A. It's pretty normal for these documents to be somewhat informal. You can still use it, if it's what they use. You can also use the state document, to possibly elicit a more complete description. Basically I'm saying that you can do either of these or a combination. At the end of the day, I will be looking to be sure that non-professionals are not saddled with professional duties, and if they are, for you to address this as a problem or issue.
11/18/08
Q. We are debating how to reference our rationales. We all think that the page numbers need to be included...
Q. How should Information Power look in an online citation, with a direct quote? 11/17/08
Answer to both:
--in APA, you do include the page numbers for direct quotes, as you have.
--for that pesky IP inline citation, this looks better to me:
(AASL/AECT, 1998, p. 21). I've never come up with the perfect way to
do this.
Q. You said (in class) to use a three-legged rationale: (1. SLM professional standards, like IP; 2. School mission/goals/etc.; 3. student achievement; and there can be overlap). How should this look? 11/17/08
There are at least 2 choices:
1. Bullet your multiple rationale pieces, using inline citations as necessary
2. Craft prose to synthesize it all together - definitely more work for you, and more work to read. But certainly acceptable! Use inline citations as necessary.
Q. We’re confused about whether you should evaluate the objective or the strategy. Please clarify!
Answer: Evaluate the objective. This is easy to see when your objective contains a benchmark - as it should. For example, if your goal is to “improve the learning climate in the media center,” you might have a benchmark of “replacing 25% of the chairs with new, quiet, child-sized chairs.” The 25% is your benchmark. Then, the evaluation becomes “Did we replace 25% of the chairs?” - easy to determine. Strategies might be the little action steps involved, like: research furniture options; identify characteristics of chairs conducive to our learning situation; order chairs; etc.
By nature, goals are too big to evaluate. The objectives break goals down into manageable, measurable chunks.
One more note: the terms “goal,” “objective,” and “strategy” are my arbitrary designations for these ideas. The literature presents a big muddle about what these words are - so I just chose. I try to be consistent with myself. You can call these things whatever you like. Whatever you decide to label them, I will be looking for things that match these three levels of “things to do.”
Q. How much of the PDEP is based in fact on our target school (the school we
use for the description/philosophy) and how much can be
hypothetical/fictional? Should the goals be based on actual changes that
the current media specialist would like to see or instead are these
improvements/goals that we as outsiders think the media center/program
needs? Should we speak with the MS about what she thinks the program needs
or even ask to see his/her PDEP if they have one? I guess I'm just not sure
how based in fact you want this project to be. If the media center we are
using already has a well-developed development plan in place, how much of
that plan should we use?
A. This is a great question and one I get every year. The answer is that it's really a dance and you do your best.
I care that your project is based in reality to start. Beyond that,
it is impossible to control. Certainly, use anything in place that will help you (like a pre-existing plan).
(Of course, get permission and cite anything that you use, even if it is existing school policy.)
You can't actually expect to change anything, although that might be a side effect. Also, don't allow your team to get to "stuck" in the reality -
and compliant to the wishes of the SLMS,
because that's not the purpose of this assignment. The purpose is to take a realistic situation and plan from there.
It may be that you take on this mindset: take a "snapshot" of the
program as it is now. Then, in your team, brainstorm about moving forward from there. Perhaps this will help you as you talk with your in-the-trenches SLMS.
The "snapshot" may include the plans and ideas of the current SLMS, which you can use if helpful, or not if that adds difficulty.
Try not to set up any false expectations - make no promises.
If there are details you need that you cannot discover after reasonable effort, then you may use creative license.
Believe me, it's harder to do this than to use reality, but it may be the only way. ---MAF