Well, how’s this for trying something new. Jenny I hope it’s okay! I decided to sign up for mindmeister. Liked it immediately. Starting mindmeister-ing. Realized it was turning into a super cool blog post. Hopefully I can share that with you now:

http://www.mindmeister.com/308017189

http://www.mindmeister.com/308017189/my-conceptual-development-libe-477

One of the two should work!

The term “connected self” has left me thinking/staring blankly at the ceiling although I know the answer isn’t up there, for a good ten minutes now. It is one of those terms that can be looked at in any number of overly confusing ways. Or, it can just be taken literally. As with our discussion today in class regarding the ‘social life’ of information, you are the only one in charge of yourself, and so ultimately, it is your own responsibility to either connect yourself or not.

To be a strong connected self when it comes to technology and information literacy, I feel that it is important to have a strong grasp of what those terms mean. In our group, we looked up a couple of definitions of info lit. Anne-Marie found one that rang true to all of us. We were surprised when we looked at the year of publication and found it to be from 1989: http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency#ildef
But, when we really thought about it, it isn’t information literacy that is new, it’s the way we use it in terms of technology that is changing minute by minute.

In terms of my professional development when it comes to technology and information literacy, I only really push the boundaries when I have someone to push them with me – whether it be a class, a teacher, a colleague, a student, or a friend. Although it is the connected self, couldn’t it also be the connected-self-in-connection-with-other-selves? This, after all, is the basis for social media – which brings me to my next point.

Today was great. I had those ‘someones,’ as mentioned earlier, to push through the barriers of the unknown along with me. I had signed up for Twitter months ago, while my boyfriend and I were stuck in an hour-long traffic stand still on the way back from Whistler. About a week later, I got hacked, had to change my password, and never used Twitter again – until today. Since my friends and I have recently become avid Insta-grammers, the learning curve for Twitter was more like a flat Prairie field than the steep mountain slope of the Pearltree introduction.

But, steep learning curve or not, the best part of today was that we were all doing it together, and learning as a big group. I have always thought that the saying “two minds are better than one” is very true. Today we proved that saying exponentially – there were people helping people, learning, teaching, and discovering all over the classroom. As Jenny pointed out, there are now that many more teachers using these social media sites. Let’s get our voices out there loud and clear!

Will Richardson’s Why School? was a great read. It managed to be thought provoking and inspiring at the same time as being overwhelming and scary. It did, however, spark some great discussion during class. While I always have lots going on in my head, I sometimes tend to be the student that sits back and let’s the others take over. Today though, I couldn’t help but contribute wholeheartedly throughout our discussion.

Our group was discussing Richardson’s main points in writing the book. We discussed both their merits and downfalls. For example, the teacher that handed his students a PLO and asked them how they wanted to learn about it. I can just imagine the great discussions and inspirations that could come from this type of self-directed learning. But, we considered, students need to be at a certain point academically already to participate in this type of learning. They can’t do their own inquiry based research project without some sort of firm knowledge base in reading, writing, etc. Or can they? Richardson’s got my head spinning here (in an absolute good way).

A couple of years ago I volunteered at a very small independent school in Vancouver. The tiny student population (8 at the time I think) was each working on their own unique and very interesting project – chosen of course by them. A couple of girls were working on a community fundraising initiative by selling handmade items. It was great – what a positive way to learn about community, empathy, and being proactive. It is with skills like this that our future citizens can help repair the shape of our earth. With community and student directed learning perhaps students will learn to foster a better sense of ownership over their learning, and therefore over their home and Mother Nature. Maybe? Hopefully.

But I digress. The point I was aiming to get to a while back was Richardson’s quote from the founder of High Tech High: “we have to stop delivering the curriculum to kids. We have to start discovering it with them.” He follows with “I wrote that down.” Me too, Will, me too. I love learning and am always thirsty for new knowledge and new learning experiences. I love learning right along with my students, so I found this quote exciting and hopeful.

If you haven’t done so already, check out the Ken Robinson videos discussed in our group post from today.

One of my teachers last summer compared us to lemmings, all of us about to blindly jump into the unknown together with the changes to teaching and teacher-librarian-ing taking place right now, especially when it comes to technology. So lets trust each other. Here we go!