Mary Ann Harlan's Page

This is a promotion of a sort. And in the spirit of the students who invited me to listen, and record, I am going to lay myself a little bare in explaining why all of this mattered.
I am burned out. I spend my days not sure whether to cry or rage. I am frustrated with entitled students who either a) don't want to learn or b) don't want to think. I know it seems like the same thing but in this era of testing they can consume information without thinking, and feel as if they are learning. I a… Continue

In October AASL published the updated information literacy standards “Standards for the 21^st –Century Learner”. Now the parsing begins… what is right about the
standards? What is wrong? What do they mean? How can I use the standards to improve my instruction, and
student’s learning? There is more to
come, more work being done by AASL but in the meantime what is that we,
teacher- librarians, notice about the new learning standards.

It took

… Continue

The past two school days I have spent "in the field" with science students gathering photos and video for a class project to post podcasts, and vlogs on the PORTS web site, which is hosted by Ca. State Parks. It was an interesting exercise in gathering visual information - what was important, and who was the audience. It was fun to get out of the library, we had beautiful weather (which is significant up here) and it was refreshing. But it also got me thi… Continue