Michael Stephens slides

I found the slide show by Michael Stephens probably the most interesting of all the things we viewed or read for this week’s class session. One of the first things to catch my attention was the book, Born Digital by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser. Where I work with high school students who are definitely a part of this group, I think this title would be most beneficial for me to read so I can understand where it is our students are coming from. I’ve already located it at my local public library and plan on picking it up soon.


In the presentation, it’s stated that 1% of searches online begin at a library web site and I don’t doubt this. As one of the following slides says there isn’t much awareness of the electronic resources to which many libraries subscribe. I am fortunate that more teachers seem to be getting the idea that we have more consistently reliable information in these resources and therefore more of them have had me speak to their classes about them. I was pleasantly surprised just before spring break when some students came by the library quite some time after school was out and hardly a student can be found let along in our domain sadly enough. However, this group came asking for the tri-fold handout I’d made up with our library’s login information for our databases. This seemed to have been done completely on their own initiative so, occasionally it appears that some of the things I tell classes do sink in with them.

Another good point Stephens makes is that for the Millennial generation, these emerging technologies are just another part of the scenery for them whereas for people my age and older, it’s like ‘wow, this is something new and fantastic’ or ‘run for the hills, there’s another new overwhelming technology to learn’. I had a discussion with a student today about this very thing and she agreed that many technological innovations today aren’t that intimidating to people her age, you just explore it with little fear of failure she seemed to be saying. There’s always someplace or someone you can go to if you don’t understand something.

I found myself and our school library to be guilty of possessing some of the signs shown in the slides that forbade gaming or social networking on the library’s computers. Initially, when I took this position I agreed more heartily with these positions but even now as I see more benefits for students to learn these technologies in a participatory culture, I know that the school administration wouldn’t be as understanding if we tried to open the door to some of these tools. I think the scary stories of the misuse of technology by young people have many less tech-savvy adults freaked about the use of such things. Though, I’m not honestly sure that I want to go as far as this guy seems to be advocating where it’s like let’s throw open the floodgates but I know I could be misinterpreting things possibly.

I do agree that libraries, public or school, do need to be open to young people’s input so that it’s a place that relevant to them and thus, a place they want to be. I think programs that teach them how to use various Web 2.0 technologies so that they can contribute to the real world are great. The Bloomington Public Library in collaboration with the some of the local high schools has in the past worked with teens on video production as part of an effort to be part of a local film festival. Activities like this certainly have real world applications and I think many of the teens involved enjoyed learning more about this technology. As I mentioned in class tonight, one way that I’ve tried to incorporate student input is by adding a link to a blog I created recently where students can share their book reviews hoping that they’ll share this information with their friends or others will stumble across it while on our site and see what comments their peers left. I fear that students may be reluctant to share their thoughts for the same reason they don’t in classes verbally-fear of ridicule. I know that I too have this fear with my online classes here though I know perfectly well that’s not likely to happen. With teenagers who know their peers can be less than mature and uncouth often times online sharing may be taken up as much as it could be and I guess that’s why I’m surprised people like Michael Stephens and the authors of the other articles were such strong advocates for young adult participation in online forums. It’s probably just a case of me missing some piece of the puzzle here and once I get a better view of the big picture of things I’ll understand better.