. I bought those Docs my sophomore year of high school. Those Docs and I went a lot of places together: fields, rivers, the Leggett’s parking lot in Farmville–all the places a rural kid hangs out in high school.
We even went to senior prom together.
Everything goes with a pair of Doc Martens. Everything goes with a pair of black Chucks too as demonstrated on my wedding day, which took place in the backyard of my unpainted house.
Wedding day
As much as I hate to say good-bye to my pink All-Stars, I know that dressing for work just got a little easier.
The spring play this year is The Crucible. It just so happens that two sections of English 10 are studying the play. Rather than just writing your traditional research paper, the students in those two classes researched the play and the history and then interviewed the acting class. The actors discussed their interpretations of the characters. A few scenes were performed.
In a discussion on Puritan communities, one of the teachers said:
Who would choose a Puritan life? It’s like people living in Alaska. Has anybody been to Alaska? I spent a summer there, and I loved it, but it’s like not dark except for two hours a day during the summer, and it’s not light except for three or four hours a day during the winter. Why would you choose to live there? It’s so oppressive. It’s so bizarre. And the people I met there I think they’re all running from something. They’re running from the law or they’re running from their families. It’s like a colony of exiles. It’s an amazing place, but I don’t know why you would live there.
Never having been to Alaska, I immediately thought about two things: (1) Into the Wild and (2) T.C. Boyle’s Drop City, a novel my sister handed me back in 2004, when I befriended two hippie brothers who lived on a farm near Yogaville in Buckingham County. By farm, I mean this and a garden:
Quaint.
Drop City, like 30 or 40 other books that I own, has been sitting in a box in my living room for the past three months.
Books for the used book store
My intent was to take these books to Chop Suey, a local used book store. That hasn’t happened yet.
I thought about passing Drop City on to the teacher who mentioned the bits about Alaska, but I’m having a hard time letting the book go. Apparently books, like tattoos, are markers for watershed moments in my life. Despite my desire to practice non-attachment, especially when it comes to physical artifacts like books, CDs, DVDs, etc., I cannot give Drop City away.
If you’re not familiar with the book, it is a tale of a group of hippies who flee their commune in California for Alaska’s wilderness. Chaos ensues.
My sister suggested that I read it, because many of the stories I told her about the brothers and their “farm” reeked of the naïveté one would expect from two affluent, Connecticut boys (they were actually in their mid and late 30s) deciding to settle in rural Virginia. One brother was a gentle, certified yoga teacher, who practiced and taught yoga and a did variety of odd jobs to supplement whatever trust fund that paid for daily expenses and trips to Costa Rica. The other was an entitled, emotional hot mess looking for a life without hassle.
Both brothers were distractions from home–20 minutes away in Cumberland, the next county over–where my mom was fighting a fucking good fight against ovarian cancer.
The hippie brothers made for a good anthropological study and good stories. They had a solar shower and an outhouse for god’s sake.
It was 2004.
While Buckingham and Cumberland counties are no Alaska, they are still remote. Isolated. I think Yogaville is very much a place people go when they want to hide. Unfortunately there’s no hiding from one’s demons in such a quiet place.
So here’s this book. Drop City. It reminds me of being an inadequate daughter. It reminds me of being lonely. It reminds me to be thankful for what I have and that every day with my husband and son count. It reminds me that I don’t have to fill the quiet with noise and that sometimes you really do need to just sit down and have a cup of coffee with the demons in order to sort things out.
I watched Joi Ito’s Keynote address to the OER meeting a few days ago
I made many notes on things that resonated with me. One thing Ito said that I found especially profound was, “focus diminishes serendipity.” I’m partial to this philosophy, because I feel like I can now justify the fact that I’m easily distracted with “Well, if the director of the MIT Media Lab lacks focus then it’s just fine for me to investigate this new shiny thing over here.”
An acquaintance of mine once described herself as “mildly interested” in just about everything. That’s very much my problem. I think there are common threads in being mildly interested in everything, the philosophy behind the power of pull, and the nature of librarianship. I’m going to think more on that though.
I’d like to say that my distractability just keeps the doors open for the adjacent possible. I think that’s partly the case. But on the other hand, being easily distracted makes it very hard to get things accomplished or dive deep into something. I’ve had an Arduino kit on my desk for about 6 months now. Have I opened the box? Nope.
Maybe the difference between being the director of the MIT Media Lab and me is that Ito doesn’t have to actually do a project. He really just needs to put the right people together. Connect the right resources for the person or people with the questions.
Or maybe he doesn’t have a three-year-old who happens to be more fun and cooler than Arduino.
I like to imagine what I could get done with three of four (or more) hours of silence and solitude. I’m pretty sure that the stillness would lend itself to some unprecedented concentration and productivity on my part.
Wednesday morning was a rare morning. There were no panicked requests in the email inbox. The before-school flurry of activity from Minecrafters was dampened by whatever virus is currently making its way through the middle school. It was quiet in the library trailers. Still. There was just me and two seniors who sat at a table together, each with an earbud in one ear, laptops out. Their work was interrupted periodically by questions or comments for each other and sometimes for me.
O: “Ms. Barker, have you heard of the ‘Harlem Shake?’”
Me: “Only through my Twitter stream.”
O proceeds to introduce me to the “Harlem Shake” meme through a series of videos. She and T then explain that the Harlem Shake is on its way out. They show me a series of “Harlem Shake” backlash videos.
T: “Ms. Barker, why did you become a librarian?”
Me: “Well, I used to hang out in the library a lot during high school….”
T & O look at each other and start laughing. “You are both doomed,” I say.
O then excitedly tells me about MIT and the legendary prank culture that exists at the school. She read about it, she says. I tell her about Aaron Swartz.
Our exchanges took maybe all of 10 or 15 minutes, but it was probably my favorite school moment in almost 10 years of school moments.
I’m in MIT’s Learning Creative Learning MOOC, and I think it’s going to be a MOOC with which I stick. Much like DS106, LCL promises to be fun and engaging with philosophies to ponder months after it ends.
One of the first reading assignments is to read the foreward, “The Gears of My Childhood” from Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms. From what I hear, reading just the foreward of Mindstorms isn’t enough. It’s a book I plan to continue with over the next few weeks. There was a short writing assignment with the reading. It goes something like this:
Read Seymour Papert’s essay on the “Gears of My Childhood” and write about an object from your childhood that interested and influenced you (and share with your group).
I would like to sit here and tell you that the Apple IIe that my parents brought home one evening was the most profound object to enter our house. I’d like to say that I learned how computers really worked, that I learned how to program in elementary school, that I demystified computing, technology, whatever you want to call it. I didn’t do any of that though.
I typed words and sentences into the command line, pressed enter, and pretended that I was doing important work, making big things happen, dominating my enemies.
The only thing I was really dominating was on that Apple IIe was “Sammy Lightfoot”
Image from Mobygames.com
and “Below the Root,” (which was based on the novel by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, one of my favorite authors at the time. Although her name was in the credits, I was not clever enough to make the connection between the game and her until years later. Um, I may have also stolen a copy of Below the Root from a library that will go unnamed. I know. I feel bad about this).
Image from gamesdbase.com
The day I solved/won/beat “Below the Root”–a game that I spent weeks playing–is one of the more memorable days from my childhood. I vividly remember waking up and thinking, “This is what I need to do to win this game.” And then I did it. It was very much one of those “Aha!” moments that is actually a result hours/days/weeks spent cogitating about the problem at hand.
The Apple IIe wasn’t the “gear” of my childhood. It was just an outlet for play and imagination. It was, like Legos, Barbies, and a motley assortment of Smurf figurines, a way to create universes with complex plots, character motivation, protagonists, story arcs, etc.
With my rad gaming experience and interest in creating alternate universes, I really should gotten into game design or something. Instead I studied English in college. How depressing is that? I went from making my own stories to reading about other people’s stories (and then writing mediocre essays about those stories). From active to passive.
At some point there was an almost overnight shift (or so it seems) from playing to self-doubt and self-consciousness. I’m still trying to figure out when this shift occurred and why it occurred.
Disaster, right? Not entirely. The DIY/Maker seminar students took over three blank boards in the hallway for a couple of interactive art projects.
The board on the far left was based on the “Before I Die” project.
The board on the right are coloring pages that can be removed, colored, and tacked back up. The project was born out of a class conversation about the the effects of a large-scale construction project currently taking place on campus. Fencing went up around much of the interior of campus. Convenient paths from getting from on building to another are blocked for now. The students say its reminiscent of prison or some post-apocalyptic zombie world. Our question was how can we bring some whimsy to this situation?
It took maybe one school day for students to populate the “Before I Die” walls.
Some comments were reflective. Some were silly. Some were knee-deep chest-deep in the waters of inappropriateness.
Some reflections were scratched out either by the contributor or other students (maybe even staff/faculty).
Here are some questions/observations I’ve been rolling around in my head:
Does a space like this create yet another place where someone can be mistreated by his/her peers?
What are the implications of anonymity?
If a community sets the standards, how does the community enforce those standards? Who is the enforcer? How is that determined? And what happens when different subsets of a community have different standards?
Why are spaces like this so appealing? What is it that makes people want to share?
There is a secret language on these boards–a lot of inside jokes–that alarmed (perhaps rightly so) some staff and faculty. Is the alarm warranted? Is the “secret language” reminiscent of children’s made-up languages or is the intent not as innocent?
Senior seminar meets again Tuesday. I’m hoping we’ll have an interesting class discussion.
