A Dog's Purpose

W. Bruce Cameron's novel A Dog's Purpose: A Novel for Humans follows the lives of one dog as it tries to understand the purpose of its being. As readers we circle back to the meaning of Bailey's life whose sole purpose was to unequivocally love and protect his boy. Each life gave the dog a lesson that followed him into the next life which ultimately brings him back to the fulfillment of his purpose.

How wonderful to think that we might share different stages of our life with an animal that has become bonded to us by love. I recall at 45 the moment I picked Max up as a puppy, I loved him. It surprised me as I always saw myself as a cat owner. It wasn't until years later when I found an old picture of myself at 3 with Poochie that I thought how much these two dogs are alike.

Cameron's novel brings home a lesson to all of us. Every living creature, great and small, should be treated with grace.

Battle Hymn

Book Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

I liked this book. Chua's humor is self-deprecating and witty, something all parents need from time to time regardless of their parenting style. It is survival mode for intense situations in child-rearing. Yes, I found her parenting excessive but then few of us raise 13-year-old Carnegie pianists. The question is not even whether we want to or not. It is more about raising our children with intention and knowing when to adapt. Child raising is about relationships, parent to child, child to sibli...moreI liked this book. Chua's humor is self-deprecating and witty, something all parents need from time to time regardless of their parenting style. It is survival mode for intense situations in child-rearing. Yes, I found her parenting excessive but then few of us raise 13-year-old Carnegie pianists. The question is not even whether we want to or not. It is more about raising our children with intention and knowing when to adapt. Child raising is about relationships, parent to child, child to sibling. We need to give the best of ourselves to our children but not allow our best to cripple them but to empower them. It's a tight-rope. And sometimes we don't know which we have achieved.

The Shallows

A Teacher Librarian from South Carolina on LM_NET reviewed Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. She states, "It explains in understandable terms the brain research that has revealed the plasticity of our brains and the subtle effect computer and internet use have on the way the human brain functions. By comparison, it explains how 'the book' altered the brains of our predecessors as did other 'intellectual tools' like the map and the clock. While the author isn't sounding the warning that we are losing our minds as we allow the computer (internet) to take over many of our search/research decisions, he does make clear that we need to carefully evaluate this 'tool' and use it wisely. We alter the chemical flows in our synapses and change our brains. And when we hand down our habits of thought to our children, through the examples we set, the schooling we provide, and the media we use, we hand down as well the modifications in the structure of our brains.

By freeing us from the struggle of decoding text, the form that writing came to take on a page of parchment or paper enabled us to become deep readers, to turn our attention, and our brain power, to the interpretation of meaning. With writing on the screen...we read if anything faster than ever but we are no longer guided toward a deep personally constructed understanding of the text's connotations. Instead we're hurried off toward another bit of related information and then another and another. The strip-mining of 'relevant content' replaces the slow excavation of meaning...the more we use the web, the more we train our brain to be distracted--to process information very quickly and very efficiently but without sustained attention. Our brains become adept at forgetting, inept at remembering."

Library Lovers

Research has shown that everyone loves libraries, but no one thinks very much about them. That's where you come in. Promote a child's school library. You just have to talk about it. Here are some ways to do it.

(adapted from: www.librarysupport.net/librarylovers/)

Attend local meetings. Urge city and county legislators to invest in libraries and certified teacher librarians as vital community resources, one that will save tax dollars in helping people of all ages to be more literate and productive. Write to state/federal legislators. Demand that school libraries be viewed (and funded) as a necessary service for children and young adults. Urge school administrators to make school library funding a high priority. Write a letter to the editor or call in to a radio talk show to express your concern. Share your concern with friends, family neighbors and co-workers. Many people are not aware of the funding problems school libraries are experiencing nationally - or in their own communities. Encourage others to get involved. If you are a writer, suggest a story about the many ways school libraries serve their communities and the need for support. Speak up for school libraries at community groups that you belong to - PTA, school boards, Chamber of Commerce, League of Women Voters. Invite a teacher librarian to talk about children services. Check out: www.ilovelibraries.org/?gclid=CIGL_LW8hqcCFQS7KgodtUuQgQ.

Senate File 171

Ben's question #14 to his Leather Apron Club. "Have you lately observed any defect in the laws of your country, of which it would be proper to move the legislature an amendment? Or do you know of any beneficial law that is wanting?"

Yes, Ben, I have recently observed a defect in the laws of our country, specifically of our state. Our state congress wishes to rescind the mandate (Senate File 171 introduced by Sen. McKinley on Feb. 10, 2011) that all school districts have at least one librarian. I find it interesting that a district could not fund ONE librarian for the benefit of their students. I wonder who purchases their books. Do they read reviews? Do they base selection on their students' interests and comprehension levels? Are they familiar with the school curriculum in all subject areas and grade levels? Do they know the current changes in the Dewey Decimal system? Do they know the depth of the current library collection, it's strengths and weaknesses? Do our congressmen know that teacher librarians are information literacy teachers, teaching students how to: evaluate large quantities of information and to cite them correctly; how to use newer technologies, such as wikis, blogs, Googledocs, Prezi; how to build a website; how to find age-appropriate authoritative sources for their research? Do they know why these skills are crucial to the 21st century citizen? Teacher librarians do.
http://coolice.legis.state.ia.us/Cool-ICE/default.asp?Category=billinfo&Service=Billbook&menu=false&hbill=sf171

PLN

I am trying to wrap my head around why I need to set up a Personal Learning Network since it basically is in my head. Therefore, I am not sure what benefits constructing a graphic representation of my networking process will have. Will it make me see the process more clearly? Will it help me focus on interconnecting links? It seems rather innate at this point but I am open to experimenting with it. Thus the PLN gadget is located on the right.

As I explored PLNs, I liked what Kate Klingensmith said about the value of a PLN: http://onceateacher.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/pln-your-personal-learning-network-made-easy/ The Flickr link on her blog describes the stages of setting up a PLN: immersion > evaluation > know it all > perspective > balance. I think I am at the balance stage where I learn new things to grow professionally but not at a rate where I feel overwhelmed.

A modern mind

When do our digital tools enhance our learning and when do they make us cognitively dependent? I enjoy my smart phone but don't ask me what my family's numbers are without it. It has become an appendage of my memory. I no longer memorize phone numbers. I rarely memorize email addresses since I can easily type in the first three letters of the address and my email provider finishes it for me. With digital tools we have all the necessary information at our fingertips without requiring much memory use on our part. I wonder how that changes the connections in our brain and how it affects the developing brains of our children.

Memorization benefits the culture of a people. It expands our learning capabilities, internalizes the musicality of language and deepens our understanding of self. The Greeks made memorization and recitation of poetry the foundation of their pedagogy. According to Michael Knox Beran, they discovered "that words and sounds—and the rhythmic patterns by which they were bound together in poetry—awakened the mind and shaped character."

Are we impairing our learning capabilities through technological dependency? Is a Borg-like future awaiting us and does it matter?

Bon appetit

I like this quote which a reader recently reminded us about on Louise Penny's blog. "There is an architecture of books as surely as there is one of buildings. When you read a book, you enter by its cover, but you live within the spatial environment that its pages throw up around you. You inhabit its margins, whether commodious or cramped; you ambulate among the serifed glyphs of the typography; you respond to the climate of the page, pure white or mottled beige, and even negotiate the textured terrain of the paper itself, whether it be the alabastrine smoothness of bible stock or the porosity of wood pulp." ~James Gardner.

It is an appetizing reminder of how much we love our books.

Man Behind the Curtain

Everyone wants their children to be information literate and experts in the use of technology so that they will be competitive in the global marketplace. Literacy and technology - the twin towers of the library media world. It seems like a no-brainer that these two crucial areas for creating 21st century citizenry would be well-funded and staffed by professional library educators. Yet at times teacher librarians feel like they are the man behind the curtain. There can be a disconnect by funders who witness a strong library media program supporting and teaching 21st century informational skills to students without realizing that it is the teacher librarian who has created this effective program. Excellent library resources are not selected without a procedural selection plan (which includes reading reviews, knowing the curriculum, knowing the students' interests and comprehension levels, aware of the diversity of the library collection, etc.) In this tight economy it is most imperative that a systematic purchasing plan be in place. Teaching students how to navigate the web to find authoritative sources and then to communicate their findings using appropriate tools is part of the library media program. I've never heard someone say a para-educator could teach a student or an office secretary could do the job of a principal. How is that a library para could be seen by some as replacing a library teacher? I keep drawing back the curtain but I sometimes think no one wants to look.

Blog Evaluation

Blogging is cathartic. Whether anyone else reads one's musings is dependent on whether or not the writer has struck a cord with their reader. I wonder though if people who set up their first blog think about their reader or even about any reader for that matter as blogging at first tends to be a reflective piece for one's own evaluation. My topic for this blog spins around the idea of what is a library, it's purpose, it's readers, it's future. Like the clay tablet of Lugalbanda that I discussed in an earlier blog, the future library may not be brick and mortar but I believe it will still exist in some form or another as we are inquiring humans, not just satisfied with yesterday's printed word but with tomorrow's analysis of yesterday's printed word. Setting up a blog is easy. What is hard is writing that perfect essay that strikes a cord with someone else. I believe Ben struck such a cord with his Leather Apron Club.