Defense of the Media Specialist

The school library media program is an integral piece of the student achievement puzzle.  The library media center is the place where students learn how to find, analyze, evaluate, interpret and communicate information and ideas.  These skills are the skeleton key to unlock any door  for any student in the present or in their lifelong learning pursuits.    It has come to my attention that this administration is considering dropping a full-time licensed media specialist from its staff.  I stand before you today not to argue for my job, I stand before you to present why the media specialist is an indispensable teacher, collaborator, program administrator and change agent in this learning community.  

Let me begin by recognizing that the district, is feeling the pinch of the economic downturn.  In these difficult times every dollar spent needs to be carefully considered; how will this expenditure increase student achievement? 

A licensed media specialist wears, at least, three very important hats.  First, and most importantly, a media specialist is a teacher. Also known as a teacher-librarian, the media specialist provides information literacy and technology literacy instruction for all students in the school.  This instruction includes lesson and unit planning as well as feedback and assessment. 

The second major role of a media specialist is as instructional partner.  The media specialist works with the teaching staff to develop collaborative, inquiry and project based units.  This partnership with the staff is embedded in almost every unit within all the subject areas in the school’s curriculum. 
Finally as administrator of the media program, the media specialist is an expert in the selection of and evaluation of all print and electronic media for use in the curricular goals of the school.

The loss of a media specialist at your school, is a dramatic blow to the students and staff and the entire learning community.  Students’ access to important literacy skills, skill essential to the development and sustainable learning is threatened.  Additionally, research suggests that a well staffed and fully funded media program has a positive correlation with student achievement.  Teachers will lament the loss of a keystone partner in their curricular goals.  The media specialist is the lifeblood of fresh new information for teachers to continue their professional development.  Finally, and most tragically, the media specialist is an active agent for change in the learning community.  By providing physical and intellectual access to information, the media specialist plants seeds for change in all walks of life curricular and extra-curricular.  From providing the community with access to news important to them or even as far as supporting the development of new ideas that will change the world, a media specialist is indispensable.

Why a Media Specialist is important.

A licensed media specialist wears, at least, three very important hats. First, and most importantly, a media specialist is a teacher. Also known as a teacher-librarian, the media specialist provides information literacy and technology literacy instruction for all students in the school. This instruction includes lesson and unit planning as well as feedback and assessment.
The second major role of a media specialist is as instructional partner. The media specialist works with the teaching staff to develop collaborative, inquiry and project based units. This partnership with the staff is embedded in almost every unit within all the subject areas in the school’s curriculum.
Finally as administrator of the media program, the media specialist is an expert in the selection of and evaluation of all print and electronic media for use in the curricular goals of the school.
The loss of a media specialist at your school, is a dramatic blow to the students and staff and the entire learning community. Students’ access to important literacy skills, skill essential to the development and sustainable learning is threatened. Additionally, research suggests that a well staffed and fully funded media program has a positive correlation with student achievement. Teachers will lament the loss of a keystone partner in their curricular goals. The media specialist is the lifeblood of fresh new information for teachers to continue their professional development. Finally, and most tragically, the media specialist is an active agent for change in the learning community. By providing access physical and intellectual access to information the media specialist plants seeds for change in all walks of life curricular and extra-curricular. From providing the community with access to news important to them or even as far as supporting the development of new ideas that will change the world, a media specialist is indispensable.

unFacebooked

I followed a tweet from Tim O'Reilly (Web 2.0 guru) to Danny Sullivan's post here: http://daggle.com/facebooks-microsoft-moment-1556


Danny breaks down all of the exhausting and utterly strange changes, unchanges and rechanges to Facebook's privacy settings in the last few days.  

Under the new regime, Facebook treats that information — along with your name, profile picture, current city, gender, networks, and the pages that you are a “fan” of — as “publicly available information” or “PAI.” Before, users were allowed to restrict access to much of that information. Now, however, those privacy options have been eliminated. For example, although you used to have the ability to prevent everyone but your friends from seeing your friends list, that old privacy setting — shown below — has now been removed completely from the privacy settings page.

In 2005 when I joined the Facebook, it was a college only space. Designed to replicate the Harvard Face Book, a sort of living breathing yearbook of all your classmates.

In 2006 the network changed dramatically, allowing anyone and everyone with an email address to join the site. Which was fine until most recently Facebook's privacy settings have changed. Now anyone on the internet can see a lot more information than I really want to share.

Suddenly, the Facebook is more hassle than its worth. So..this is my second attempt, and probably not my last... but I have now, indefinitely left the Facebook.

Ira Glass on Storytelling

It is really difficult for me to describe how I get to where I go on the web.

The best analogy I have comes from observing my father control the television as a child.  At first blush, it seems almost random; channel after channel each for only a few seconds sometimes it seems we would watch seven programs at a time.  After years and years of complaining, I am starting to see the bigger picture.  When my father watches TV there are certain things he will almost certainly do: check the ESPN crawl, scan through the movie channels, scan through the news channels and then settle in on about two programs.  The process repeats itself several times every half hour.  Re-check scores, see where that classic movie is, get the latest news update and then settle in on two or three new programs (you can only fully watch one, but you need to have back-ups for commercial times).

That strategy works for someone who is entertained by the television.  Things happen at a set schedule, and you are forced to make a decision about the programming you want to watch at any given moment within a very specific 20-70 channel parameter.  (Tivo is an entirely different story).

At the end of a TV-surfing day you can recommend different programs to watch at different times and expect that a friend might catch the next episode so you can have a chat about it.  But on the internet, time and content do not drive decisions.  On the internet, it is all there all the time whenever you want it.  You are only driven by your interestests and at the end of web-surfing day you have nothing really to show for it unless you share some links.

What the heck does this story have to do with storytelling?  I'm not sure. What I do know is that the point of my story is to say, I am not really sure how I found my way to this series of videos about storytelling, but I felt like you needed something to make you interested in watching them.

Ira Glass on Storytelling:









I hope you enjoyed.