Infomancy

What’s in a name? According to the results of the 2008 School Library Journal Job Satisfaction Survey, at least $10,000. As seen in the chart, the average salary for “teacher librarians” in the survey was $10,000 more than the average for “library media specialists” and $15,000 higher than “school librarians.”

While it would be nice to be able to attribute some sort of causal relationship between the title and the salary, I am pretty certain that it is much more correlative in its nature. California, for example, uses the teacher librarian title and also has some areas with very high costs of living that probably lead to higher salaries. Still, wouldn’t it be nice to speculate just a bit?

What is your title, and do you think it matters in how you are perceived (and paid)?

Sure, you are reading this now, but will you remember the immensely important key points I might be about to make? There are a number of online applications that help users make notes about information they find on the web, but some of the additions to newcomer WebNotes are quite intriguing.

Being able to highlight and annotate pages is nothing new, but the ease with which this and other tasks is accomplished using the WebNotes extension for Firefox is quite refreshing. After a bit of playing around thanks to an invitation from ReadWriteWeb this morning, the most notable thing about WebNotes is their attention to small details. I must confess that my favorite feature so far - and the one that will probably lead to my leaving this installed for easy access on the occasions where it would be a very useful tool - is the ability to show or hide the extension/toolbar with a single click of the icon in the navigation toolbar area. Other sites (*cough* Diigo *cough*) just get to be so annoying with a toolbar that takes over after every update despite my constantly turning it off. I appreciate WebNotes giving me an easy way to access their toolbar during those times when it will be needed, and then easily hide it when I am not annotating.

So what else does the tool do? The standard mixture of sticky notes, highlighting, and organization are supplemented by a few ideas that make WebNotes especially nice for schools and libraries. After annotating an article or other content, a teacher could use WebNotes to create a permanent link to the marked-up page that could be shared with students. Or, students could use WebNotes accounts to annotate pages and share them with the teacher as an assessment of note taking skills (hint: highlighting the whole page is a fail).

Another way to share is the WebNotes daily report tool. Users can create PDF or HTML renditions of their sticky notes and highlights from around the web collected onto a single page. Since you can generate reports by folder, librarians could create a new folder for a reference session and then send a customer an annotated report at the end of the research help session.

So overall my first impression is very positive. This is a clean, simple application that does a small thing really well and offers some innovative new ways to interact with output for sharing. As noted above, I especially like the unobtrusive nature of the tool as it hangs out waiting for a time of need. I have to think that this is something that will be in my Firefox extension list for a while to come. If you would like to try it out, drop me a comment or send an e-mail. I have a number of invites to share for the currently restricted beta.

Does your library pwn? Would that be a good thing if it did? Though you might be worried about being labeled with a fail sticker, should you be equally concerned if a student says “Librarian FTW”?

Part of embracing gaming in libraries is learning the lingo that accompanies online gaming and the less academic side of the Internet in general. Like LOLCats, pictures of cats with funny or snide annotations, the title to this post can be used as a measurement of your online credibility. So let us delve deeper…

• Pwn: This intentional misspelling of the word “own” probably grew from accidental typos in online games when players tried to tell others that they had been “owned” or beaten rather soundly. Now to pwn has come to be an insider way of claiming victory. Though one must be careful in verbalizing this too much (just like trying to say ROFL makes you look a bit daft), it can be pronounced as either “pone” so it rhymes with own, or sometimes as “pawn”. It is most often used as a verb - I pwned you - but can also refer to general actions as in “I brought the pwnage.” Getting pwned is not a good thing as it tends to make you look like a total noob.
• Fail: Not necessarily a gaming term, but rather the LOLCat derivation de’ jour on the Internets (see how I added an “s” to make this a sarcastic reference?). To fail is pretty self-descriptive, it is used as a rather obvious label to a picture or situation that represents a total breakdown of expectations. An example fail was identified here a few months back - note that not only does the sign presuppose that libraries must be quiet (FAIL!) it then proceeds to misspell quiet as quite (EPIC FAIL!). Please also note that fails are much funnier when not explained.
• FTW: FTW - For The Win - represents the opposite of fail. A win is a success, and often one realized in the face of hardship or overwhelming odds. Identifying that something is “for the win” is tantamount to saying that it is a good thing or a desirable outcome. At the conclusion of an especially successful reference interview, a student might proclaim “Librarians FTW” to acknowledge the high level of expertise that you brought to the search process. One must be careful int he use of the abbreviation for this in certain company, however, as it is also the accepted short form of f&%k the world for some subcultures.

You can learn more about the complex love-hate triangle that is pwn-fail-ftw by watching this very helpful documentary from Rocketboom. Until you are fully versed in the proper usage of these complex words, please be cautious in your attempts to represent. Nothing would be a bigger fail than to fail in using the word fail - talk about a self referential loop that would skyrocket to epic faildom almost instantly.

Once you are pwning fail for the win, however, you might consider showing off your newly discovered cred by labeling book displays with these terms. What books embody pwnage for instance? A great opportunity to highlight some books where the underdog comes out on top and wins in the end. Or, you could label Twilight as a SCARY VAMPIRE FAIL and offering a selection of more traditional horror books instead (though feel free to include a footnote on Twilight as Romance WIN). Have a bit of fun, acknowledge current Internet memes, and hopefully encourage a bit of reading as well. Just make sure that the usage is authentic!

An open response to a random press release sent my way by someone from CBS Evening News. I am not sure why they think I would want to share this along with you, but I had a few minutes sitting here and this kind of tickled my fancy tonight for some reason.

Hi Colin,

While I loved the fleeting thought that CBS News might actually be interested in my little blog, that feeling quickly passed. If you actually read my blog before sending this out, then it might have occurred to you that I would more closely identify with the the real story behind the story you guys covered; The absolute mess of assessment in our educational system.

If students are cheating on tests, the easy answer is to blame the students for their lack of ethics. Given all the positive role models for ethical behavior children have these days (our government, wall street, etc.) then surely it is their fault that they are trying to find an easier way to endure the mind numbing regurgitation exercises we foist upon them on a regular basis.

Instead, it might be a bit more effective to talk about the real story here. Why are teachers using assessments on which students can cheat? Just like with The plagiarism on research papers, the problem is most often not in the copying, but in the failure of the initial assignment to present a rigorous and authentic assessment situation. Only the fault doesn’t lie entirely with the teachers. Though I came from being a classroom teacher, I am not sure I could still face the immense pressures teachers are under these days.

So are my questions When is CBS going to take a stand and look at the need for rigorous, authentic work in our classrooms? When is CBS going to stop focusing on cheating students and focus on cheating test companies and corrupt governmental departments that brought about the total failure of Reading First? When is CBS going to stop focusing on fear-mongering and instead join in the effort to bring about real change in the educational system?

My readers aren’t really in to re-postings of press releases without additional comments, but since I have taken the time to write you back in hopes that someone on your end is reading this I will also take the time to share the news about your story so my readers can construct their own conclusions regarding my interpretation of the story.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my questions.

Chris
__________________________________________________________________
On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 6:00 PM, Small, Colin wrote:
Hi Christopher,

My name is Colin Small and I work for the CBS Evening News. A story aired this week that I think your blog readers might be interested in. Our science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg examined videos made by kids, for kids, teaching each other just what teacher’s don’t want them to learn: how to cheat.

Check it out the story here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/20/eveningnews/eyeontech/main4622153.shtml?tag=topStory;topStoryHeadline

And this is a blog post on the same subject: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/11/20/eveningnews/techtalk/entry4620394.shtml

Please let me know if there are any questions.

Thanks,

Colin

This post addresses two of the objectives presented in the recently released AASL Learning4Life document prepared by the Standards and Guidelines Implementation Task Force. The objectives are used here under the non-commercial permission granted by ALA.

Objective 11: Introduce the learning standards and guidelines to the national educational and school administrator organizations that will have the most influence over their implementation.
As AASL works with the leadership of these national organizations, we can also work with local affiliates and members. Can you present at a local reading association meeting or a teachers’ association meeting about the new standards? The more local members we can touch, the better the larger discussions will go as the standards are introduced at state and national conferences.

Objective 12: Have 25 percent of each state’s school library media specialists attend a learning standards and guidelines session (national, regional, state, local) in the first two years that it is offered.
I hope AASL will consider creating presentation templates for official workshops that they will release freely for use by AASL members in local trainings. The challenge will be to reconcile the desire for control over the message with a need to spread knowledge about the new standards without a huge cost.