I have mentioned before, that I am a huge fan of Brandon Stanton’s blog, The Humans of New York. This year, as an activity in the images unit in our Library and Technology course, we had students head out with their digital cameras or cell phones and document the Humans of Harvard-Westlake. In our effort to embed digital citizenship instruction into our curriculum, some of our goals for the activity were to have students:
- Think explicitly about uses of technology that connect us with others rather than separates us.
- Better understand our school Responsible Use Policy (RUP) as it applied to the use of taking and sharing images of others from the community.
- Engage in some proactive discussions about the morals, ethics, and matters of etiquette that come into play when taking pictures people and using those pictures online.
I asked my students to find the outer edge of their comfort zones to go out and meet members of our community that they didn’t know well. Each person’s comfort zone would be different so I would not judge their choices, but I hoped that the project would be a way to push themselves to greet and chat with somebody that was “just a little bit scary” for them. Interestingly, many of my 7th graders came back with pictures and interview snippets from 9th graders. It had not occurred to me, but for many of them a 9th grader that they did not know was more scary than a faculty member that they did not know.
The activity was such a huge success that at our recent AISL Conference in Dallas, I decided that I needed to walk my talk and I decided to step out of my comfort zone and try to introduce myself to librarians the I had not previously known. It was, for me at least, a rousing success!
In my homage to Brandon Stanton’s HONY blog, here are, The Librarians of AISL …
Thank you to all of you who made the Dallas experience wonderful. It has made me look forward to meeting more of you next year in Tampa!
Apologies to the handful of you that I met and interviewed, then subsequently lost your images when I messed up the sync from my phone.
I love this post! I met so many great librarians at AISL this year; this post sums it up perfectly!
Very clever! Another reason you are one of my favorite people and favorite librarians. I’m so happy you will be back in Tampa! 😎 I look forward to some more conversations.
How clever of you to bring together an experiment you used at your school to apply at conference. I have to tell you that a senior at my school used the same project to show how art can bring a community together. Hers was so successful (https://www.facebook.com/humansofemmawillardschool or http://jeannettepang.blogspot.com/2014/02/humans-of-emma-willard-school-1.html if FB is blocked on your campus) that she decided to turn it into a book(!) which will be sold at our Bicentennial celebration this weekend. It was such a cool way for me to get to know students’ names this year, through their stories. I love that it drew your kids out of their comfort zone AND I’m glad that I got to meet you at conference. I look forward to our next meeting! 🙂 Great blog post.
Just curious, but are you students working on passion projects based on Angela Maiers and The Passion Driven Classroom? http://www.angelamaiers.com/ I love the work Jeannette is doing! Amazing stuff!
Hi David,
Hmmm…not to my knowledge, there are just some passionate kids here :); however, I’m definitely going to add that to my summer reading list. Thanks for this!
K
What a great idea, David! There is never enough time at the conference to speak with everyone, and this reminds us of the great opportunity we’ll have again next year. Thanks!
Love it! And as Sandy G. suggests, what a great project to bring out at next year’s conference. Or any gathering.