Tag: Computers in Libraries

Virtual Learning and Training

Teaching and Learning with Drupal
Meredith Farkas, Norwich University

Transferring face-to-face classes straight to online classes doesn’t work. They are boring. Something is lost in translation?

What gets lost is the before- & after-class interaction; the in-class interaction; this hasn’t always been transferred to online learning.

Web 2.0 ideas for the classroom.

  • age of participation
  • the wisdom of crowds
  • social constructivism
  • instructor is facilitator; everyone learns, even the instructor

Meredith used Drupal, an OS CMS, in her instruction, instead of the school’s current learning management system.

  • multiple blogs
  • wikis
  • forums
  • static html
  • lots of options available in Drupal

She has taught three semesters of classes online so far. The important part has been the class participation, and the commenting that has gone on in the class.

Why blogs?

  • faculty communication with students — “housekeeping” category posts
  • familiar medium
  • builds student sense of ownership over the medium (with forums, you don’t own the space; you just post there; with own blog, it’s your space)
  • community-building: students interacted and connected online, much more human medium where they be themselves, informal.
    • “this was probably the most engaging class i’ve taken because were were required to interact with each other every week…” –comment from student
  • Reflective learning: reflect on the experience of reading, process it, and write about how it affects you. Reflect on other discussions.
  • Discussion and debate: when you have to critique or justify your ideas, you are able to start to clarify your own ideas better and own them.
  • Writing in public: gain experience writing for an outside audience, while in school, not just your class reading your stuff; professional blogging beginning already
  • Everyone is teacher and learner: reading and teaching not as important as the conversations that went on in the class, so everyone learns and teaches.

Blogs can:

  • promote critical and reflective thinking
  • enable collaboration and knowledge-saharing
  • create an informal environment for student discussion and community-building
  • encourage dialogue and debate
  • encourage students to teach as well as learn and co-construct their learning experience

Using blogs for teaching brings in much more real-world experience.

Blogging at the American University in Cairo
Joan Petit, Portland State University

Worked at the American University in Cairo for two years.

It’s a US-accredited institution; has a required info lit class; mostly Egyptians; English as 2nd or 3rd language; no libraries there; no critical thinking taught in high school; no research papers in class before college. This situation presents challenges for the information literacy course that’s required.

OLD LALT 101 class

  • research project
  • Quizzes — graded automatically
  • WebCT
  • PowerPoints — instructor would read through the slides
  • 20% increase from pre- to post-test
  • Light workload for librarians; not much prepwork

New LALT 101: class wiki

  • Strict attendence — if you came to class & did the assignments, you’d pass.
  • Easier to pass
  • All students had to blog
    • weekly posts
    • assigned topics
    • political blogging in Egypt
    • Final project in blog — just a blog entry
    • Student Blog #1
    • Student Blog #2
      • Students could have public or private blogs

WordPress blogs resulted in for staff:

  • near-disaster
  • platform is not-so-simple
  • technology issues
  • instructors thought the students hated it

Student feedback

  • they loved the blogging.
  • the instructors couldn’t back off the blogging approach because the students hated taking the rest of the class. Since they bought into the blogging portion of the class, it had to remain.

The Lessons

  • Looking good on paper isn’t enough
  • Take advantage of key moments
  • Own your disasters
  • Define success
  • The most exciting technology isn’t always the best for users
  • Ill-considered hastily implemented can be a great success: if this had gone before a committee, it wouldn’t have happened.

Comments at the End

Meredith: students felt ownership of their classroom through the online structure of the class.

Joan: you find the technology that works for the students, play around with it, even with engineering students.

Meredith: so many different ways to engage your students in learning; you just have to find ways to engage the students so that they learn.

Joan: hear what the students are saying in response to what’s being used.

Meredith: how to get students to comment on each other’s stuff? not sure if an environment caused this or if it was the students themselves.

Digital Managers Sound Off

Bobbi Newman, David King, Sarah Houghton-Jan, Matt Hamilton

#dbsoundoff — session hashtag on Twitter

Panel Job Titles

David King: Digital Branch Manager, Topeka-Shawnee County Public Library

Sarah Houghton-Jan: Digital Futures Manager, San Jose Public Library. IT at Sarah’s library doesn’t want to support software on the machines, so she’s started doing that and making the decisions.

Bobbi Newman: Digital Branch Manager, Chatahoochee Valley Libraries. No staff, no funding. Liaison between IT and the rest of the library staff. Translates between tech & non-techie. Does the technical training for the staff.

Matt Hamilton: missed his title, Boulder Public Library.

The panel arranged itself in gadget order: iPad–> Full-size laptop.

What do you really do in your job daily (not job title/description) ?

Matt Hamilton: lots of meetings; tries not to get too hands-on, tries to avoid micro-managing, but spends lots of time on server administration.

Bobbi Newman: library looking for ILS — asks hard questions about how system will look to patrons — what she care about; staff & patron training; OverDrive; goes to manager meetings; teen service & children services meetings — what they need in the digital branch; web site redesign moving forward. Bobbi spends a lot of time explaining things.

Sarah Houghton-Jan: Spends more than half her time in meetings. Group wants a tech expert on hand, but isn’t doing much. Serves on 16 teams/formal committees & chairs 4 of those. As a result, doesn’t do a good job managing her own staff. Balancing needs of public library uses vs. merged entity. Wishes she could do more project management.

David King: goes to a bunch of meetings; types & talks a lot. Managers meetings, department meetings. Lots of emails, since he works in the basement. Project management — starts out heavily involved with it, and then hands it off (like Facebook page). Techs good at the tech stuff, not the people stuff. David deals with much of the people stuff as a result.

Educational background

David King: started touching computers in high school; college — found out you could get 10% extra credit by typing papers on computers. Went to library school. First job as electronic services librarian (involved putting ProQuest CDs in every month). Put in charge of that library’s website. And everything just developed and took off from there. No formal IT background, except for not being afraid to tinker & break things.

Sarah Houghton-Jan: English/math background. Got interested in libraries. Took HTML class, Dialog class during MLS studying. Nothing else available at the time. Got told one day that she was the webmaster because she took an HTML class & “good luck!”.

Bobbi Newman: wouldn’t take no for an answer. Has history degree, then got MLS. Worked with engineers for awhile. Then switched to public library sector. Saw something on a listserv about newer technologies. Fought with IT staff to implement some of those things, and implemented it anyway. No formal training. Always been technogeek.

Matt Hamilton: Interest in computers for a long time. He went into it backwards from the others. Technology wasn’t interesting to him; wanted to help people. Libraries were a good fit. Tendency to ask for forgiveness, rather than permission on doing technology tasks at his library.

“r u designing virtual or digital spaces for service delivery using the same approach that physical spaces have been designed?” —rebeccajones

Sarah: library wanted digital branch to match the physical space. Fonts, colors, spaces.

David: keep 3 things in mind: we have two libraries: physical & digital ones; some stuff we can do digitally different from physical (and some stuff we can’t or can only do digitally); for some the digital branch will be our only library. Physical collections being divided into neighborhoods, zones. Example: Travel physical neighborhood. Digital branch has a travel blog. Customers are still customers regardless of the branch they enter.

Bobbi: 4-county library. some areas are the poorest, old buildings. but very new buildings also exist in her library system. How to make an approachable website for that drastic of a different community/library?

Matt: current websites of the library don’t necessarily reflect, refer back to the library itself. Spending current time, getting the sites under the Boulder Library banner. Currently moving library’s web presence into Drupal.

Do you let others post content to the websites?

Matt: allows others to post, tries to find those with expertise in certain areas to post. Lots spend time encouraging people to post. Helping people realize they can add content to the site.

Bobbi: Old site still up since she arrived a year ago. Marketing department only one that posts content to the site. Teens/Children/Senior Citizens/New Materials/Genealogy areas would have sections on the section. Bobbi’s job is to facilitate the content, not create it.

Sarah: marketing department of 1 and that person had most of the control of the site at the time; that control has mostly been taken away. She thought she could moderate social media presence and comments. Sarah tries to encourage people to post and create. About 70 people are content creators are on the site.

David: marketing person didn’t want to manage all the content after all. Also, inherited a job where a lot of stuff was locked down on staff and patron computers throughout the library. Took awhile to get rid of that locked down stuff. Content creation? He doesn’t do much of this. He encourages, mentors people on their own content creation. He does write a bit for the site, and creates videos weekly for the site about technology. Staff then say “that if he’s doing that, I can write a blog post.”

Archiving Issues

David: doesn’t have to do this at his library.

Sarah: state law requires archiving — including Facebook. Utter waste of staff time.

Matt: discussion has gone on, but city record manager so far has said the library doesn’t need to.

Question: lots of time spent on building communities. How much time do you spend on looking at technology trends and how to leverage those?

Matt: attends local community tech groups, Drupal groups. Brings people from the community into some of the libraries’ discussion.

Bobbi: her library is moving slow — part of a school district. Wishes she’d be able to do more community engagement and content creation.

Sarah: does all of that on her own time. Research & trend-spotting has to be done at home. Gets into trouble looking at her PDA at work. Wishes she had more time.

David: doesn’t have a lot of time to do it. Keeps up shallowly (email, twitter running in the background at all time). Takes a look at RSS feeds at home. It’s a hobby, looks at it at home. Enjoys looking at this stuff at all times.

Analyzing, Evaluating and Communicating the Value of Web Presence

Michael Porter and Amanda Clay Powers

don’t let “that’s the way we’ve always done it” or “we are too busy” kill our libraries.  –Michael Porter.

Michael’s part

ROI: What it is. What it is for libs. Why you care/don’t need to care.

Slides will be online later.

Case to invest staff time, see Oliver Blanchard’s site (business community leader), smroi.net

“Social media is just a spoke in the wheel.” –Jason Falls, www.socialmediaexplorer.com

Create your goals, then measurable objectives, then strategies to met the objectives, then tactics to accomplish the strategies. –Jason Falls.

Video: Social Media ROI: Socialnomics

Delicious Resources

See, ROI can be pretty COOL….can tell a story. “there really is no way to calculate Social Media ROI through an equation…”

There are low-cost tools available (listed in the slides)

WebJunction studies. Michael has thrown stuff together into reports over the last 18 months with lots of anecdotes about what has happened at WebJunction looking at their investment into Social Media.

Amanda’s part

There’s nothing wrong with analysis… AND the metrics are out there….

Most people see a place for Twitter and Facebook and Other Tools

But What is Your Target? What’s next

It’s about listening, building relationships, and adding value. What Barry is doing at JCCCLibrary is this. See his slides from last week for more info. He does a lot with Twitter Search & connecting with his patrons at the college.

Get your resources noticed. and see how your message is being spread.

Assessing Social Media #cil2010 – Not just about numbers, but who’s engaging with you —@carolbatt

Assessment is Blanchard’s

  • multiphase
  • multi-layered
  • process

We are peeling back layers of rich, nonlinear, exciting data we’ve never had before.

  • Are you retweeted? Who did it and why?
  • What gets “liked”?
  • What provokes comment?
  • Who’s engaging with YOU?
  • What are you doing that’s STICKY?

Create your own assessment tool.

Your ROI Story, Questions, Comments?

@JanieH tells story of library tweetups & businesses have come who use Twitter. These businesses now retweet library events that the library tweets about.

Archiving Tweets: Twapperkeeper

Can feed your Facebook stats into Google Analytics now.

Libraries & Transliteracy

Bobbi Newman, Matt Hamilton, Buffy Hamilton

Bobbi’s part

Transliteracy: ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools, and media.

Fast evolution of technology going on. Industrial revolution will look small by comparison.

1976: first Jobs’ apple computer creatd.

1998: iMac

2001: first iPod

2007: first iPhone

2010: first iPad

Information used to be consumed through the printed word. Information overload concerns been around for a very long time & are not new.

Life being changed by drastic technology changes. Taxes, health info, statutes, contact information, paying bills, social media. Privacy, life online. Password strength (hacking).

Access to internet is increasing. Free wifi just about anywhere. A lot of people still don’t have access, and don’t have ability to get it.

Those with chronic diseases, under the poverty line, and those older are more likely to not be online, but these people need to be online more than anyone else. Social interaction online helps them out, keeps them engaged, saves their lives.

Change. Regurgitation of information in schools. Information is now available online, accessible in two seconds. Must instead be focused on analysis, evaluation, critical thinking about information. Patrons are looking to libraries to learn how to do this. They’re asking, requesting, and demanding this.

Transliteracy is not a destination. About methods of communication, art, culture, not just technology. Grandparents need pics printed; parents can be emailed with links to pics thru email; friends will see the pics the next time they long on.

Reading literacy — learned to read and that was it. Transliteracy is fluid that you must be able to change and learn new things, constantly.

“The future is here it is just not evenly distributed.” –William Gibson. –Knight Commission report & MacArthur Foundation reports talking about second class citizens in this digital world both mention libraries. 2nd class citizens could include senior citizens, those below the poverty line, those with chronic diseases, and some teenagers.

Digital Divide — high speed Internet access AND access to hardware. Ownership of hardware and/or lack of knowledge to use the hardware.

Transliterate Divide — those who can’t discern what a legitimate website is. Those who can’t write a resume.

Libraries are failing their patrons. We assume they know it or ignore it.

Training is important.

What can we do?

  1. stop fighting amongst ourselves. Web 2.0 vs. Anti-Web 2.0. need to meet where the patrons are at. meet the patrons needs, not ours
  2. it won’t be easy. Techies: must lead from here on out and must stop being condescending to those who don’t know; be kind and excited for those learning. Make comfortable environment. Non-techies: must move forward; have to be fearless and try and attempt. You are moving. Standing still is not working at all.
  3. there are no excuses for not doing any of this. patrons need this. It will be hard; no money; no time, but we always find time to what’s important to us. Patrons must be transliterate to be an active participant in society.

Buffy’s Part

Slides

reading and writing the world: school libraries as sponsors of transliteracy

  1. sponsors of literacy
  2. participatory librarianship

“literacy is the energy supply of the information age.” –Deborah Brandt.

“this means that our democratic institutions (schools and libraries particularly) have to work hard and thoughtfully to mitigate these forces.” –Deborah Brandt

Knight Foundation is calling upon libraries to be this powerful agent into what literacy can mean in the lives of patrons, for transliteracy, we’re doing something even greater for the public good.

“as new and powerful forms of literacy emerge, they diminish the reach and possibilities of receding ones” –Deborah Brandt

In the very near future, Transliteracy, digital literacy will become as valuable as the three Rs.

How do we invite and facilitate conversations about transliteracy with our patrons?

participatory librarianship is about inviting and creating spaces for participation; sparking conversations (f2f; virtual means); knowledge construction and creation; libraries are in the change business.

Not just books. eBooks; mobile readers; iPods; cell phones; mobile computing (using Evernote, for example); ereaders; research pathfinders that reflect the changing nature of social scholarship with tools such as rss, social networks, videos, mashups, and other information feeds (not just databases).

Connecting students with real world experts. Skype. Blogging.

Collaborative tools to create and share knowledge; Social bookmarking tools (diigo, evernote, delicious);

scaffold alternate ways of representing learning and knowledge (glogster)

Scanning, posting, and licensing artwork (creative commons licenses)

Multigenre elements of learning

Presentation zen and digital citizenship and get away from death-by-powerpoint.

Harness power of cloud computing. RSS; Netvibes; videos; blogs; widgets

Rethinking what “collection” means. Gaming. Manga and anime (graphic novels); virtual reference; digital equipment (flip cameras); information portals & digital information;

“The possibilities are challenging and exciting”

“libraries efforts as sponsors of translitearcy can provide ripple effects in the lives of our patrons.”

Matt’s Part

Supporting Transliteracy

21st century skills– IMLS

customers growing up with expectations of ubiquitous access.

For those not growing up as digital natives, libraries are about the only institution that people can turn to.

IT traditionally looked to as locked-down. Tools looked at as security threats.

“teach yourself.” –IT self-taught, but not normally good teachers, and frustrations provided on both sides during training.

How do we bring everyone to the table and work together?

Get excited and make things.

Have to ask IT to shift focus from fixing things to getting involved with programming; (hacking Wii firmware); program at St Louis Public Library on personal technology assistant;

IT can help take it further; classes on things as removing Spyware; alternatives to paid software; IT can help lead the way to increase tech competencies. IT staff not comfortable with training can work with those more comfortable with training already (reference desk staff).

IT can support digital storytelling workshops; video game club — developing games yourself (Scratch & Alice);

“Make tools for creating and experiencing new media broadly available.

We’ve got to work together. All about partnerships.

Pivot Points for Change Session

Connecting the dots of information literacy with social media.

–Buffy Hamilton, Internet & Schools East, April 2010.

Presentation slides

Rethinking ways we can instruct our students with information literacy.

– How do we support and scaffold students’ ability to read and write an ever-growing world of information?

– How do we adapt our pracitce as librarians to effectively cultivate informationally fluent students who will thrive in today’s society? — help them learn to analyze/evaluate information.

-Seth Godin: “when industry norms start to die, people panic. it’s difficult to change when you think that you must change everything in order to succeed. Changing everything is too difficult.”

– strategic changes are much more helpful than changing everything.

Don’t reinvent the wheel; instead, find pivot points for change.

Pivot Point #1:

Keep your traditional sources of authoritative information in your research pathfinders, but let the research topic and mode of research guide the integration of social media information sources and tools for delivering that content to help students navigate the maze of today’s information world.

– days of trusting the printed reference book has come and gone. Teachers must get their heads around new authorities.

AASL 21st Century Standards

New Resources for Authorities

  1. podcasts — students much more engaged at times if they listen or watch resources. Lots of resources now provide podcast; lots of authoritative information being delivered through podcasts.
    1. PBS
    2. CNN
    3. students weren’t just reading about situations; they were able to experience the situations.
    4. Podcasts can be a free and dynamic way to capture student interests
  2. Blogs — lots of experts blogging about issues.
    1. Homefires Blog (veterans transitioning back into mainstream civilian life)
    2. Netvibes — RSS feeds from several blogs all on one page
    3. Students prefer to read the blogs over a textbook — they are much more organic and students are engaged. Plus blogs are free; textbooks are not.
  3. Twitter
    1. #iranelection
    2. way to get current information about current issues.
  4. Youtube/video
    1. YouTube blocked at schools, use Zamzar to download and convert YouTube videos.
    2. Treasure trove of videos that are free and online and full of information that students can use and explore.
    3. Video used as a teaser; then, students really got excited about learning and researching.
  5. Google Maps/mashups
    1. taking data and putting it into map form
    2. Embassies Accepting Injured People in Iran
    3. Swine Flu Google Map
  6. RSS Feeds
    1. Librarians’ best friends
    2. Database vendors (including Ebscohost & Gale) have RSS feeds
    3. Newspapers, Twitter, Podcasts all have RSS Feeds
    4. Streams of information to push the information out to students
    5. Google News
  7. RSS Feeds/Widgets
    1. Don’t have to be an html expert to create widgets; already created for you.
    2. News, Topics, possibilities are endless

Teaching research is much more fun today, because so many tools available to teach research. Traditional research pathfinders are no longer. So many ways now to display research information in ways students will use them, and they are free

Pivot Point #2:

Keep focusing on teacher collaboration, but focus on creating conversations…

Create conversations about collaboration, leadership, and social responsibility….

  1. research wiki (wetpaint)
    1. building living textbook
    2. continually being updated and created
    3. share with other classes involved with the same project. very rich and informative discussions in class
    4. cross-collaboration with students; no more lone-wolf learner in era of testing; how do we share information & replicate what we see in the real world
  2. literature circle wiki
    1. book trailers
    2. notes on the face-to-face meetings posted to the class wiki.
    3. have follow-up discussions online through the class wiki, through comments on the discussion notes.

Pivot Point #3:

keep assesing student learning using traditinoal tools, but use alternative modes of assessment like blog to engage students in metacognition and to activiely reflect on their research strategities.

create conversation about adaptability and research strategies using blogs.

  1. research student blogs
    1. students get excited about the research. “Life changing, these two words give a perfect summary of what this project has been for me….” –student blog comment
    2. Real world experts comment on student research blogs.
    3. Students engage, think about topics, and connect with real-life experts.
    4. Learning tool not just for one research project. Blogs are a way to have a voice and get ideas out there. Ideas have value and meaning

Pivot Point #4:

Keep teaching students how to access and consume information, but place….

Create….

  1. multi-genre artifacts — can differentiate instruction & open up students who have abilities in other areas. Can learn online safety skills through these projects. Presentation Zen ideas covered.
    1. Facebook Page
    2. Voicethread
    3. Glogster
    4. Two Voice Poem
    5. Skit
    6. Song
  2. Presentation Zen: Students had to think about the content, not just regurgitate. Had to learn to connect with the audience.

Pivot Point #5:

Keep creating research pathfinders for students, but teach students how to forge their own paths for learning and building their own information portals

Learning is the process of creating own network….

www.netvibes.com/alex7586#home (student created netvibes portal)

www.netvibes.com/samonte94#General (student created netvibes portal)

Students so excited about researching and learning about their topics.

Advice

  1. Baby steps are ok.
  2. anticipate some initial pushback, from both students & teachers. –for first time students were being asked, “What do you think?” Some students were ok, some not so much.

Embrace the messiness of social scholarship and questions of authority.

  1. Rules are hard & fast now; not firm. What is authoritative. If students can articulate this, they have mastered these skills.
How do you go about getting some of these tools unblocked? Check out Buffy’s Fighting the Filter Presentation.