College Stuff

Videos, Secure Data and Napping

/ dwakimoto

Happy Monday!

So my library isn’t even open to the public yet (we open at 10am as we are between terms right now) and it is going to be a pretty dead day around here. Which means, of course, lots of work will get done-thus it is a happy (work) Monday.

So, why would it be a happy Monday for you? Because, faithful reader, I have a trio of resources and articles to inspire you to protect your data, make YouTube videos and, well, nap. So without further ado:

First up is this article on students using YouTube videos for help with classes. And, no, I’m not talking about those horrible videos on how to cheat. This article talks about how students watch videos on math problems, biology concepts and physics in order to learn. Yes, they learn on YouTube. This is just great, really! I use YouTube videos in my classes on information literacy all the time and I’ve seen some library videos up on YouTube, but I think it is a place where there is a lot of untapped potential for librarians to populate the YouTube sphere with great library videos. I mean, we’ve already got the vlogbrothers on our side. If you have no clue who the vlogbrothers are, please click the previous link and find out.

Speaking of retaining what you learn, check out this article on how napping helps memory. Yes, we should have students watch YouTube videos and then nap so they retain the information and can think of new ways of using the information they have now retained. I am totally for napping; we need to institute napping during the work day.

And, in order to keep your data secure, while you are napping or otherwise, check out Lifehacker’s guide to the top 10 ways to lock down your data. This is very important stuff. No one wants to be the poor person who loses the confidential company data. So do yourself a favor, and lock down your data.

As a bonus, just for fun because this is probably the last post before I leave on vacation, check out John, of the vlogbrothers talking about his library and other fun stuff.

Enjoy, happy Monday, and happy holidays!

Keeping Current and Living in the Library

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday! I don’t know about your place of work, but at my library, it has been dead all week long (I mean, we still have people coming in but after the crush that was finals week, it feels like a ghost town). Granted I work at an academic library, and the term is over, and it is quickly nearing many holiday celebration days, and most of the faculty members have left on vacation, but I’m still here! Which means, faithful blog readers, that I’m still blogging.

This will be a much shorter post than usual because, as my colleagues know, I just finished about 7 hours of captioning a video to make with 508 standards. Want to see the labor of my hard work? I captioned the wonderful Fair(y) Use Tale Video from Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society. Thank goodness they made the video available under a Creative Commons License, and with this post I am trying to fulfill the Share Alike clause. And, yes, my eyes hurt from trying to sync captions that long.

Onward to other great things on a Friday.

How do you stay current about trends online? Are you interested in what people are tweeting about? Why should you care? Well, it is always a good idea to know what is happening out there in the Internet ether. You never know what might be super-important to you and your library. Plus, it is just fun to play with new stuff. Here is a great article about 21 sites to Find out What’s Hot Online by makeuseofit.com. Just don’t go overboard on the web surfing. Remember to back slowly away from the computer every once in awhile.

I love this article about students camping out in the library. Take that people who say libraries aren’t relevant! It also goes to show that furniture needs to be moveable so students can rearrange the spaces in ways that work for them. And, in my opinion, people designing library spaces or renovating spaces, could do well to talk with students about how they use the space and what they need before assuming they know best. In another library I was at, it was obvious someone had taken the time to figure out what the students did in the library. Why? Because there were tons of electrical plugs for laptops and wireless worked throughout the building. Not to mention, the chairs were fabulously comfortable. Think I’m joking about the importance of designing for laptops? Check out this post about laptop use from the Ubiquitous Librarian.

Best wishes for a happy weekend! Safe travels to everyone who is traveling this holiday season.

And, never fear, the Waki Librarian will be blogging until the 23rd and then be back again with techie, library goodness after the new year.

Quotes, Transfer Students and Marketing

/ dwakimoto

Again, no I don’t think I can tie these three ideas together. But who knows? Let’s try…

First up, this great list of the top 10 quotes of 2008 by The Yale Book of Quotations. Quick warning, if you are not into politics, or do not have a good sense of humor, you probably won’t find these funny or amusing. But I think they are hilarious, though scary. I mean, check out quote #4. And people at my work are worried about buying an extra toner cartridge. Oh, the irony.

Okay, moving on to something that is near and dear to all of our hearts in the academic world: trying to be inclusive of all the members of the student body. So why do I bring this up? I just read this great article on forgotten transfer students. I think that it is great that some universities and colleges are finally realizing that they need to help transfer students too and not ignore this part of the student body. I especially think of my own institution where “native” students must take an information literacy course but the course is not required for transfer students. I helped co-teach an instruction session on information literacy this summer and one of the students, who was a transfer student, came up after the session and said how helpful it was and how she thought it would be great to have a required course. We have an optional course that transfer students can take but not a course designed for them. Perhaps my school is too small to actually have a dedicated course as such, but surely the library could become more involved and proactive about making the transfer students feel at home. Just a thought.

So how would the library reach out to not just transfer students but the whole community? Take a look at this article on marketing by using Web 2.0 applications. Yes, I know the dreaded word “marketing.” Really, it isn’t a bad word and doesn’t mean you are selling your librarian soul to the big, bad capitalistic corporations of the world. Really, I’m serious, I am so sick of people in my field downplaying or being negative about marketing in the libraries. Marketing is a survival strategy, one that we need to perfect in order for people to perceive us as being relevant (we know we are relevant, but others need to perceive us as being relevant). Okay, off my soapbox now.

This article on marketing in a Web 2.0 world is great because it re-emphasizes that Web 2.0 is all about social connections and that by allowing customers, users and/or patrons (we can have a discussion about the choice of terms used in library discourse and their relationship to power later) to have control over a certain portion of your website and interact with each other, they actually become invested in your services and resources. Everyone wants their voice to matter and wants a way to interact with others. Humans, even librarians, are social creatures, to varying degrees. I think the library is an idea place to let people have a forum to discussion issues, ideas and *gasp* books together in an online world. Seize the positive in the messy, info-overloaded world and let’s market together!

And, the last fun bit of fluff for the day, check out The Best and Worst of Everything from BusinessWeek. Another end of the year list that is interesting and not all doom and gloom.

So tying everything together: Web 2.0 marketing is vital for companies, including libraries. Libraries could use Web 2.0 applications to reach out to transfer students in order to create a welcoming space that they could “own” at their new place of higher education. You could start a discussion around the Best and Worst of Everything from 2008 on a blog or wiki and of course link to the best quotes of 2008–because who doesn’t like a good quote? Okay, I think I’ve now tied everything together.

Enjoy your Tuesday!

End of the Year Lists, Fire Ants, and Other Stuff…

/ dwakimoto

Yes, we are actually closing in on the end of another year. So what can the waki librarian have for you to help with this year’s wrap-up? Well, a little bit of fun, a little bit of “ecological karma” and a little bit of information on college presidents.

Okay, so first for the end of the year lists. I absolutely love this The Top 10 Everything of 2008 from Time. It is great, definitely a sink-hole of time, but a good way to review what happened in 2008. I love the editorial cartoons. There has to be a use for this in my information literacy class next quarter.

So, for the ecological karma. From Wired Science comes this article on fire ant invasions. I love this short article, with links to the original research, because it just goes to show that Mother Nature bites back when there is unnatural ecological change to an environment. So are fire ants superior to other local species of ants? The answer apparently seems to be no, not in undisturbed habitats but with plowed fields-bring on the fire ants! Yeah, ecological karma, guess we should stop plowing under natural habitat for strip malls. Who’d of thought it?

I just love this article on Facebook and the National Archives. I love how people never stop to think where information they give out will ultimately end up. Now granted these papers won’t, most likely, go into the National Archives, but still it pays to think about what is happening to all the information generated when you send out your information into cyberspace. Digital trails, archives have got them. And, if you think you can’t hide anything from a librarian who is searching for information, try an archivist.

And, to end this post. Check out these figures about the inflation of college presidents’ salaries versus instructors and the general U.S. population. No wonder our students are paying a ton and we have institutions that are so top-heavy. I haven’t checked the statistical sources yet, but they look like valid sources to me.

So that ends today’s blog post on random stuff that you can use while teaching, or at least fascinate someone at a party with trivia.

Internet, Books and Graduation Rates

/ dwakimoto

No, I don’t think I’ll actually be able to link all the items in the post’s title together, but those are the topics to be discussed today. I saw a lot of random articles I had been saving and just had to add my 2 cents.

First, the article, Is the Internet the Start of History? This is a very interesting article and I give the author full-props for writing about how the Internet changes the very meaning of archives and archival appraisal (even if he doesn’t say it in this way). However, like so many that do not have a preservation background, he gets a few things wrong. Changing movies from analog to digital can help with access and can, sometimes, help with preservation. But preserving things on cds or dvds is really not a good idea as the media degrades quickly and formats change. Really, you don’t want to get a person who works in preservation or digital archives to get started on this topic. They could talk about it for days and days! It is a huge archival issue. But the concept of the Internet starting a new page in human history is a very cool one.

Here is another article on Google vs. the Libraries in the realm of the Google Books project. Interesting read and argument of private versus common good. That argument reminds me of the whole argument about the commons in England.

And, to end, an article about how the United States lags behind other nations in the graduation rate of students from universities. Interesting read.

And, so as to not end on a pessimistic note, it is a beautiful sunny day and we have the weekend to look forward to. Enjoy!

Why I Teach

/ dwakimoto / 2 Comments

Hi. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I feel rested and ready to take on the rest of the quarter.

Okay, so while I don’t have any great technology sites to share today. I thought I would just continue on the optimism theme and explain why I teach. Now the obvious answer is I teach because it is part of my job description and I have to. Well, yes, but that doesn’t really answer why I teach. I teach information literacy to freshmen which can sometimes be trying at best and life-draining at worst.

Today reaffirmed for me why I teach. I just had my focus group for my class. I am trying to figure out ways to improve the class and how the students see the class. The data is completely worthless for extrapolation, but still interesting. My best students came–thus I cannot extrapolate out even to the rest of my class. But they did reaffirm why I teach. I teach to try to reach the students, help them, inform them, give them the ability to have power over the flow of information in their lives, but really, I teach because of my engaged top-tier students. I teach for the students that take what they’ve learned to the next level, who take pride in their work, who truly learn to learn and really want more.

These students want more knowledge, they want more power and they want more out of life. These are the students that give me the energy to slog through the papers that are turned in late, that are turned in by students who obviously ignored the directions and who could care less about the class and who have a glazed over look no matter what we do in class.

I try to lift up all my students. I teach so that they can improve and learn and grow. I pull them kicking and screaming into active learning, into collaboration with others in the class, and into participating online. But that can be draining. My students that actually see that one can have fun and learn from anything are the ones who I teach for.

My students today ended with the suggestion that we have another library class. They actually wanted another class in their college career–later when they were in upper division classes in their disciplines. Really! They thought the class was helpful. They loved the YouTube videos, they liked the quotes used in class, they enjoyed helping others with their new knowledge and even saw the use of learning citations! How can one not feel blessed to have students like this in class? And I have more than one!

This, friends, is why I teach. Because these are the students that are going to change the world, one little step at a time. These are the students that make the time, the energy, the blood and the tears worth it. They are why I teach.

Tangentially, can I just say I am super-proud of my students? I am. Check out their online presentations here Library 1210 Presentations. These are presentations of the most interesting parts of their research projects. My students have made me proud.

Like the bumper sticker I picked up in Monterey says: “Those who can, do. Those who can do more, teach.”

Collaboration and the University

/ dwakimoto

Okay, so I’m very sorry for the lack of updates. My only excuses are that it is nearing the end of the quarter, enough said, and I took the weekend off to top off my energy tanks because exhaustion was taking over in a big way. So enough with that and on to the topic of the day–collaboration and the university. Yes, everything is about collaboration.

Now I really don’t care if this article says that the blog is dead and we should all move to twitter. People declared the death of the book years ago and I’m still borrowing and buying books. It is just now that there are multiple ways to deliver and receive information. Is twitter fun and a neat way to keep up with people, sure? But blogs are still a great way to deliver information and even if people don’t get famous off their blogs anymore, which seems to be one of the laments of that articles, blogs still offer a way to get your voice out there on the web and contribute to the building of community.

So what does this have to do with collaboration and the university? Well, this article says that Web 2.0’s big advantage to the college and university world is the ability to collaborate. You don’t say? 🙂 And what have we been discussing on this blog, why, collaboration. It is all about connecting people to people, information to people and people to the information. Collaboration is always what Web 2.0 is about and it is nice to see someone write an eloquent article on the subject. I think one of the things that will save online learning is the fact that it is becoming easier and easier to collaborate online, even asynchronously. One of my big concerns with online learning is the potential loss of interaction and synergy among students that happens during great group discussions and projects in face-to-face classes. But with Web 2.0 growing, improving and expanding the opportunities for collaboration each day, we do not have to sacrifice interaction when teaching online. And that, to me, is a saving grace because I don’t want us to become a bunch of pod-people who never interact and lose all social graces of conversation. Remember, it really is all about interaction, community and collaboration. Without interaction, we are all just screaming into the abyss of cyberspace by ourselves which, let’s face it, does not sound like a very appealing way to spend your life.

And, last but certainly not least, a post with a video clip from Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. The stop-motion film looks awesome and Gaiman’s take on other people expanding and adapting his creative works is so refreshing. Talk about being talented and gracious. This article and clip renewed my confidence in Mark Twain’s quote: “Stay away from people who belittle your ambitions, small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Have a great Tuesday.

2.0 Learning & 1.8 Users: Bridging the Gap: IL2008

/ dwakimoto

2.0 Learning and 1.8 Users

by Rudy Leon, and Colleen Harris

Google generation aka Digital Generation

Myths about the Google Generation:
Skilled online searchers
Ease with new gadgets
Always connected
Effective multi-taskers
Require constant stimulation
Must be entertained
Learn by doing

Mythbusting
The do use the stuff, but not generating content, don’t understand the backend of the technology
Don’t have a mental map of the technology, little transferable skills, ramifications for new services, they don’t fit into student’s understandings of what they already know
We need to build the map that allows the students to transfer skills
We can’t build services and resources built on the myths

Digital Divide
Still very real
only about 62% of US homes have a computer in the home
99% of US schools have computers and Internet, but it varies widely in hardware and access
Differential training and use of the technology, very different skill sets

Fault lines:
Number 1 line is still race: 65% white, 45% African American, 30% Latino households have computers
Also fault line via class

Persistent effects:
Students get their information and do groupwork online, students do not get training in universities and therefore self-select out of certain majors that use a lot of technology, creates a divide in education

Challenges:
Students put a lot of weight on what their faculty say

Challenges: Faculty
What Faculty Know or Don’t: learn how to do research from their instructors through Ph.d, have informal networks
Expect students to figure it out on their own, but students need context and help
Equipment: need to think of technology as part of a skill set
Faculty not highly trained in teaching: learn to teach through sitting through classes, how can we help professors with their teaching?

Think of technology as Education Technology and do training to show how to use technology to make the teaching better. How do you integrate technology into teaching? Have library step in and help with the training.

Getting faculty on Board:
Owning our own expertise–help faculty use the content effectively, because hey, librarians rock! We need to own our librarianship.
Competitive processes for course development–give faculty stipends and workshops
Make connections–get out there and network and make connections, “let’s have coffee,” need to have relationships in order to then get people to use the library
Classroom instruction–have faculty attend the session with their students, the faculty will learn stuff too
Leveraging reaccreditation process–include technology outcomes as part of this process

Campus IT
Scarce resources–go if something is not working
IT can’t implement everything–librarians have to do it
Lots of open source software–free, but requires a lot of time to implement and maintain, so consider what you do
What is the model for teaching and training–librarians are great and are a link among students, faculty and technology

Learning Spaces
Library is a safe learning space–students can fail without consequence of grades
How to strategies for engaging students/faculty
Workshops–great to have face to face contact
Making equipment available–can check out laptops, cameras, etc. from the library
Actionable assignments–use technology in an assignment, eg. make a documentary, photojournalism, etc.
Partnerships–again, network!

Moving Forward–Learning Spaces
Libraries are a unique spaces on campus, safe learning spaces
Technology is fun and libraries are for learning, technology should help or enable learning
Critical thinking and metal maps–learning should be fun and technology should support learning

Building the Bridge
Build the workshops that help build skills
Gadgets support learning
We are the adults and students need to have a voice, but what they want is not always what they need, we don’t need to entertain the students 24/7
Have space and structure to play
Be skeptical about what the media says about the Digital Generation

Great presentation, love the LOL cats photos, wonderful energy!

Take Home Message: It’s all about community. Technology supports learning and is the means to the end, which is having faculty and students understand how technology helps.

Reality Bites & How You can Change it

/ dwakimoto / 1 Comment

First off today, I have to give props out to Tom H. who has been awesome in commenting on this blog. Thank you! I am so glad someone is reading and enjoying the posts.

Now to the main topic today: reality bites. That sounds a little pessimistic, doesn’t it? Well, some parts of reality really do bite–like povery, global warming, students cheating, librarians thinking that they can be outsourced and the fact that I haven’t been able to find veggie gyoza at Trader Joe’s for the last 3 weeks.

But parts of reality rock–like Jim Butcher having two new books coming out, people helping out because it is the right thing to do, librarians helping to Rock the Vote, and autumn weather that is warm during the day but perfect for a quilt at night.

So what specifically made me write this type of post today? Two things, actually.

First this YouTube video on cheating that has been going around the Internet. I found out through Tame the Web blog and you can see it here. Did she even think about the consequences of posting this video on YouTube? I mean, it is scary that students are posting videos about how to cheat and the comments to these videos are even scarier. I really dislike the “but everyone else is doing it” defense. No, they are not and cheating is just plain wrong. I am going to show this to my Information Literacy class so we can discuss the implications of the video. But I’m not completely disheartened by this because I still believe that most students are honest and hard-working when they are doing their school work.

Anyone read the latest Backtalk column in Library Journal (October 1, 2008 edition)? Another person who is pessimistic about the future of librarianship–believing that we have caused ourselves to become obsolete through our increased reliance on technology. While I agree that the human touch is very important in what we do as librarians, I don’t believe that technology can be considered the downfall of the profession or libraries in general. Though, I may be a little biased in this as I am an Online Literacy librarian. I think technology, if anything, has made our role as librarians even more important for the efficient finding, analyzing and evaluating of information. I don’t feel obsolete and I am proud of my work as a librarian. What do you think?

I think that our perceptions truly become our reality. If we think we are obsolete, we will fulfill that thought. But if we truly believe that librarians are important, than our thoughts and subsequent actions will make it so. Yes, it is annoying to answer the tenth question in an hour about the location of the bathroom. But we also help people with so many important questions and concerns. We also design websites that are accessible, have events that gather together communities and help students find information that is personally relevant to them. And through these actions, we change reality into something better.

And to end on a somewhat positive note, the Wednesday post of this blog will be in support of Blog Action Day 2008 where bloggers around the world are going to be posting only about poverty for one day in order to raise awareness and hopefully get people to help end world-wide poverty. We can all do something to better ourselves, our communities, our libraries and our world, if we only work together.

Podcasts and Zombies

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday!

So the big news today is that the podcast of the first Technology Brown Bag is now available. Just check out the Tech Brown Bags page of this blog for the podcast. Its runtime is just under 40minutes. And I am sorry in advance for the poor quality. My only excuse is that it is my first podcast and I am still learning Audacity. I promise the next one will be better, but at least you will be able to get the information, along with the handouts, now.

For fun, check out this article on the Zombie Tag craze that is sweeping colleges and universities. I love the fact that both classrooms and libraries are safe spaces! This is a good example of having fun without any technology. I wonder if it will come to CSUEB.

Have a great weekend!