Technology Literacy & Webinars

It's somewhat ironic that such an isolated school district should be the one to have the flexibility and initiative to create such a seemingly good educational model as the Fusion program outlined by Semadini. I love the idea of people getting paid to get better at what they do in general, but especially in teaching. For most education systems, this idea is contrary to culture, and I will personally be pretty surprised if I am ever given contract hours (or even stipends!!) to become a better librarian. While I think self-education should be expected of and compensated for people in teaching professions, I will obviously point out that learning how to educate is always only as effective as the models and techniques taught. When I was teaching English in Japan I did actually get some mandatory paid training time throughout the year, but it was neither here nor there and often had little or even negative effects on my classes. I do like the idea that the Fusion model seems to be flexible, with a "menu" of techniques that can be chosen by teachers. It would be interesting to know just how much principles "point" teachers towards certain goals.

I think educating librarians on basic technology competency actually is rather urgent, at least in my experience, and like the inviting sense of "play" that it uses, rather than making things like a chore. There are many...non-digital natives I've seen working at libraries across the state who actively choose not to educate themselves on basic computer troubleshooting and software that they constantly get asked about. While it's there right to do so to an extent, at some point it does become a professional requirement. I cringe when I see someone at a reference desk get a question about how to print something, betray a terrified look, and then say "I can't help you with that." Or, as the article mentions, put an out of order sign on a computer or piece of equipment without doing any troubleshooting at all.There's a bit of a strange dichotomy in librarianship where on one hand a lot of people talk about the importance of technology literacy and an awareness that people want access to and help with computers. On the other hand, I've noticed at least personally that when it comes to helping patrons at least, the idea is "we're not here to teach people to use microsoft word. There's a class for that." I think not only do staff need to know how to use the technology they provide in a basic sense--and making it seem fun is important since if someone doesn't already know, they probably really don't want to. I think (and predict we'll see) that library staff, even librarians, need to become more open to helping patrons out with the little silly things that seem so obvious. I teach someone how to adjust the volume on public library computers just about every week, and it doesn't bother me. Yes, I know it doesn't require a graduate degree. But neither does a willingness to help people with immediate needs.

Kristin's article is so succinct! It nicely communicates the importance of technical training being about "playing around" and "experimenting" with others rather than "drilling." It's perhaps somewhat counter-intuitive, but I think it's really true that learning how to use machines and technology isn't really best done going through a manual or an extremely strict workshop. I've learned how to use Photoshop and Illustrator this year, and quickly found that following manuals and tutorials was not terribly effective or motivating--I really just had to take the time to play around. Having a professor sit next to me might have been nice, but I've found professional advice isn't always retained as well as discovery on one's own. As with all things, I think there is a balance though, and the success of Kristin's program is a bit surprising if only because it does seem to stray slightly closer to the area of "self-teaching" than one would imagine might be optimal, particularly for learning how to use technology. But again, I think we under-appreciate the usefulness of "play" in making machines work.

The webinars were another fun hands-on learning & teaching experience, and overall I liked how mine went. Carmen and I had good visuals, which we were complimented on, and really used the visuals to drive our discussion. My part of the presentation was very scripted, much more so than the screencast, but I found this wasn't too much of a problem as I had Carmen to help answer chat questions and give feedback while I said my piece. Practice was very important. If I had this to do over again, I would have somehow anticipated that the trial I had been using was some sort of 3-person only room, though I guess I would have thought to have more than one person join the room to test it to find this out. Whoops. I also--and this goes for the webinars I attended to--would have tried to make the webinar even more interactive throughout. That's what the idea of a "live" webinar is all about, having an actual discussion and contributing and sharing ideas. I had polls and invited feedback, but what was received was kind of drowned out since we didn't have time to just chat as we had to constantly move along with the slides and presentation to finish in time. I also would have liked to have decided to do the "web tour" whereas I ended up settling for screenshots, mainly to save time. Overall I think the webinars were fun and successful, though I did constantly wonder, "how can I add value to this, and how can I make use of the fact that there are live people here." It's surprisingly easy when doing a webinar to lapse into a mere lecture with a token survey, where a screencast or a podcast would do the same.

Paul Courant, Twitter

I very much enjoyed last week's talk with Paul Courant, who was surprisingly affable and seemingly very forthright considering the tricky nature of some of the topics we were discussing. It's always nice to be reminded that we're really at the center of a lot of major library action here, where organizations like Google are getting sued and such via projects the University is a major participant in. His reaction to Joanna's incisive question was especially interesting though I wasn't surprised to hear his view that issues libraries like Michigan are facing are basically due to problems with forces outside of academia rather than within academia itself. I do imagine corporations like Sony and so forth do have bigger fish to fry than folks in academia and/or library land. However I do think it's important that an academic library be very cognizant of academic culture and interests affecting thought processes behind certain systems and actions, rather than just painting themselves as bystanders in a world shaped by powers far bigger than themselves.

I'm glad this week's assignment regarding signing on to twitter as I am reluctant to participate more than absolutely necessary is "social media" and this obviously needs to change. To use an SI 500 obsession I guess one reason is just the problem of information overload--I don't use things like google reader or twitter often because I feel I am already bombarded with more than enough information, and I like to think if something is important enough, I will take the time and energy to find it myself. But it not using things like twitter I miss out on a lot of opportunities, and for better or worse I really just need to be tuned into all the major ways people find and share information.

For my tweets, I retweeted blog posts of a librarian I happen to be following who basically does focus on social media like facebook and twitter. Aaron Tay, at musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com. Of his posts, I found the one listing the most influential libraries on twitter to be very interesting because it was dominated by large public rather than academic libraries. One might imagine academic rather than public libraries should be the most present on twitter or facebook (another post I tweeted had to do with the fact the NY Public was the biggest library on facebook) because of the clientele: college kids should theoretically be the most active on twitter, right? I wonder if it's due to the fact that public libraries often have to scramble the hardest for funding, and so are more active and have been quicker to get onto the web 2.0 social scene? I don't seem to be personally acquainted enough with academic libraries and their digital incarnations to have a very strong opinion on the matter and would appreciate those of others. Aaron has hypotheses, including that public libraries have a larger audience and so are followed more (I don't think this accounts for the discrepancy. There are plenty of academic libraries with huge user bases) or that public libraries are more aggressive in following users. This is really interesting because when thinking about things like Twitter, I always initially think of it as a way for libraries to market themselves and get users' attentions, rather than a way to follow them and get information on them, which is also very important. If nothing else, I'm going to use twitter from that perspective, as I have harped on how public libraries especially need to be extremely and innovatively in touch with the communities they serve.