Last month, I shared this great post on why education reform wasn’t succeeding.

Today, I’d like to point you toward this interesting post on the speed of that failing reform process.

Change is naturally a slow process unless a radical change is needed and a group can deliver it swiftly (even though it’s more often than not in a painful manner). Perhaps what we need is a group that can find a better, and perhaps radical, path and implement it swiftly and pain-reducedly (how’s that for a made-up word!) before the current system completely fails those we’ve entrusted to its care.

Too bad I haven’t an idea where to begin.

I don’t remember much beyond a brief unit on fact and opinion in learning how to determine the validity of a source, despite the fact that I’ve spent so much of my life doing research and reading. The closest I’ve ever come to going on a tour of a library was twice in college, both times the entire tour was five minutes and amounted to, “The stacks are that direction. The periodicals are that direction. The restrooms are that way.”

Somehow, despite all that, I grew up loving libraries, and even working in some. There are days when I think I’d even like to be a librarian.

These things together probably explain why I don’t understand how students in this age of overly available information aren’t learning how to discern whether or not a resource is trustworthy. This is a time when it seems to me that information literacy should be a focus of classes starting in middle school where extensive research papers are being assigned.

Found via Library Link of the Day

Frequently, when explaining my background to people, I’m asked what a museum educator does. Some of the guesses are always amusing, my favorite being if I teach the actual building. I thought it might be fun to present an average week that I’ve worked in many of the museums and planetariums I’ve either volunteered or worked in. Keep in mind that I generally worked 10-20 hours a week, and was generally assigned tasks that focused on curriculum development and event planning (my strengths).

For me, a typical week was six days long because I was often involved in some sort of special programming. The planning more often than not would have already started a few weeks before, but it wasn’t an odd Monday when I’d walk in and be asked to prepare some activities around a specific theme for an event on Saturday. I’d spend a couple of hours on Monday researching the theme and developing a starting list of ideas to build activities from. If it was a topic I knew nothing about, I’d usually hit up a few of the lesson plan sites to see if there were any neat ones that we could use.

From there, I generally spent about an hour or two on Tuesday writing up a formal plan. Being trained in a teacher prep program, my planning always took the shape of a lesson or unit plan. (Oddly enough, my traveling trunk designs, workshop designs, and special event designs all look like lesson plans!) I’d present the plan to my director, and we’d figure out what was on hand and what we needed to acquire.

In the midst of my lesson plan writing, it wasn’t unusual to find me fielding reservation requests and questions about our programming and facilities on the phone.

By the time Wednesday rolled around, I was often creating flyers and wayfinders to help people find their way to or around the events. If I wasn’t working on event materials, then I was helping with newsletters and exhibit materials for the temporary exhibits.

Thursday and Friday were often spent making sure we had all the resources we needed for the event. I usually got really comfy in the workspace and just copied for an hour on one of the days. This was also usually when my director would turn to me and say something to the effect of, “I have this traveling trunk/workshop/special project coming up on (topic I may or may not know anything about). Do you want it?” Of course, I’d squeal and take it on.

On Saturday, I’d arrive anywhere between one to two hours early (depending on whether I was running the event or just working it), work the event, and then help with the clean up and go home. I’d do anything from presentations and demonstrations to helping teach and direct an activity, to just making sure everyone was doing all right and that our supplies were staying well-stocked.

It was a great job for me because it allowed a lot of freedom and creativity, plus I got to play! It was flexible and had days where it could be quite adventurous because you never knew what was coming next.