Florida Media Quarterly
Winter 2016 Volume 42 No. 2
FMQ publication disclaimer statement:
Florida Media Quarterly is the official publication of the Florida Association for Media in Education, Inc., and is published at least four times annually: Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer. Interested persons are invited to submit material for publication. For special information on articles and advertising, visit our website at www.floridamediaed.org. Text submitted becomes the property of FMQ and is not returned. FMQ is not responsible for the accuracy of material, including references, tables, etc., and for obtaining necessary releases. The opinions expressed in Florida Media Quarterly are those of the authors and not necessarily those of FAME. Articles are the property of the authors indicated, and any use rights must be sought from the author. FAME is not responsible for the accuracy of text submitted; contributors are responsible for the reproduced for non-commercial purposes provided full acknowledgements are given and FAME is notified. All members of FAME have access to the FMQ via the webpage of the FAME website at www.floridamediaed.org.
Nancy Mijangos, FMQ Editor
Kathy Lancaster, FMQ Contributing Editor
A Letter from our President:
This issue of the FMQ finds us smack in the middle of the holiday season! I can hardly believe how quickly 2016 has flown by. It is a good time to consider the accomplishments of our association and our libraries over the last calendar year. FAME had a wonderful annual conference, our book award committees produced diverse and well-received lists, our legislative efforts have increased, we have strengthened our relationship with AASL, the governing documents committee has been working tirelessly to bring our Bylaws and Policies & Procedures up to date, and our professional development committee has provided relevant and informative webinars to our members. And that’s just a sampling of what FAME has accomplished in 2016. Our hope is that FAME has helped you to accomplish great things in 2016 in your libraries! We’d like to celebrate those accomplishments with you! I’d love it if you’d pick one or two events from your library and share photos of them with us via Twitter. Don’t forget to tag us - @floridamediaed - and include the hashtag, #FAMEStory16. All who participate in this time of celebration will be entered to win a ticket for breakfast at FETC. A winner will be chosen December 30th. This brings me to my next subject - FAME Day @ FETC. As announced at conference, FAME will hold a breakfast at FETC on Friday, January 27th at 7:30 AM. Tickets are available on the FAME Website. They are $30 for members and $40 for non-members. Feel free to invite colleagues who may be attending the conference with you to join you for this event. If you are registering for the FETC Conference, feel free to use the code SPK17 to receive a $30 discount. Even if you only attend the vendor hall, it is worth your time! I spent all day (and racked up 10,000 steps) in the vendor hall last year! We will have a special guest at the breakfast (more to come on this soon) and will enjoy face time with our colleagues from around the state of Florida. This is the first time we’ve held an event at FETC and I encourage you to get your ticket early so we can gauge attendance.
We will again partner with April is for Authors in 2017 and you don’t want to miss it! Jason Reynolds, Corey Putnam Oakes, Paul Griffin, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, and Erica Perl are just a few of the authors that will be in attendance! This is a FREE event but discounted accommodations will be available for a nearby hotel if you wish to attend the Author Cocktail Party the night before and require an overnight stay.
Finally, you won’t want to miss #FAME17! The 2017 Annual FAME Conference will take place October 18th-20th at the gorgeous Rosen Centre in Orlando.
I am pleased to announce our opening keynote speaker will be tech guru and author, Kevin Honeycutt. If you’ve never heard Kevin speak, this will be a treat! He is equal parts knowledge and inspiration! I can’t think of a better way to kick off #FAME17!
Twitter: @kevinhoneycutt
Website: kevinhoneycutt.org
I’m also thrilled to announce our closing keynote. Co-Authors of All American Boys, a 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book and recipient of the 2016 Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature, Jason Reynolds & Brendan Kiely, will be presenting. The conference will be filled with authors, fun events, and amazing workshops and sessions, just as it has been in years past. Make sure you’re a part of it!
Enjoy the rest of the FMQ and be prepared for the fantastic journey of 2017! Have a blessed, joyful, and healthy holiday season and a very happy new year!
Elizabeth Zdrodowski, FAME President
FAME's 44th Annual Conference
Keynote Speaker Kwame Alexander and Lucia Miller
SSYRA 6-8 Author Bethany Wiggins and Jenn Underhill
SSYRA Committee
Authors James Ponti and Kwame Alexander
Speed Dating with an Author
Author Sherri Winston
Author Chris Gall
Author Jay Asher and Lucretia Miller
Conference fun!
Michelle Jarrett and Nadir Qaimari, President of Follett School Solutions
Author and Illustrator Kevin Sherry
Lucretia Miller, FAME Past President, and Elizabeth Zdrodowski, FAME President
FETC Conference Information and Opportunity to be a Presider
written by Joshua Newhouse
Want to attend FETC but steep costs getting you down? Do what I do? Apply to volunteer! All it takes is interest and the link and we are giving you the link.
You sign up for workshops to be a presider, which means you check tickets and help the person running the workshop. The workshops are mostly 3 hours each, and you need just 6 hours to get free admission to the FETC Conference. But wait there's more!
Not only do you get free admission to the conference, but you also get to attend the paid workshops you preside over! Being a presider is important and easy, and you get the knowledge that otherwise would have cost you extra as a bonus! I have had the pleasure of attending several great workshops both as presider and participant, and with the budget cuts for travel in my district, free makes it very doable!
Here's the official info. Signup before it all fills up and I look forward to seeing you in FAME-style at the conference:
To SIGN UP to be an FETC Presider, YOU MUST REGISTER HERE:
Workshop descriptions can be found online athttp://www.fetc.org/agenda.html.
Note: Sign up is on a first come, first served basis. We will send confirmations to each Presider that reaches the 6 hour minimum and give you a conference registration code to use via email. All email communication will come fromFETCPresiders@LRP.com
You may put yourself on the waiting list of any workshop, summit or poster session in case there is an opening.
ALL volunteers must wear the FETC t-shirt while volunteering. FETC will provide an FETC t-shirt at volunteer check-in.
All FETC Presiders will receive confirmation information and further instructions by December 15, 2016. Feel free to contact us at FETCPresiders@LRP.com with questions.
We look forward to a great FETC 2017 conference with an amazing team of volunteers!
Thank you again for you willingness to assist FETC!
As a Presider your primary responsibilities would be to:
• Scan attendee badge as they enter the workshop
• Check attendee list at your workshop
• Assist presenter with material distribution (no technical assistance is required)
• Alert staff if technical support is needed
• Assist with workshop evaluation online process
• Direct participants to online access of their VerAttend reports at the conclusion of the workshop
Presiders can be teachers, administrators, IT Staff or any adult or graduate student with an educational technology passion!
NOTE: There is only ONE presider per workshop.
PRESIDERS WHO AGREE TO PRESIDE/VOLUNTEER OVER A TOTAL OF 6 HOURS OR MORE WILL RECEIVE A COMPLEMENTARY FULL CONFERENCE REGISTRATION PLUS ATTENDANCE AT THE WORKSHOP/EVENT THAT THEY ARE PRESIDING OVER FOR FREE.
Joshua Newhouse
Collaboration Engineer, School Librarian, Reading Advocate,
Tech Adopter, B.R.I.C.K. Makers Advisor, Lab Director, PTSA Supporter, FAME Board Member, Thinker and Media Specialist
Future-Ready Librarians: Education's Superheroes
written by Lucretia Miller
(Reprinted with permission from the winter 2016 edition of FYI, St. Johns Country Day School's alumni magazine)
Nestled between the books on the shelves in my office is my very own Librarian Action Figure complete with sensible shoes, reading glasses, and “amazing push-button shushing action!” The box lists some notable famous librarians including Kant, Longfellow, Casanova, Mao Tse-Tung, J. Edgar Hoover, and Batgirl. These librarians would feel out of place in today’s libraries, though. A librarian action figure of today would not be shushing, but instead would be beckoning students into the library. She would be sporting a snazzy cape and large “I” on the chest (the sensible shoes are still a must, though). That large “I” would stand for “information,” because today’s role of a school librarian is to help make sense of the vast world of information in which students are immersed. R. David Lankes, director of Syracuse University’s Library and Information Science Program, states, “To be a librarian is not to be neutral, or passive, or waiting for a question. It is to be a change agent within your community.” In other words, a superhero.
Of the many changes in education that the development, use, and integration of technology has affected, perhaps the greatest change is in school libraries. Technology has changed the focus of pre-1990s libraries from collections and buildings to the access and use of information. The Internet brought instant access of global information to individuals with one click of the mouse; social media has brought instant access of information in the form of opinion with one hundred and forty characters. Those who ponder if librarians are needed now that students have use of the Internet, or whether libraries are still viable now that students have devices with eBooks have never seen students attempt to do research in the digital age of information. A web search is not synonymous with research. Technology has forced libraries and librarians into an exciting period of reinvention, relevance, and rejuvenation. With the shift from analog to digital, the amount of information has increased exponentially; our global digital world has thus created a new literacy that students must master in order to be successful and future-ready; students must become information literate and it is the school librarian who specializes in this task.
Librarians teach information literacy during a time when we are bombarded with information; even though our access to information is unprecedented, the quality of information is not in proportion to the rate of information. Social media has blurred the lines between fact and opinion, and users have difficulty in determining bias in media. School librarians are leaders in both the transition to and sustainability of effective digital learning because we are the experts in teaching students how to navigate, access, evaluate, and organize that digital information to create new knowledge.
Maria Popova wrote a wonderful article on "Wisdom in the Information Age," stating, "...more and more information without the proper context and interpretation only muddles our understanding of the world rather than enriching it." Librarians are the experts at teaching students how to first wonder and question intelligently in order to get the information they need. We then teach students how to take those basic facts, correlate and interpret them and put them into context to create knowledge. Then we instruct students how to apply that knowledge- that information worth remembering and the information that matters to develop an understanding of how the world works and how it should work. This is wisdom according to Popova. This is what we hope for St. Johns graduates: during their years at St. Johns they become effective users of information, able to evaluate for fact and bias and then take those facts, put them into context to create new knowledge, finally applying an ethical component as to why it matters. Librarians are nefarious pushers of both knowledge and wisdom.
The one constant about technology is that it is continually changing, thus in order to remain relevant, educators must be looking forward. Currently, educators nationally have been pledging support for the Office of Educational Technology and Alliance for Excellent Education's Future-Ready Initiative, which centers around digital learning and digital citizenship. Librarians are a major part of this initiative as leaders in transformational and digital learning. The framework for future-ready librarians contains several principles. Under Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, librarians are tasked to "Empower Students as Creators." This is one reason for the proliferation of MakerSpaces being constructed in today's libraries or Learning Commons as libraries are referred to today. We want students to not only create new knowledge from the vast amount of information available to them, but to also create solutions through problem and project-based learning. It is not enough to just be able to evaluate information; our students will be successful if given a problem, they intuitively know how to build background knowledge, access and evaluate the information needed, design possible solutions, create prototypes, and test or assess the solutions. The information-seeking process model and the design model go hand in hand to create information and solution-fluent students.
With this digital age, some have questioned the need for libraries as a physical space or the need for printed books. Again, libraries have adapted. School libraries are now active, collaborative community spaces where students can meet together to study, research, and create. The Heinrich Learning Resource Center is truly the hub of the school, with classes simultaneously meeting to Skype with other students in different states and countries for the Global Read Aloud program, creating Lego robots with LittleBits in the MakerSpace, meeting for Student Government, researching for Senior Symposium, and checking out books.
Yes, our library still has and will continue to have physical books for reading. With all the changes to libraries and the librarians' role brought on by the digital shift, this is the one constant that has not changed- the importance of books and reading in any format. Although four years ago we began our digital book collection and have increased it each year, the need and desire for books in print has not diminished. A Pew study from 2015 reports the preference of readers in regards to format, and shows that analog and digital can coexist. eBooks are an excellent tool in the classroom, as the teacher can project the book to the class while the students refer to the title on their own iPad. Most students at St. Johns prefer print books over eBooks for recreational reading, choosing to put a book on hold even when the digital version is available. Our circulation statistics prove that reading is still valued at St. Johns.
The librarians listed on the box of my librarian action figure would be relieved to know that even in this time of students being literally attached to their devices, Carl Sagan's words still resonate and will always be the root of a librarian's mission of facilitating knowledge creation.
"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." So are librarian superheroes.
Sources:
Lankes, R. David. "Success Through Collaboration." HELIN Annual Conference, January 16, 2013, davidlankes.org/?p=2595.
Popova, Maria. "Wisdom in the Age of Information and the Importance of Storytelling in Making Sense of the World: An Animated Essay." BrainPickings, September 9, 2014, www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/09/wisdom-in-the-age-of-information.
Sagan, Carl. "Persistence of Memory." Cosmos, 11th episode, Carl Sagan Productions, December 7, 1980.
A Question of Copyright
Written by Gary H. Becker
Q. For my Creative Writing classes, I am beginning a fairytale/children’s book unit in roughly two weeks’ time. Looking ahead, I am going to have students compare the original stories written by the Grimm brothers to their Disney version. I know copyright can get kind of “funky” when it comes to Disney products. Would this be at all possible?
A. I am providing the following link that provides information on various media uses that have been deemed to fit the criteria of Fair Use in Education.
http://cmsimpact.org/code/code-best-practices-fair-use-media-literacy-education/
Based on the limited information you have provided me, I am assuming the teacher doesn’t want to use the entire video, but rather to use “clips” from the video for the basis of discussion/comparison with the Grimm, written versions. Utilizing the guidelines, it would appear that this “may” be possible, if brief clips are taken and the video is owned by the school or a legal copy has been obtained. Especially using Disney materials, this would be very important.
In any claim of Fair Use, such decisions are locally based and one must review the factors affecting Fair Use to make sure your actual use is in compliance with the guidelines.
Q. A colleague is organizing a literacy-themed "flash mob". She's rounding up a group of people who will synchronize this effort at a local bookstore in the midst of, presumably, unsuspecting patrons. The idea is that they will collectively break into song at a pre-determined time. The tune will be some contemporary pop song, but her organizing crew will compose the lyrics. In all likelihood, this mob will be videotaped and potentially posted on “Youtube.” There are tons of examples of other schools doing something similar, but I want to know if there are any ethical/litigious concerns.
A. The flash mob performances are an interesting, and legally challenging, phenomenon. The fact that examples of such performances are found on YouTube is a result of:
1. Copyright owners not necessarily enforcing their rights
2. Groups obtaining prior permissions
From a strictly legal point of view, these performances are considered public performances and the performance of copyrighted music requires obtaining a public performance license. Adding or deleting lyrics to an existing, protected work, is considered modifying a work, which technically is called creating a derivative work, a right reserved for the copyright owner. If the performance, with modified lyrics, was not scripted or recorded, it might not be challenged by copyright owners, however, you have indicated that the flash mob performance might be recorded and placed on YouTube. Now we have a situation where permissions are needed to record the performance of a copyrighted work and a separate permission for being able to distribute that work electronically.
Separate from Copyright is the ethical, if not legal issue, of making sure the bookstore would permit such an activity taking place in its facility. Their concerns could range anywhere from possible Copyright issues for hosting a flash mob performance to public safety, accident liability, etc.
So, at this point, you might now feel that this adventure may qualify as “Mission Impossible.” I am providing the following link that provides information on how a college was able to legitimately perform a flash mob performance and the student learning that took place as a result:
http://www.voicecouncil.com/is-a-singing-flash-mob-legal/
A “Question of Copyright” is an ongoing column authored by Gary H. Becker, national Copyright law consultant and retired, public school system, technology administrator. If you have a question, pleased send it to gbecker@beckercopyright.com. You will receive an individual response and your question may appear in a future edition of FMQ. Requests to withhold names will be honored.