March 27, 2011 Much to cover: all about engaging with students via technology!

Chapter 7 in How People Learn discusses how teachers can teach subject matter that students have stereotypical trouble grasping, such as math, in ways that help students grasp overall concepts, not just facts.  Certain teachers were singled out for their understanding of the important concepts of their particular discipline and the best ways for their students to learn those concepts (hint: it wasn’t by memorizing data or facts). They figure out that way by knowing the challenges of their particular discipline, knowing their students and knowledge of academic content. Another important lesson noted by the authors was that a set of general teaching strategies will not simply apply to all disciplines or even all classes and these great teachers were learners themselves.

Montgomery 2010: “Online Webinars!...”

This article discusses the ways librarians are reaching out to a new generation of college students who are actively engaged online and prefer to communicate online in many situations. Beyond using chat, email and text services, academic librarians are starting to use webinars to help their users, especially when they are embedded in specific courses.  Matos et al. goes further to expand on virtual interaction between librarians and classes, noting the difficulties and benefits therein. I really liked their point about how virtual library sessions accomplish two important things: “integrating library instruction” without actually taking time away from the scheduled lectures and exposing students to a form of technology that they might use in their professional lives.

The webinar I watched was “Crisis Webinar” by Chris Harris and Buffy Hamilton and moderated by Gwyneth Jones and Carolyn Foote. The webinar was about the crisis in the job markets school librarians are facing today. Chris Harris reminded me a lot of Eli Neiburger, he too believes in the digital shift away from print books. Except he’s not a librarian, he’s an administrator, oooh. Anyways, in general one of the things I noticed thanks to this webinar is that it is very difficult to listen to the speaker, visually process the slide show and also pay attention to the conversation progressing in the chat window.  I think that wasn’t a huge issue for the webinar we watched in class because Bobbi Newman’s talk centered on our questions; she didn’t really have a prepared lecture. Thus, slides would have added to her webinar, not distracted. Mr. Harris actually said it was hard to keep up with questions while reading his notes, on his end. I know you can archive it, as one of the moderators mentions, so maybe we should be encouraged to ignore the chat unless we have a question and focus on the lecture, then go back later and read the chat. I’m not sure… I can’t decide if it’s worth it to have all three: a prepared lecture, slides, and chat operational. Thoughts?

Also, Mr. Harris’ slides didn’t transfer from his Keynotes software very well, definitely a reason to preview and test our webinars first. Buffy’s portion of the webinar echoed much of our readings for this week, in that she voiced the need to pay attention to the types of technology our students are constantly using and take advantage of that notice. And wow! does Buffy have a thick accent! It was rather delightful to listen to as a nasal Midwesterner. I felt that Chris’ talk was a call to action and Buffy’s talk was specific examples of how school librarians can act today, now, in this moment. A webinar that was very well balanced in terms of content and I think for a soon-to-be graduating school librarian, essential to watch. (I’m not one, but the perspective was great to hear as a public librarian I want to collaborate with school librarians.)

Thoughts on Last Week's Class (3/14)

Since they are no readings for this week, I will focus on last week's class. Definitely the focal point of the class was the interactive talk about the #hcod debate with "Librarian By Day" Bobbi Newman. I'm trying to remember what else we did that night...planned our upcoming workshop (hope you guys are ready to get down and dirty with e-books!), discussed ethics, and kind of "debriefed" our book clubs somewhat. Thank goodness for Kristin's emails about what we do or I wouldn't be able to remember all of the things we accomplish in 3 hours!

Ok so the talk with Bobbi Newman. First, it was a great way to see Elluminate in action and see how we will navigate it ourselves when the time comes. Second, I didn't take notes on Bobbi's opinions and statements as the webinar proceeded. Perhaps that would have helped me write this post, but my intent was to let Bobbi's discussion sort of wash over me and help me build a better picture of this debate raging in libraryland. I absorbed much of what she said but the thing that struck me most was Bobbi's clear intent to remain as neutral as possible on the issue. Not just neutral in whether or not HarperCollins is the most evil publisher ever (which they are not) and we should boycott them or whatever, but rather quiet on how to proceed. As far as I can tell, Bobbi feels libraries needs to collaborate with publishers, but I'm still fuzzy on how they would actually do this. Ask to meet with HC? And who would meet? Reps from each consortia? ALA reps? But not everyone belongs to ALA or "believes" in their tenets, as Kristin reminded us in class. By the way, that totally shocked me. Naively, I believed every librarian had to belong to ALA to "matter" as a librarian. What an eye-opener!
Lastly, I attended "A Day in the Life of a Visiting Librarian" yesterday and Eli Neiburger was one of the visiting librarians from Ann Arbor District Library. Eli is the polar opposite of Bobbi, in my opinion, he makes very inflammatory opinionated statements with no hesitation! Despite my use of these inherently negative terms, I really like his attitude and I respect him greatly for taking a stand. One of the things he said, was that in a few years we will be begging for the "26 checkout" policy to make a return. In other words, it's going to get far worse for libraries, in terms of e-books (well and other things, too). His big push is for libraries to get a seat at the discussion table and not proceed though an intermediary, like Overdrive. If you want to hear his entertaining talk on why "Libraries are Screwed" here are the links to the Youtube videos. Keep in mind he If you're in SI 620 right now, you already watched them so ignore this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqAwj5ssU2c  (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd0lIKVstJg     (Part 2)

I just feel that I believe Bobbi's talk was the perfect entree for our class, to get a broad overview of the issue, I wanted to know, to have a little dessert at the end, what her total and unequivocal opinion was on this issue. I am worried that librarians have a tendency to be too nice and these days to get the best and most for our users we might have to get firm with big businesses out there and let them know we won't be steamrollered into submission.I still feel as a librarian who has yet to work out in the field, I don't have a fully developed idea of what the solution to the e-book problem is. Yet, I believe if enough librarians like Eli and Bobbi get fired up, they can save the day.

#hcod, book clubs, and workshops. oh my.

As you can tell from the title, this week's readings are leaving many thoughts swirling in my head. I shall attempt to capture them and pin them down on paper, or at least digital paper.
Last week's book club was probably one of the best "practical" classes I have ever participated in. Beyond the veritable fun I daresay was had by all, our book club conveyed usefulness, timeliness (after a week off to get back in gear), and some impressive experience. [Random thought: do we receive PEP credit for this class? We should.] Despite our gruesome and morbid readings (with the lovely exception of our practical reading "Four Habits of Highly Effective Librarians") our book club engaged in excellent and entertaining discussion. Preparing for the book club and reading the evaluations afterward was an eye-opening experience for me. I learned much about myself last week: most notably, I have yet to fully learn when to shut my mouth and when is the best time to speak. An ever-evolving process, I resolve to do better and speak less the rest of this semester, so that I might learn more.
I have read the ALA's Code of Ethics before for another class, but certain statements jumped out at me this time. A always, I like to note the caveat in the beginning that says these are broad principles and every specific situation is different. "We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties..."--this statement is hard for me to digest. Don't misunderstand, I believe in this statement wholeheartedly but I find it difficult to imagine myself upholding it when I am practicing the profession. My values are so deeply entrenched  within me that to know me, is usually to know what I stand for. I think this is another way of the good Lord telling me I need to (again) learn to keep quiet in those situations. Lastly, the statement that librarians are to commit to "maintaining and enhancing our own knowledge and skills" put me in mind of Agnostic, Maybe's recent barrage on older librarians. Could it be that he was trying to point out some older librarians no longer uphold this part of our code of ethics, for whatever their reasons? If he had quoted the ALA, would his points be more respected?
"Creating a Library Assignment Workshop..." gave me profound respect for the librarians at Texas A&M Univ. I found it interesting that they collaborated with another well-known center on campus to engage the faculty's interest; I see that as one of the biggest challenges to anyone attempting to create a workshop for the same purpose. I think one of the best portions of their workshop was the brain-storming exercise early on; I saw it as having multiple functions, all very useful. One, it was an ice-breaker; two, the exercise got faculty thinking about the usefulness of any library assignments they designed on their own; and three, it informed the librarians what they needed to focus on, content-wise, in the workshop. Very cleverly designed. Overall, the thought of attempting a workshop on a similarly large scale scares me. I'm worried how next week will go.


#hcod
I read Martin Taylor's post (he's pro-HC). His argument seems logical and I feel that he definitely pressures librarians to come up with the solution to the e-lending problem. I advocate more of a collaborative solution between both libs and publishers. Perhaps Taylor's point is that HC came up with a solution, if we don't like it, then we have to come up with our own version. I vehemently disagree that libraries/librarians think "authors and publishers make excessive profits"-perhaps patrons believe that but librarians know better. We're taught in our collection development & management class here at SI exactly what the cost of publishing one book is and how much of the retail actually goes to the publisher, much less the author. I find it hard to believe the rest of the country's librarians have their heads in the sand as to this fact. Taylor frightened me with his thought that e-book lending would lead to even fewer libraries, with fewer jobs. Scary to imagine for those of us about to graduate in a year or so. His concept of a "loan fee" as a possible solution I don't understand what that is or what it would look like; yet, my instinct is that it goes directly against the ALA's code of ethics (perhaps they have no such ethics in New Zealand?).
I chose to read the CBC's article on HarperCollins's new policy. Dan Miserer is the technology columnist there so I would suppose he is less biased than librarians. He really focuses on the magic number 26, in his article; Taylor didn't mention it at all. As far I can tell, Miserer anticipates libraries acquiescing to HarperCollins will set off an avalanche in which librarians will be crushed under a mountain of arbitrary numbered caps on lending and loan fees. Oh how terrifying to think that could be the case!
Lastly, I read Laura Crossett's blog post on the issue because she is in a public library and that's my area of interest. She too, insisted that HarperCollin's cap on 26 circulations is a ridiculous made-up number that is not realistic. She doesn't thin that libraries are big enough to impact the market with a boycott; instead she advocates for getting the public on our side so that HarperCollins and other publishers, will have to take notice of such a combined force.
My opinion? I feel that I am not well-versed enough in the knowledge of e-books versus print books, in terms of money and circulation, etc enough to even have an opinion. Still, I acknowledge that libraries cannot afford to pay what HarperCollins is insisting on so there has to be another solution.

Week 7, Book Club Bonanza

Summary of readings:
I belong to the Diamonds Book Club which happens to boast, incidentally, some shining examples of good readings. Our readings for the week were "The Four Habits of Highly Effective Librarians" by Todd Gilman, "The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde, "The Landlady" by Ronald Dahl, and "Hansel and Getel" by the Brothers Grimm. Oh and my cohort and I picked "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift.
How fascinating that we all picked texts of such sinisterly gruesome tones (with the exception of "The Four Habits..." of course)! From a range of genres not to mention the variety of contexts in which authors penned their works comes 4 texts that explore death, loneliness, child abuse and so much more! I am looking forward to discussing these storied works on Monday; should make for a very dark (and fun!) book club.

Summary of class:
A few interesting things to note about our last lecture. I was disappointed in the content presented by our guest lecturer from AADL. She seemed like a lovely person and I was glad to hear that her branch was trying to reach out to teenagers to hold a book club of their own; yet I felt she didn't really have a lot of experience in book clubs over all. Maybe it was how she presented? I just wanted to know more details; for example, if we could have heard "this works, this doesn't work, groups can be started in this way but if you market them in this way won't get too many people, etc." She seemed to have more knowledge of the book club she participated in. I found her answers to our questions rather confusing and vague as well. Was I the only one who felt something was lacking? I'm really interested in what you all thought.
Moving on, the modeling of the Socratic seminar was fascinating! It never occurred to me when I was doing the readings but if a teacher does a Socratic seminar with his students this is a perfect opportunity to see who has done the readings and who hasn't. You could clearly tell who had done the readings last class and who maybe, shall we say, skimmed them.  Also, I don't know how students who aren't in the "inner circle" could keep their mouths closed; there were so many moments during last class that I wanted to leap down to the circle and put my 2 cents in! I had so many thoughts and I had to keep them to myself (or whisper them to Mallorie lol). This probably doesn't surprise any of you by now; clearly, I could benefit from the binder clip regulatory system.
I'm really looking forward to book club on Monday because I cannot wait to see the reactions to these texts, especially the fiction ones. Still, it will be interesting to hear the discussion on the non-fiction text. I have a feeling it might be hard to generate but could be surprising once it gets started.