Last night I got to hear Stephen Abram talk about the future of SLA & librarianship. First (and most important) I have uploaded my pictures to Flickr.

Stephen started with a mini rant (a good rant) about the fact that there is no proof that the book is at risk. Reading stats are going up and book sales are going up. That said, do we hear that librarians are at risk? Ever hear this one, “Everything’s on the Internet.” The fact is that librarians are at risk even if books aren’t. In short, there are some serious issues we have to get stronger about talking about.

Stephen mentioned that we’re about to experience some huge changes. If you think about it, we haven’t had any major changes in a long while. Our grandparents had a bunch of huge changes all hit them at once (phones, tv, 2 world wars, etc) and it’s time for that to happen again. North America is way behind the rest of the world when it comes to technology. In Europe, people are using their phones for everything. They have free TV delivered through their phone and text messages for everything. I’m not a fan of this movement - maybe it’s just because of the costs associated with it here - but - I just want a phone - I don’t need it to double as a TV.

When it comes to digitization, China is only 5 years from digitizing everything written in Chinese. It’s not going to be long before everything is available in digital format. We’re going to need the tools to take advantage of this content.

So, what does this have to do with SLA? Everything! The world is changing and librarians have to change with it and SLA wants to help librarians make that change as smooth as possible. One interesting point that Stephen brought up was the fact that when someone leaves an organization one of the first things they do is clear off their computer - bookmarks and all. This means that all the great resources that long time librarians have collected are lost. We have to start storing our data in collaborative spaces so that we can all benefit from each other’s knowledge. I love this! And this is why I took so much pride in working on improving the Jenkins Law Library research links (a pre-del.icio.us project) - I wanted to make sure we were sharing our resources with any one who might need them.

Stephen asks that instead of sharing the myth amongst ourselves that we’re collaborative, why not be collaborative? I love this! The fact is that the nature of associations is changing - something I wrote about in library school. The main selling point for associations used to be networking - but now with tools like Ning, Facebook and LinkedIn - why do I need an association to find fellow peers? With these tools threatening library associations as we know them, what can SLA do to continue to be important for librarians? The answer is learning and innovation.

One way that SLA is setting itself apart (in my opinion) is their Click-U. Educational events for SLA members. What I didn’t know is that they have a regular presentation by Gary Price where he shares the newest tools he’s found for researching and they have a monthly free course available. Being a recently graduated student, I’m a bit too poor to pay for too many classes - so I love to find things for cheap or free!

SLA also offers members access to over 1000 e-books on leadership and management topics (apparently we were told about this - but I missed it somehow - after writing this I’m heading to the SLA site to check out my member profile). They also offer what they call ExecuBooks Summaries - they are 4 page summaries of new releases.

The thing I’m most excited about hasn’t been released yet, but I’m keeping my eyes open for it, the Innovation Labs. This area of the SLA site will be a testing bed for members to try out all kinds of free and proprietary software without having to install it or pay for it. Some of the big names will include Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Blogger, Survey Monkey and Confluence. It’s basically a place for everyone to play!! This area of the site will also have over 25000 software training videos from atomic learning. How great is that???

While this isn’t everything that Stephen talked about, these were the bits that I was able to write down as he sped through his awesome talk. He certainly made me pay even more attention to what the association is doing for us - I hope he did the same for some of the rest of you.

Technorati Tags: njsla, sla

Eleonora Dubicki and Jacqui DaCosta talked to us about how to keep students engaged while teaching about libraries. That said, I went because I wanted to learn teaching techniques that can be used in any instruction - and I did!!

Active Learning

We started with the rules for library bingo. This is the first way to keep students engaged. Basically, we listen which the instructor speaks everytime one of the words on our cards was spoken we marked our cards. Once the card had everything marked we called out Bingo - well not “we” - I didn’t win

This is part of active learning. This technique is about using techniques that shift library instruction from lecturing to guiding or coaching students.

Active learning:

• engages students in the learning process
• elicits student discovery
• captures their attention (in a 45 minute class students would get bored - now takes 75 minutes and it’s hard to get the students out)
• addresses multiple learning styles (oral, visual, exercises - so they can practice as well)
• creates an experience they can relate to and replicate (rather than going step by step and having them follow along, now because students are doing their own searching and keywords it’s an experience they can replicate later)
• provides immediate feedback to the instructor

Confucius says “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand” - I love it!!

The goal is to reach the bottom of the learning pyramid and try to get students to be able to teach each other:

Learning Pyramid

• lecture
• reading
• audiovisual
• demonstration
• discussion
• practice doing
• teach others

To participate in active learning you have to be comfortable giving up the control of the classroom to the students. This requires more prep time. For bingo you have to know what words will be used in the lectures so that someone can win - you have to print out the cards and get the bingo markers and prizes.

When teaching a class powerpoint slides work really well with visual learners - they hear her say something and then they see it - I am like this - I hate reading slides, but I do like having them there so that I can reference them if I missed hearing something while taking notes. Handouts are always handy because students can take them with you.

Asking for feedback

They also create a one minute evaluation sheet with four open ended questions that allow the students to provide feedback about the class:

• what did you learn
• what are you still confused about
• general comments
• rate the session (ratings are all on the high side - they like the interaction with it)

Another way to get feedback is to give a library session questionnaire at the beginning of the session - or before people arrive. This means that participants have questions prepared if things aren’t covered - so at the end when you ask “do you have any questions” at least one person will have on prepared. You can collect the papers at the end of the session and this gives the instructor a chance to reply to students after session (”we didn’t cover this in class and I wanted to address your question”). Lastly, this helps you prepare for future sessions by showing you what people are expecting based on your description and title.

Cephalonian Method

Another method of active learning that we were introduced to is called the Cephalonia method (yes, I created a page for this on Wikipedia - please feel free to edit and add more info if you’re an expert). The Cephalonian method uses a fusion of color, image, humor and music to keep students engaged in the learning process. This method was started at the Cardiff University by Linda Davies and Nigel Morgan and was introduced to the British Library Public in 2004.

Some quick points about the Cephalonian method:

• been used for large groups (200+)
• been used for small groups
• a variety of institutions around the world
• graduates and undergraduates
• used very much for orientation
• used initially for large group orientation and to replace tours

How does it work? In our small group the instructor passed out 8 colored cards (they were hidden in our packets) with a question or statement on them. There were 2 of each color and each color was associated with a specific category - for your library orientation you might have one for the catalog, one for services, one for rules, etc. For the instructor this means being prepared to answer any questions asked and having the technology to match. Our instructor had a cheat sheet that told her the slide number for each card so that she could easily show that slide in answer to the question (this is because you have no control over what order the questions are asked. For the students this means having questions given to them - it starts discussion and acts as a great icebreaker. The instructor can say “does anyone have a pink card?” and then the students can read the card out for the whole class.

Reactions:

• students seem to like it
• they laugh with you and want to see what’s next
• faculty thought it was wonderful

Benefits:

• good icebreaker
• adaptable for different audiences
• as well as being fun it does meet the learning objectives of being interactive

What can go wrong:

• technology can fail
• students shy
• invite a bit of chaos into your classroom
• colorblindness (you could put the word for the color on the handout)

Mix it up

Another way to keep students engaged is to “mix it up.” You can do this with games like Guess-the-google. This is a great way to introduce library students to keyword searching. It shows a montage of images that all match a specific keyword. At first students don’t participate, but then when see that they have a score of zero they start to compete and have fun with it.

Another way is simply to have a virtual tour of the library playing as students enter the room. There may not be enough time to do this during the class and it gets students engaged right as they enter the door.

Other tools you can try in library instruction:

Exercises

• keyword exercise
• pick a topic and guess the keywords
• brainstorming
• think pair and share - collaborative learning - pick a topic and pair up with a student near them and discuss - then share with the rest of the class

Use creative research topics

• new marketing strategies for video games
• consumers are concerned about identity theft and privacy
• hip hop lyrics draw outrage

Demonstrations

• have students demo a database search (as the student goes through the instructor can then point out things and ask questions)

What did the students have to say about all of this?

• “I think more discussion is good”
• “Letting the students follow along makes remembering the steps easy”
• “the exercises were helpful, fun and informative”

Conclusions

Some of these methods may not be for everybody, these are just some fun ideas that you can mix and match to make your classes more interesting and engaging.

I’m not sure I’d be able to pull off the Cephalonian method - but I’m thinking of creating some open source bingo cards!!

Technorati Tags: njla2008, njlaconf08

This is an interesting interview:

Eszter Hargittai, an assistant professor in Northwestern University’s sociology department, has discovered that students aren’t nearly as Web-savvy as they, or their elders, assume.

Ms. Hargittai studies the technological fluency of college freshmen. She found that they lack a basic understanding of such terms as BCC (blind copy on e-mail), podcasting, and phishing. This spring she will start a national poster-and-video contest to promote Web-related skills.

Eszter goes on to explain her study and its results. I found the comments as interesting as the interview itself. One comment in particular made me laugh:

Finally someone says it. We listen ad nauseam to administrators and journalists blather about tech in the classroom and this generation’s web-and-computer savvy. Bollocks. My students (at an R-1) have had enormous difficulty posting documents to Blackboard and WebCT; don’t know how to use a program’s tutorial; don’t know how to save documents in different file formats than the default; don’t realize they can discover basic information about our university (e.g. a phone directory, a registration calendar) through our webpage. They are as tech savvy as they are anything-else savvy: not so much, unfortunately.

Here’s my question - the first time you tried to use Blackboard or WebCT were you able to post info to it? As a very web-savvy person I have to say that Blackboard at least (since I never had to use WebCT) is one of the most user-unfriendly tools I’ve ever had to use. Do not use Blackboard as a measure of your students web savviness. Also - I’m really glad I didn’t have this person as one of my professors. How can any instructor be so negative about their students? If you think they know nothing then how can you teach them effectively?

All that said - I agree with the studies results. I found it interesting that my sister who recently finished college didn’t know about things that are part of my everyday web life - RSS, Blogs, etc. We should never make assumptions about our students/audience. We should always start at the beginning - as educators it’s our jobs to teach students about these tools and how they can be used in the professional world.

I didn’t respond to Rachel Singer Gordon’s post about what makes a librarian - mostly because I’ve made it pretty clear what my opinion is in the past - but I just have to laugh at this comment and Rachel’s response:

Librarianship is a profession akin to medicine or law. You don’t see people without law degrees calling themselves lawyers; you don’t see people without MDs calling themselves doctors; people without the MLS shouldn’t be able to call themselves librarians.

This comparison is ludicrous. Go ahead: compare your year or two of library school to law school + the bar, or medical school + a residency. Do it with a straight face. I’ll wait for you to compose yourself…

Unfortunately I have heard this one before too! My response (while Rachel’s is awesome) goes a different way. Doctors & lawyers are required to continue their education. They (and other professionals) have to attend X number of credit courses a year in order to keep up with their fields - are librarians? Some - but not all. If librarians were all required to continue their education in order to keep up with changes in the field of research then I’d say this was a valid comparison - but it’s not - because librarians get their MLS and then they get to be called librarians for life - that’s what I consider “ludicrous.”

Phil Bradley points to an interesting article entitled: Lecturer Bans Students From Using Google And Wikipedia. In the article a professor states that she doesn’t allow students to use Google or Wikipedia because she wants them to use their brains - but at the same time she provides a reading list and wants students to cite those resources - ummm - I have to agree with Phil on this:

I’m sorry, but how is that encouraging them to use their own brains? How is that encouraging them to research and analyse? Quite frankly the idea of an academic banning anything is pretty poor in my book, and from the report, she clearly has little grasp on the situation. Surely it would be far better to encourage students to compare resources, to work with them to actually gain this ability to research and analyse?

Why not require a combination of sources? By giving them a list you’re making their lives easier and not really encouraging the to learn how to research and “use their own brains.”

Don’t miss this free opportunity hosted by PALINET:

Koha Camp is a unique first opportunity for systems librarians, library software developers and designers to come together for an open source experience with Koha Library Integrated System.

This one-day workshop, limited to 25 participants, is a place where teams of software developers and librarians will join to explore the open source community and to solve real-world problems. Staff members from LibLime, the library software solutions company that developed Koha, will attend the workshop to work with participants.

By the end of the workshop you will be able to: communicate with other Koha users worldwide, install Koha, understand and navigate the source code tree, create and customize Koha templates, modules, scripts, and utilities, send your improvements as patches to the Koha community for inclusion in the next version.

Koha Camp is free, and will be held at PALINET, in Philadelphia, on January 11, 2008, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM ET. Continental breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Technorati Tags: koha, palinet, liblime

We’ve all heard the complaints about presentations based on PowerPoint (or other similar slide show product) - but my question is - what is the alternative? I like to start my presentations with some slides - mostly for reference and note-taking (if printed), but then move on to a live demo of sorts. The way I see it though - not all talks have a “live demo” approach - so what do these people do?

I’ve been attending a lot of events lately and at one of them (nope I won’t tell you which) one of the speakers didn’t use PowerPoint (she did have visual aids of a sort though) and she read her entire talk from a script. Is this the type of presentation you want to attend? I couldn’t pay attention for the life of me!! I wanted to - I really really did - the topic seemed interesting - but I could not pay attention with her voice droning on as she read from her script and swapped her transparency for the next … oops … gave you a hint.

So - what’s the third option? If not PowerPoint and if not a scripted talk then what do people without live demos do?

I’m really just curious what the “PPT = All Wrong” people want when they go to a presentation - what would make it educational and enjoyable?

For me, I’m okay with the PPT as long as the speaker is speaking to me. I’m okay with it as long as it’s supplemental to the talk itself. My problem comes after the fact - after the presentation - if you want to share what you learned with others - you had better have taken real notes - because without the speaker’s words, a PPT with several slides of bullet points isn’t usually going to cut it.

I’ve sort of gotten off track here - but I needed a little rant and this seemed like a good topic for today. Feel free weigh in.

I’m finally reading Everything in Miscellaneous - and it’s awesome. The irony is that I’m taking a two day subject cataloging class. While the instructor (who is awesome and full of energy) talks about how getting the most specific subject heading is our goal and having things in alphabetical order is good - I can’t help but laugh inside because sitting next to me in my bag is a book that says this isn’t the only way to organize things!

On the subject of teachers - I have had two great instructors at PALINET continuing ed courses over the last month and it makes me wonder why these aren’t the kind of instructors I had in library school. Is it because they’re actually out there doing the work? Is it because they love their jobs (which you can really tell?) or is it just the setting? I don’t know, but I do think that if you’re just out of library school and feel like you’re maybe missing something or if you’re a librarian who wants to beef up your skills, taking a course from a librarian who is out there doing what they’re teaching is the way to go!

In an article in The Ann Arbor News (pointed out by Ken Varnum), Dave Gershman questions whether allowing wireless Internet access in classrooms is productive. While I see both sides of the argument (students should pay attention and we are paying attention, we just need to do more than one thing at once), the best thing to take away from this article (in my opinion) is this:

Ben van der Pluijm, a professor of geology and the environment, said he can’t worry whether his students are surfing the Web. “I only tell them not to be obnoxious about it,” he said. Van der Pluijm said the key is to use the technology to engage students, and he believes it enhances his lectures.

He co-wrote software called Lecture Tools that allows him to send lecture slides of charts and data directly to students’ computers. Students can take notes online and constantly update them.

Most of his students bring their laptop computers to class. In a recent class, van der Pluijm stood on stage in front of a big projection screen. Most of his students followed along, switching between watching him and their computer screens, where they flipped among the slides of his electronic presentation.

Instead of complaining about “kids these days” he developed an application that would meet everyone’s needs! How awesome is that?? This would have totally stopped me from day dreaming when I was in class (back when the Internet required wires).

First - Amen to Dorothea! Every one in a while I read something on someone else’s blog that makes me think - that’s what I’ve been thinking but unable to put into words! Dorothea’s Training-Wheels Culture post is one of those posts.

Dorothea’s post starts by pointing to the results of my library school survey. I want to mention to those reading my post and Dorothea’s that I sent the link to my survey out to the AUTOCAT list - a list full of catalogers - which might explain the results related to cataloging. That said, I’m with Dorothea nearly 100%!

I love teaching and watching others learn new things, but sometimes people ask for help with things they just don’t need help with. What ever happened to learning by doing? I don’t know if Dorothea has the complete picture when she says that librarians always ask for training because”

We believe knowledge is power, which taken to an unhealthy extreme can mean that we do not do anything until we think we understand everything. We do not learn by doing, because learning by doing invariably means failure.

I think that it’s also something you see in people who fear technology (at least when it comes to learning technology). My mother can be like this (sorry Mom) - she’s gotten much better over the years, but I sometimes have to say “Just hit the damn button and see what happens.” It’s always a fear of the unknown - of breaking things -that stops her from trying something new without me on the phone.

When it comes to cataloging, I also have to agree with Dorothea:

Fundamentally, cataloguing training is not going to help these people. It won't help them feel confident about MARC and AACR2, because I don't know anybody who does (and I do know some cataloguers, thanks).

I had to laugh out loud at this! I’m still a baby in the cataloging arena, but I think it’s safe to say, that no one can feel 100% confident or comfortable with a big ass (I mean back breakingly heavy) binder full of rules (AACR2) and a bunch of fields without meaningful names like “title” and “author” (MARC).

Like I said - I love teaching and watching people learn - but at the same time I’m with Dorothea:

I do mind, quite a lot, having to stand over a grown professional's shoulder teaching her to use a set of essentially self-explanatory web forms because she cannot be bothered to learn by doing. And I do this a lot.

All of that said - I stand by my personal survey comments. I think that library students (librarians of the future) need to be provided with a grounding in all areas of librarianship before they choose their focus. By teaching cataloging in school it shows future reference librarians what their colleagues in the back room are doing. By teaching future catalogers collection development, you help them understand how the books came to be on their desk. It just makes sense - but that’s not the point of this post or Dorothea’s - which I strongly encourage you to read.

I repeat for the hundredth time on this blog - the keys to learning how to use new technologies are playing (aka learning by doing) - it’s that simple - I promise!

Last night I gave a hands-on workshop for the Philadelphia SLA Chapter. Today you can see the slides and the video of that event.

• The 2.0 Office: More Than Just Wikis & Blogs [slides, video pt1, video pt2]
  SLA Philadelphia Chapter, Philadelphia, PA, September 18, 2007

I was looking for a page defining what a Millennial was for a friend and I came across this article from 2 years ago that I think hits the nail on the head - not for her purposes, but for mine. The article is from http://www.ltimagazine.com/ltimagazine and it’s titled “Millennial” Learning: On Demand Strategies for Generation X and Beyond.

The article talks about what employers need to provide in order to keep their Millennial employees.

According to the staffing firm Spherion, five core factors significantly influence whether employees stay or go: culture and work environment, compensation, supervisor role, and - the two retention drivers indicating employers need to focus on employee development - training and development, and growth and earning potential. Spherion’s study indicates employers are scoring low with workers in these areas. Today’s new breed of workers requires an adapted approach to employee development.

In order to build suitable training for today’s learner, organizations must tailor training by addressing key characteristics of this new breed. Research reveals that today’s younger worker values:

• Relevant development
• Rich experiences
• Flexibility
• Community
• Technology
• Instant results

(Emphasis added by me)

I’ve had this very conversation with many Millennials (including myself). We want to learn - at least those I talk to want to learn (there are always black sheep). There is always this mentality among employers that if you train someone to do something new, they’re going to leave and do that something somewhere else - and that is a risk, but at the same time, if I’m not allowed to learn something new (which I am!) then I’m going to look elsewhere.

Just an interesting little article I thought I’d share with you all.

Do you maintain a weblog and attend college? Would you like $10,000 to help pay for books, tuition, or other living costs? If so, read on.

We’re giving away $10,000 this year to a college student who blogs. The Blogging Scholarship is awarded annually.

Get your application in soon - the deadline is the 6th of October.

Found via Joho the Blog.

Technorati Tags: scholarship, blogging

Lately, I’ve been talking to students at other library schools as well as library staff here as I do a bit of homework for my “What I Learned in Library School” post. I realized that I needed a bit more information so I’ve created a 5 question survey for library students and librarians.

If you could help me out by answering this tini tiny survey that would be very helpful. I will of course, share my results here.

[update] WOW! What a response. I was limited with my free account to 100 answers and you all hit that very very quickly. I have upgraded my account, so if you weren’t able to get your survey submitted, you can now. [/update]

[update2] With over 500 responses, I have closed the survey, I am going to clean up the data (make school names consistent and add a few classes that a lot of you mentioned) and then post the results - keep an eye out. [/update2]

Technorati Tags: library school, learning, education

Straight from my inbox:

SHAKE UP YOUR THINKING
WITH THE PHILADELPHIA SLA'S TECH-TOPICS SERIES

The TechTopics Series will be comprised of three evening workshops concentrating on new technologies and tools, and are designed for anyone who is interested in keeping their skill sets up-to-date.

These "hands-on" workshops will provide you with an overview of new technologies such as wikis, blogs and other online office applications, and show you how to apply these key learnings to your organization!

These evening sessions are specifically designed for the busy information professional. For a nominal registration fee of $15.00 ($25.00 for non-members), you will receive interactive training in an open-learning setting designed to answer your questions on how to apply these best practices to your own work environment! Food and refreshments are included!

All workshops will be held in the evening in Room 116 at the Korman Computing Center on the campus of Drexel University, in Philadelphia, PA. If you are unable to attend in person, please bear in mind we plan to deliver these sessions via web-based simulcast as well!!!

Planned Sessions:

Registration will be from 5:00 - 5:30 pm for each session"¦

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 — 5:30 pm - 8:30 pm
The 2.0 Office: More Than Just Wikis & Blogs
Instructor: Nicole Engard

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 — 5:30 pm - 8:30 pm
"Plug-in" to Firefox!
Instructor: Chris Curry

AND, in November 2007"¦
Second Life
Instructor: Tim Siftar

SAVE THESE DATES!

Information on registration and more details on the September session — coming soon!

Technorati Tags: sla, special library association, training

Over at Designing Better Libraries, Steven Bell has a post listing a few innovation blogs to get your creative juices flowing:

Ideas 108 - This blog is dedicated to providing you with a steady stream of creative problem-solving tips and techniques.

The Innovator's Digest - Gerald Haman's new weblog, which appears to be focused on helping to promote his new Innovation Tool of the Month Club. But it also contains weekly "question banks" that can help you to come up with creative ideas to help solve the challenges you face, and various posts on the value of creative problem-solving tools and techniques. It's good to see you in the blogosphere, Gerald!

Think Differently - The catchphrase for this blog speaks volumes to me. It says "get ahead by doing something different "” not what everybody else is doing or what you'd always be doing." That seems like a great way to express what innovation is about, and to make things better this blog actually has a category for Design Thinking.

Innovation Weblog - a meta-index of the latest innovation trends, news, technology, resources and viewpoints. It covers topics including innovation research and best practices and strategies, innovation management, business use of Weblogs for ideation and collaboration, and much more!

I’m so far behind on blog reading that I won’t be adding these to my blogroll just yet - but I still wanted to share them with everyone who might have missed Steven’s post.

Some of these sound really great - I just don’t have time right now to take yet another class.

Title: Coaching for Results (Face-to-Face)
Date/Time: 9/17/2007, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm EDT
Location: Roanoke Higher Education Authority

Title: Basic MARC Tagging for Books (Live Online)
Date/Time: 9/17/2007-9/18/2007, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm EDT, (meets two hours a day for two consecutive days)
Location: Live Online

Title: Library as Place (Live Online)
Date/Time: 9/18/2007, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm EDT
Location: Live Online

Title: CQ Press: Government: Politics and Policy (Live Online) **FREE!**
Date/Time: 9/18/2007, 10:00 am - 11:00 am EDT
Location: Live Online

Title: RSS for Libraries (Live Online)
Date/Time: 9/18/2007, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Location: Live Online

Title: XHTML: THE Future of Web Design (Live Online)
Date/Time: 9/19/2007 - 9/21/2007, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm EDT (meets two hours a day, for three consecutive days)
Location: Live Online

Title: Metadata for Digitization and Preservation (Live Online)
Date/Time: 9/20/2007, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm EDT
Location: Live Online

Title: OCLC WorldCat Resource Sharing Beyond the Basics (Live Online)
Date/Time: 9/20/2007 - 9/21/2007, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm EDT (meets two hours a day for two consecutive days)
Location: Live Online

The above list is copied straight from Beyond the Job.

Drexel held an eLearning 2.0 conference last week (and I had no idea about it - bad bad student).

At the conference, over 180 individuals represented 50 institutions as IRT, Drexel eLearning, and Villanova co-hosted the event. For those in attendance, there were 26 presentations in tracks on best practices, support, and administration. The featured speaker at lunchtime was Susan Patrick, President and CEO of North American council for Online Learning (NACOL).

If you’d like to see the presentations from the conference they are available online.

Technorati Tags: elearning, e-learning

Hmmm - this is very interesting.

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald reporting on research done at The University of NSW suggests the use of Microsoft PowerPoint (and similar products) in lectures and meetings actually makes it harder to absorb facts, rather than being a reinforcement of key points.

Via Slashdot.

Technorati Tags: powerpoint, presentations

On Tuesday I taught/presented a professional development session for area law librarians (specifically members of the Greater Philadelphia Law Library Association [GPLLA]). While we aren’t actually doing a full on Learning 2.0 event like other libraries (where staff members learn how to use 2.0 technologies on their own time) I did plant the seed.

I started a wiki for us (and for you all) with a small list of 2.0 technologies that will help us in our daily lives. It is in no way a comprehensive list - and we’re not looking for it to become one. I just thought that it would be a great way to point area librarians to resources that might be handy. After my presentation there were several edits to the page - Yippee!! I hope to see others contribute and add their comments. I know that a wiki is not the best platform for link sharing, but it was a way to allow everyone a chance to learn how to use a wiki.

We’ll see how it goes - and maybe it will lead to a “real” Learning 2.0 event for our staff and GPLLA members - wink wink.

For now, feel free to visit the GPLLA Learning 2.0 Tools Wiki and contribute or just learn something new!

Check out Lifehacker’s list of Note taking sites & tools.

Next month I am giving a whirlwind presentation (in one hour) on 23 (or as many as I can fit) Web 2.0 technologies for Law Librarians. I’m going to go over some of the obvious ones (Flickr, Del.icio.us, Blogger/WordPress, PBwiki, etc), but I wanted to know from all of you if you have any recommendations that might be perfect for Law Librarians - or just something you think I should cover. I’m basing my talk on the Learning 2.0 event held at PLCMC last year - except that mine isn’t hands-on - yet

I just read a great quote in someone’s email signature and I wanted to share:

“People grow in the direction of the questions they ask” — David Cooperrider, PhD

Very appropriate.

Lifehacker points us to a site with podcasts that will help you learn another language.

To get there, just head to the iTunes Music Store, then go to Podcast -> Education -> Language Courses. You can get started perfecting your Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or Italian (to name some of the most popular) in no time, and best of all, they’re mostly all free.

Pretty handy.

I’m registered, are you?

Learning 2.0 : Make “play” your New Year’s resolution
Date : Jan 09, 2007
Start Time : 8 a.m. Pacific
Length : 01:00:00

As the Nationwide insurance commercials taunt “life comes at you fast”, it’s time for librarians to jump into the knowledge pool of Web 2.0 technologies and discover how these tools are changing the way many library users communicate, collaborate and receive information. Helene Blowers, Technology Director for the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County shares insights and best practices around the creation of Learning 2.0, an online self-discovery program designed to encourage staff to explore new technologies (blogs, wikis, podcasts etc.) and reward them for “play.”
Join us for this informative session and then think about adding another resolution to your personal New Year’s list… cause it’s true, life (as well as new technology) does come at you fast!