"Learners will inherit the earth"

I have been in the education and library fields for the past 35 years. My work life is not over yet – in some ways I feel that I am only just beginning to enter another era. As this class ends we are reflecting on what we have read and learned, the questions we have, the questions we have answered, and what lies ahead in the next 30 years. This is a parallel reflection on my professional experiences, too.

When I first began teaching, there were no computers at all in our classrooms. We did not have workstations available for typing up papers, or the internet to research for papers. Multimedia in the classroom involved a 16 mm film projector, filmstrip projector with cassette tape or a slide projector (or in the case of my art history classes, 2 or 3 projectors side by side shining on a large wall in a darkened room – no sound). Overhead projectors were pretty exciting, and being able to run off a test on a ditto machine saved hours of time! After a few years in the classroom I found myself teaching a high school computer class – actual programming in DOS. At home and our work we were on the cutting edge of personal computing – we had computers in the living room and the office. Our children grew up using computers at home and school. By the time I began my public library career, we were finding increased demand for workstations for the public (with very limited time allotments per person) and installed an innovative (at the time) piggyback phone line connection between the school and public library to allow a direct link to the regional library system LLSAP.

As I look around my library today and respond to the daily demands on my time, I realize that in my library alone I have 11 desktop computers, a lab with 24 computers, and two wireless labs with 52 computers to manage. 90 % of my day is spent working with students in the library and in the classroom on media projects and instruction. I have set my library’s website up as a convenient portal for 24/7 access to electronic databases, internet sources, and ebooks. I stay late to monitor students in the library who are trying to finish their term papers (due tomorrow) because they do not have a computer at home, or do not have internet, or a printer. I have 20 digital still and video cameras to check out – which is great because right now I have approximately 80 students working on multimedia projects. In the past eight years I have spent an increasing amount of time designing and delivering professional development, collaborating with teachers, and helping students become information literate. In the past four years we have added SMART boards to every classroom in the district, and every classroom has at least one computer – in the elementary rooms there are more. Interestingly, in teacher preparation classes in college there was no emphasis on integration of technology – just how to thread a film projector without running the film backwards or worse, tearing it. Believe it or not, the only computer course I have ever taken was one that focused on how to wire the boards that determined how the sorting machine slotted the punch cards. I did not even have one keyboard or typing class in all those years. I have never had a multimedia production class. The only way I have survived in my profession and thrived as a lifelong learner has been to find training and information on my own as I needed it. I have been fortunate to have the motivation to do that, and to have been surrounding by willing and capable mentors through the years.

All of the articles we examined for this week hit home with experiences I have had in my work life, and very much tied together to present an overview of how we got here and where we are going with media literacy. In a 2007 international press release from the European based e-inclusion project we are cautioned that “In today’s society, access to information by all citizens is a right as well as a condition for prosperity. It is neither morally acceptable nor economically sustainable to leave millions of people behind, unable to use Information and Communications Technologies to their advantage.” When comparing internet world statistics, it is clear that “the Global Village” became a reality. The internet has indeed changed life as we know it, from business to casual communications. In December 1995 there were about 16 million users (0.4 % of the world population). In December of 2009, there were about 1,802 million users (26.6 % of the world population.) While the physical access to the internet has skyrocketed in a short amount of time, the abilities of those users vary greatly. That is the new frontier in media literacy for our future.

If you have been involved in writing the mandated technology plan for your school district you will have watched the evolution of requirements to having your plan approved. Where once the plan focused on establishing broadband connections for districts, the move then pushed toward access to hardware in classrooms, then finally access to the internet in classrooms. Three years ago our plan had to include surveys of our students, faculty, administrators and community members about their use of technology, their training, their skill level, and what they felt their needs are. The plan had to include several phases of increasingly involving professional development, student instruction, and community involvement. Because our school straddles counties, the Illinois Century Network (ICN) which a majority of school districts use to access the internet Is NOT a cost savings to our district. The state is actually divided into LATTAS – and because we are in more than one county we are in more than one LATTA. Our broadband costs were enormous each month, and all we could get was a wireless connection – our whole district was wireless to the tower in another town. Two years ago we switched to AT&T with 3 T-1 lines and a connection between all of our buildings ( 5 buildings in 2 towns). The ERATE initiative has helped us greatly by reimbursing a portion of the telephone bills and the internet access bills. That reimbursement rate is based on our percentage of free and reduced lunch number. One of our buildings has a free and reduced rate of 70 % so our reimbursement for that phone bill in 70 % of the bill. The internet access reimbursement is averaged for all of the buildings involved, so our reimbursement rate is 62%. That is a significant savings in telecommunications. At a time when the State of Illinois owes our small rural school district over $846, 289 in back payments, that is extremely important.

A friend of mine is a professor of literature at a private liberal arts college here in Illinois. I asked her recently what books she wished the incoming students were familiar with or had read before they came to college. She replied that it was not as critical which specific books they had read, but rather how well they could think and respond to anything that they read. Did they have critical thinking skills? For several years there have been various versions of the “DID YOU KNOW” presentation by Karl Fisch which emphasizes that we cannot teach CONTENT to our students, but must teach our students how to learn on their own. The content they will need to be successful in their work and personal lives even 10- years or 15-years down the road hasn’t even been thought of yet. Simply memorizing facts today will not help our students later. Some of the facts they will need to know don’t exist yet.

As Eric Hoffer said, “ In times of change learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. As we read in the article “What Should be the Professionals Attitude Toward Lay Criticism of the Schools,” debate about the efficacy of education has been raging for decades. A clear vision of what is needed, a unified vision of a direction to take, and a consensus about the results of instruction hasn’t been reached in any decade. We don’t have that now.

As summarized in “The Power of Pow! Wham!: Children, digital media & our nation’s future, the biggest challenges for the coming decade are research and development, the connection between digital literacy and learning, and the accessibility of applications and tools all children to increase their skills, ability to collaborate, and motivate their continued learning. The old digital divide centered on physical access to computer hardware and then the internet. While that divide does still exist (poorer schools and environments = less access and equipment), a new divide involves what is happening with the access our students do have. How do they use it? How do they apply what they learn? How do they assess the amazing amount of information they can reach now?

In my own work world I totally agree that my greatest challenge is helping our students become lifelong learners and to be information, computer, visually, and media literate. We can’t give them the content, but we can give them tools of learning. I think this is an exciting time to be a school librarian, and the possibilities for productivity, creativity and understanding are unlimited.