Education not taken for granted
This past week I had the opportunity to chat with a woman named Margaret who is working on her GED. Margaret is a middle-aged woman who dropped out of school in her early high school years to take care of her family. She is now going blind due to macular degeneration. But this hasn’t stopped her passion for finally having a high school diploma. As I talked to her she chatted freely about missed opportunities, but loved her family enough to be okay with how her life had gone. At her GED program, Margaret has been writing a story that has taken her months to create and edit. The idea of using a computer made her nervous, but she hung in there. She beamed as she told me that her story had been entered in a contest for all the GED programs in the state. Education has opened a world to this sweet woman. I felt priviledged to sit and chat with her about her life and how important education was even at her age.
Today we have the Internet and information at our fingertips 24/7. It seems a shame to read in the paper everyday about American students not doing as well as international counterparts or that the nation’s dropout rate is rising. Kids today could take a lesson from Margaret who left education in a generation where family survival made dropping out necessary. Today even with permanent blindness looming closer, she realizes what an opportunity she has and can’t wait to go to school each week and learn. We can all learn from Margaret and people like her who go back to finish their education even under tremendous odds. She is truly an inspiration and I will never look at education through the same eyes again.
Changing role of Librarians (media specialists too)
There are many pundits that question the need for libraries and librarians in a world of 24/7 information on the Internet. What is curious is that the same notion can be exactly the reason why there should be librarians. Are you looking at the issue as a glass half empty or half full. Recently CNET posted a great article that I wish I could put in the hands of every person that thinks a Google search now gives them a Masters Degree in Library Science.
This article called: “The most reliable tool could be your librarian” and it speaks to that issue.
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-6120778.html
I figure if CNET is encouraging the use of a libraries and Google has a librarian space, just maybe people might realize that on occasion you will need the services of someone who lives in information world all day long. So when you do a search that renders you a few million hits, try asking a librarian to help you, he/she just may know how to get the information odds back in your favor and yes…save a whole lot of time.
Privacy … or something like it
With the popularity of websites like MySpace and Facebook, social networking has taken the world by storm. Kids and sometimes their parents are naive about what gets posted and who sees it. What kids today don’t know is that there was a generation before them that was addicted to their own version of Internet contact called BBS’s. Only when I was chatting up a storm with people all over the world, during those digital bygone days we didn’t even know there was an Internet. Now with slick websites and the ease of uploading of quick and sometimes impulsive digital images, kids especially are putting things out on the Internet that they would never share willingly with their parents or even their teachers. There is a great article by Anna Quinlan on the subject of privacy. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13121946/site/newsweek/ Think about all the places a computer knows you from your ATM machine, grocery card, to Internet preferences. This article is an interesting look at the world of privacy or lack there of. So be careful what you put out there for the world to see because “Big Brother” just might be watching after all.
