I Want to Take Apart A Hard Drive!

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.