BFTP: Why I belong to ISTE

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post, May 19, 2007. Last week I gave my reasons for paying my dues to ALA/AASL. Since I am also an active member of ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), I thought I ought be fair and look at why I pay my dues and volunteer and write for that "other" national professional organization to which I believe all school librarians ought to belong.  Or simply join if they don't see ALA as a good fit.

ISTE advances excellence in learning and teaching through innovative and effective uses of technology.

First, dues are not the issue with ISTE that they are with ALA/AASL -  $99 vs. $180.  (Both organization's dues have gone up $20 over the past 5 years.) The basic membership includes membership in any SIG (Special Interest Group) like SIGMS (Media Specialist) and one journal like Leading & Learning. ISTE is not a library association, but education organization, and school librarians have no higher or lower standing in ISTE than they do in ALA. And just as all librarians are represented broadly by ALA, so are all educators represented generally by ISTE.

I have concerns about ISTE, but they are quite different from those I have about ALA. If ALA is the dowdy old aunt of the family who needs to be encouraged to get out of the house and try something new but upholds cherished values, ISTE is the rowdy teenager whose values and character are not firmly formed and needs guidance. It's easy for the glitz and "gee-whiz" of technology to overshadow the primary purpose of the organization - to help educators learn how to evaluate and use technology to better educate students. (See Gary Stager's recent blog post.) This is why ISTE needs librarians as members - to provide some balance and little common sense to the organization. So being a member or ISTE and...

1. Paying dues gives me a voice. ISTE needs seasoning. As a member, I can express my concerns regarding any head-long rush of technology adoption. Counter the profit-motivated push by companies to blindly add technologies to the education mix. Promote research, demand assessment, and raise concern about the safe and ethical use of technologies. To remind ISTE that in its mission statement - "providing leadership and service to improve teaching and learning by advancing the effective use of technology in education" - the operative word is "effective."

2. Paying dues shows I support and recognize the need to know about cutting edge educational practices. Any school librarian who does not get and stay on the forefront of accessing, using, communicating and evaluating information in digital formats and is not seen as a building technology leader is irrelevant. Simple as that. 

3. Paying dues gives me more opportunity for inter-species communications. ISTE has a great mix of educator types. Technology specialists, of course, but also lots of classroom teachers, administrators, college professors, and librarians. When we librarians present at AASL conferences and write for ALA/AASL journals, we are preaching to the choir. Writing and speaking through ISTE gets the sermon about the importance of good libraries to the sinners who actually need to hear it.

4. Paying dues gives me access to the ISTE Conference and SIGMS. Yes, I have described this mega-conference as a "love fest to all things that go beep," finding it far too vendor driven. But it is exciting and motivational. This blog is a direct result of hearing David Weinberger's NECC keynote in Philadephia in 2005. Unlike most ALA conferences, I actually attend sessions at NECC. Oh, the organizational work of ISTE (affiliates, SIGS, committees) is all pretty much done the days just prior to the ISTE conference or virtually - no need for the  expensive "midwinter conference" idiocy. The SIGMS events at ISTE are outstanding. This is where the cutting edge conversations happen in the school library world. Period.

5. Paying dues shows my support for the NETS standards. This is the set of learning standards the nation's states and schools actually use when it comes to what kids need to know and be able to do with information and technology. Librarians, we need to make sure the NETS  focus remains on information literacy, problem-solving, communication and the use of HOTS. The "refreshed" NETS do this and even add a "creativity" component. Now if we could just merge them with the AASL standards...

6. Paying dues gives me the chance to influence legislative lobbying efforts. These efforts of ISTE need some serious work. At the present time unfortunately, it's all about the money - making sure E2T2, E-rate and other national funding sources are preserved. Important to be sure, but less important in the long run that ISTE being a voice on education policy, especially in speaking out against issues like DOPA. I don't think ISTE "gets" intellectual freedom. School librarians, your voice is needed here very much. Or do you like your Internet blocked?

7. Did I mention paying dues gives me complaining rights? This is tough for me since I have served on the ISTE board for the past and have gotten to know both the other board members and CEO Don Knezek and the ISTE staff. I genuinely like these people. They are smart, dedicated, competent, and have their hearts in the right place. They care about the organization and its members. But as members, we not only have the right, but the obligation to try making all our professional organizations better through constructive criticism - including ISTE. (As of this writing, Don has announced his retirement and the board structure is undergoing a transformation - stay tuned.)

I said it before and I will say it again, "Joining a professional organization is not necessarily about the good we as individuals get from membership, but the differences our contributions in both money and time make to the profession as a whole - and to those whom the profession serves. It isn't always about you!" This goes for ISTE as much as it does ALA/AASL.

School librarians, join ISTE.  Sure, we'll take your dues, but it is your values and sense are what we really need.

Why iPads?

My friend Miguel Guhlin at Around the Corner has done a great job of summarizing many educators' feelings about iPads in school. (Epiphany of Experiences - #iPads in the Classroom, April 17, 2012). He writes:

As I've spent more time on an iPad, I'm continuing to have problems imagining what iPad-shifted instruction would look like. ... In a twitter conversation earlier tonight, I referred to this lack of vision as elusive.

"How can we better articulate what iPads are being purchased to accomplish in schools? It feels so elusive."

For me, this tweet gets to the heart of the problem I'm having with iPads in schools--simply, I don't get it. I want to explore why "I don't get it--iPads in schools" for a simple reason. It's not because I'll be working on an iPad deployment, or because I want to justify the 64gig WiFi iPad I just purchased for my own use as part of my education consulting. It's because a part of me fears that my past experiences with technology are interfering with how I use technology in the present and future. Does that make sense?

Our district is also seeing an influx of i-Pads - through grants and individual building purchases, rather than a planned roll-out. (And you think tech directors are all powerful!) The old, "now that we have it, what the hell do we do with it" song is playing again. At a recent after school, iPad "'Appy Hour", a teacher simply looked at me and said, "Just send me a list of social studies apps." Hmmmmm.
 

I don't know that the iPad dilemma is unique. The same problems have been endemic in technology implementation - acquiring the shiny things first, and thinking about what to do with them. What I call "Ready, Fire, Aim" deployment. Too many educators don't have sound philosophy educational technology purpose. Period. (Cheap plug: This is a primary reason I wrote my latest book!)

How are iPads really any different than any other computing device? My basic guideline is that you add technology in any form to a classroom environment to:

• Improve the ability for students to produce, create, and share original work in multiple formats.
• Facilitate communication, collaboration and sharing of student produced work.
• Provide access to information on a variety of reading levels and in a variety of formats.
• Allow skills to be taught in more engaging, interactive ways through games and simulations.

Now, was that so hard, Miguel? You shouldn't fear your past experiences, you should learn from them and apply the lessons. iPads are really just AppleIIs in a smaller, shinier container.

Image source

Autonomous education

After my first two years of teaching - 6 classes a day with 5 preps plus sponsoring the yearbook, newspaper, class plays, and speech contest, I wanted a job that required absolutely NO thinking.

And I got one.

During graduate school, I worked at the University of Iowa hospitals in the Central Sterilizing department. (We sterilized equipment, not living beings.) Each afternoon at three, I would put on a scrub greens, a hair covering, and plastic gloves and begin to make Three Gown Packs to be used during surgical procedures.

The process was simple. Lay a cloth wrapper (inspected for holes) on a stainless steel table, place three surgical gowns, a paper towel, and a bowl on the cloth, wrap it, tape it, label it with a wax pencil, and place it on a metal cart that would be pushed into the autoclave for sterilizing. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. For eight hours. Until eleven at night. 

After two weeks I was bored out of my skull and, like the rest of the college students working there, spent many of my breaks smoking pot in the parking ramp. The evenings went faster with a buzz. I still wonder how many people we may have killed - having perhaps missed packing a bowl - while working under the influence.

That job taught me that no matter how stressful, a job with autonomy beats one that has no freedom of thought or action hands-down.

Daniel Pink in Drive, speaks to the importance of autonomy in job satisfaction. And in a recent post in his blog, he recommends the book, 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans*. The wisest Americans (those over 65) say this about job satisfaction:

1. Choose a career for the intrinsic rewards, not the financial ones.
2. Don’t give up on looking for a job that makes you happy.
3. Make the most of a bad job.
4. Emotional intelligence trumps every other kind.
5. Everyone needs autonomy.

My sense is that a lack of autonomy is a very real reason a lot of kids either tune out or drop out of school. Not given choices, not given the chance to be creative, and not given the opportunity to work socially, school becomes as mindless as a soul-deadening job. 

That's why libraries and technology programs that honor students' individual interests and abilities by giving them access to materials of personal interest are so very, very important. The one-right answer, the one-right activity, the one-right course of study mentality is worth all our efforts to resist by offering autonomous educational experiences.

* I am not much of an advice book reader (although I've written one), but I would recommend 30 Lessons for Living. It's very down-to-earth with no startling insights or off-the-wall recommendations. Just very thoughtful reflections from those who have lived a lot of years. One comment that is still running through my mind after reading it days ago is "You will never be happier than your most unhappy child." Think about it.