Last old man in the woods

Nature deficit disorder refers to the phrase coined by Richard Louv in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods that human beings, especially children, are spending less time outdoors resulting in a wide range of behavioral problems. Wikipedia

This old man spent a good deal of time Saturday afternoon chasing after an energetic grandson at a local state park. It was good for both of us (and his grandmother) to be out enjoying a cool, windy afternoon climbing over rocks, roots, and fallen branches on a twisting, hilly dirt trail that led to a small waterfall.

I have long enjoyed giving both my children and grandchildren the opportunities to enjoy hiking, camping, and just playing in nature. Whether scuba diving with my daughter in Cozumel, hiking in Havaupai or Abel Tasman with my son, climbing Harney Peak or canoing Quetico with my eldest grandson, or exploring Effigy Mounds with his little brother, I believe our time outdoors was always a healthy thing. If my offspring retain (or regain) a love of being in nature, I will feel successful as a parental unit.

And while I fully subscribe to the benefits to children as outlined in Last Child in the Woods, I also think we adults benefit from getting outside and among trees and bugs and mud and such as well. Sleeping on the ground. Having a little dirt in your panacakes. More of us, especially those of us who spend an inordinate amount of time behind a computer screen, need to get out more into the elements and away from our phones and our iPads and our earbuds. Standing under a tree is good for the soul. It's good for the psyche. It's good for the bod.

When I retire in a few years, I hope to have good enough health to continue hiking and biking and snorkeling and other outdoor activities. None of these activities is horrendously expensive. I plan on week or month long hikes. I plan on cross state bicycle rides. I could even see spending a winter doing the pilgrimage of Camino de Santiago.

So, start now. Take a walk at lunch. Soon you will make noon hour a sacred time, a temporal space carved out for you. Take your kid to a state park. Ride a bike with a grandkids. I bet they will remember the time more than the expensive gadget you last gifted them.

Hope you have woods nearby.

BFTP: Filtering and hypercompliance

The guy who does my taxes says that good citizens pay every penny they owe - but not one penny more.

That pretty well summarizes a sensible view of compliance with any law. Follow it, but don't go overboard. A driver is not more law-abiding by going 10 mph under the speed limit.

Unfortunately, too many technology decision-makers "hyper-comply" with CIPA. A great example is the current flap over Google enabling encrypted searches for materials. In some weird, paranoid logic, the readwriteweb [link no longer active] folks think this violates CIPA since such searches can't be monitored. (The websites found are still blocked.)

CIPA, just as reminder, only says:

"The protection measures must block or filter Internet access to pictures that are: (a) obscene, (b) child pornography, or (c) harmful to minors"

Nothing about monitoring - period.

Some school districts (San Diego) have just flat out blocked any sites that use SSL, encrypting data sent - which honks off, I guess, the more Orwellian techs. Since GoogleApps in Education uses SSL (aren't we supposed to be protecting users' privacy?), schools have been blocking GoogleApps as well.

No filtering attempt works 100% - even filtering companies admit this. Kids use proxies. Kids have their own devices with 3/4G connectivity. Kids take computers home and cache web pages. New nasty sites or old nasty sites with new web addresses appear. Just like a school cannot 100% guarantee a kid will never get hurt on a playground, a school cannot 100% guarantee a kids will never be exposed to pornography*.

Smart schools practice "due diligence." This means filtering at a reasonable level. It means ADULT monitoring of student computer use. It mean having, teaching and enforcing an understandable AUP (or Responsible Use Policy). It does not mean using any crackpot CIPA scare tactic to block access to useful information, tools and experiences.

Due diligence can have a different meaning to reasonable people. But relying on over-blocking by web filters alone is not due diligence.

* Postman's "one big room" theory seems to be increasingly prescient.

Thanks, Geezer Online.

Original post June 16, 2010

Focused curation - an indispensable role for the school librarian

As a school librarian in the 1980s, I was sometimes asked to pull books, locate magazine articles, and find filmstrips that could be used by students to support independent research on a curricular topic. Since "plate tectonics" was already covered by the seventh grade science textbook, these resources were considered supplementary. As was my position as a librarian.

With the emergence of learning management systems (LMS) like Moodle and Schoology replacing textbooks as the primary means of providing informational materials to students, the librarian's role as "focused curator" presents a very real opportunity to become indispensable. While the modern school librarian has happily adopted the role of "digital curator" of print and digital resources organized as pathfinders, webpages, GoogleDocs, or Pinterest, the learning management system can provide genuine curricular focus to digital resource curation.

While learning management systems provide interactive tools (discussion forums), formative and summative assessment tools (online quizzes), and organizational helps (calendars, homework drop boxes), their primary use in many classrooms is providing clear and easy access to reading and viewing materials that support learning objectives tied to state standards. There are several reasons why the LMS used in this way becomes a more powerful instructional tool than the textbook alone:

• Reading materials on a single topic but on different reading levels can be provided
• Informational materials in a variety of formats, including video, can be provided
• Links to powerful interactive websites and applications can be provided

This ability to correlated materials to student abilities and learning preferences as well as providing links to materials with differing points of view on topics (overcoming the built in blandness and irrelevance of the mass-produced textbook) simply engages more students, especially those who may not fit the definition of the "average" student.

Yet it is a huge challenge for classroom teachers to replace the textbook with LMS courses. Along with often learning the operation of the devices students use to access the LMS, the functions and features of the LMS itself, re-organizing course content by state standards, and writing learner outcomes, the location, creation, and evaluation of digital material can be both frustrating and time-consuming. Teachers will require assistance in populating units of instruction with high quality intructional materials.

Librarians, do you see an indispensable role for yourself as your school rolls out its LMS?