Debbie Abilock is an educator with over 25 years experience as a Curriculum Coordinator, Director of a unified Library and Technology Department, and a school administrator. As founding editor of Knowledge Quest, the print journal of the American Association of School Librarians, she applies extensive knowledge of educational research to the practical issues and tasks of teaching and learning. In a recent interview for Super Searchers Go to School (2005) she describes "messing around and clumping" strategies for teaching our youngest searchers to be information literate. She edited the Standards and Guidelines for Strong School Libraries (2004) published by the California School Library Association in cooperation with Scholastic Publishers. She currently serves on the national Advisory Board for Project LEAD (ILMS) and BayNet Multitype Library Assn. Debbie considers consulting offers which provide an opportunity to coach, team and build institutional capacity.

Keynotes 

Technology...for What?
Predicting the library's future is like looking cross-eyed into a crystal ball. Yet by intelligently examining key catalysts, exploiting design principles and recognizing our professional “indigestion,” we can uncover new opportunities and develop exciting roles for our digital and physical futures.

No More Cat and Mouse: Teaching the Real Purpose of Citing Sources
What's really important when it comes to teaching about plagiarism? After all, science researchers, inventors, musicians and knowledge workers refer to and build upon the work of others! Examine assignments, classroom pedagogy and school structures that contribute to the ethical climate. Learn proactive strategies to address the ethical conundrums presented by new technologies.

From Novice to Expert
Like naïve thinkers of any age, students operate under faulty mental models that block their learning and prevent them from learning from their mistakes. We'll examine ways to teach them to build expertise and, in the process, address some of our own unexamined misconceptions about student learning.

Doorstops, Elephants and Cheesecake
If you find yourself facing elephants more often than creating cheesecake, it’s time to look into the collaboration refrigerator and identify what to throw out, what to snack and what to take time to prepare well. (Can be expanded into a practical workshop on developing a strategic schoolwide plan for collaboration.)

Motivated to Learn, Designing From Inside Out
Why are some students deeply engaged in learning while others resist, perform superficially or are self-defeating? Using research developmental psychology and a new taxonomy of educational objectives, we'll examine why beliefs about self and learning goals impact motivation, attention, effort and achievement. Then we'll evaluate specific examples of differentiation and other teaching strategies that have the power to motivate learning.

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Curriculum Workshops 

The Process of Collaborative Curriculum Design
A practical look at the design process for inquiry or constructivist curriculum which can target teams that are actually working on specific projects.

Focusing Curriculum on Library Goals
Learn to design, implement and evaluate curriculum so that reading and information literacy goals are central to student learning and assessment.

Curriculum Mapping and the Library
Decisions you make about mapping the library curriculum can impact your role in school and the long-term effectiveness of the library program. Consider alternative strategies and their influence on teaching, learning and advocacy.

Transformational Curriculum Design
Do they care about research? Do they beg to spend more time in the library? I Using examples, strategies, scenarios, forms and structures, you can tweak your activities or redesign whole units to take advantage of what the research tells us can change your students’ understanding of information literacy and the library.

Low-Cost Web Tools for High-Impact Curriculum Collaboration
By matching online tools with the teacher’s goals and the learner's characteristics and needs, librarians and media educators can leverage hands-on, minds-on tools for curriculum collaboration – and provoke critical thinking and engaged learning among our students.

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Reading Workshops 

Reading the News: Media and Information Literacy
News media literacy involves understanding the context in which news is created and gathered, and how media formats impacts reporting. Activities and strategies for teaching students to “read” the news using information literacy skills. (21st Century Literacies Series)

Online Reading Strategies in an Information Rich Environment
Our students and staff use the Internet daily to answer personal questions, solve practical problems, do their school work and accomplish goals. New technologies demand new literacy strategies from our students. Learn to teach the strategies that good readers use along with critical information literacy skills in order to help students construct meaning and analyze information in an online environment. (21st Century Literacies Series)

How to Read – Photographs
Just as readers of books learn to decode words, then become fluent readers, and finally emerge as expressive readers and writers, our students need "visual literacy" in an image-drenched world. We'll look at the rhetorical situation of a photograph, examine some signs and symbols, and see how point of view is created by the interaction of the reader, the audience and the medium. (21st Century Literacies Series)

Digital Scholars Learn Historical Inquiry
Engaging activities can teach students to apply the historian’s skills of sourcing, corroborating and contextualizing to primary sources. How is the historical record created? What is the difference between point of view and bias? How can resistant questions help me identify the screaming silences in the historical record? Learn to teach information literacy and historical thinking using digital archives, then have students apply it to current-day events. (21st Century Literacies Series)

Grand Conversations with Students and Staff
Socratic Seminars, literature circles, book clubs, curriculum meetings and teacher study groups are discussion frameworks in which the librarian can gain recognition as a teacher, staff developer and school leader. Learn the questioning techniques, facilitation skills and use of non-analytical approaches to help self-directed inquiry groups consider the author’s purpose or develop a curricular theme, or explore an important classroom issue.

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Ethics & Information Literacy Workshops 

Beyond Cut-and-Paste: No More Cat and Mouse, Revisited
You’ve been telling your students not to cut-and-paste, but are you teaching the specific skills they need to avoid plagiarism? Do your students (and do you?) know the difference between paraphrasing and summarizing? Do they know how and when to quote a source directly? Do they recognize common knowledge? Do they understand how to develop their own opinions and voice? Constructivist, student-centered teaching ideas and documentation strategies for your information literacy curriculum.

Who Knows What...and How Do We Know it?
Students make judgments about authority in their everyday lives, but don't necessarily transfer this to evaluating online sources. We'll look at the relationship between trust, expertise and authority in the real world, the academic world and in the new permeable Web where learns expect to create information and construct knowledge, not just consume it.

The Gestalt of Online Searching
Thanks to Google’s interface, simple searching appears easy, yet the process of teaching students to become smart searchers has become harder. “Choose the Best Search for your Information Need” is my award-winning web page that suggests ways to deliver better results. We’ll look at ways to teach students to analyze an information task using habits of mind in a just-in-time environment.

Our Common Wealth: Teaching the Commons
Are you teaching academic ethics as a balance between individual and collective rights? See how others are enhancing the creative and scholarly assets that enrich the public good and belong to us all. Understand how and why to redesign your information literacy lessons and anti-plagiarism strategies so that you, too, can teach, support and contribute to our intellectual Commons.

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Quotes About Speaking, Consulting & Teaching 

"Debbie is always abreast of the latest in educational research...and is always prodding us to examine reflectively what we do and how and why we do it. She thinks outside the box - sees the possibilities for integration of technology into curriculum in diverse ways for a wide variety of purposes." – Science teacher

"Debbie's knowledge and outreach is outstanding, and what makes it even more wonderful is the infectious enthusiasm she exudes with anything related to literacy, research, and libraries." – SLIS professor

"She is widely acknowledged as one of the great teaching librarians - by her colleagues, her students, the teachers with whom she collaborates..." - "Movers and Shakers" School Library Journal

"It is important when thinking of a 21st Century Librarian not just to focus on technology and preparing students for ‘the challenges of the future.’ We must not lose sight of the ultimate goal of a librarian, to inspire a love of learning that students will carry through life. Debbie meets this goal every day." – student, grade 8

"Debbie Abilock saved my life, at least professionally. I received a call from the Associate Head of School on a Monday evening at home. There had been a cancellation of a speaker for our opening faculty meetings and I was asked to fill four hours of opening faculty meetings with "something about the library." Now normally, a librarian would be exited to receive this kind of time with the entire faculty, but I was asked to present the following day without any preparation time at all. I panicked, and then focused on my choices. I had been working with Debbie Abilock on a conference presentation, and called her to brainstorm what I could do with such short notice. Debbie offered to come and speak with me at a moment's notice, and it turned out to be one of the best presentations offered by the library. Working with Debbie helped me focus on what the strengths are within my program, and which parts of that program I would like to emphasize to the faculty. Many faculty members who had not taken advantage of the library resources came in within the first few weeks of school and asked for recommendations on how they could work a research project into their curriculum. The new faculty were in within a few days, so excited about the resources the library had to offer. The bonus that I hadn't expected was the kudos that Debbie paid to me and the library program during the presentation, helping the faculty acknowledge the important function of the library program and the librarian at our school." – high school librarian

"Thanks so much for coming into my library...it was so much fun to see a path for clearing out the clutter and moving into a world of books that is accessible and appealing. You are so practical in clarifying what is wanted and needed in my specific situation." - elementary school librarian

"It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it." -- Jacob Bronowski

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A Selection of My Favorite Pieces 

Online articles

• A Seven-Power Lens on 21st Century Literacy [PDF]
  Nov/Dec 2003 Multimedia Schools
   
• Engendering Equity; Apply the Research on Gender to Your School Library
  (revised in 2004 from an article originally published in Emergency Librarian)
   
• Literary Club: Meaning-Making in a School Community
  (revised in 2004 from an article originally published in School Libraries in Canada)
   

• Alpine Flowers [PDF]
   
• Information Literacy from Prehistory to K-20; A New Definition [PDF]
   
• Put Yourself in Your Administrator’s Shoes
   

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Core Beliefs 

In the 21st century, the definition of "basic literacy"—the ability to read, write, listen, and speak—includes competence in emerging formats and interdisciplinary knowledge. The changing issues raised by new technologies as they relate to intellectual property, ethical use of information and the authority and credibility of information need to be examined with the age-old habits of mind we have always taught. Critical analysis and questioning, as well as an attitude of healthy skepticism, remain central whether documents are in print or digital formats, or whether data is stored in file cabinets or on servers. Librarians are foolish to argue about the death of print or whether we will have "patrons" when library resources are no longer housed inside the walls of traditional library buildings. Change is the coin of the information realm in a continual learning environment. Those who can ride the edge of possibility while remaining focused on our core mission and values are our profession’s assets.

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Photographs 

• Black and white high-resolution [TIFF, 14.8 MB]
   
• Color high-resolution [TIFF, 8.6 MB]
   
• Color informal [JPG, 44 KB]

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Updated 4/24/2008 by D. Abilock

Copyright ©2008 Debbie Abilock. All rights reserved.