The last few months have been a whirlwind of school library activities and conferences. In the past several weeks I have attended our own MSLA conference, MassCUE and the SLJ Leadership Summit in Florida. In addition, I wish I could have included the Connecticut (CASL) and Christa McAuliffe conferences to which I was invited. In January, I will travel to Denver to attend the ALA Midwinter conference…and through it all, as everyone does, I juggle the work, home, family events as gingerly as I can. The more I do, the more I wish I could do. In this high tech, virtual world, why can’t anyone figure out how to make a day longer? Oh well, perhaps that is best left undone!

The one thing that stands out in my mind as I travel through all these events is that technology is flying at warp speed ahead of us. As you read through the articles in this issue of the MSLA Forum you might learn of new research, online games, electronic advances and new worlds you didn’t know existed. I continually ask myself how we can keep ahead of our users, the students whose lives are impacted by it all daily. The one thing I know is that the kids are already way ahead of us, and they know it. I continue to ask, “Who is teaching them to use it ethically, safely and to their best advantage?” One area that most parents are not versed in is teaching their kids the “manners” or safety measures they need to know. If we are not doing it in school, then who is?  As in the past, they are learning it from their friends. Somehow we need to get beyond our fears, help our districts move beyond their fears, and take the bull by the horns for our kids’ sake. We need to surpass the mentality that was pervasive when schools first went online, ‘what if they misuse it and what about all that porn?” If we do not slowly, carefully, start to open access to these social networks and web 2.0 technologies, then many students will continue to leave our schools woefully unprepared for the 21st century. It is school library professionals that need to take the lead in educating our administrators, teachers, students and their parents about Informational Communication Technologies (ICT). Do we believe that kids take a step backwards everyday they come to school and leave their virtual world at home? That is what is heard in the national conference circuits, yet, these virtual spaces are the worlds they will need to navigate in the future to network, gather, remix and create new information, and to collaborate with their own colleagues.

Joyce Valenza, on her "NeverEndingSearch" blog nicely summarizes the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, "Transition Brief: Policy Recommendations on Preparing Americans for the Global Skills Race".  Joyce states, “The document offers broad proposals for forging a workforce and creating an education system that will thrive in the 21st century.”

The reasons for change include:

• changes in the economy and the nature of work
• new skills demands from jobs and businesses
• two student achievement gaps: (1) the one between our own higher and lower achieving students, and (2) the global achievement gap--the one between our students (some top-performing) and their international peers in competitor nations.

We hear about it, we read about it, we all know about it…but we continue to hide behind all the excuses why we can’t, fear of the unknown, fear of letting on that we don’t know, fear of what parents will think, fear of litigation, fear of what might happen if…the list goes on. We can continue to make excuses or we can move the agenda forward. We already know change is not easy…why can’t we just do it??? Has anyone in our profession ever thought about the censorship of information that is prevalent in denying access to these resources? Second Life, youtube, flickr all have educational applications that cannot be used in many of our schools. It is our students who are creating and mashing a lot of what can be found on these sites. But, they are doing it all at home, not in our schools, where we are being asked to teach creativity, ethical use and critical thinking skills.

The P21 Brief proposes the next administration must concentrate on helping every American achieve skills such as problem solving and effective communication. The one thing I do know is that Obama's campaign was successfully impacted by the astute use of information technology. Let’s hope that spreads to his education leadership nationally and that it trickles down to the states and schools.