*Position Statement on the Confidentiality of Library Records The members of the American Library Association,* recognizing the right to privacy of library users, believe that records held in libraries which connect specific individuals with specific resources, programs or services, are confidential and not to be used for purposes other than routine record keeping: i.e., to maintain access to resources, to assure that resources are available to users who need them, to arrange facilities, to provide resources for the comfort and safety of patrons, or to accomplish the purposes of the program or service. The library community recognizes that children and youth have the same rights to privacy as adults. Libraries whose record keeping systems reveal the names of users would be in violation of the confidentiality of library record laws adopted in many states. Revised on 02/06/12 *ALA Policy on Confidentiality of Library Records (See also Suggested Procedures for Implementing Policy on Confidentiality of Library Records)
Chapter 4: Curation in School Libraries | Valenza | Library Technology Reports The school librarians featured in this chapter describe the value of curation to a school’s learning culture. Their efforts ensure that their investment in e-books, databases, and homegrown instructional content is scaled, embedded, and discoverable whenever students need it. Their efforts support flipped and hybrid learning. They use new strategies to display and juxtapose books and other media face-out in imaginative genre gatherings perhaps never before physically arranged. Most important, the school librarians we spoke with shared the importance of curation as a learning activity. They described helping learners connect more easily with appropriate resources and saving teachers instructional time. Curation for Students Shannon McClintock Miller, Van Meter (IA) School (May 22, 2014) Teachers and librarians see the value of developing and modeling the creation of dashboards of resources or launchpads for their learners. BB: How do you define curation? Why reinvent the wheel? Brenda L.
Live Media Feed | REDEF I like to debate. Sometimes for the sake of debate. Sometimes to learn. Sometimes to know that you and me believe what we're debating. Understanding Content Curation – A Refresh – Innovations In Education In the summer of 2012, I began an exploration of the concept of Content Curation, and what this meant for teachers and students. Little did I know at the time that my journey would involve curating…about curating. Given the task of providing professional development for teachers to curate resources for backwards-designed units, I started researching to better understand why the word “curate” was being used – so I set out to define what curation meant in the field of education, and realized early on in my research that student curation is where our focus should be. My original post, where I shared my discoveries and understandings, has generated more traffic than any other post on my blog, with hundreds of cross-postings on sites in the fields of education, marketing and libraries. For the past 5 years I have continued to curate information about curating, using the same Scoop It site I started in 2012. Personal Connection Sharing, Audience – Comments & Discussion Storytelling Like this:
*Position Statement on Digital Content and E-books in School Library Collections Today’s twenty-first century students must be able to discover, analyze, evaluate, interpret, and communicate ideas, information and knowledge in a variety of ways. Because school library programs are instrumental in teaching these skills, their collections must include a wide variety of formats beyond printed books. These multiple formats, including e-books and other forms of digital content, should be accessible by the school community physically and virtually as indicated in the mission statement of AASL’s program guidelines, Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Programs (2009). School library programs should provide access to materials in all formats, provide students and staff with current resources, and anticipate changes in technology. Presently, in 2013, there is no single device that will access all e-books. Digital content, e-books, e-readers and other digital devices are essential components of school library collections. Brief Definitions
Why it’s important to smash a few apps (or what’s on your palette?) Lately when I think about how I am going to accomplish a digital task, I find that I automatically consider the task as a creative process, a process that makes me dig into my digital toolkit or examine my digital palette, usually more than once, to discover new synergies. I’ve come to discover what I’ve been doing is commonly called app smashing. Roughly defined, app smashing refers to the act of using multiple digital tools or apps to achieve a creative goal. The term is generally attributed to Greg Kulowiec (@gregkulowiec) of EdTech Teacher who explains and demonstrates the concept in this video: Intro to App-Smashing from misterkling on Vimeo. So you might take a bunch of photos on your iPad during a field trip. Why share this concept with learners? App smashing encourages learners to: curate their own dashboards of optionsunderstand app categories/genres and affordances For inspiration, try a Pinterest search or search the hashtags #appsmash or #appsmashing. #whatsonyourpalette
Curating current events 8. Anyone Can Teach Anything — Everyone Can Study Any Topic — Content Curation Official Guide Today, if you want to learn about something, you don’t need to go back to school or to a university. Unless you are looking for an official degree from that very institution. But in all other cases, if your main goal is actually to learn something specific, independently of certifications and pieces of paper that prove it, there are a growing number of private, for-profit and not-for-profit online schools and academies that offer you the opportunity to learn just about anything you can think of. Not only. You can even teach, or start your own school, even if you do not have a PhD. I myself, have been making the bulk of my professional revenue in the last 7 years, by running a small online learning campus for independent information entrepreneurs. The array of web services, apps and tools that are available today to create such online learning schools it’s quite impressive, though, in my opinion, it is not critical to making it possible. But you don’t need to follow the same road.
Let's Talk Collection Development! Even though we’re back in school, our library budget money won’t be distributed to us until December. We can’t change this timeline, so we’ve tried to make the best of it by using the first few months of school to really talk to staff and students about what type of books or other materials they’d like to see in the library. We’ve always been open to suggestions, but the timing has to be right for us to add items to an order. Otherwise, the request has to wait until we have funds to make another order, which could be in a week or six months. I love collection development, but sometimes when I talk about it with other teachers I feel like all they hear is Old lady librarian going on about card catalogs or some nonsense. I know other school librarians get excited about collection development, but in some schools it’s almost taboo to talk about buying books. Even though technology can be awesome, we’re still buying books and expanding in specific areas. Contemporary Classics.
Librarians wanted for smashing, blending, toolkit building. Tell me if you’ve seen this happen. A classroom teacher or a teacher librarian friend attends a workshop or a webinar about a certain app, masters it and tries to use it, a lot. There are likely better tools for the various tasks at hand, but they aren’t easily discoverable. Pre-service training does not prepare most educators to create personal toolkits, palettes or catalogs from which they might easily find the apps or sites needed to creatively blend or smash apps and sites. Recently, I wrote about the growing importance of app smashing, or creating a palette for blending–the power of combining multiple tools to achieve an instructional or creative goal. I’ve been thinking that a new, and critical element of our mission as librarians is the curating of apps to meet the needs of specific grades, projects, classes, teachers and administrators. For years, our pathfinders and guides blended instruction, content and basic web tools for research. All of these systems support learner agency.