Webinars: For When You Need to Have Class in a Snowstorm

In honor of our other readings this week, I chose a webinar from EdWeek called Virtual Challenge: Creating Quality E-Courses. Since it was an archived webinar, I basically got to watch a PowerPoint slideshow with a voice-over, but it was still interesting. Honestly, I've never been in a college class that's taken advantage of these resources for their on-line classes, and my grades have suffered for it. The entire time I was in undergrad, I took a couple of on-line classes over the summer while working. I can tell you right now that every one of these courses averaged an entire letter-grade lower than my face-to-face classes and I still blame them for keeping me from graduating with honors (I was 0.02 points away!).

Anyway, this was a really well put-together webinar moderated by Michelle Davis, somebody I've never heard of but Kristen probably rode in an elevator with once. There were two other presenters as well--Greg Marks and Debbi Crabtree, and they presented a really in-depth study that to be honest I kind of tuned out but which they seemed really excited about. While the types of on-line courses they were talking about were not the sort I had any experience with, being primarily aimed at younger learners, some of the quality-control measures they proposed really made sense to me. One thing they emphasized over and over was motivational framing--making the student want to complete the course without having a teacher actually there to get in their face about it. This was especially important because a lot of the kids they were targeting were ones who had failed a class during the regular school year and had to retake it during the summer. In Crabtree's study, 83% who enrolled successfully completed their courses. Crabtree and Davis also emphasized the importance of making students feel unique, not just like one of the crowd. Teachers could do this by sending out emails which addressed the student by name, or giving them in-depth feedback on assignments (also something I never received).

As for the Matos reading: a) I had never heard of embedded librarianship before this and b) I now really want to know more about it. Honestly, I'm not sure its for me, though, as schmoozing faculty members and getting my name out there really isn't my strong suit. I know I'll have to interact with real people as a librarian, but I'd hope not to this extent, maybe? (Yes, this is totally unrealistic. Yes, I was one of those kids who thought being a librarian meant reading books all day. Yes, I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that this is not the case. Give me time.)

Then there's also the Montgomery and How People Learn readings, but I'm kind of running out time and I'd really like to finish up by talking about our workshops last week. So: maybe our workshop didn't kick all the butt I thought it would, but it was still pretty darn cool. I was glad that we went with the all-pictures slide show, since making our fellow students do a lot of reading in the six minutes (six minutes!) we'd allotted for the lecture section seemed a bit much on top of our very detailed scenario questions. I did most of the talking for that first six minutes, and luckily did not have one of my deer-in-the-headlights moments. There were a few more "ums" and "ahs" than I was comfortable with, but generally I think I conveyed the information that I set out to. The scenarios discussions were likewise very lively and engaging. I'm glad people really seemed to get into them. We tried to make them both as open-ended as possible, but one participant reported that his/hers seemed closed. Maybe we could do some tweaking, but I'm pretty satisfied with how that part went. The lecture section, however, proved problematic in feedback. I've come to the conclusion that given the short amount of time we had, we might have been better off to cut it all-together as I was only able to do a very surface gloss on the subject. Honestly, I don't think I gave them much in the way of new information. In order to do that, we would have needed to cut the scenarios all-together, and I think they were the stronger of the two sections. They certainly garnered some interesting results.

I Have Five Minutes to Talk at You, So Listen Up (pleez)

My group is finishing up our preparations for the workshop as I speak and the thing that struck me the most about getting ready is just how little time we actually have. Joanna, Brett and I figured that what with activities, introductions, evaluations, etc. we'd only have about five minutes of pure info-dump time at our disposal. Believe me, we intend to make that time count. I even made a useless little PowerPoint to give our participants something fun to stare at as I motormouth.

I have to admit, reading the Mosley article a week late was actually kind of beneficial for me (plus, her first name is actually Pixey, which just about made my week). It helped me put things into perspective as we threw together all the last-minute touches on our workshop. Don't get the idea from all this talk of night-before planning that we procrastinated on this assignment. No, we met last Wednesday and last Saturday. I would just like to reiterate: I got up on a Saturday for 643. Our workshop is going to kick butt.

As for last week's class, I'm still in the "ooh, shiny new technology" phase as far as elluminate is concerned. It was really useful to get a feel for what our webinars will look like on the other side when the time comes. I also took a peek at a couple other classmates' blogs before writing this, and I think I agree with most of what they said about the experience; namely, that the conversation got a little chaotic and we might have gotten more out of it if we could have used all of elluminate's features. It was pretty weird for her to be able to see but not hear us and for us to be able to hear but not see her. On the other hand, we got to talk to a real-life library blogger who was knowledgeable and articulate and totally didn't treat us like children. You know you've grown up when the grown ups take you seriously.

Anecdata

...is my new favorite made-up word, a la Jason Griffey! Obviously, the HarperCollins/Overdrive debate has generated a lot of blow-back by librarians who feel that the doctrine of first sale is under attack (I mean, even Neil Gaiman is involved!), as well as calming voices and outright HC supporters. My favorite posts, however, came from Griffey and the awesomely-named BeerBrarian. The first posits that the 27-patron cut-off will have very little effect on most libraries bottom lines, as few books ever really circulate that often. The second contends that in the digital age, why do we need publishers, anyway? I must admit, I was a bit skeptical of this theory, until I heard an explanation from one of the panelists at the Day in the Life of a Forward-Thinking Librarian presentation last Friday. According to him, authors--like musicians before them--are soon going to start realizing that they can make more money selling $0.99 e-books to more people than by using the inflated pricing systems that publishers are currently pushing on them to make e-book analogous to print books. Judging by the success of established artists like Coldplay, who recently released their latest album on the web, I can see this trend accelerating in the near future. With the way the internet is currently blurring the lines between traditionally-vetted and self-published authors/ artists/ musicians, it makes sense that ye olde publishing industry is flailing around trying to find solid ground--even if that means violating the sacred statute of first sale.

Jason Griffey's post, on the other hand, I found to be much less useful, especially in light of the Pioneer Library System's YouTube demonstration. Griffey, as he freely admits, makes use more of "anecdata" than statistics. Additionally, his library seems to have unusually low circulation rates, in addition to being an academic library, which receives fewer checkouts of each title anyway. The PLS video, on the other hand, provides concrete and compelling--if cherry-picked-- data as to the longevity of popular HC print books versus their ebook counterparts. One hardcover, which admittedly had some spinal damage, had circulated 120 times. Of the five books profiled, the library would have had to buy 12 additional copies if they had been e-books. That's pretty convincing evidence of the arbitrary and unscientific nature of the 26-checkout rule.

As to the other readings, Mosley and the ALA code of Ethics, I'm not quite sure what to make of them. The Mosley reading is old enough that some of the specifics of her workshop has lost relevancy (students don't use the library in the same way today as they did in 1998). On the other hand, the need to liaise with professors handing out "library assignments" remains high, and the overall report provides a great example of a successful workshop, which was probably the reason we had to read it anyway. The article also made me think back to my favorite library assignment in undergrad, where my film instructor told us all to go out and watch a movie from the 1930s and then find the press-packet associated with that film (which our library had on microfilm), scan the materials into a PDF document, then write a paper on the marketing of that film and submit along with the PDF.

The Code of Ethics wasn't especially earth-shattering, either. It said basically what I expected it to, taking a hard line on censorship and patron privacy, as well as all other best-practice stuff that can be found in just about any institution's mission statement. I did, however, really appreciate statement VII: "We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources." If only pharmacists had to adhere to this doctrine, instead of being able to deny birth control and Plan B to customers because of their religious beliefs. Libraries, like the medical system, have a duty to the public that goes beyond our own petty biases and preconceptions.

As for last week's class (actually two weeks ago because this post is mega-late), I quite enjoyed my group's book discussion. Between the nine of us, we took up the entire three-hour bloc, which speaks, I think, to our appreciation of the material. I especially enjoyed preparing the passage from Ovid, and that group's insightful questions. In evaluating our own performance, my group identified several areas we could improve upon for the upcoming workshop.

Hearts, continued

Sorry, I apparently forgot to comment on the Card Catalog Poetry Project in my previous blog post. So, quickly: the entries by Robin Harris consist of four short free-verse poems written on catalog cards. Some refer to the books indexed on the card while others are more concerned with the melancholy nostalgia involved in trading in file cabinets for computer files. To be honest, I couldn't quite decipher her handwriting on number 3, and having never used actual cards in my library work, didn't identify much with the sentiment. Harris does seem to have a gift for growing imagery out of a sparse crop of words, however. What I really want to know is what the multi-colored recycling stamps mean, though.

Is This Your Card? Hearts Book Club

As my assigned suit is hearts (and I have nothing better to do over spring break), I prepared the following materials for our book clubs and socratic seminars next Monday:

• "Hansel and Gretel" by the Brothers Grimm
• "Heroides 1 (Penelope to Ulysseus)" by Ovid
• Robin Harris' contributions to the Card Catalogue Poetry Project
• and, of course, my own group's offerings: Tiger by William Blake and Design by Robert Frost

Even though I am intimately familiar with the Hansel and Gretel story, I found it very interesting to read the annotations provided by SurLaLune. Delving into psychology, allegory, history, and symbolism, these notes analysed the story in far more literary terms than I had ever bothered to--much to my own detriment, apparently. I had known previously that before the Brothers Grimm and a few of their predecessors, fairy tales were an entirely oral tradition and so given to a certain flexing of story, depending on the teller and the times. It seems that the same can be said for Jacob and Wilhelm. Their patriarchal, religious viewpoint flavors all aspects of the story, from the invention of the shrewish stepmother to the children's prayers for God to watch over them. Perhaps the most obvious example--"If a man yields once he's done for, and so, because he has given in the first time, he [the father] was forced to do so the second"--apparently contributed to the popularity of the Brothers' work in the mid-1800s. Likewise, I found it interesting that some scholars had interpreted the story as an allegory for peasant uprising. I can see how the desperately impoverished woodcutter's family might represent serfs of previous centuries, and the evil red-eyed witch their wealth-flaunting masters, who are later overthown and robbed of their luxurious appointments.

I also had some background knowlege of the events referred to by Penelope in her letter to Ulysseus (isn't this ususally spelled Odysseus? As in Odyssey?), but apparently not enough to understand anything in the second paragraph. After a little research into Antilochus, Menoetius, and Tlepolemus, I think I get that Penelope was worried for her husband during the Trojan war. Honestly, I'd never really thought about her plight while her husband was off battling cyclops and lotus eaters for, what was it, fourteen years? I wonder if it would be sacrilege to compare Ovid to some sort of ancient fan fiction writer.