Thing 35--Books 2.0

I have the fortune to work in a school where children love to read and love books. That being said, however, they also love technology and gaming. They will ALWAYS choose to begin their research projects on line, and only on line if not encouraged to look elsewhere. I find myself increasingly conflicted about this concept, because I'm not always sure that we--teachers and librarians--should require them to go to print sources. I'm not trying to be sacreligious here, but I think our goal should be a different one. I think we should demand that students read deeply and thoughtfully, regardless of where they find their material. Right now, I believe most people do not read deeply when they read on line. I think we tend to skim over info rather than stop and think about it. With books, because there are fewer bells and whistles to distract us, we are more likely to contemplate the ideas, to pause, to consider what we are reading.

I'm trying to explore this idea personally by tackling a large reading project on line--I have begun to read Don Quixote through DailyLit. I'm getting two installments a day so far, although I may have to expand it if I hope to finish the book in the next year. I am finding it tricky to read in this fashion. I generally dive deeply into books, often reading them in big spurts. To have what seems to me to be tiny pieces show up in my Rss Feed on a daily basis is strange. I do find that I have to work to read, not skim; my brain is trained to skim whenever I am reading on line. So before I become a crusader for getting children to read more deeply on line, I decided I need to train myself. I'll keep you posted on this endeavor. I will say, though, that for me a regular book is still preferable--it's more transportable and doesn't ever need power once it's printed.

Here are some of the sites I explored and my reactions to them:

I set up a LibraryThing account during the original 23 things. I want to catalogue my whole personal collection, but have put that out there as a summer project. (My husband sees this as self-preservation should I ever have to convince an insurance adjuster that I really did own this many books...) I haven't played with it as much as I would like, but the site has a number of interesting features that made it fun.

As I noted, I am trying DailyLit. Since I do not have a cell phone with any bells or whistles (I had to be dragged into having any cell phone), I am reading my installments on my computer. Of course, being a geeking academic type, I chose a book the size of a whale, so I may eventually give up and read it the old fashioned way.

I looked at both Book Lamp and What Should I read next? in the next section. Book Lamp seemed severely limited in the types and numbers of books it had available to choose and recommend. I had my husband try What Should I read next, and he thought the site made some good recommendations based on his knowledge of their suggestions. I might try this with students if they are looking in genres I am less versed in.

Overbooked in the next section was interesting, but somewhat difficult to use for me. Maybe I just like browsing shelves too much to find a site like this one to be useful. I could see using it to help others find books though.

Booksprouts appeared to be a good choice for someone who doesn't have an active, local group of friends to discuss books with. It might be a fun way to share with someone out of town as well. I thought I could organize some of my friends from college and grad school to play this way. When I have time....

I love the idea of books being recorded and available easily. I plan to pass these sites along to our special needs coordinator so that she knows how to help students who need audiobooks find them.

My school has its own version of book swapping, so I am somewhat less interested in this idea. But I love the idea of releasing books into the wild through BookCrossing. My neighborhood seems to be a hotbed of released books, so I may have to get in on the action.

BookBrowse was interesting but I still prefer the NYTIMES book review.

I had already found the International Children's Digital Library to look for Hebrew books for my school. I liked Lookybook and regret its passing. I liked the PDFs of Tonight's Bedtime Story and thought that it would be great for parents who travel to be able to read to their kids long distance. Plus, for small schools with no money (do we detect a theme?), it is a fabulous resource for traditional fairy tales.

I had already used a book app on my Facebook account. I find it clunky with too many different things I have to click to get it to show up on my page. Sigh.

Basically, my biggest reaction to this Thing is that we educators need to do a better job of modeling and teaching how to read information on the computer. We need to remember that HOW we get the information should be less important that WHAT we do with it.

Thing 34—On-Line Answer Sites

I work at an elementary school, and I have actually encouraged students to try to use some of the better screened sites (eg., WikiAnswers) to find the answers to their research questions. Part of my goal, both as a teacher and a librarian, is to help students learn how to become more self-sufficient in using the available resources and navigating the material that is out there. Also, these sites allow students to phrase questions in the way they think of them--unlike traditional search engines that need quotes, etc. The students like being empowered—I like them being more independent. By teaching them how the sites work, I can get them to see the benefits of not simply resorting to a Google search, since many of them do not have the experience or knowledge to evaluate the answers or material that such a search might result in. I think that people also like the sense of anonymity: if I am worried that my question might seem dumb or embarrassing, then I really don’t want to have to ask it of a live person.

The questions at some of these sites really run the gamut—from a simple plural in another language, to the curious (why are people ticklish), to how to get an extension on their taxes (I’m doing this on April 15), to game cheat codes, to what is meant by the words “economic stimulus.”
I think some of them are library questions, but some of them are either simpler or more complex. I wouldn’t want to ask librarians for help on my taxes—unless they also worked as tax accountants! I’m also not sure I would ask a librarian for cheat codes on a game, unless he or she were an avid gamer. But the other questions are certainly things I would ask. I also think a person could ask a librarian on advice for where to go to FIND the answers to the questions. That is often what I do as a school librarian.

People use these sites for a number of reasons. As I suggested above, most of us prefer to be independent. And somehow, it feels more independent to post a question on line than it does to ask someone more directly. I do think that we as librarians are often in the shadows, until we retrain people to recognize librarians as being not just technically savvy, but perhaps helpful and non-judgmental in recommending potential sources for information. Having some sort of web presence would probably help that. But it can be tricky. Working at a school, I find that the social networking sites where students spend the bulk of their time are places that we as a teaching staff are discouraged from interacting with kids at. (Ugh, an ugly sentence—sorry!) And I really don’t want to be available 24/7 for K through 8 students (or their parents). I’m trying to put together reference wiki pages that can enable greater “self-solving” but that doesn’t mean students will take the advice offered there.

I like the idea of slam the boards. I haven’t participated but think it might be interesting in the summer when I have more available time.