Do these "information" pants feel too tight ;)

What an amazing and interesting book!  What I found the most interesting was the author’s description of choice.  If you ask my children or friends of my children and ask them what my motto is or my main mantra in life and they will tell you without hesitation “it’s all about choices”.  While that may seem very obvious it is truly what I live by - both the good and the bad of it.  We do not get to pick our consequences, but we all have choices.  And that pretty much covers it all :)

As a librarian we are looking at ways our students use information and should be a guiding force teaching them.  I personally have spent many lessons on website evaluation and being a digital citizen.  While I do go over that there is the good and bad out there in the information world, I however, do not believe I have ever addressed what it means to have a “balanced information life”.  Maybe since I am in elementary school students may not have as much freedom to be on devices than their older counterparts.  But students to spend lots of time on devices with games and apps.  We encourage online games such as Prodigy or spending time on databases.  Our school just renewed its subscription to Myon – it is an online digital library with over 6000 books and endless news articles.  It is amazing and it is my job to promote it (since it is super expensive) but now I feel like I need to make sure that I am not pushing for use that creates an imbalanced information diet.  The book really has me thinking of my role as a librarian and a teacher that really focus on how to find the information the students and staff need.  My job is assisting in the finding but now I see that I also need to advocate and model a good life balance. 

There is no one best way.... Creative Spirit of Design

When I first read our assigned article relating to the creative spirit of design my thoughts went directly to a very bad design that we are currently experiencing.  This past summer our cafeteria was remodeled.  We went from having one service line to having two.  This was going to be a big improvement for our school having two serving lines.  IT is a disaster!!  Most days when I go and get my lunch, I just shake my head thinking about the design.  It is the most problematic for our kindergarteners and first graders – very short little children who cannot reach the poor lunch worker trying to hand them their tray and the glass so far down that you cannot really maneuver the tongs to take out a piece of fruit or get some salad.  Each day I struggle, and I cannot understand why this design has make it so hard for our students to get their lunch.  One more than one occasion I have been “stuck’ helping these young students get their food.   This is brand new and I just do not understand why this was not thought about before putting it in our school.  I guess someone must have thought it was ok but I would like that person or team to please come during kindergarten lunch and really see how the design it working.

OK, that was my design vent.  I believe the creative spirit of design is having the flexibility to continue improving.  From our article one of my take a ways was the statement “designers with the creative spirit are often tinkering with tangible works-in-progress pushing the boundaries of what they know, making  better sense of their ideas, and, importantly, testing how well emerging designs accomplish the goals they originally set out to achieve”. (p.55).  So, having goals really is a big part but getting to those goals is not set in stone – it may be achieved in many different ways.  The article also mentioned perspective – which is something I have to really think about.  We have discussed this in class of really thinking of how the student is seeing this lesson or concept and improving our lesson from the student’s view.  Having a creative spirit of design is a willingness to continue to improve, be reflective, make changes and to take risks. 

What does it afford?

I was introduced to affordance analysis last semester.  At first this seemed like a hard concept to me as it was such a new way to think about the tools.  I do think about what a technology could do but I was not going as deep as what an affordance analysis can offer.  I believe with much practice since that time I look at tools a bit differently and a bit more deeply to what they can each afford to the learning process.  There are so many different tools we can use and looking at all the affordances gives a better picture of which tool would be the better choice.  The tools are also changing, and I believe also improving.  Power Point is an example of this where it has so much more abilities to do so many more things, so it affords more possibilities.

I really like what was mentioned in class that using a tool should be as seamless as possible when it is needed and appropriate for the student to connect content and learning.  Sometimes I think we jump right into a tech tool when a pencil might do the trick just as well.  The article we read by Bower describes the method not the prescription of choosing technologies to “scaffold the learning” so that the “design process will be retained by educators rather than subsumed by a mechanical process”. 

There is so much to consider is the design process and sometimes I do feel a bit overwhelmed keeping it all organized.  I do feel that I am getting better a looking at a tool and considering all the affordances it has.  I know that many of the teachers I collaborate with do not have the time to work it out or to try something new on their own.  Coming to them with a tool and the affordances allows them to see the possibilities and they are willing to get out of their comfort zone and take a “risk” with me.  Sometimes it goes well and others not as much, but learning is had by all. 

Bower states, “Focusing on an affordance level draws the educational designer’s thinking closer to the underlying attributes of the technologies and how they support collaboration and cognition, allowing selection to be based upon learning needs.” (p. 15)

Bower, M. (2008). Affordance analysis- matching learning tasks with learning technologies. Educational Media International, 45(1), 3-15.