Karl Fisch's Library tagged media_specialist →  View Popular

I think that was also exactly my concern I was trying to share - albeit not very well - in that twitter conversation. We need to have an ongoing, public, and vigorous discussion about what a "media specialist" - no matter what particular name your district is using - is.

Can you be a media specialist without being a specialist in the media forms of the day? What are the important and essential media forms of today? How can we utilize them with teachers and students? How do we prepare teachers and students for the inevitable rapid change of what the current media forms are? The questions (and I'm tired, so they perhaps could be worded better) go on and on and on.

But the concern is are those questions even being discussed/debated out in the open? Yes, many folks are having the discussion, but is it enough? How do we help current media specialists who perhaps don't feel comfortable having the discussion, much less working with these new media? And how can they help us? And can folks get beyond defensiveness to talk about the issues, and about what's best for our students? Or is the end of the discussion, "too much technology, not enough library?"

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@Joyce – I think Darren Draper started it all with his darn question.

@Cathy Nelson – That’s an interesting idea, PLP for LMS’s – I wonder if that would work? Some of PLP has been somewhat geographically constrained, due to the face-to-face component and school-based teams approach, but I bet it could be modified. Perhaps you should pitch it to Sheryl and Will?

@Ukiah HS – I don’t think anyone is discounting the role of books in all this, although I think the article that Will Richardson blogged about recently (http://weblogg-ed.com/2009/new-reading-new-writing/) certainly brings up the idea that books are also at least partially becoming social media (or at least have the potential to).

The other part of your comment I found interesting was the “supporting reading” phrase. I know it was just a short comment, and therefore doesn’t have the full context of your thinking, so I don’t want to read (pun intended) too much into it. But one way to interpret that would be that you don’t feel that helping educators and students with social media is “supporting reading,” or that somehow “supporting reading” has to be set aside in its own little box. I certainly don’t have all the answers, here, but I would strongly suggest that if you want to support reading, then you have to be doing it in the social media space as well.

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@Cathy Nelson – Very true, I think it’s very difficult for LMS’s not to support what their school’s feel is important, that’s part and parcel of the job. But I also think it’s part of their job to influence what their school’s think is important, especially in media-related areas, which is what we’re talking about here. Which gets back to the whole “they need to be social media specialists” as well as “traditional” media specialists (whatever that means).

And yes, I don’t leave teachers out of this equation either, but this particular twittersation was spurred by Darren’s question, so that was the focus (and what I’m still continuing to think about).

@Jared Ward – I’m excited for you that you’re in Darren’s district – you’ve got great leadership in this area. Again, I agree that it’s not just the media specialist’s job to figure all this out, it’s all of our jobs. But I still see a major role for a “point person” in a building, and I think the media specialist position is ideal for this. And certainly, if we’re going to have media specialist positions, than that position must encompass social media as well.

@Carolyn Foote – Agreed, none of this conversation (at least my part) was meant to imply that there weren’t many, many media specialists who have embraced social media and are at the forefront of trying to figure out how this works in education. But I think we can all agree that it’s not all, or probably even a majority, of media specialists that are there at the moment, and that’s very problematic.

@booklover472 – “How do we ensure educators keep up with the times?” Yep, that’s a great question. For me, a big part of the answer lies in a mindset shift, a shift to “teachers as learners.” We’ve given lip service to “lifelong learning” in education for quite a while now, perhaps it’s time we start living it.

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