CommonCraft: Social Media in Plain English
Cliff May 30th, 2008
The folks over at CommonCraft have done it again! Check out Social Media in Plain English; what a great way to explain it!
Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.
Archive for the 'teaching' Category
Library Instruction: Quantitative Assessment Pre- and Post-Test
Cliff April 23rd, 2008
Getting actual quantitative assessment of library instruction is something that most librarians hate to do–it often eats up our too-precious time with the students. And yet, I find myself dissatisfied with the “how’d I do?” opinion polls that we’ve used in the past.
So as part of our annual goals here at MPOW, we’ve created an online form for students to fill out as a pre- and post-test. The results write to a tab-delimited text file using ProcessForm 3.0.
By including a hidden date and timestamp, we’re able to separate classes as they are added to the text file, and then import them into a spreadsheet for analysis. Couple this with the students’ institutional ID number, and we can compare pre- and post-test scores while keeping the students’ anonymity intact.
With a little help (read: enforcement) from friendly professors, this test could be self-administered before and after the library instruction session to prevent eating into precious library instruction time. Additionally, the test could be performed pre- and post-library instruction, and then again at the end of the semester. Let’s see how much they really retain!
I welcome comments, criticism and suggestions! A big “thank you” to Andy and Sherrida for making this happen, and feel free to steal the code from the assessment form.
On my way to CIL2008
Cliff April 5th, 2008
My bad luck in commercial flights appears to be congenital, because one flight was cancelled and another delayed. Luckily, I’ll be able to make the whole conference this time (unlike IL2006). But I think this journey will be quite interesting for other reasons as well.
First, I’m going to be teaching Sunday School tomorrow. I’ll be staying in DC with my friend Sarah. The Sunday School class that she teaches (with her masterful M.Div. degree) is doing a series on world religions. When she first asked me if I’d be willing to teach about Paganism, I had that knee-jerk reaction:
“Are you guys learning how to convert Pagans?”
“C’mon Cliff, it’s me. Hello.”
“I know, I know, just checking…”
Given Sarah’s strongly liberal religious leanings (she and I agree on most metaphysical concepts), I know that I have nothing to fear. So I plan on going in and sharing some of the basics of Paganism, the major branches, and the few unifying themes of the Pagan religions (taken from a well-timed episode of the Deo’s Shadow podcast). From Sarah’s description, I have nothing to fear and lots to look forward to. I’ll promise not to hex them if they promise not to stone me.
After that I’ll be spending Monday - Wednesday at CIL2008! I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends, meeting some new friends for the first time, and meeting in person folks that I’ve been trading blog posts with for a while (here’s hoping I don’t go all geeky fanboy on that last group!). Thursday through Sunday will be time spent with Sarah, Jason and their St. Bernard dog Bruno, as well as visits with friends who live in the DC area.
Freshmen, Facebook, and not taking myself too seriously
Cliff August 9th, 2007
I prepared a low-key (and in some cases, low-brow), humorous presentation for freshmen on how to use social networking sites. It’s available here: In Your Facebook! Managing Your Online Identity.
No one showed. For either of the presentations. There could be several causes (foremost in my mind is timing), but it was not for a lack of marketing. We’ll probably just set up to do it again later in the semester.
I note in my presentations that I’ve embraced failure as part of the creative process. And after all, if I have to fail, I want to do it spectacularly. I want to fall on my face in front of a crowd of people who point and laugh at me–just so that I can remember to laugh at myself.
So in that spirit, feel free to have a look at my cheezy-humored presentation (with a few facts thrown in for good measure), and laugh with me. I’m sure that next time the room will be packed. :)
Speaking to Students About Social Networking
Cliff July 24th, 2007
In a couple of weeks, I’ll be speaking about Social Networking Sites to that other crowd–students. I have two workshops set up for Fall Explosion (our freshmen orientation) in which I’ll be teaching how to manage your online identity.
I’m actually finding this more challenging than speaking to librarians about social networking. Most of the time when I give Library 2.0 talks, the majority of the crowd is being introduced to it for the first time (beyond what they hear in the media). So after I do a little damage control regarding predators (with the data to back it up, of course), I explain how these tools can be useful for libraries. That’s the other defining characteristic–I’m telling librarians how to use these tools for work, not fun (although I personally find them a lot of fun). So I start from the basics and then talk about libraries. Piece o’ cake.
Not so with talking to freshmen. How many of them are already embedded in SNSes? I’m sure that many of them have been using MySpace (and perhaps Facebook) for some time. And yet some may have not. And for those who have, their various degrees of experience will mean that for some I will be teaching a lot of new material, and for others I’ll be rehashing stuff they’ve known for years. The solution? Tap-dance. If you have to rehash stuff, do it in a way that’s entertaining and innovative. I’ll try to throw in as many jokes, comics, pictures, etc. as I can to keep it light and entertaining.
Second, I’ll be speaking about how freshmen can manage their online identities (i.e. privacy). Not the sexiest of topics. I’m sure some of them have had their authority figures try to scare the crap out of them in the wake of the MySpace Predator scare (since fear is an easier deterrent than education). So I’ll be informing them about the instances of true predation, the statistical likelihood of predation and stalking behavior, and how to protect themselves (so that they don’t become that one-in-a-million). I’ll also need to educate them about the long-term effects of having an online presence (insert WayBack Machine here). I can’t wait to show them my web pages from college!
If you have any great ideas of what college freshmen should know about SNSes (or more ways to make it entertaining) let me know!
edit: I changed the title because it was non-descriptive (in an attempt to be poetic). Bad, librarian, bad!
Review: Technology Competencies and Training for Libraries
Cliff June 7th, 2007
Dear reader, you have two objectives:
- Buy two copies of this report–one to read/mark up, and one to share.
- Grab a pencil–you’ll want it.
In Technology Competencies and Training for Libraries, Sarah Houghton-Jan has created a concise, humorous, and illuminating step-by-step guide for planning, writing, implementing, training for, and reviewing technology competencies in libraries. This report continues the sensible organization and writing style that I have come to love about the Library Technology Reports series. In addition, Houghton-Jan has included practical advice for each step, gleaned from personal experience and thorough research. As she says in the introduction:
A few years ago, I found myself wanting a work like this to exist. Because it did not, I figured that I might as well consolidate all the information about library technology competencies in one place so that others could benefit from my hunting and gathering.
She has truly succeeded in this, because her writing style fluidly combines personal narrative with an abundance of research. I found myself scribbling notes in the margins, drawing big arrows, and underlining entire passages. It is impossible to read this report without thinking about the ways that you can implement the information in your own library. Be prepared–reading this report will induce a brainstorming session!
The step-by-step format of the report makes it accessible and practical. I could see this becoming the standard work for technology competenies taskforces, with each chapter serving as a practical guide in the process of developing and implementing technology competencies. The author’s advice is useful and down-to-earth; she skillfully addresses dealing with the possible fears and reluctance of staff, librarians and administration. Problems with funding, skilled trainers, learning styles and lack of time are all addressed in full. Each time that I thought of a potential question to write in and ask, I found the answer a few sentences away (the mark of a great trainer!).
Even if you don’t plan on implementing technology competencies in your library, this report will prove valuable. Instruction librarians in particular should read the chapter “Conducting Technology Training,” since the library skills that we now teach to our users are inseperable from technology. I will be passing along Houghton-Jan’s list of twenty technology training tips to our Library Instruction committee, and will be reviewing them for my own benefit for years to come. Continue Reading »
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.
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.
Teaching students how to organize information
Cliff March 20th, 2007
What better way to teach information organization than to have students do it themselves? We started out with disorganization, which students had to find individual items from:
Next, we put the items in alphabetical order by title. At this point I explained what articles are in the English language, and why including them can be a problem. Here we have the snail puppet filed under “S” for “snail puppet”, not “T” for “the snail puppet.”
Then we tried to locate an item by editor, and found that it was difficult, since the items were arranged by title. An explanation of the purpose of the OPAC ensued. Then we discussed the nature of subject headings, as some items (such as Feminism and Addiction) had more than one subject. Then we started the fun of tagging the Holy Bible to create our own folksonomy:
Each student created up to 10 tags, and placed identical tags near each other. By the end, we had a quite diverse tag cloud!
Only three tags appeared more than once: God, Jesus and disciples. The rest were all original tags (some of them quite creative!). Since the Holy Bible is both well known and widely interpreted, I was sure that we would get a diverse range of tags. If we had chosen a different item to tag, I’m sure we would have gotten a less diverse tag cloud.
I also asked students how they organized their own information (such as books and DVDs), explained the differences between taxonomy, ontology and folksonomy, and we discussed the benefits and drawbacks to each form of information organization. Altogether the class took about 45 minutes, and the students were engaged right up to the end.
If you think this was a good (or bad) idea, let me know by leaving a comment. Or better yet, write a half a page for my phoney job search before next Monday. Please, do it for the children!