Tag: learning

Libraries and the New Education Ecosystem

Lee Rainie, Director, Internet, Science, Technology Research, Pew Research Center
@lrainie @pewinternet @pewresearch

“any day spent with librarians is a better day”

FactTank, News in the Numbers

Pew doesn’t take positions on what it researches. Enthusiastic about the audience, not here to prove a point.

What we know: our previous findings, libraries.pewinternet.org Continue reading “Libraries and the New Education Ecosystem”

Learning at Your Library presentation

I presented yesterday at the 2015 NEKLS Innovation Day, “Learning @ Your Library: Empowering your community to learn”. It was a new presentation, expanding on the Open Education Resources introductory sessions I’ve led over the last few years for school librarians and teachers.

The presentation focused on the idea that libraries (public, particularly) are the perfect organization to be facilitating learning for all ages, Continue reading “Learning at Your Library presentation”

Tapping Your Inner Futurist: Designing a 21st Century Roadmap for Libraries

Garry Golden, Futurist

Resources: www.garrygolden.com/NEKLS2014

PDF: http://www.garrygolden.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NE-KS-Library-GarryGolden-FINAL-PDF-.pdf

Futurists look at leading indicators (not politics or culture) but in states (California), places, technology, etc.

No one is stepping up yet to systematically educate the population about digital literacy (it should be libraries) — We’re talking about social data; health data (fit bits; eating); lifelong learning data. We like to complain about privacy, but we need to get up to speed on this.

Elevate Social Norms: Digital Identify Management

  • Owning Your Own Data (OYOD Policies) [like BYOD]
  • Expand use of tools (Ghostery; Account Killer]
  • Education and Advocacy for Opt-In [European Model] — establishes trust with people and also may allow for more enriching experience.

Micro-credentials — digital badging. Manufacturing Institute + Mozilla Badging

  • How do we rethink the role of libraries in certifications of lifelong learning?
  • We need to break down the skills that people know
  • Open Badges

Digital Me: Moving toward portfolios and reputation — not just resume. 

  • Teaching people who ask for help building a resume in a library, but then going beyond that
  • Resume –> Portfolio –> Online Presence (managing identify; your network; what you’ve shared/posted)
  • What stories are people telling the world through their online identity?

Word Gap

  • 30 million word gap between high and low income families on the words kids hear age 0-3.
  • Closing the Word Gap: Aligning Policy, Family Culture and Technology — libraries should own this.
  • Trust factors/creepy line
  • Your e-book is reading you WSJ

Will there be more or less change 2004-2014 vs 2014-2024? 

  • Most everyone in the room thinks there will be more change
  • Globalization; economy; middle class emergence around the world; Kansas needs to be delivering to the world
  • Internet of Things: Devices communicate amongst themselves — books speaking to each other
  • Openness of everything — citizen science; enlightened, scientific culture; more availability of tools
  • Cheaper computers
  • Health care and wellness — consumerization of health
  • Population pyramid shift — aging society
  • Education — skillset gaps; lifelong learning shift
  • Institutions are changing — collaboration all over the place
  • Less driving — Millennials especially; self-driving cars — shifting makeup of rural areas and cities.
  • Food world — local food movement
  • Natural resource constraints
  • Language & Culture — Uniform language
  • Gaps are also accelerated

So much will not change

  • Books not going away
  • Human creativity
  • Desire for facetime
  • Children & Storytime
  • Reading for Pleasure
  • Printed Books

People are more social and mobile than ever before — technology doesn’t dehumanize.

Libraries shifting from Access to Collections –> Outputs: Behavior Changed and Mastery of skills.

  • Digitization threatens collection to some extent
  • Challenge: are libraries in the business behavior change, culture shaping? Debate over this.

Future Studies: Sociology (Foresight 101; Drivers of Change, Place & Lifelong, Bringing it home)

Libraries as intersection of place and lifelong learning — place-based experiences

Raise Expectations for Place-as-service: early childhood (libraries already there!); creative & active aging; 20-somethings, ’emerging adulthood’

  • Creative aging environments — strategies: libraries & arts experiences; library teams + teaching artists; social experiences; full body — whole person; library collections: creativity focus
  • Why Teaching Art in the Library Works 
  • The way we engage an aging population is going to improve (libraries already do programming), but we will do more
  • Engage — Tim Carpenter — Thrive as we age 
  • Brain Fitness Trends
  • New partners: teaching artists;
  • Products & Collections: Lumosity; Brain Science Podcast; Brain Packpacks
  • Products & Training Pathways: Wearables — Fitbits & Melons — people will be asking for help on these devices. Libraries providing access.

20-somethings ’emerging adulthood’ 

  • Millennials Engaged in Civic Conversations
  • TNT Basehor Community Library
  • Alt+Library
  • Escape the Room [not library, but cool] — must solve puzzles to get out of the room.
  • How can libraries change their programming to meet this group where they’re at?
  • Families, as well

Places to hold niche collections: art, audio, comedy, objects, time capsules, Tumblr blogs

Libraries & the future of lifelong learning

  • Era of Apprenticeship –> disruptions of books & industrial work cycle –> Era of Institution [school especially] –> disruptions of web & knowledge economy –> Era of Learner (not teachers responsibility; but learners)
  • Era of the Learner can be supported by schools. Learner is the 15-year-old; the 70-year-old
  • MOOCs: Udemy; Coursera; Edx; Udacity; University Now
  • Who could lead this effort? The library

Libraries build the local learning communities who build the MOOC

  • Summer Reading
  • Parents & Families
  • Workforce Training
  • Internal Training
  • 21st Century Skills

Everyone has something to teach someone else. Problem to solve: Lack of learning communities. Build the base of community instructors. SkillShare

Coursmos — micro-content based. Not just theme and topic organization, but also how long it takes to finish something.

Culture Lag: Anonymous Web (portal for info) –> Social Web (social environment) –> Learning Environment

Are libraries in the business of information delivery? Connections? Behavior change? Getting better at things?

Lifelong Learning & The Personal Data Revolution.

Data is not end game. Data –> Knowledge –> Wisdom.

Connected Data = Insights & Wisdom

Experience API

Learning Graphs –> Learning Record Store –> Activity Streams –> Library delivers Adaptive Learning Experiences)

Learning Activity Streams — “I did this”

This allows library to create a greater experience for their users.

Library Experiences based on a learning map

Connected Experiences from Learning Graph — Map of My Ignorance: History of Jazz (Basic Level; In Progress; Expert Level)

“Every day I make an effort to move toward what I don’t understand.” –Yo-Yo Ma

Three times of people

  1. I want to become a Futurist — socializing ideas; signals team
  2. I want to encourage others (interesting) — intrapreneurial culture; lower barriers to pilots & partnerships; fail fare; risk-taking
  3. I am not convinced by this snake oil salesman — show how futurist scenarios can be wrong; challenge these assumption; rally existing partners & stakeholders to return to golden era of libraries

Lifelong Learning in Libraries Ignite Talk

I jumped off a cliff last month and did something way outside my comfort zone: I gave an ignite talk (5 mins, 20 slides designed ahead of time, and auto-advanced every 15 seconds) at the Digital Media and Learning Conference in San Francisco. The talk was titled, “Learning from Birth to the Grave @ Your Library”, and I spoke of all the wonderful ways lifelong learning is on full display in Kansas libraries and in a couple of other locations. I hope you enjoy the talks. All the other ignite talks can be seen at DML’s YouTube channel. Thank you to all those who contributed pictures and stories for this talk!

Ed Tech Master’s Degree: One Semester Completed!

I started yet another grad school journey this summer in June, beginning the Master in Educational Technology online program through Boise State University. I’ll also be completing a graduate certificate in Online Teaching for Adult Learners along the way.

The summer semester pretty much kicked me in the rear end — I don’t necessarily recommend taking 6 hours, right off the bat, in the summer semester, while working full-time. But I survived, had understanding co-workers, learned my limit, learned how to cope again with lack of sleep and full brain.

The projects, reflections, and readings of the program have all confirmed that this path was the next correct step in this journey called life.

If you want to follow my journey of learning, feel free to check out and read my Ed Tech Learning Log, a required blog for reflection on the classes I’m taking to help build a portfolio at the end of the program. I may occasionally cross-post here, but more often than not, will keep the two blogs separate.

Also, I designed and completed several learning activities for the Internet for Educators course (web design), which can all be found through this homepage. I designed many of these with a target audience for the librarians I work with.

The projects I created and designed included:

My goal from the ed tech program right now is not to end up in a classroom with K-12 students (not certified, anyway), or even a college classroom. It’s to continue working for an organization like where I’m at right now or another continuing education or professional development organization, developing training using online learning and blended learning tools. Or, it could be in Higher Ed working with faculty to develop online learning/blended learning/technology integration.

Also, the library is about lifelong learning. I’m hoping to learn ways to incorporate ed tech concepts into libraries to reach patrons at whatever learning level they want to be at.

Finally, one surprise from this program has been resurrecting my design skills that have remained dormant since high school web design and newspaper days. I still have a lot to learn, but it will be interesting to see what I get out of instructional design this fall. I sure enjoyed designing the final two projects in the web design course!