XplanaZine

Here’s a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.Doug Johnson has an insightful post on the value of traditional libraries and librarians in a digital age. Doug concludes his post by saying, “Please, tell me why, if a young person asks, I should enthusiastically say, ‘Yes - pursue a career as a librarian!’” I’ll go one step further. Please, tell me why, if a young person asks, I should say enthusiastically, “Yes — pursue a career as a teacher!”

I like Harold Jarche’s comments on the limitations of the print medium. “As a blog post, this article built on previous posts and was open to comments and additions. With this print article, it seems as if my learning process has been frozen in time.”

Also, Ben Vershbow points to a post by John Holbo on the need for academicians to take responsibility for creating scholarly resources on the Web. As Ben has pointed out recently, “Google, Amazon are moving more aggressively to define how we find and read
documents online.” In my opinion, if academics are going to have a chance to define any part of this space or discussion they will need to move with uncharacteristic haste.

Finally, Lanny Arvan weighs in on the the NCLB discussion with his usual candidness and fresh perspective. Responding to Sunday’s article in the NY Times, Lanny points out that the real issue is not how much the kids are reading in school but rather if they are reading at all outside of school.