Mr. Popularity

Geeze I've been popular lately. At least with commercial interests who "think my readers would be interested in" their games, books, seminars, product release announcements, etc.

I appreciate the difficulty of getting the eyes and ears of potential customers today, but I've never felt comfortable in the role of recommending stuff. I happily share my opinions, good and bad, of products used personally or by my school, but I just don't have the time or interest to look at nonsolicited items sent my way.

I am reprinting my endorsement policy from a few years ago that is a permanent part of my blog - just in case people missed it the first time.

Warning - I am considering raising my rates for being bought off. Act now!

Product Endorsement Policy for the Blue Skunk and my presentations

• I will not endorse or mention a product (at least without a heavy-duty disclaimer) which I don't have experience using in our district. This is important. While the product itself might look very cool, it's only through experience that one learns about little things like support, compatibility, bug fixes, situational customizations, and unintended consequences of use.
• I will not accept any form of remuneration for reviewing or writing about a product. (Exception listed below.) This includes trips, gifts, cash, cars, call girls or dictatorships of small countries. Not that any of these things have actually been offered to me.
• I don't take paid advertising on my blog or website.
• I don't accept unsolicited guest blogs from commercial enterprises.
• I don't wear t-shirts, baseball caps, or underwear with corporate logos. (I do have a hip flask with the ALA logo on it, however.)
• I do write "blurbs" for books and/or products that I've actually read or used and liked.
• My recommendations are my personal recommendations - not the school district's.

I suppose there are other guidelines I should set for myself. That readers trust my objectivity is important to me.

Now there is one big caveat to all of this. If the price were right, I would probably say just about anything. I am thinking $100K would pay off the mortgage, allow me to fill up both family motor vehicles at the same time, and get the LWW that new garbage disposal she's been pining for. Cool.

There is an old joke about a man who approaches a woman in a bar and offers her a staggering amount of money if she will sleep with him. She accepts. Then the man offers her five dollars if she will sleep with him. The woman responds, "Just what kind of a woman do you think I am?" The man responds, "I think we both know that. We're just negotiating the price."

I suspect it's good for my professional reputation I work in education where the profit margin is so small that the temptations just aren't that tempting...

Doug Johnson, July 2008

Oh, if you are thinking about leaving a comment on my blog or website that is thinly disguised spam, think twice. Not only will I remove it, I'll leave a comment dissing your business for lack of ethics.

Unintended consquences can be positive

An unexpected bennie of putting in our district's VOIP phone system this summer may well be that our whole IP network is getting an upgrade. At least our wiring closets certainly are.

Like a lot of places, our networks "grew" without much of a master plan. We added drops, patch panels and switches as our needs grew. We replaced classroom hubs with multiple direct runs as budgets and remodeling projects allowed. As a cost savings measure, we made a lot of our own patch cords - with 2, 4, or 6 wires according to mood. Cable management was, well, nice when there was time. Our closets looked "organic" to put it kindly.

Like most schools, we are understaffed with technicians and sometimes chewing gum and baling twine would get a problem solved quickly. (We do draw the line at using duct tape to splice fiber.)

At the urging of our very smart network sys admin, we are replacing not just most of our old switches with new POE (Power Over Ethernet) switches, but all of our closet patch panel cables and adding cable management systems as well. (Along with doing some major network reconfigurations.)

Perhaps I am a natural pessimist at heart, but I'd never before thought that the law of unintended consequences could mean positive consquences, but it looks like the new phone system will result in better overall network functionality. Cool.

Oh, if you hear of one of our techs are coming out of the closet this summer, it's literal - not metaphorical.

Paraprofessionals - let'm in or keep'm out?

Let me start this by saying that I genuinely value good library/tech paraprofessionals. Whether we call them clerks, aids, secretaries or paras, these people are essential to running a good program. I even wrote a Valentine to the great paras with whom I've worked in the past.

But a hard question often comes up here in Minnesota about paraprofessionals and their relationship to our state library/tech organization, MEMO. Should they be eligible for membership (and training opportunities) or not?

The "big tent" proponents argue that since library paraprofessionals currently work with students and teachers, often without the supervision of a professional library media specialist, our organization should be giving them as much training as possible. Hey, they DO work with kids, after all, and we want what's best for kids.

Those who feel that our "professional" organization should be restricted to professionals worry that we are legitimizing putting paras in places where professionals belong. We've had a rash of schools in which certified library media specialist have been replaced by clerks, aids or secretaries in buildings, so this is not an hypothetical worry.

I don't have a good answer. There is an immediate short term need to give kids access to someone with good library-related skills NOW. But the long-term health of the profession is a stake by seeming to say that certification doesn't matter.

How do other organizations resolve this problem? Is there something I am overlooking?

This may be an issue for an increasing number of educational organizations as the movement to "alternate means of licensure" picks up steam.