Caitlin evaluated the blog "Blue Skunk" written by Doug Johnson, a school media specialist, for its usefulness as a resource for her library. She summarized several of Doug's blog posts discussing topics like banning Facebook, student research habits, and the need to find a balance between choice and assignment in student projects. Overall, she felt the blog may be useful for individuals but would not be practical as an institutional resource due to its informal nature, recommending his professional website and published works instead.

1. Caitlin Bergan
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Blog/Listserv Assignment
To: My Supervisor
I looked into the blog Blue Skunk written by Doug Johnson to evaluate its
usefulness as a resource for our library. Doug Johnson has extensive experience as a
teacher and a school media specialist for a variety of ages, with skills highlighting
international cooperation and technology. He is currently the Director of Media and
Technology for a school district in Minnesota. From his blog, you can access his more
professional website and information about his published works, which includes a
number of articles and four books. He mentions in his bio that he sees his blog as a
companion to his professional website and to his published works. He likes that it gives
him a place to explore ideas and get feedback before developing it for publishing, and a
way for people to communicate with him about his works.
Aimed at school media specialists, Blue Skunk shares gems of information and
experience mixed with the everyday ramblings of a daily, or almost daily, blogger. His
readers have a range of experience level, though all do seem involved in the sphere of
school libraries. Some of the comment posters have their own blogs, while others are
media specialists at varying points in their careers. He spends several posts helping or
answering questions for people who are new to the job. He stresses openness, patience,
and respect in dealing with children of all ages, and also emphasizes that a school
librarian should foremost be an advocate for the children they serve. He discusses best
practice, problems with conducting real research, and issues of technology versus
traditional teaching methods. But he also sidetracks with anecdotes about his travels and
comments about new technology he comes across. Much of the information is valuable,
but to get a real appreciation of what is there, one would probably have to start at the
beginning of his extensive archives and read up until present.
On October 6th, Doug’s posted about Facebook and why it is not banned from the
school district’s computers. It came up because the administrators at the district level
wanted to have a talk about it. He says that while he has little attachment to the site, he
does not like the thought of banning any site on hearsay alone and thinks that content
needs to be strongly considered before banning anything. He has links to information for
educators and other people who are not familiar with social networking sites to explain
how they work and why people use them. He also stresses the importance of teaching
kids how to use social networking sites, and the internet in general, safely. Included are
two short videos about cyber bullying and the fact that information put out on the web
could come back to haunt a child later.
The comments posted had a range of good input on the subject. One poster
discussed how they used the set up of Facebook for history projects, especially if the unit
concerned a range of important people and their relationships. The class would make
“profiles,” “events,” and “groups” for all of the important figures and their causes, using
a setup they were familiar with to make connections between people, events, and ideas.
Doug agrees later that these projects can work well – he has also heard that using this
format to map book characters in literature classes can work well. Other posts agreed

2. with the need for free access and the need for kids to learn to make good decisions on
web use. One commenter got defensive – saying that most of them probably had little
control over what was or was not blocked, as they relied on filter services that decided
without input from the schools what should or should not be blocked. Doug answers this
a little sharply – even in such cases, there is someone in the district that can curtail how
much the filter company decides on their own and what is actually enforced. Doug fears
that religious or political bias could eventually factor into a filter company’s criteria for
blocking sites. One poster mentions that schools that only allow students on for
“educational” purposes are kind of silly – if they can go to the school library and check
out a fiction free reading book or a book about a hobby, why shouldn’t they be able to get
similar material off a school computer as well? I thought it was an excellent point.
On October 13th and 14th he does an interesting pair of posts. He talks about how
kids are said to satisfice, a fun linguistic construction from “suffice” and “satisfy.” In
other words, they find what will be minimally acceptable, instead of the best answer to a
question. Doug notices that this is true, but a youth’s tendency to satisfice is directly
related to the personal importance of the question. He suggests that better questions
would lead to deeper thinking and a better estimation of a student’s true ability to find
information. The commenters all agreed on this one – stressing choice and relevant
project design.
I concede the point, students are going to look for something harder if they are
more interested in it, but we would need to change the entire world, not just the public
K-12 curriculum in order for that kind of project design to do any good for the student if
that is all they are exposed to. College-level instructors do not care if a student is truly
interested in their topic; a professor does not care if the student feels no personal
relevance in a research question and they will not hold their hand. The professional world
does not care if a person wants to do a report – it is do the report and get paid or find a
new job. A boss is not going to change the focus of the report to make it more personally
appealing to an individual. Part of school is social preparation for life. To make it in
higher education and in any kind of worthwhile job, you have to be willing to spend a lot
of time becoming familiar with information that you genuinely don’t care about. As much
as I want everyone to be able to feel that they succeed at school, this is also a factor.
Choice is nice, but not all projects can, nor should be, the choice of the student.
Sometimes there needs to be an ultimatum. Would first teaching students researching
skill on subjects they like be a good idea, before applying the same criteria to an assigned
topic? The answer to that is absolutely. But school is about learning, and that does not
always entail handholding and giving into what the student wants.
I liked his second post on satisficing better. He suggests to people writing reports,
especially required ones for the government that will never again see the light of day, he
suggests to calm down and satisfice as much as is appropriate. When the stakes are
higher, when money is on the line, then it is time to worry about specifics and to do
serious research. But his advice is to focus on helping the kids, and if that means making
educated guesses instead of spending hours gathering information for a report that no one
is going to read or investigate, then that is what should happen. That post had only one
comment, and that was a woman saying, you know what, you are right. The whole topic
reminded me of something my high school chemistry teacher said. “People,” he said, “are

3. like electrons. They exist at the lowest energy level possible.” More people need to keep
that in mind, but especially educators.
In general, I think this blog might be a good resource for an individual, if they are
willing to follow the blog and read the archives, but it would be impractical for an
organization to make too much use of it as it is haphazardly put together and not all of the
posts are of equal relevance. I feel that his professional website and his books and articles
might prove to be more useful, as he admits they contain some of the same information
and it is in a more organized form. I certainly would not discourage a colleague from
following his blog and implementing some of his advice if seems like a good fit, but as
resource for our institution, it lacks structure.
From: Caitlin Bergan