The continuum's ends

My Australian friend Dr. Arthur Winzenried at Charles Stuart University in Wagga Wagga (voted 12 years running coolest name for a town in the entire world) and I have been commiserating about the diverse levels of expertise we encounter among those we teach. Arthur recently wrote:

At CSU I teach Distance Ed and with all the technology issues decided on a bold approach by setting the group of Masters students (200 odd) the task of collaborating (in teams of 4) on a joint PowerPoint using only a wiki ...  as their communication tool. The results are now in and the work is quite exceptional, but in their personal reflections, it showed that a significant number had never produced a PowerPoint before, let alone communicated via virtual chat, wiki etc. The group are essentially all working teacher-librarians in various parts of the world. Despite all of the hype, we still face enormous differences in the levels of expertise and access. Curiously, no access problems reported by students in Belgium or Ghana, Iceland or China, but one serious issue with a student less than 100k from the Uni ...

My fussing was about teaching Web 2.0 tools to educators. In every group setting, there are those who could (and possibly should) be teaching the workshop, who know more tools and more features of individual tools than I ever will, and those who say, "Uh, blogs? Whaz 'at?" And it is tough to do differentiated instruction in a conference workshop... "OK, Bluebirds at this table; Buzzards over here... Please, check your pretest scores!" I don't think so.

It seems to me that that the continuum between reactionary educators who still find overhead projectors a cutting edge tool and progressive educators who seem to master each tool and philosophy du jour is stretching ever longer every year. As a classroom teacher in the 70s and 80s, we all taught pretty much the same way, with the same sets of tools.

But today, teachers and librarians are, let's charitably say, heterogeneous in their skills and outlooks.

Technology use is the most obvious culprit for stretching the continuum, but there also seem to be other factors at work - improved communications, more voices, and an explosion of theories and practices and philosophies of education.

Are our technologies bringing educators closer together? Or are they driving the teaching profession apart?

First year goals for a library program

From an LM_Net post this morning:

Dear Great Brain, [this was addressed to the collective brain that is LM_Net, not me. But you guessed that.]

I need to write up my goals for the year and give them to my principal. I have a few general ideas such as collaborating with teachers as much as possible, becoming a good resource for them, teaching students to use the databases, starting a lunch time book club, and decorating the library with student art. If you could send me any other ideas that seem reasonable for a first year in high school it would be much appreciated...I love creative ideas.

Diane

Hmmm, I personally get asked this question at least a couple times a year. Below is my standard response to which I can now refer when the question comes up again. Ain't blogs wonderful...

Dear Diane and other LMSs new to the profession or a school:

My advice is based on Johnson's Three Commandments of a Successful Library Program:

1. Thou shall develop shared ownership of the library and all it contains.
2. Thou shall have written annual objectives tied directly to school and curriculum goals and bend all thy efforts toward achieving them.
3. Thou shall take thy light out from under thy damn bushel and share with others all the wonders thou doest perform.
   

Pretty good, huh? What do you think the job of biblical prophet pays nowadays?

These would be my goals for my first year at a school:

1. Establish a formal library advisory committee comprised of teachers, parents, and students. And the building administrator if his/her leadership style is collaborative, not dictatorial. (See Advisory Advice.) Oh, get on your building's improvement committee/leadership team ASAP.)
   
2. Work with this committee to establish collaboratively-created goals and a good budget. You may wish to conduct a library survey and do a collection evaluation to give direction to these goals. (See tools here for examples.)
3. Quickly establish a formal communication plan with four main audiences: your students, your staff, your principal and your parents. (See Using Planning and Reporting to Build Program Support)

While I applaud you for wishing to do individual collaborative projects with teachers immediately, do not neglect a long-term, systematic approach to developing a program that has buy-in by the entire staff.  You need a school culture that values and uses the library's program and resources, not just a few enthusiastic teachers. Be strategic!

Good luck and let me know how things go!

Doug

PS. This probably not all that bad of advice for technology integration specialists starting out either.

Blue Skunk readers - Your advice for first year goals???

Strong passwords, weak security

D7B3BE289B1020A8A1D25FFC74

That's the password to log on to our WEP encrypted wireless access in one of our district's meeting rooms. With one or two changed characters, of course.

I've always had a suspicion that the requirement for a "strong" password really creates more security problems than it solves under most circumstances. Strong passwords require a minimum number of characters (12-14), need to be a combination of numbers and upper/lower case letters, and often need to forced-changed on regular basis.

Which all leads normal people to write them down and hide them in a convenient place - top desk drawer, under the desk calendar, on a sticky note adhering to the monitor...

The rationale for strong passwords is they are harder to discover if one runs a fancy password-guessing program to crack a computer security system. These programs rapidly try all common words and names in an attempt to gain access.

So the question I have to ask is: Which is more likely: a middle school student having access to a cracking program or knowing that passwords can be found under the teacher (or parent) desk blotter?

There are compromises that involve mnemonic clues to remembering strong(er) passwords:

• add a date to a child's or pet's name (sammy411)
• substitute numbers or symbols for letters (r0o$evelt)
• create an acronym (1itln - one is the loneliest number)
• write the password down but with a change in a single character that one can actually remember

None of these are recommended by an computer security expert, I am sure. Be thankful I don't work for the CIA.

Social hacking remains the number one computer security threat, at least according to the things I read. If you call someone and say you are from so-and-so security firm and are conducting an audit and need to verify his/her password, a high percentage of people happily divulge that information.

At last count, I have 54 different programs and websites that require a password for either school or work. I have them all stored in a password-protected database on my computer. Were a person able to obtain access, horror or horrors, s/he would be able to see my frequent flier miles, credit card and bank balances (both embarrassing), and edit my school web page. There are some benefits, sigh, to living a dull life.

So how do you create passwords that are difficult to guess but easy to remember? What are the practical rules for passwords schools should establish - and teach to kids?