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Knowledge Quest on the Web:
September/October 2001

Special full-text reprint with embedded links of
the "Homepage" column "My Own Sea of Learning" (p. 9-10)
exclusively on KQWeb

My Own Sea of Learning

Debbie Abilock, Editor

I am surrounded by a sea. Like Sophie in The Wanderer, I am called to go "floating, rolling, splashing, swimming" in the books, journals and Web pages that are the "rowboats and dinghies and motorboats" of my own learning voyage.1 "Come in, come in" call those books by my bedside and those Web beacons on my computer screen, just as Sophie was called to a voyage of adventure and discovery. Like her I am three-sided: "one side is dreamy and romantic; one is logical and down-to-earth; and the third side is hardheaded and impulsive."2

For the dreamy side I am immersing myself in the many retellings of Beowulf. My long-time favorite version, a vivid prose retelling by Kevin Crossley-Holland illustrated with vigorous, cross-hatched black-and-white line drawings by Charles Keeping, could pair well with another interpretation by Welwyn Wilton Katz and the dramatic paintings of Laszlo Gal.3 This fall I will be teaching Beowulf to middle school students, so I am ruminating on how to engage students in this archetypal epic, originally composed between the seventh and tenth centuries in Old English. How can I can help students set sail on the road" of Irish poet Seamus Heaney's new lyrical verse translation or use online resources to discover, as I am rediscovering, the intensity of this epic about loyalty, bravery, and fate?4

For my impulsive side I took Introduction to Macromedia Flash 5 through the continuing education program at Stanford this spring.5 While following the instructor's Web tutorials I learned about the freeware version of Viewlet Builder used to build animated online demos of how software works, a feature I plan to apply to my search pages.6 Although I have learned some technology through self-directed inquiry, my lack of knowledge about animation and interactive multimedia made me grateful for the expertise of two classmates: a Web developer who is also a Nueva parent and our lower school technology integration specialist. It is humbling to jump in over your head and exhilarating to discover that you can stay afloat with coaching from your peers!

My logical, down-to-earth side leads me to examine aspects of my practice. Print publications drift everywhere in my house. Washed ashore like shells next to my computer are two books on Web instruction, both, interestingly, from university educators. Web Wisdom is a thoughtful examination of Web-evaluation principles that I am allowing myself the time to thoroughly absorb.7 Along with Mary Ann Fitzgerald's article and checklists, it will help me revise my teaching of the Web-evaluation process this year.8 The second book that I fished from the ALA bookstore at Annual Conference in San Francisco is a practical and clear discussion of Web-based library instruction from design through implementation and assessment. Here's where I finally grasped the concept that the "tweening" animation I have been using in my Flash course is short for "in-betweening," a calculation made by the Flash program to simulate motion between two instances of my image.9

I've been thinking about being a curriculum partner, thanks to Carol Kearney's book that combines current research and theory with richly described examples from more than forty school library media specialists.10 She's missed one of my favorite titles on the curriculum development process but, all in all, her book is useful as I refine and redefine my roles.11 As a companion volume, I would suggest acquiring Foundations for Effective School Library Media Programs if you have not been subscribing to Emergency Librarian (now Teacher-Librarian).12 Ken Haycock has gathered a series of seminal articles on the essential elements of such aspects of our job as program development, collaborative planning, and teaching and information literacy. These volumes are not front-to-back reading for me; I dip into their contents as I reflect on areas of my program or practice.

My down-to-earth side is also grateful for two essential purchases: The Information-Powered School with lessons from the Library Power initiative along with forms, logs, surveys and other practical tools, and Powering Achievement and its online companion, a complete package of presentations tailored to varied audiences about the coauthor Keith Lance's studies in Colorado, Alaska, and Pennsylvania, as well as other research related to school libraries and student achievement.13

Professional learning nourishes our practice. Sometimes we are able to navigate daily within a community of learners or find such fellowship online. At other moments we seek out books and journals to stimulate inner voyages or travel to conferences with peers. This issue features some of the presenters at AASL's upcoming 10th National Conference and Exhibition www.ala.org/aasl/indy where, like Sophie, I will drop anchor and meet up with my professional "family," which I hope will include you.

References

1.   Sharon Creech, The Wanderer (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 1.
2.   Ibid., 3.
3.   Kevin Crossley-Holland, Beowulf (New York: Oxford, 1999); Welwyn Wilton Katz, Beowulf (Toronto, On.: Groundwood Books, 1999).
4.   Seamus Heaney, Beowulf (New York: Farrar, 2000); Araby Greene, Resources for the Study of Beowulf, 3 Apr. 2001, www.library.unr.edu/subjects/guides/beowulf.html. Accessed 22 June 2001.
5.   Stanford University, Stanford Continuing Studies, 2001, http://continuingstudies.stanford.edu. Accessed 22 June 2001.
6.   Hank Duderstadt, Flash 5 Tutorials, 2000, http://flash.cybermeister.net. Accessed 22 June 2001; Qarbon, ViewletBuilder2 Freeware Edition, 21 June 2001, http://quarbon.com/products/viewletbuilderfree/index.html. Accessed 22 June 2001.
7.   Janet E. Alexander and Marsha Ann Tate, Web Wisdom; How to Evaluate and Create Information Quality on the Web (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., 1999).
8.   Mary Ann Fitzgerald, "Critical Thinking 101: The Basics of Evaluating Information," Knowledge Quest 29, no. 1 (Nov./Dec. 2000): 13-24. Handouts at Knowledge Quest on the Web, 2000, www.ala.org/aasl/kqweb/kqweb_29_2.html. Accessed 22 June 2001.
9.   Susan Sharpless Smith, Web Based Instruction: A Guide for Libraries (Chicago: ALA, 2001), 121.
10.   Carol A. Kearney, Curriculum Partner: Refining the Role of the Library Media Specialist (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr., 2000).
11.   Allan A. Glatthorn, Developing a Quality Curriculum (Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1994).
12.   Ken Haycock, ed., Foundations for Effective School Library Media Programs (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1999); Teacher Librarian Magazine, 12 April 2001 www.teacherlibrarian.com. Accessed 22 June 2001.
13.   Public Education Network and American Association of School Librarians, The Information-Powered School (Chicago: ALA, 2001); Keith Curry Lance and David V. Loertscher, Powering Achievement: School Library Media Programs Make a Difference: The Evidence (San Jose, Calif.: Hi Willow Research and Publ., 2001);  David V. Loertscher, "Powering Achievement: School Library Media Programs Make a Difference," accompanying Web site to the book, LMC Source, 7 Mar. 2001, www.lmcsource.com/tech/power/power.htm. Accessed 22 June 2001.

Debbie Abilock, Editor, is the Assistant Head of The San Francisco School, San Francisco CA.

Copyright © 2001 American Association of School Librarians,a division of the American Library Association.