Librarians’ hearts were aflutter today as the New York Times reported on school librarians in their Future of Reading column. Motoko Richs’ article “In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update” features a day in the life of Stephanie Rosalia, a librarian at Public School 225 in Brooklyn. The piece marvels at how she does notContinue reading “Our Students, Ourselves”
Author Archives: erin downey howerton
The year in ed
I wanted to cap off this year’s blogging with a good activity. So I decided to use Wesley Fryer’s prompt to read the posts nominated for Most Influential of 2008 in the EduBlog Awards. Chris of BetchaBlog posted on the New Digital Divide. Just more anecdotal proof that the education field is suffering from theContinue reading “The year in ed”
The New Ownership
Today I read two very interesting items: 1) CC Learn reports that the University of Michigan Library has adopted CC licensing for all of its own content. Any work that is produced by the library itself, and to which the University of Michigan holds the copyrights, will be released under the Creative Commons Attribution NoncommercialContinue reading “The New Ownership”
she got her head in the clouds (sharada sharada)
Ok, so the song isn’t about cloud computing – but it’s close 🙂 I’m glad I waited to blog on this, because I bumped into a great new book on this very topic. The Big Switch : Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr is fascinating. Carr interweaves history with present-day computingContinue reading “she got her head in the clouds (sharada sharada)”
NEKLS Tech Day reflections
If a small business owner comes in the door needing resources, web 2.0 tools may very well be the information that makes the difference for them. (attribution needed; comment if you can remember who said it!) This was one of the great revelations of NEKLS Tech Day! I feel as though we are all talkingContinue reading “NEKLS Tech Day reflections”
the long hot summer
While Scott McLeod notes that global changes are necessary for our American schools to break out of the old mold, our friends across the pond in England are also considering broad, sweeping edu-reform. Via Schoolgate from the Times Online comes this report from the IPPR: Thursday’s Child. A quote from the exec summary: Besides thisContinue reading “the long hot summer”
Copyrights (& wrongs)
It’s been a busy two months since my last post… besides ALA and some much-enjoyed vacation time, everything seems to have piled up! Off to the right you will see myself and Cory Doctorow, happy to meet briefly at a Tor event in Anaheim. I told him how rad we all found his new YAContinue reading “Copyrights (& wrongs)”
"It’s the death of education, but the dawn of learning"
From Scott McLeod, via David Warlick: “They will be doing work that calls on:artistic abilitiesabilities of synthesisunderstanding [of] contextworking in teamsthe ability to be multidisciplinary, multilingual, multicultural…” “So the coin of the realm is not memorizing the facts that they’re going to need to know for the rest of their lives, the coin of theContinue reading “"It’s the death of education, but the dawn of learning"”
Conversations about education
This article from today’s NYT is thought-provoking, but I find the commentary a richer food for thought. The conversation we are really having is about what kind of society we live in, and what we want to do about it. What would it really look like to truly close the “achievement gap”? Are we askingContinue reading “Conversations about education”
Public Library Association conference 2008
I am in the process of transferring all my notes from Word to the blog (adding links, etc.). Some of my favorites: Field trip to the Ridgedale library Field trip to the Minneapolis Central Library Why do we Dewey? Services to Homeschoolers School/Public Library partnerships Dangerous ideas Homework centers Programs I spoke at/organized were: SupplementingContinue reading “Public Library Association conference 2008”