It is finished…
Cliff April 27th, 2007
My class is finally over. Final papers are graded. My regularly scheduled ramblings can begin anew(after a well-deserved weekend).
And I have 883 spam comments on my blog to sort through. joy.
Archive for the 'academe' Category
When teaching reality sinks in…
Cliff March 24th, 2007
Alas, I have yet again taken off my teacher’s rose-colored glasses. When they’re on, I believe that all students have a thirst to learn (if you merely engage them), and that it’s not all about the grade. That, of course, is not the case.
As I reported before, my students informed me about the pointlessness of the core curricula. And yet, I thought that my class was different, because I was trying to engage them in the material, by reaching out to their experience. I thought I was different. I thought I was special. I thought I was Katherine Watson. (Ok, maybe that’s taking it a bit far…) But, the truth is I’m not different. My class is just another requirement they must fulfill before they can start taking classes that they’re interested in. I wonder how English 101 teachers do it year after year.
And when I look back, I was the same way in college. I was only interested in Religious Studies classes. I’ve never used those history or math courses beyond the rare reference question. The required public speaking and computer courses felt redundant. And to be honest, I really don’t remember the cross-disciplinary classes that I took (which is the same type of class that I’m teaching).
Have I given up hope? Not completely. I believe that some of my students are engaged with the material, even if only for a nanosecond. A few of them will walk out of my course having learned something, even if it’s only that some insane librarian won’t stop yakking their ears off about this “2.0″ stuff that’s old hat to them. And in the delusional-Katherine-Watson-wannabe part of my brain, I imagine one of these students perhaps becoming a librarian some day, and coming back to thank me. Hey, a guy can have a dream, right?
But for now, I’ll scale back my in-class exercises to something a little more reasonable than trying to get students to engage in a full-scale fake search committee. We’ll use the one example cover letter I got (thanks “Donald Duck”), and a couple of my own design to have them evaluate together as a class. I still believe that making the connection between their online impression management and real-life job searches will help them in the future (even if they don’t know where they thought of it).
Having come to all these depressing conclusions, I will no doubt go through the same thing again the next time I teach this class. For we, the hopeless optimist teachers of the world, have a tendancy to keep reaching for those rose-colored glasses again no matter how many times we promise ourselves we won’t.
Movers & Shakers 2007
Cliff March 20th, 2007
A hearty congratulations goes out to all the Movers & Shakers out there. You all deserve recognition for everything you do for librarians and library users. And a special congrats to my friends Amanda Etches-Johnson, Brian Matthews, and Nicole Engard!
What the Millennials (aren’t) learning
Cliff February 23rd, 2007
This semester I’m teaching a class of 17 freshmen, who are taking Information Society as a “required elective,” designed to broaden their horizons. They had no idea what they were getting into. They are my “2.0″ guinea pigs
Since the class started, I have completely rewritten the course content (without changing the syllabus or objectives! contract is honored, administration!), changed my approach and attitude, and asked a lot of questions. Yesterday, I bluntly asked them about the college experience, the course I’m teaching, what they care about, etc. I tried to be upfront and honest, and make sure that I wasn’t talking down to them. Here is what they told me in the course of the hour (and amidst talking about Mass Media). In their own words:
- We are lazy. It takes a lot to motivate us, and only then if something is interesting and can be shown to immediately affect us. Our laziness bothers us a little bit, but not enough for us to do anything about it.
- We are not learning anything in college. We are being forced to learn the same things in our classes that we learned in high school. It’s not interesting. College is a social experience. We make good grades to keep HOPE and to appease our parents.
- It’s already paid for. The government and our parents pay for almost everything. Some of us have to work menial jobs to help contribute. We don’t feel like adults.
- We are uninformed. We spend a lot of time on entertainment and almost none on self-education.
- Make it personal. We pay more attention when content is personalized. We see that it relates to us, which makes it more interesting and easier to understand.
In studying Mass Media, I had students read a selection from McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage (1967). The central point of the book is that we can’t approach the society of today (and it’s problems and young people) with the solutions and institutions of yesterday. TV has changed us. The Web has changed us. Web 2.0 is changing us.
Education has to keep up, or these students will not have learned anything.
The thing that struck me more than anything else was that noone seems to be listening to these students. They’re consumers, they’re offspring, they’re tomorrow’s future, yes. But it seemed that none of them had been asked what they wanted, what they were passionate about, or what they thought of themselves or their education.
I’m angry for them. I’m sad for them. I feel like we as a society have let them down. But I’m determined that I will help them see themselves as part of the Information Society, and give them the tools to make informed decisions about their lives. (which means that I’ll spend more time re-writing lesson plans and less blogging this semester!)
Wish us (all) luck!
Internet Librarian 2006 Review
Cliff October 29th, 2006
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been to the best conference in my expierience.
Unfortunately, I missed the first day due to my travel insanity (thank you Delta & Hartsfield-Jackson). I arrived late Monday night and was up early the next morning to dive in. I attended:
Challenges of Cyberinfrastructre & Choices for Libraries
Podcasting & Videocasting
MySpace & Facebook (presented)
Partnerships in Archiving
Web Presence for Internet Librarians
Technology Training in a Library 2.0 World
Training Tutorial Tour & Tips
Comparing Book Search Engines
Social Computing & the Info Pro
Rather than do a blow-by-blow of all the sessions I attended, let me tell you what I gleaned from this experience:
- If possible, plan out every last little detail of your trip the moment you know you’re going. Get flights, hotels, restaurants, wifi access, and all that jazz done as soon as possible. And then immediately throw out all the plans (emotionally, at least), because it will all change the moment you leave your house.
- The conference is about learning things, yes. But more important than that is meeting cool people–of which there were an abundance at this conference. I was able to walk up to any group of people and immediately start carrying on conversation about what we are doing well, what we want to change, and where we think all this stuff is going.
- I’m not the only one with my attitudes/thoughts/opinions. A lot of folks share the same ideals about usability, accessibility, user-centered service, and the future of technology in libraries.
- The vendor representatives will listen if you gripe about their databases–most of them gave me their cards and an opportunity to contact them for more support. They should be listening to us, their users, for what would be useful in their databases, and which parts of their interfaces suck.
- There are a lot of non-librarians who are interested in our work, our needs, and our services.
- There are a lot of awesome librarians doing some amazing things to provide users with tools and services that they need in innovative ways.
Videos are up on YouTube and pics are on flickr.
Everyone smile and say “Promotion & Tenure!” Go to flickr and note yourself in this photo!
Universitites in the Facebooking business
Cliff September 28th, 2006
Facebook opened its doors this week to the world. Of course, there were protests after the mini-feed scandal. But, of course Facebook users have been reassured that:
This doesn’t mean that anyone can see your profile, however. Your profile is just as closed off as it ever was. Our network structure is not going away. College and work networks still require an authenticated email address to join. Only people in your networks and confirmed friends can see your profile.
If and when users become fed up with Facebook (for whatever reason), they will abandon it. As danah teaches us, this happened to Friendster when it became too slow, and this may happen with MySpace in the future
In the mean time, administrators at various universities are still struggling to find the right way to “handle” Facebook:
- many are ignoring it,
- some are blocking it,
- some are “spying” on it,
- some are joining it,
- and some are trying to replace it.
This last prospect is the one that intrigues me the most–if you can’t control the for-profit social network, create one of your own that you can control! Schools like Texas Tech are purchasing U.Peers, a social networking system run by GoalQuest (a strategic partner of NASPA).
I see a few problems here. One of the appeals of Facebook is that you can link to your friends at various universities and colleges. Since U.Peers must be purchased by the university, it leads me to believe that students can only link to other students at that university. Second, these closed social networks are often motivated by marketing schemes or fear–which leaves the users out of the design process. Third, we know that free, advertising-driven software works because it has to be user-centered to work. By having the university/state pay for the program, it could have a terrible interface, not do what the users want it to, and continue without updates or changes because the bill has already been paid.
But now, U.Peers has one-up on Facebook–it’s university only. Facebook no longer has the “just us” mystique that it had. Facebook users fear that it will become another MySpace, and only time will tell if that’s true.