Notes on The New Learning Commons: Where Learners Win! Ch. 6-10

"Such projects build knowledge bases tagged by many, searchable by everyone." A quick thought about tagging- I love the idea of folksonomies, but I wish that the people who design these sites would give just a little more subtlety to tagging. Instead of just tags, imagine if you could also tag an item as a Broader item, a Narrower item, or a Related item. This to me is an example of a best practice that librarians have had forever that could be incorporated into web design. (Del.icio.us webdesigners if you're reading this, take note--great feature to add!)

Our school is using Ubd, so many of the ideas presented were familiar. Reading the material only adds weight to my conviction that I must get coverage for the library so that I can attend curriculum and planning meetings. Too much of my current work is clerical and could be done by support staff. "This includes the teacher librarian whose first responsibility is to the improvement of instruction rather than tending and managing the Open Commons. For the most part, the Open Commons is the province of support personnel under the direction of the teacher librarian."

I'm going to propose the On the Right Foot idea to our principal. I would also like to do action research based on using blogs and bloglines for a class. It makes me wonder about the idea of a paperless class-- is it possible?

Action Research in the Expermental Learning Commons sounds like a dream come true! "It takes the best theories of education and research results and applies them to a local situation." This sounds challenging, interesting, and damn fun!

"In the context of the Learning Commons we recommend that the Experimental Learning Center be the center of such research activity that informs the faculty as a whole. There is an atmosphere of collaboration in the achievement of excellence because everyone expects that this is a place in the school where experimentation is the central focus. It follows that a positive attitude toward continuous school improvement is likely to develop and be sustained across years and across faculty turnover or student demographic evolution. . . . Such a focus would go a long way in promoting the idea that everyone has a stake in school improvement rather than just isolated teachers in closed classrooms."

Some links to look at more closely:
webquest.sdsu.edu/taskonomy.html
novemberlearning.com
www.criticalthinking.org/index.cfm
http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
OfCultivatingYourPersonalLearningNetwork
weblogged.wikispaces.com/New+Internet+Literacies
cissl.scils.rutgers.edu/guided_inquiry/introduction.html
www.projectnml.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf