H Y P E R - - M E D I A , A W A Y ! ! ! !

With hypermedia I can leap tall tomes of information with a single click and swhoosh through cyberspace at swashbuckling speed to another world filled with still more information. But sometimes I wonder if maybe as I bounce from one screen to the next, I’m missing the depth of thought possible from reading and reflecting on an article or a book with chapters laid out in a purposeful way by the author.

I have been told that I am a free spirit. I admit I don‘t always think linearly. I like to have multiple ideas swirling around simultaneously. So, hyperlinks don’t bother me - much. I’m glad for them. Though I must admit I try not to click away until I’ve read the entire article through. But sometimes if I'm not really engaged in what I'm reading, I'll click - to be transported to another place. It's exciting.

I do worry, though, whether with Google and the explosion of hyperlinks, we may not be researching and thinking deeply. We grow impatient with articles that are more than a few paragraphs in length. It’s so easy to bounce from one idea to another, skimming through information, going off on tangents, until we run out of time and have to leave the computer. What do we have to show for the session? Have we researched in depth, have we reflected on what we have read, have we constructed knowledge or just skimmed the surface and picked up a few tidbits for tonight's cocktail conversation? Maybe we bookmarked a site or squirreled away some file, but aren't we just kidding ourselves? Will we ever come back to that information, and when we do, will we remember why we thought it was important in the first place?

Copyright

I have been on both sides of copyright issue. I’ve written educational software and owned a computer store for 15 years and now I am preparing to be a purveyor of ideas and knowledge as a school library media specialist. As a small business owner I understood the business-end of things. If people illegally copied software, then the programmer, the publisher and the store owner don’t make money which would eventually result in fewer quality programs being released, prices going up, companies going out of business. I understood the ethical side of things – unauthorized copying is cheating. I understood the legal consequences – those illegally pirating software risked fines and imprisonment. In the 1980s public domain software and shareware provided legal and free or low-cost alternatives to commercial software. As a sponsor for a computer user group, I educated users about copyright and made the free software available as a way for customers to broaden their software libraries.

Just as I appreciate the need and the right of authors and publishers to make a living and be compensated for their creative work, as an instructor I feel passionately about using every possible tool to educate students. I want to share the wonder, the excitement of learning that certain images or videos, audios or movies, stories or songs can evoke. If I have the chance to make an idea crystal clear in their minds, to bring about wonder and awe, how can I not grab that opportunity? Fortunately the Fair Use guidelines for education recognize and protect those desires of teachers, who operating in good faith, use works created by others in the classroom. As a SLMS I will again educate about the responsibilities of copyright and also the rights of educators to use resources with the copyright permissions of Fair Use.

Collaborative vs. Cooperative Groups

Recently, I heard it said that when you collaborate, the group result is smarter than the smartest member. And to me that’s a pretty good reason to collaborate! When each member of the group brings with him/her a different set of experiences and is willing to contribute ideas and respectfully consider others’ thoughts, the stage is set. Then, when there ensues discussion of the ideas, debate, questions, clarifications, and building upon the initial ideas, it becomes a collaboration. The group agrees upon a course of action and then writes, edits and revises the final report. The result of a successful group collaboration is more robust, more complex, and more complete than what one member would have been able to produce.

Cooperative group work, on the other hand, lacks the same degree of social interaction, the evolution of ideas, the construction of knowledge. The cooperative group cuts the task into pieces, farms out the work to members, and each member goes off and does their task, and somehow at the end they cobble the pieces back together.

Our group strove to follow the collaborative approach. We met in Palace three times and used the discussion forum and wiki. We emailed a lot - sharing ideas and revising versions of the text. I felt that during this exercise I learned about the learning process and learned new approaches to teaching and preparing lessons from my team members.

Our group idea was that Janice would do an interdisciplinary, technology-infused unit on the presidential election using constructivist principles. Within this unit students would do various individual and group activities including Internet research on the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, participate in an on-line kids election and online computer election simulations, write blogs, create a class wiki, devise campaign slogans and signs and create a brief campaign video. For the culminating project, Janice would facilitate a debate with students taking the roles of the candidates.

A laptop for every student

A laptop for every student ...... Tool for education .... Connection with the global learning community. The opportunity to participate in a global thinktank - float an idea, others build upon it and just watch what happens next. Sounds pretty exciting to me. If we want the knowledge explosion, the next revolution - an intellectual revolution based on constructive collaboration, then I think we need to get computers into the hands of kids eleven and twelve years oldnow and see where they take it. Let them start early and grow with it and shape their relationships with computers their way - as they see fit. Each child will go in a different direction and that's o.k. It won't always be where the teachers or parents expect or maybe not in the way that they always approve of, but with proper guidance and filters, I believe that the results are likely to lead to a greater good and yield unimaginable results.

My 11 year old is teaching herself HTML, driven by the desire to design her own website. When I had to do that for a class this summer, it was an intimidating task for me, I questioned my ability. But she has a goal, no fears, no limitations, and she's forging ahead. What will she learn? What will that knowledge and confidence allow her to do next? I'm anxious to find out.

Of course we worry about the durability of the computers - the maintenance costs. Will the students be responsible enough to handle the computer properly? Will the investment losses be too great. But then I think how we allow 5th and 6th grade children to take $700 trumpets, $2000 saxophones, $800 violins on the bus to and from school each day with little mishap. So, maybe it will be o.k. to put a laptop in every backpack.

Will the benefits outweigh the costs? I think the risks of not providing laptops, (i.e., what we might miss out on) are just too high to chance.

It's a ill wind that blows nobody good

Recently, when a subtropical depression, spawned from Hurricane Ike, blew down trees and knocked out power to a million homes and businesses in Cincinnati, I was forced to find alternative ways to do most things - cook, clean and communicate. However, I must admit, life became almost idyllic, I grilled out, read in a lawnchair on the front porch, talked with neighbors, played board games with my daughter, and reveled in the quietude. It was like a nature-imposed camping trip – when the sun went down, our flashlights came out. We all realized how lucky we were – everything is relative. I thought about how my ancestors, farmers in northern Ohio, had lived in the 1800s. Only thing, though, they weren’t accustomed to life with electricity and they didn’t take online graduate classes.

Through this experience I learned firsthand what it is like to be without a computer with Internet connection at home. For a week, I was placed on the other side of the digital divide. When the public library’s power was restored, I used the computers there. It wasn’t quite the same. I had to make a reservation on the computer, for an hour at a time, a clock in the corner of the screen counted down the minutes. I didn’t have the luxury of long leisurely Internet searches, where I could investigate subjects in depth, and jump from one topic to the next. I just stamped out the hotspots – answering urgent emails and reading about assignments that I would have to do sometime later, and checking energy forecasts for any news about when our power would come back. For me there was the hope that “the power” would return any minute, but that’s not the case for so many families and students.

I took away many lessons from the windstorm about what really matters and the benefits of leading a simpler life. As a result of this experience I will be more compassionate toward students who may not have access to a computer at home. I better understand how that may impact their academic life. When I begin teaching, I’ll remember this week, and try to help all students find times and ways to use the computer – perhaps by extending the hours of the media center and ensuring that it is a welcoming, inviting place for all students to come to study and learn.