Educators That Rock!: Buffy Hamilton
FindingEducation was delighted to spend some time chatting with Buffy Hamilton, also known as The Unquiet Librarian. We met Buffy after attending her presentation at the Internet@Schools conference in Washington, D.C., in early April. Hamilton has been an educator in the Cherokee County School District, an hour north of Atlanta, Ga., for 18 years, and a librarian for six.
Hamilton talked about the Media 21 project, a collaborative, interdisciplinary project she and her colleague Susan Lester developed in their school. Hamilton examined the impact this project has had on her students. “There’s one student who was in that group that was out of their comfort zone. She didn’t have a lot of confidence [before] and she has just blossomed … Even if you only impact a few students that way, it’s very powerful.”
Hamilton, a frequent speaker, blogger and thought leader, earned her graduate degree at the University of Georgia. She tweets @buffyjhamilton.
fE: What brought you into libraries?
BH: In the beginning of my career, I taught high school English. After seven or eight years, I took a position in our district’s technology services department where I got exposure to a lot of schools and age groups, but I also missed being attached to one school.
Around 2000, I realized that being a librarian would be the perfect marriage of my love of reading and books as well as technology. I’ve been a school librarian a little over six years. People often ask me do I miss being in the classroom. (I actually did teach English classes at night school up until last year.) I love being a classroom teacher but it seems like as a librarian, I’m more able to be a change agent. I can be an avenue for helping teachers introduce inquiry and help them to see that you can address the standards for learning and improve student achievement, without necessarily having to be tied to all those traditional ways of learning. I’m not saying that the traditional ways are bad but you can add to the learning toolbox.
fE: How did the Media 21 project at your school come about?
BH: Our school district has two programs: There’s the Teach 21 program and the Media 21 program for library media specialists.
The programs teach effective strategies for integrating technology into the classroom. You take a certain number of courses, keep a learning portfolio and blog about your reflections. In the final year (it takes two to three years to complete) you propose a capstone project. I approached Susan Lester, who teaches English, about collaborating on a project. I knew she would be an ideal partner, and she did not hesitate to say “yes.” We submitted a proposal, and the district approved.
The ultimate vision for the project was to scaffold students’ abilities to create personal learning networks. We wanted them to engage in collaborative and knowledge sharing activities and gain collective intelligence.
fE: What did your Media 21 project involve?
BH: In August we introduced a lot of cloud computing tools to students to give them hands-on practice, and to have them research ways that people were using these tools for learning.
In September we shifted from experimenting to actually using the tools for learning. For roughly 10 weeks, students were engaged in research on issues in Africa. They were also working in literature circles. Students picked the books they wanted to read and formed groups around those books—both fiction and nonfiction. The literature circle experience informed their research and gave them another context to better understand the issues.
Throughout these 10 weeks, students kept their reading responses and research experiences on a blog and each literature circle kept a wiki in which they shared notes from their discussions. Ultimately, they built a learning portfolio using Google Sites, and a multi-genre artifact as a way of conveying what they had learned about their topic in addition to the traditional paper.
And the culminating project was a class presentation in which students learn the principals of presentation Zen, digital citizenship and creative commons licenses. In the end, the project was extended over an entire semester for 18 weeks.
fE: Is it hard for students who are used to staring at a blackboard and taking notes to adapt to these new expectations?
BH: Some students have flourished in this kind of learning environment. For other students, it’s definitely pushed them out of their comfort zone, away from what had always worked for them: your basic note-taking, regurgitation and traditional test. We try to help them cope with that discomfort with a lot of one-on-one help, acknowledging some of the changes and brainstorming ways to fix that.
There’s one student in particular who was in that group that was out of their comfort zone. She didn’t have a lot of confidence and she has just blossomed. She’s doing her Netvibes page and interacting with her experts and just really taking an interest and pride in her learning activities. Even if you only impact a few students that way, it’s very powerful.
fE: In your “Internet and Schools” presentation in Washington, D.C., you talked about a “speed dating” project you’d established with your students that encouraged students to think critically and really internalize their learning. How does it work?
BH: I have to give credit to Dr. Bob Fecho, my professor at the University of Georgia (where I went to graduate school). I e-mailed him and he sent me the basic guidelines and I adapted them for an activity.
We were exploring how people are using social media for social good. Students read different articles and then met in small groups of eight, sitting at rectangular tables with four people on each side. They basically did six-minute interviews with each other, three minutes per person. And when we called time one side would rotate down and move seats. It gave everyone an opportunity to have one-on-one dialogue and reflect on the articles they’d read.
We had them post their interview notes on the class wiki. We used the wiki to brainstorm ideas for essays that they later wrote, arguing pros and cons for social media in the classroom. Students really enjoyed seeing that something that we did in class extended beyond that one activity and became the basis for that larger experience. Ms. Lester and I have been more like facilitators than anything else; we try to give students the virtual and physical space to have a voice in what’s happening.
fE: It seems as though you’re already doing a lot of collaborative work with teachers, but you’d like to do more. In a recent blog post you wrote about embedding yourself in the classroom. Can you elaborate?
BH: The ultimate incarnation of this would be forming an interdisciplinary team in which this was reinforced in all subject areas—English, math, science, social studies and the other core subjects.
If we had a team that emphasized engagement and content creation and participation and collective knowledge building—with the librarian there to support and facilitate those efforts—to me that would be the ultimate learning experience.
I hope we can get a grant to bring that to fruition; maybe in another year or two.
fE: What can librarians do right now during this budget crisis to try to make themselves indispensable?
BH: We have to carve out space somewhere to make sure that we are transparent about our practice. Whether it’s through your monthly library report or if you have a YouTube channel where you get video interviews with students and teachers, I think it’s really important to showcase what it is that’s happening in the library. Otherwise people aren’t going to know the ways that you as a school librarian can support the larger goals for learning of the entire school community.
I think you need to also challenge what you believe about librarianship. There’s more emphasis now on the librarian as someone who is a teacher, or who supports the classroom teachers’ efforts to introduce different models of learning.
fE: Recently, who’s had the most impact on your philosophy of librarianship?
BH: I’m a big fan of Dr. David Lankes, Wendy Drexler, Dr. Michael Wesch and Howard Rheingold.
A couple weeks ago I listened to a free online webinar with Henry Jenkins. I read his blog entries and his white papers, but to hear him talk live really crystallized a lot of ideas for me. He’s doing a lot of work with participatory cultures and with transmedia navigation, which speaks to my interest in transliteracy.
He’s going to be doing a session in June on transmedia navigation that I think might inform my practice for the coming school year.
We’re just really fortunate to live in a time in which there’s all this knowledge sharing, whether it’s from a blog or Google Reader or Facebook or Twitter. It just boggles the mind that I can sit in and listen and interact and access the information that way, and that’s what I want for my students.
fE: What do you do to disconnect from your work, conferences, your blog and tweeting?
BH: I play the piano and I even sing a little, either with family or through church. That’s a creative outlet for me. I enjoy photography because it helps me look at the world in different ways. And I like running and walking. I get a lot of ideas while I’m running and out in nature. And like most women, I like shopping.
Buffy Hamilton’s Favorite Sites:
The Unquiet Librarian
Wikispaces: The Unquiet Librarian
LibGuides: Creekview High School
The Unquiet Library
Google Sites: The Unquiet Library
Howard Rheingold
Confession of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins
Google Reader: The Unquiet Librarian’s Shared Items
