where do we go from here?

In reading over my classmates' recent blogs, I see a lot of things that have been going through my head as well. We're all thrilled to have so many new technologies at our fingertips (no pun intended.) We're all fired up, and gearing up for September. This is exactly what I hoped would happen this summer, and I am so happy to have had this experience! Distance learning has its own set of special demands, but it has made it possible to meet a great group of people I probably wouldn't have to been otherwise able to meet. It was especially fun to get "out" and compare notes with people who live in other places.

Another thing I'm really happy about is that several people have commented they would like to stay in touch after the class. I think this is really valuable - as we actually try to use these technologies in our workplaces, we can share stories and ideas, successes, and roadblocks.

I know I will stay on twitter(and investigate pownce), and I will keep looking at classmates' blogs, but I wonder if we would use a common space if we set one up. For example, we could - very simply - share a Google docs document and just keep adding onto the end of it with our thoughts, concerns, experiences, as we try our new tools out, kind of like a message board, just in a document. Or we could set up a wiki. I guess I would vote for a wiki (not that I've set one up yet, but this would be the perfect time to learn....) only because we could use RSS to know if someone has added a new comment.

DOPA

DOPA is very disturbing, but reading the ‘talk’ page of the DOPA Wikipedia page was pretty disturbing, too. Some nasty behavior by participants is perpetually there for all the world to see. (as an aside, it certainly didn’t encourage me to make a contribution to a Wikipedia page anytime soon..)

Reading the ‘talk’ page did, however, give me some insight into the history of the bill, and the implications. One interpretation of the law that was voiced there mentioned that the law may actually prevent access to Wikipedia itself (due to the “unregulated” content of the talk pages). That would be a real loss. Reaching back to last semester’s reference course (seems like a long time ago already…) I went to the Thomas website, and see that it is still in the House Subcommittee on Technology and the Internet. So, it’s not carved in stone yet. (And hey, isn’t that’ an RSS aggregator collecting information on DOPA at http://www.andycarvin.com/dopa.html ? One more link for my Google Reader….)

You know, I can understand the thinking behind H.R. 1120. Do we want people in libraries, public, or school, to be able get to a porn site, unrestricted? Do we want them soliciting minors? I think most people would say ‘no’. But, don’t most libraries have acceptable use policies that rule out using the internet for pornography, etc? So really, it’s the ‘social software’ that’s presenting the difficulty here; it’s open, so anyone can register, and that includes people you don’t want to be talking to your teenager. But, lots of software is going ‘social’. You can have a chat session within a Google Spreadsheet from the ‘discuss’ tab! So how on earth do you enforce restrictions?!?! You effectively can’t, and so you just have to teach kids to not do things that are dangerous. Repeatedly. And hope they listen.

Technology isn’t bad or good, it’s what we do with it. But it is certainly a big part of our lives (and getting bigger by the minute). That’s sort of the theme of this course, isn’t it? It’s up to people in education to find ways to incorporate it, explore it, find positive uses, in short, to use it to help us and our students work and learn.

selling tech & keeping up

This class has exposed me to new ideas and technologies, and I'm anxious to get back into school to see how I can start using them to help learners learn and teachers teach. One of the hardest things about any job is communicating effectively, and we certainly have learned many new ways of communicating! Getting people interested in them, and willing to use them, is going to be a challenge. This course has been great because we've actually experienced the benefits (and difficulties) of using these technologies. Selling them to people who haven't seen or used them is going to be trickier.

A library blog seems like a great place to start - it seems like it will give us so much freedom to communicate with the entire school community. I am hoping we can get permission to have a link to it from the school website, that's the first hurdle to overcome. It won't do any good to have these tools if no one can see them! That's a big benefit of our final project - thinking through all the steps of actually using some of these technologies in a real setting. If we can make a library blog and teachers start to use it, they may think about it as a teaching tool in their own classrooms.

I'm wondering how well I'm going to do, after this course, and after my program is over, staying on top of new technologies. I know there are many ways to do that (and RSS will be very helpful!) But then there's library journals, professional organizations, our regional library cooperative, school and professional listservs. It seems a little overwhelming, but hopefully I'll figure out how to do enough of it to stay current. Even as we take this course, things are changing underfoot! Understanding that we are never finished learning is key.

converging worlds

My work and school worlds really seem to be converging, which is an interesting and wonderful phenomenon.

This past year I worked in a small school library – no budget, donated books, run by a wonderful and dedicated volunteer. This library was born from the energy of a retired English teacher who is passionate about our school. When they hired me, they were really looking for someone to help check books in and out, and shelve them. I, of course, as is my nature, couldn’t leave well enough alone, and simply do the job I had been assigned. :-;

For lack of anything better, our little library had all its records about books and circulation stored in an Excel worksheet – a home-grown system that worked fine as long as no one made any data entry or sorting errors. My background as a software developer made me itch to improve the situation, and, halfway through the year, I realized I could write software to go on top of the Excel spreadsheet, that would allow us to scan our books in and out, and generate classroom reports and student notices.

So, I built this software, and, we began to use it, and refine it. Of course, I knew that this was not a good final solution, but it was an acceptable band-aid. In general, it improved the reliability of the data we keep, and therefore our credibility with our patrons, parents, and staff.

Next year, we actually have a small budget(!), which hopefully will grow as the years pass. So, someday, a couple of years down the road, we may be able to purchase standard ILS software. This summer, I had hoped to find an interim solution, one that would move us closer to a “real” ILS. Also, this summer, we had decided that we should organize the non-fiction section by Dewey Decimal (we have a home-grown system there, too.)

During the course of LIS460, I began to explore LibraryThing – a classmate is making an encyclopedia entry for it, and it caught my eye. I’ve been communicating with the folks who provide LibraryThing, and it looks as if it might be a very nice interim (or even final?) solution for storing book data for our little library. I can, pretty easily, retrofit the circulation software that I wrote, so that it works with an Excel spreadsheet exported from LibraryThing. And– when you give LibraryThing an ISBN, it looks the book up in LOC and/or amazon.com and returns nearly a full MARC record – including Dewey Decimal number! Two birds with one stone!

I also started to investigate open source software for libraries, and the other day a library listserv that I monitor had a message about code4libs, a forum of developers who write software (open source, mostly) for libraries, in which they share their expertise. So, while I don’t know what ILS system we will ultimately choose, it certainly is fascinating to me how all these things are coming into my field of vision, from different directions, informing me, and giving us so many more options that I would have imagined a year ago.

more on podcasting

Once again, this past week, I took my laptop in my car (not recommended) and played it, full-volume, so that I could listen to a podcast as I did one of my many errands behind the wheel. Good thing I didn’t have to stop short! It certainly was a far cry from the portability of an iPod or mp3 player, but it solved the problem of the moment. But I bet it looked pretty strange to anyone who might have happened to notice what I was doing :-)

I was a much happier camper when I finally figure out how to “rewind” a podcast that I was playing in iTunes or Windows Media Player. It’s easy to do on an iPod, but it wasn’t obvious to me when running the software on my computer. Learning how to do this definitely let me be a lot friendlier to people who tried to interrupt me 35 minutes into a 40-minute podcast.

Making a podcast, on the other hand, was an entirely different experience. I definitely had fun playing with Audacity, and I thought it was very easy to learn. Compared to multimedia software I struggled to learn this past year, it was a dream, and I expect it will be much more useful to me in a school setting, in the long term, than being able to design webpages and build animations. I haven’t yet listened to all of the podcasts that our class has recorded, but the ones I’ve heard thus far were excellent, and so varied!

On the other hand, I was totally unprepared for the way I reacted to being recorded – initially, I completely froze! It’s really funny, I didn’t expect this at all, because I didn’t have an audience staring at me. I didn't expect stage fright! Richardson makes a comment about a podcaster’s sense of audience – how good podcasters are aware of the people who are going to be listening to them. I guess I was a little too aware! It was a bit easier at the end, and I suppose with practice I would be much more comfortable. But something very definitely to consider when offering this technology for students to use – some may be very uncomfortable with it, at least initially. We have to design time to let them learn the tool and get comfortable with the sound of their own voice - maybe scaffold them by letting them read some of their own work, before they record conversation or interviews. Once they become good at editing, I think it will help them feel free to improvise - they don't have to make it "perfect" as they record it.

podscast ramblings

Warning – whine ahead.

This week’s experience brought home to me that I am so NOT an auditory learner. LOL

To make matters worse, I was really frustrated in my efforts to work with this week’s technology. I spent hours playing with a borrowed iPod and a generic mp3 player, and finally managed to listen to only a couple of podcasts on them. The inexpensive mp3 player didn’t recognize most of the files I converted using iTunes (although I used the identical method for all of them) and the iPod alternated between working and not working – it’s been flaky for months, according to its owner.

When I was frustrated with the players, I wondered how else I could play them, so they would still be portable. My cell phone? A CD? Ha, not so fast. These files are huge. Makes one appreciate the technology improvements that are embodied in these little handheld devices, but, the bottom line was, I didn’t come up with any good alternatives.

So, I got lucky towards the end of the week, the iPod decided to work again, and I listened to a couple of long podcasts on it. I listened while exercising, cooking dinner, driving the car (this one worried me a bit, but it was sort of just like listening to the radio – except when I had to periodically yank the earbuds out because the volume increased suddenly in the student podcasts.) But, in general, it was nice. I can see how people get hooked. However, I certainly wasn’t listening with my full attention.

I listened to the rest of the podcasts directly from the computer – a far cry from the “take this podcast with you wherever you go” picture portrayed in this week’s readings. Overall, I feel as if I invested a lot of time, with poor (or at least, variable) return. Not sure I couldn’t have gotten the information other ways better and faster. Then again, maybe that’s the old non-auditory learner thing at work.

I took an informal survey of the handful of people in my life who use iPods & mp3 players regularly. All of them do not update them frequently. They (or someone else in their family) set them up periodically with new playlists, and off they go. When the player doesn’t work, they leave them alone for awhile, and hope for the best. Sometimes they work later, sometimes not. Not very comprehensive or scientific study, I admit, but it makes me wonder about how many students really would/could use this technology for educational purposes, and how much teachers can rely on it. It would seem that if you were to plan a lesson around it, you would have to have a good backup plan!

For some of my graduate courses in the online MLIS program, teachers have provided audio components in powerpoint presentations, and/or screencasts to demonstrate tricky technical maneuverings. Have they added value? Absolutely. Have they taken a lot more time to work through than a purely written treatment of the subject? Definitely. I think that, as educators, we have to be conscious of the fact that these tools may present a lot of technical obstacles, plus be aware of the time involvement on the student’s end. That’s not to say don’t use them, but use them judiciously.

me + blog = ?

This is my first foray into blog-land, and I must admit to feeling more than a bit self-conscious. I am not new to distance learning, this being my eighth LIS graduate course online. The distance learning experience has been much more intense than I imagined it would be. I've been amazed at the depth into which we can delve into topics, the emotions that can surface as people passionately debate, and the level of sharing that can occur - sometimes moreso than in a face-to-face class.

I am, however, a muller and a polisher, which perhaps lends itself more to message threads, where one can - and I do - revise endlessly before "publishing". My sense is that blogging is more off-the-cuff, perhaps more like a casual discussion than a carefully worded comment. I'm just not used to the idea of my conversations appear online, for anyone else to read! Perhaps I will become more comfortable with the concept as the weeks go by.

It's not that I'm not a reflective practitioner, as they say. Perhaps I reflect too much! Regardless, I wonder why anyone would want to read my ramblings, or would have the time to do so. I guess I fall into the category of those who would prefer to ignore blogs, as Will Richardson says, in our textbook, because of the difficulty in assessing the reliability of the information therein (even at the risk of missing some important ideas).

However, information literacy education is near and dear to my heart, one of the primary reasons I want to work in a school library. It has become abundantly clear to me in reading Richardson that the world our students do - and will - live in is markedly different from the one I grew up in, which means they will need to become expert at dealing with Too Much Information. So I can't really keep my head in the sand about blogs any longer. As Richardson says, "there is no better way to understand the impact of the Read/Write Web than by becoming a part of it." (p. 40)