The actual program described in the "C's of our Sea Change" article by Blowers and Reed sounded like great fun. While I was a bit iffy about the facilitators' decision to allow anonymous blogging (it seemed like an invitation to trolling, as far as I was concerned), their idea to reward participants with MP3 players was genius. Not only did it provide a tangible motivation for learners to complete the course, but the choice of prize actually tied in perfectly with the goals of the course. Actually, this seemed to be a constant in all three of the articles--success depends on providing the right kind of carrot. As Fontichiaro noted, teachers in her explorations course got 10 professional development hours, and participants in the Fusion program received a stipend of up to $500. I also now realize where our professor probably got the idea to make us blog about our readings every week.
The actual writing style of the Blowers and Reed article put my teeth on edge, however. The cutesy alliterations and puns, as well as little asides like "see if you can say that three times fast" made me take the authors much less seriously. Apparently they developed a good program as our own professor later modeled on of her own on it, but I think the experiment would have perhaps gotten wider recognition if it had been written in a more professional manner. My reservations aside, however, the authors did present some fairly convincing anecdotal evidence as to the effectiveness of their program. I had no idea librarians sometimes put "out of order" signs on computers because they didn't know the password! If Blowers and Reed were only able to stop this practice, I would still consider the program a success. In reality they went much further, teaching "late bloomers" about Flikr, YouTube, blogging, RSS feeds, downloadable content and more. While their hierarchy of four core competencies seemed a bit lenient (come on, everybody should know how to use a spreadsheet, not just those in public service), the great detail they went into when determining them speaks to a sophisticated understanding of the needs of librarians.
I also really liked their emphasis on "play". This is how I and everyone I know my age learns about new technologies, but people my parents' age seem to be stuck repeating a set of proscribed steps. For example, an older woman I used to work with always kept a notebook on her with numbered lists for a certain program. Every time she had do do something on the computer, like notify a patron that their hold had come in, she would open up her notebook, find the appropriate topic, and then just follow the steps-- 1, 2, 3, 4. If anything unexpected happened, she would either start over from the beginning or just give up. Encouraging exploration and creativity in problem-solving really takes a lot of the scariness out of computers, I think. Once you learn the new lexicon of procedures and phrases inherent to computing, you can apply them in thousands of different ways. Even learning that there is often more than one right way to do something, or that shortcuts exist for a variety of commonplace actions, teaches beginners that the key to successful computing is not memorization, but actual use. Like learning to play an instrument, the more you practice scales and chords, the better you become at improvisation.
On the surface, the Semadeni reading held the least relevance to me as a prospective public or academic librarian. Being explicitly geared towards professional development in the field of primary and secondary education, it focused on some aspects of the teaching career that has no analogue in that of the library. Like teachers, however, librarians have to constantly update their skills and look at new ways of reaching patrons. Learning new teaching strategies for conducting book clubs, webinars, and workshops is just as important for LIS specializations as SLMs. Her comment that with this program "Teachers expenence professional development as an opportunity to learn wiih colleagues rather than something to resent or fear" brought me back to where Blowers' and Reed's "late bloomers" were before their training. It seemed as though they were both afraid of Web 2.0 tools and resentful of their intrusion into the library sphere. By using collaboration, however, all three of these programs made learning new skills less frightening and more exciting. Semadeni's discussions of the laid-back group study sessions divided the time between conversation, discussion, advising and reporting, which seemed to suit the participants just fine.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Webinars and U(seless warranties)
This post is... late. Very late. My computer conked out on me again last weekend (faulty adapter this time) and it took me until Wednesday to get the part shipped in. The process was expensive, frustrating and worrisome, not to mention redolent of deja vu. If you'll recall, something similar happened to me earlier in the semester, immediately after my computer's warranty expired. As far as I'm concerned, this was no coincidence. Of course, all this hand-wringing doesn't explain why I didn't get around to writing until today, but as I don't really have a good answer, we'll just go with shock and trauma--definitely not that I was writing the final paper for 500 instead.
Naturally, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Not only did I conduct my first-ever webinar, but I got to listen to the majority of my class's first forays into this brave new world as well. I've got to say, you all did much better than I. My group's troubles began with a previously-undiscovered incompatibility between Elluminate and Keynote and, despite some fancy footwork, we had a hard time working out all the bugs and getting the presentation underway. I know its rather late in the game for such advise, but if you happen to listen to my group's archived presentation you can probably just skip about the first five minutes as its just us whispering to each other about how to get the webcam working. Add in a healthy dose of public-speaking jitters and the fact that I thought my teammate was mouthing "wrap it up" when he was actually asking for a bit of back-and-forth, and my performance could best be characterized as amateur. So, sorry, teammates and classmates. We're just going to have to chalk this one up to the learning curve. Oh, and speaking of learning: my biggest takeaway was definitely to come prepared for questions. If you don't know, you can always prevaricate or suggest other resources, or, as a last resort, just say so.
Due to my troubles, I wasn't able to participate in any of the webinars live, so I went to the archives on the Wikispace when I finally got my computer back in order to listen to what everybody else had to say. These are the order I watched them in:
The "Three Blind Mice" tutorial also dealt with an underserved sector of the population and had a lot of interesting observations about the library experience of a blind or low vision person. Many of this group's suggestions were eminently practical and insightful. These included such common-sense dictates as "clean up the aisles" and "don't pet the guide-dog" as well as "introduce yourself" so that the patron can later ask for and identify you by name. Following this, I listened to the "Pow-Wow at your Library" webinar, which actually addressed some of the same issues, like sensitivity and the importance of storytime. Other issues were unique to this population. Since Native Americans are not as visible a minority group as others in this country, many libraries still have materials that may be offensive or inaccurate. Stories like "The Bernstein Bears Give Thanks" or "The Indian in the Cupboard", which we all grew up reading, actually contain messages that, upon reflection, do not portray Native Americans all that accurately. I also heard some echoes of my own group's presentation in the Pow-Wow group's exhortations to identify the subgroup living in the library's community. For us, that meant figuring out which country our immigrants came from, while for them it had more to do with specific tribes and reservations.
Lastly, I felt like I should shake things up by including a copyright webinar, so I watched the open access presentation by Amanda, Kayla and Joanna. They had some really interesting things to say about "copyleft" and creative commons, as well as the development of open-access journals. I was especially excited to hear about Senator Lieberman's bill to make publicly-funded research publicly available until they said that he'd been introducing it over and over for years. More heartening was the speed at which open access journals have so far developed readership as opposed to print journals. Even with the "permission crisis" of publishers restricting distribution rights from libraries, I think this trend can go a long way towards making Sen. Lieberman's dream come true.
Naturally, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Not only did I conduct my first-ever webinar, but I got to listen to the majority of my class's first forays into this brave new world as well. I've got to say, you all did much better than I. My group's troubles began with a previously-undiscovered incompatibility between Elluminate and Keynote and, despite some fancy footwork, we had a hard time working out all the bugs and getting the presentation underway. I know its rather late in the game for such advise, but if you happen to listen to my group's archived presentation you can probably just skip about the first five minutes as its just us whispering to each other about how to get the webcam working. Add in a healthy dose of public-speaking jitters and the fact that I thought my teammate was mouthing "wrap it up" when he was actually asking for a bit of back-and-forth, and my performance could best be characterized as amateur. So, sorry, teammates and classmates. We're just going to have to chalk this one up to the learning curve. Oh, and speaking of learning: my biggest takeaway was definitely to come prepared for questions. If you don't know, you can always prevaricate or suggest other resources, or, as a last resort, just say so.
Due to my troubles, I wasn't able to participate in any of the webinars live, so I went to the archives on the Wikispace when I finally got my computer back in order to listen to what everybody else had to say. These are the order I watched them in:
- Is Access a Civil Right?
- Three Blind Mice
- Pow-wow at Your Library: Serving Native American Youth
- Open Access: Less Money, Less Problems
The "Three Blind Mice" tutorial also dealt with an underserved sector of the population and had a lot of interesting observations about the library experience of a blind or low vision person. Many of this group's suggestions were eminently practical and insightful. These included such common-sense dictates as "clean up the aisles" and "don't pet the guide-dog" as well as "introduce yourself" so that the patron can later ask for and identify you by name. Following this, I listened to the "Pow-Wow at your Library" webinar, which actually addressed some of the same issues, like sensitivity and the importance of storytime. Other issues were unique to this population. Since Native Americans are not as visible a minority group as others in this country, many libraries still have materials that may be offensive or inaccurate. Stories like "The Bernstein Bears Give Thanks" or "The Indian in the Cupboard", which we all grew up reading, actually contain messages that, upon reflection, do not portray Native Americans all that accurately. I also heard some echoes of my own group's presentation in the Pow-Wow group's exhortations to identify the subgroup living in the library's community. For us, that meant figuring out which country our immigrants came from, while for them it had more to do with specific tribes and reservations.
Lastly, I felt like I should shake things up by including a copyright webinar, so I watched the open access presentation by Amanda, Kayla and Joanna. They had some really interesting things to say about "copyleft" and creative commons, as well as the development of open-access journals. I was especially excited to hear about Senator Lieberman's bill to make publicly-funded research publicly available until they said that he'd been introducing it over and over for years. More heartening was the speed at which open access journals have so far developed readership as opposed to print journals. Even with the "permission crisis" of publishers restricting distribution rights from libraries, I think this trend can go a long way towards making Sen. Lieberman's dream come true.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
I Keep Running Out of Characters
Like everybody else, I signed up for Twitter last week in order to have something to write about in this blog post. To be honest, I had a twitter account even before this, but I had used it a total of two times-- once to post something to the display in the SI lounge and once because I thought, like Facebook, you needed an account in order to access other people's comments/tweets. This is the first time I've actually explored any of the features. The first thing I noticed: its really hard to say something substantive in 140 characters! I kept running out and then having to go back over my tweets and either abbreviate words or take out whole phrases. I also didn't know that hashtags and other users' names counted towards this limit so I'd go right up against the wall and then remember that I had to include #si643. I also wasn't entirely certain what the content of my tweets should be. I mean, the famous people that I started following apparently have no problem telling the world about their illnesses or cursing their spellchecker, but surely if this is an assignment, I should be discussing weighty matters of professional practice? Not so! After ten minutes on Twitter, I now know that where my classmates will be spending their Sundays, what their opinions are on April Fools Day jokes, and how much they love flossing (actually, I don't think the last one had an SI hashtag, so it probably doesn't count).
Visiting the links that everybody's been putting up has been fun, although this format kind of feels like an expanded version of si.all. The jury's still out on whether I would use twitter regularly in my library career but I did just recommend the other day that my pastor (who's a total Facebook addict) use it to get the word out on her service opportunities and study sessions. Generally, this format--tweets generated by an organization instead of an individual-- seemed more useful to me. As celebrities tweets are constantly getting them into trouble and judging by the amount of personal information I've seen posted in my network, it seems that people have a hard time fully understanding just how public their random thoughts will become when they hit the "tweet" button. Twitter accounts controlled by so-and-so's marketing department, on the other hand, really get that they represent the public face of the company/institution/organization they're tweeting about, which tends to make their posts both more boring and less trivial.
As for class last week, I quite enjoyed the heated discussion on embedded librarianship. I agree that this really is an issue more of use to academic libraries than public ones, but it was still interesting to hear about different people's opinions. I'm still not convinced that sending a librarian with a physician to do rounds is going to make much of an impact unless said librarian also has a medical degree, but I can also see where it would be of great benefit to specialized collections and insular academic communities such as a music library or business school. Also, I agree with Kristen that the book club assignment was more geared in our (prospective public librarians') direction, so everything balances out.
Even though Courant already presented in SI 500 and we had to read one of his articles for class, I really enjoyed him taking the time just to answer questions. People came up with some really interesting ideas, and he had really interesting answers. Its obvious that he's thought about all this stuff in depth and has formed deep opinions about how to keep libraries viable. Also-- the Espresso Book Machine is AWESOME. 'nuff said.
Visiting the links that everybody's been putting up has been fun, although this format kind of feels like an expanded version of si.all. The jury's still out on whether I would use twitter regularly in my library career but I did just recommend the other day that my pastor (who's a total Facebook addict) use it to get the word out on her service opportunities and study sessions. Generally, this format--tweets generated by an organization instead of an individual-- seemed more useful to me. As celebrities tweets are constantly getting them into trouble and judging by the amount of personal information I've seen posted in my network, it seems that people have a hard time fully understanding just how public their random thoughts will become when they hit the "tweet" button. Twitter accounts controlled by so-and-so's marketing department, on the other hand, really get that they represent the public face of the company/institution/organization they're tweeting about, which tends to make their posts both more boring and less trivial.
As for class last week, I quite enjoyed the heated discussion on embedded librarianship. I agree that this really is an issue more of use to academic libraries than public ones, but it was still interesting to hear about different people's opinions. I'm still not convinced that sending a librarian with a physician to do rounds is going to make much of an impact unless said librarian also has a medical degree, but I can also see where it would be of great benefit to specialized collections and insular academic communities such as a music library or business school. Also, I agree with Kristen that the book club assignment was more geared in our (prospective public librarians') direction, so everything balances out.
Even though Courant already presented in SI 500 and we had to read one of his articles for class, I really enjoyed him taking the time just to answer questions. People came up with some really interesting ideas, and he had really interesting answers. Its obvious that he's thought about all this stuff in depth and has formed deep opinions about how to keep libraries viable. Also-- the Espresso Book Machine is AWESOME. 'nuff said.
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