L4L_bumpersticker2.pdf via kwout

Posted on behalf of Sara Kelley-Mudie (librarian.skm [at] gmail [dot] com:

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The 2011 Emerging Leaders team working with AASL needs your help! We’ve been tasked with creating promotional materials for Learning4Life, and we would love your input. As an initial step, we’ve created a survey about how librarians are using the Standards for the 21st Century Learners to empower their students to think, create, share, and grow; we’ll then be highlighting the excellent work librarians all over the country are doing as we create promotional materials for the standards.

Please take a few minutes to tell us about the amazing work you’re doing with your students. We’re particularly interested in any pictures or videos you have of learning in action that you’re able to share!

So tell us–How does your school library program empower students to THINK, CREATE, SHARE and GROW?
You can find the survey at: http://bit.ly/EL2011

Thanks in advance for your input, and stay tuned for more!

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PS - Like the graphic above? You can download it for free, bumper-sticker size, here.

Sue Ballard, long-time chair of AASL’s Learning Standards and Guidelines Implementation Task Force, has been tireless in her work to spread the word of the great AASL Standards to non-librarian populations. (She was also lead author of our awkwardly-renamed article “More Than Shelving and Shushing,” which appeared in the December 2010 issue of NASSP’s Principal Leadership.)

Here is her latest effort, which appeared this week in ASCD’s Whole Child Blog. Congratulations, Sue! Thanks for representing us so well.

The Whole Child Blog « Whole Child Education via kwout

That’s the question two researchers ask in a commentary for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Now while the authors have come under a certain amount of attack, there are some very interesting points in this article that may point at why fewer people place demands on K-12 librarians to prepare students for college.

Is it possible … just a little bit … that some students aren’t getting the kinds of undergraduate experiences that require the diet of critical thinking and problem-solving that we anticipate?

If the researchers are correct, there’s a pretty low amount of cognitive growth happening for students. And why is that? The authors posit that it’s because everybody’s happy with how undergraduate education currently works. Students get time to socialize; administrators get a steady flow of tuition dollars; professors get time to work on projects; parents get a diploma to frame.

(Not sure I agree that everybody’s happy … I think most undergraduate professors at highly-ranked institutions are pretty happy, but I hear from ones at lower-ranked institutions that they see kids with poor study skills and little drive to learn … but then again, let’s get a reality check: nobody’s publishing my work in Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Take a minute to read this article in its entirety. Does it explain some of the placidity with which you see some parents, students, and colleagues when you make a plea for deep thinking activities? Does it explain why some governmental agencies and politicians don’t prioritize the very kinds of critical thinking skills librarians prize?

It’s a sobering essay, in any event. Read on.

Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything? - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout