Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

It’s been struggling lately. It’s a couple of years old.  I can’t say what generation it is, but it would hold 60 gb.  Not a video ipod either, but one I had become VERY attached to.  It had music, audiobooks, pictures, podcasts, and more on it.  I will miss driving to and from work listening to the podcasts, and for the next few days or so burning a cd of my material, since I truly have begun to DETEST general radio, am or fm.  It’s been having trouble synching up to iTunes–but after most of the time 2 tries, it would synch.  But yesterday morning, as I stood at the sink, I dropped it–into the tiolet. Splash. I heard it hit the water, but did not register what had happened immediately. I turned from the mirror and nearly fainted.  BUMMER.

I turned off the power and tried to shake out water. I put it in a place to dry. (This happened to my son’s cell phone, and once it dried, it worked.)  This evening, about 36 hours later, I tried to turn it on. Nothing. I plugged it in to charge, and I could read very lightly–low battery.  Then that went away, and now there is nothing.  I think its history.  This stinks.

Oh well, maybe I’ll be shopping sooner than I thought for a new iPod.

I shared with a small group of faculty & staff who just happened to be in the library while I was “introducing” myself to kids that the mp3 player or iPod could be used to hold audiobooks. Little did I know I was the talk of the group, who suddenly began conversing about taking back their players from their kids. I didn’t have the heart to say in all liklihood, their children wouldn’t be willing to give it back.

In my role as school tech contact (troubleshooter-fixer-report big issues to the district office) I managed to fix three workstations in different classrooms today by simply plugging them back into their power source. I promise this is the truth…none of them even thought to check the power, they just called me b/c the little green light wouldn’t come on, the monitor didn’t seem to be working, or just a “something’s wrong…” Then shocked amazement when all was well. (I didn’t have the heart to say I just plugged it in…oh yes i did…with a sickening gleeful smile and a glad to help, have a good day skip out the door.) I really do love it when it is that easy, but am amazed it wasn’t checked before I was called. <blank stare>

Image: ‘Shameless Plug‘
www.flickr.com/photos/29855929@N00/245882056

Today at school as I was sharing content from my iPod to classes, a discussion ensued regarding the legality of downloading songs from Limewire. This is a file sharing site, and allows members to share their files. I gather from discussions today in class that kids just about everywhere are using the site to download their favorite songs free of charge, and they are under the impression what they are doing is legal. I decided to search myself about the legality of the site, and here are a few links:

Wiki Answers

Limewire: About using P2P Software Safely (see “copyright”)

[Updated 9-25-7] Lori A. offerd these links in an email today:

Mrs A’s Copyright and Fair Use

What’s the Download? 

More found on my own:

Read abut some lawsuits here

As a teacher librarian, I am called upon to teach the ethical use of information. So I suddenly see a need in middle school for students (and even some teachers, and teachers who are parents of youth) to learn the difference b/w “legal” file sharing and “illegal” file sharing. As I shared where I get my music choices for my iPod, all the kids new and understood iTunes. But the discussion bandied about was how easy it was to share and copy CDs that one person owns, and the ease of joining and downloading music from Limewire. So for the last class (where the conversation came up) I realized suddenly my students need to know. I may even ask to speak at a future PTO about the concept, as a teacher came to me confessing that their own child uses Limewire, and had led her to believe it was all legal.

Since I only have a few sites to point to, I am asking any readers if you have specific sites I can point to or even better, specific cases where offenders have been prosecuted. What other examples or comparisons can I make to impress upon my youth that file sharing can be illegal, especially coprighted material like music?

“100_1041.” Troy McClure SF’s Photostream. 24 February 2006. 24 September 2007 <http://www.flickr.com/photos/troymccluresf/103916029/in/datetaken/>

“Lime.” Libaryman’s Photostream. 27 December 2005. 24 September 2007 <http://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryman/78337046/in/datetaken/>

As I read through the twitter from last night around 11PM  through until 2PM today, I am shocked and dismayed that another tool has been discovered and shared, that of WIZIQ.  Several of my twitter friends have already played around and experienced it, and yes I did say “played.”  One of my virtual friends has even blogged today about her feeling of giddiness, and  asked that oh so difficult question–do our school kids leave learning with a feeling of giddiness?  All I could feel was “left behind…”  since I went to bed last night, and then all morning focused on my morning worship.  But wait!  I did have a  sense of giddiness this morning.  During worship too, no less.  You see we are going through a series  about how to deal with “hurts, habits, and hang ups,” and I feel blessed to have gotten such a good dose of spiritual  blessings from this message series. While I was serving myself up some “how to’s” from the message, I was hard at work serving in my ministry, which is the music and television production ministry.  There is a team of folks at my church, all volunteers, who  serve the ministry with operating cameras, running sound boards, operating light boards,  capturing audio & video to a computer,  running  PPTs  for worship songs, solos, and sermon notes, and MORE.  We have a quite a team who manage to get everything done with equipment that I sometime say is only working because of band aids and our labor of love.  Today I had to run  all the PPTS  (sermon notes and  music worship) and switch  screens from those notes to appropriate videos when they were called for.  My favorite part of it was my cues to run the videos, b/c Pastor Mike said, “Oh you’ll know when its time, b/c I’ll just walk off the pulpit.”  No sleeping during the sermon for me. 

But I along with my team I attacked the task with a giddyness that was infectious, as we laughed and learned while serving our ministry, our church, and ultimately our Lord. One flaw–I accidentally left the video on our center screen a fraction of a second too long…long enough for the audience to get a glimpse of a DVD menu screen.  OOOPS. My bad. But I know the video that will go to our local cable tv this week will be clean as a whistle and no flaws will show, as that little mess up can be edited right out of the video.

I wander if our students feel the same…will their one little mistake be covered before an audience (their parents, future employers) get the chance to see it?  Will what is presented (and all work is for some kind of presentation–there is a target audience somewhere) be something they can reflect back on and be proud, and be able to say next time I will do this (like time the video so I don’t play it so long we all get to see the menu screen.)  I liken that incident to letting my petticoat or pantylines show.  I gave away a secret of sorts…

Oh well, Pastor Mike assured us today that we did a phenomenal job, and we had four folks join the church today…one a brand new Christian.  Best, I can say I had something to do with it, even though it was JUST in the technical background that no one usually sees or notices.  But we are all supposed to use our gifts to further HIS word. (We had three short videos to play out today, and one solo/ensemble piece with a looping video to run  during their song.)  I had my work cut out for me. But it’s a labor of love, I promise.

So I’ll have to catch up with Wiziq tonight on EdTech Talk.  Or maybe my twitter friends will catch me up.  Either way, I am excited to play with this “new to me” tool too.

Carolyn Foote from the blog Not So Distant Future is asking the blogoshere to point her to school administrators who blog. Since I just did some of this back in June 2007, I will point her to that link, but also add some more that have been added to my own bloglines account since that conference.

Carolyn, I wish you the most positive karma, well wishes and prayers in hopes that this session you are presenting at the Internet Librarian Conference in October is highly attended and successful. I’d never heard of this conference, and now of course I’m adding it to my wish list for future professional development opportunities. Please let me know if there will be a backchannel for following your session or any other sessions at this conference, since I know it is already too late to ask about going (not to mention there is no way I can afford to go right now.) [UPDATE: Carolyne Foote will be attending the Internet Librarian West conference in Monterey, CA.]

I’ll be attending our SCEdtech in just a few short weeks, and it will have to be enough. It’s always a good conference too, and I look forward to seeing my friends from around our state. I work with the planning board, so I have a whole different view of this conference, and with each day drawing us closer to conference time, I am more and more excited! But still, I have conference envy for the Internet Librarian Conference.

Here are a few Adminstrator Blog links from my Bloglines account, that you may want use in your session:

Dave Sherman’s The Principal and Interest

Melinda Miller’s Willard East Blog

Random Thoughts of an Ed Admin Lifer

Normaqn Maynard’s The Principal’s Office: A view from THIS side of the desk

Mr. Moses

You’ve already mentioned the other educational admin blogs I follow in your original post, but I think these will add nicely to your growing list.

UPDATE – Monday, September 24, 2007  Jeanette Johnson’s From the Principal’s Desk.

Awesome! This was shared many times in the recent past, and I am considering sharing it with some kids–sort of as a starting point for conversation. I heard some other educators have shared it with their kids too, so I figure, why not?

Today I had kids for the first time–shocking I know. The library has had a slow start, and I’ve been pulled for all sorts of other things (my favorite being MAP Testing.) But I do understand we all work together, and I’m a member of the team trying to do my part.

As a way to introduce myself to eighth graders today, I showcased my interests: my blog, my aggregators–bloglines, my iTunes (just a screenshot) and pictures of the family. But they were intensely interested in my ipod! I pulled it out, hooked it up to speakers, and gave them a random sampling of some of my music selections. Many were stunned at my choices, since I have some really oldies as well as new material there. I played some Queen, Styx, Journey, Boston, Jimmy Buffett, Sugarland, Rascal Flatts, Nicole C. Mullen, Michael W. Smith, and a few opening in lines to some of my podcasts I subscribe to (like Bit by Bit, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, and a soap opera–Guiding Light.) I even shared a snippet from some of the audiobooks on my ipod, including The World is Flat and A Whole New Mind–which by the way I have still been unable to play off the iPod. (It will begin, but suddenly ends for no reason!!) It was funny to see the reactions of the kids. They were really surprised to know that I put books on my iPod.
I used this as a door to the discussion of Web 2.o tools, and how the Internet has changed to a give and take world, and how they can give as much back as they take. We talked about YouTube (and I made it clear they did not have permission to post me in YouTube!!) That got a laugh. And then we talked about the tools they have right in their pockets to add content, but then I disappointed them when they realized many of these tools (like flickr, many blogs, and YouTube) are blocked at school.

It was only a beginning, but I hope with this group I piqued some interest. I didn’t have that long to go over this, so they only got a taste, but my hope is that they will see me as one who is “up” on most things, and one they can turn to in asking questions. I do believe I impressed some, b/c at the end of school today, some passing eighth graders called me by name to say goodbye. Before today, I haven’t known a single student in the whole building to call me by name. That’s a start in changing the perception of the library for this school.

Oh, SYP I guess. Bad news today too. My fixed assett disposal forms (all 12 of them) will have to be rewritten so that the equipment that I’m ridding the school of is easy to identify. I was told today if the folks who come pick it up can’t identify it and match it to the sheet, it will not go. : ( But a fellow LMS at St. James Middle–Paula C. gave me a method to the madness of color coding using colored dots and NUMBERS so that when they look at a sheet, they look for items that have that colored dot. That will make the process easier. And all we have to do is re-arrange the line of stuff and put dots on the items, and perhaps NOT have to rewrite those sheets. For those that know about my eye surgery, I am also worried that I miscopied numbers–model numbers and serial numbers are microscopic, even w/ glasses!

So my next visit–I’m thinking about playing “Pay Attention” to start a conversation. Wish me luck.

Yes it’s coming, in just a few weeks, once again, educators all over the world will be totally caught up in a conference that is probably the most virtual event in the truest sense of the word “virtual,” and it’s a conference that keeps on giving regardless of where you are or when you decide to join in. Last October the first ever “online conference” commenced, being kicked off by David Warlick, who likened the Internet to traveling, taking this path or that, this road or that, moving in directions that can be strategic and purposeful to fanciful and based on a whim. The 2007 conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26 of 2007, and will include a preconference keynote during the week of October 8. The conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries.” And once again, David Warlick has been bestowed with the honorary assignment of being the opening keynote. It was this time last year that I participated in Elluminate, which at that time Warlick dubbed a “fireside chat,” aptly called such because we logged into Elluminate and participated from the glow emanating off our computer screens. It was a great experience, and I think this even single-handedly opened my eyes to the potential of using 2.0 tools. After experiencing this conference, I wholeheartedly embraced the concept and began talking it up to all my friends, family, and colleagues. You do not want to miss, but thats okay of you do. This conference will be available to view and participate live, but also to download and listen, re-listen, and share many times afterwards. Best, it’s 100% free! All that’s needed is a computer that gets online and is fairly up to date. Visit the site today to read about presenters, tools or plugins you might need, and this year, see “teaser” videos of what is to come! I can’t wait.

Everything presented will have a feed, so you can track live using your calendar, or subscribe and have it made available for you when you are ready–this will be the simplest way for me since I do have a day job!! The K12 Online site has a feed, and just today as I subscribed, I noticed there are already 216 folks subscribed to any feeds coming out, and they are steady hitting my aggregator now, with the most recent activity including previews of what is to come in the format of videos. Subscribe and/or plan to tune in live. It will be a mid altering experience that will change the way you think.

During the Labor Day weekend I shared some photos from a walk with the dog on the beach. Today as I was driving home from school (to my beach home away from home) I couldn’t help but notice all the trees filled with Spanish Moss.  There  is a sprinkling of palm trees around, and many pines, but the hardwoods, particularly the oak trees are filled with Spanish Moss. The trees are dripping with it.  I’m not much of a photagrapher, and driving and snapping pictures with your cell phone takes “real” talent, but here they are.

I also drove into the beach Sunday PM witnessing a beatuiful sunset.  I arrived around 6:30ish, and couldn’t resist this pix either, again from the car while driving.  It’s as if the Heavens themselves were saying to me “welcome back!” My talents amaze me–I’m sure the drivers around me thought I was nuts.

I haven’t done an SYP lately, so I thought I’d catch everyone up. Here’s my lists:

Accomplished:

• Weeded 2000+ books from the 11,000. (still waiting on the raw numbers since the “missing” titles still have yet to be removed. I’ll wait to run another coll. analysis when that is taken care of.
• Updated all the computers in the library to “new” at the suggestion of my principal–we had 40 come to the building, and I got 22 of them!
• Completed four pages of fixed asset disposals (roughly 20 lines each) of broken overheads, dot matrix printers, old overhead style LCD panels, about 100 computer mouses in a box (????), seven old, dated computers of various companies (all were running w98 and old, old, old!), a typewriter, record players, so much more–too much to list.
• Lined up this equipment in one location in the media center for pick up; lined up broken furniture and about fifty gazillion boxes, nicely broken down by me for disposals and removal
• Lined up boxes of discarded books for pick up. (Can you believe all these things (the above mentioned 2 and this one) get picked up by different folks?)
• Almost finished setting up vid production studio–the equipment just came in this week
• Administering MAP testing (still another week to go)
• Setting up very student in the building to have their own network log in–still haven’t disseminated though…
• Cleaned out library office (junked mega stuff–old manuals, etc.) Bookcases are finally clear and there is now room for my stuff!
• Cleaned out second office (where a teacher copier was placed new this year.) The assistant whose desk was in the video retrieval room has now relocated to this room. (Our school uses TechNet, a video retrieval system that also serves other functions, like scheduled bells, scrolling announcements, etc. The assistant’s desk has been near it to load the videos that teachers will call up with the phone system. It is a really expensive system that is used district wide, but it does a lot more than just play out videos. With the significant increase in the use of StreamlineSC –United Streaming portal–there was a significant decrease in the use of school owned videos. So we made the decision to relocate her out of that room. PLUS the school got a new server, and it was either go there where her desk was or out in the middle of the library floor.)
• Sink is finally spic and span–i scrubbed it myself today. It was really bad dirty.

Still needs to be done

• Orientation (hasn’t been done yet cuz MAP Testing takes priority)
• Rotating XP workstations that were in the library to classrooms that still have W98 running in them
• Fixing computer issues (like adding printers, finding network printers, troubleshooting logins, etc.) Only one so far has required a district work-order
• Formal introduction of myself to kids, a school blog, and promote SC Children’s Book and Junior Book Award program–will be planned this week in coll. meetings
• Finish cleaning out storage room number 1, and tackle storage room number 2
• Unpack my personal school belongings
• Assess the fifteen to twenty VCRs located in storage…do we need them…is there a better place for them?

Most interesting discoveries:

• Somebody before me had a weird fixation with boxes of any size. I have broken down many boxes today, and still did not make a dent in clearing them out. I’m all for saving a few–you never know when you’ll need them, but darn there are way too many. I would post a picture but I don’t want to publicize what we have/don’t have to invite thieves… But suffice it to say we could probably move four families with the number and size of the boxes we have. I will keep some, yes, but they will be broken down and sensibly stored. Sheepishly I think this is one of the reasons I’ve YET to unpack my personal belongings…they are still stacked in the library office–about fifteen medium sized boxes. I didn’t want to add to the pandemonium I inherited. I wanted to clear and clean. I’m ALMOST ready to unpack some of my personal belongings, I’m happy to report.
• A large quantity of broken material, stored from floor to ceiling in storage room number 2. We haven’t even made a dent in there yet…but slowly and surely you are now able to walk along a small path to the back.
• I had a really GROSS experience today, one bad enough for me to say okay, that’s enough for today. Storage room number 1 has shelves all along the walls. Some have equipment, some have back issues of magazines, and some have assorted other things. But here is also where i located all those boxes. Some big ones (Dell computer boxes) lined the top, and since they were empty, I simply tipped them off with my finger, allowing them to fall in front of me. The last one did fall over and down. I picked it up, hauled it out, opened the top (and got ready to turn it to cut tape and flatten) when something in the box caught my eye–it was brown and furry. Yes–a mouse. All I could think was that the way I was ever so NOT gently getting them down, that little rodent could have landed right on top of my head! It was enough to quit today. I stopped and went to do something else.
• Each day teachers come in and say how VASTLY improved in appearance the library is taking. I’m glad they can see it, b/c I can’t. And b/c we have been so focused on cleaning up and out, we have done NO decorating or making it kid friendly at all. No displays, no nothing. It’s almost embarrassing. But I’m on a mission to clear out the JUNK. And the assistant is DELIGHTED that I want to do that. I really was afraid she would be reluctant to get rid of things. (Secretly I have caught her holding onto some little things…but that’s okay. I know she’ll put them to good use.) OHH how I wish I could share a before and after picture of her new office space! She is even decorating her desk with her personal things. I hope to SOON unbox mine so i can personalize my space.

In closing, progress is slow but sure. I hope next time I report, I’ll have something STUDENT centered to discuss!

Why are the schools always lagging behind injust about everything? I can remember in the early eighties my education professors then touting “inquiry-based” learning as the way to make students rise up to the top of Bloom’s taxonomy. Yet even in the science classes I have observed and even collaborated in today have shown very little use of this technique for learning.

I am beyond frustrated right now because my youngest son used to be such a great student with excellent study habits. He used to dash in from school FRANTIC to gt his work done, even if it wasn’t due for a week. Very different from my oldest, who rarely brought a book home through middle school, but manage almost straight-A’s. When he was in high school, we as parents had to literally teach him from scratch how to “study” and manage assignments. I can’t tell you how many assignments, readings, and or projects we endured staying up until 2:00 in the morning trying to get son #1 to do his work in a quality manner that would get him grades we were accustomed to seeing. He did finally figure out how to study and get good grades. But we laughed that thankfully we would never have to go through this with son #2 b/c school had never come so easy to him, and he had always had to work for his grades, and so study habits were developed all along.

But now I have another worry. Son #1 never indicated ever that he didn’t like school. He always had a goal of going to college, and he was always working towards that goal. Son #2, however, the one who we bragged would have an easier time in high school and eventually college b/c he understood doing homework, doing required reading, spending time studying, and managing his workload in a timely manner, has become vocally VERY disenchanted with school. He despises the ninety minute (four block schedule) classes, as it is ninety straight minutes of torturous boredom. While he is a good student who would NEVER disrupt class, he gets excited when other students show out, as it breaks the tedious boredom they must all endure. The highlight of his week this week was when a student was caught using his cell-phone as a cheat sheet for a vocabulary test. My son’s comment was that was pretty smart to sit and type in all those words and their definitions, and too bad he used it b/c by the time he spent inputting them, he probably had learned the definitions. (I thought yikes, how true!) But my son’s parting comment was he didn’t understand why they were memorizing vocabulary to begin with b/c they never used the words ever. It was a dumb assignment and a classmate got caught cheating on a dumb test using his dumb phone since he probably knew them after putting them in. But at least it broke up the monotony of the day. (My question–though not voiced to him–what is the purpose of the vocabulary quiz–this is not foreign language class or anything like that). This is an 11th grader.

I am discouraged to realize that the vast majority of his teachers are just teaching like they were taught, and probably like their grandaparents were tuaght, when the classrooms are quipped with state of the art technology, like smart boards, projectors, surround sound (I think they use a system called “front row”), wireless access, no less than five computers per class (that are never used according to him). Yet they are discouraged from using most of the tools including their cell phones, ipods, and social networks at school. Yes I’m worried about this one.

My oldest never questioned school, and calmly acquiesced to that standard “game” as he called it. His advice to his brother, and it is sadly and shockingly true, was “Bro, you gotta learn to play their game.” This embarrasses me as an educator. I am in a position where I frequently work side by side with teachers, and I see it just as clearly as my own 2 guys have described it–a game, a power-trip for some teachers. The goal is not to learn, but to endure. My oldest was quite a pro at endurance, but my youngest is not. Is he any less intelligent? No. He is extremely smart too. He is just tired of playing this” dumb” game called school. In his words–school is dumb.

My oldest son is in college 950 miles away, and was adamant about going there. Why? They would immerse him in his field of study right away and not make his sit through a freshman year with the same kind of classes he had to endure in high school. These class would be spread out over his four years instead.

If our schools are embracing advanced tools, why is it taking so long for our teachers to adopt them? Can’t these teachers see the dull, lifeless eyes staring back at them (one set belonging to my son)? How can these teachers go home satisfied at the end of the day when the kids hate their classes? It’s a shame that the easy way out, that of being the sage on the stage in that classroom, is the dominant methodology my son is seeing, when I know there are better ways to teach and reach our youth without totally turning them off to school. I certainly hope he has one innovative teacher this year who can turn him back on. We are seriously close to having a crisis on our hands. (And at least I know these two parents know, understand, and care…imagine how many parents out there are clueless to this epidemic problem.)

“Cell phone.” Papalar’s Photostream. 24 August 2007. 7 September 2007 <http://www.flickr.com/photos/papalars/1225669645/>