The Horizons Report really hits home for me. These technologies are becoming an ever more present influence in the lives of our students. We ought to be using them to reach students and deliver content. In my school district, we no longer have any one in charge of our technology who has an education background. It's a constant battle with our network administrator to get him to allow us to access these tools. I'm making gains little at a time.In the past year, I have gained the ability to control the district content filter and have opened access to blog and wiki websites, but I really would like to see someone in charge of educational technology who has student learning as his/her primary focus. I plan to send out the link to the report to the members of the district technology committee as well as my asst. superintendent of ed services.
Rick Anderson's thoughts on the "icebergs" bring up more important issues to ponder. Many of us have already embraced the need to push services to our users through providing web-based resources; however, the idea of the "just in case" collection is an issue for me. I have struggled with this concept for the past nine years I have worked in a school library. I took over a pathetically neglected collection and have worked hard to bring it to a current, usable state. But as I weeded and considered replacements, I had to take into consideration whether those books would actually be used. Past circulation statistics were of little use, since the collection was so outdated to start with, no one was using them. Would new books be used? Or will students utilize online sources instead? As a result, some of my core collection just have minimum resources, and I focus my energy and funds where I know students want print.
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