When your February SLMAM issue comes, hurry up and flip to the last page, which shows how the new AASL standards correlate to the older Information Power standards.  If you’re nervous about the new standards, this document can be really valuable, because it shows how the newer standards have grown out of those of Information Power.  

There has been a lot of debate about the new standards lately on LM_NET.  Be sure to check out Doug Johnson’s blog as well, where he’s been blogging since the New Year about the standards.

If you haven’t checked out the new standards yet, I highly recommend that you take a look at them.  You can download a copy here. 

You can catch up on the LM_NET debate by browsing the archives (most of the discussion has happened since the New Year).

To read an essay about the challenges of implement new standards that go beyond skill mastery and into dispositions, you can check out this posting by Sharon Grimes on the AASL blog.  (I hear that the AASL blog is migrating to a new URL sometime this week, so this link may not work for long.)

New standards are serious business for our profession, especially for those of us in states where dwindling finances are jeopardizing the future of certified school library media specialists and school libraries themselves. 

On Saturday, at Midwinter, my colleagues and I on the Learning Standards Implementation Task Force will convene to discuss implementation strategies for recommendationt to the AASL board.  Have ideas? Hope you’ll share them here.

(Just a gentle reminder that I’m required to moderate comments … so if yours does not show up right away, fear not … check back soon.)

HEY U.  LK @ THIS.

Check out this clever way to be the first to know about Monday’s Youth Media Awards (including the Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, CSK, Pura Belpre, and more – via cell phone!  How cool is it to get the award winners texted to your cell phone? (Oh, gosh, I really am a geeky librarian if I just wrote that …)

Michelle, who is doing her practicum with me and is a wonderful librarian in her own right, alerted me to this.  Her suggestion? Get the announcement on your cell phone and take it straight to Borders so you can be first to snap up the winners! No need to write down or print out the list — it’s right on your phone.

TTYL.  LYLAS.  CU @ ALA!

As I have mentioned in the past, I keep track of a bunch of sewing and crafting blogs.  Boy, John Naisbett in Megatrends 2000 was right — we are becoming a high-tech, high-touch society.  It’s fascinating to watch how so many women — who practice handicrafts rooted in historical traditions — connect via Web 2.0 tools.  As an example, Amy Karol, who blogs the Angry Chicken blog, wrote a book called Bend-the-Rules Sewing.  A blog inspires a book, which inspires a Flickr photo group showing what readers have made from the patterns in the book.  When a crafting book inspires over 1000 readers since October alone to submit photos of their projects, we librarians need to sit up and take notice.  How can we leverage this concept in our own libraries?

Or check out this new blogging idea: two bloggers are engaging in an artistic conversation by using a blog as an incentive to create new things.  The blog documents their thinking process, not just the final product.  (Sound familiar? Don’t we encourage students to think about their thinking during the research process?)  A blogging project like this has metacognition and reflection built right in.  Check out this description, or read the Eight by Eight blog to see the conversation unfold.  How could we partner students or professional learning communities into a similar conversation using a blog?

Help me think through these ideas … how can we translate them into our own school environments?

(Just a gentle reminder that our corporate policy requires that comments be moderated, so although I’m dying to hear what you have to say, it may take a few hours for your post to appear.)