I started writing this post when Blogger went down for a couple of days, and it was hard to return to it. Thing 7 has been the best lesson for me yet, but it is an embarrassment of riches. (An aside: As I typed this, I was wondering about the spelling of "embarrassment." Can you believe it took me this long to notice the spell check tool in Blogger? Sorry for all my previous misspellings. Oh, and it just told me I misspelled misspellings.) There are so many wonderful tools in Polly's post that might be useful in both my personal and professional lives.
The tools I am most interested in are those related to backup & file storage. This is something I've been meaning to look into for a long time, but just never seemed to get around to it. Since I am an archivist, you would think I would be diligent about backup, but that is not the case. A tool like Back Blaze will be a backup to my lax backup. I will have to talk to Polly to see how she likes it, although, truth be told, like everything these days, I have information overload. There are so many tools out there. If it works and Polly uses it, that's probably good enough for me.
A few thoughts on some of the other tool:
Hoot Suite: Hmm, I think I know someone who must use this or something like this. He has posts always and everywhere. Very useful, but be careful - using it may lead to the impression that you are not working at all but are spending all your time on social media. Especially true if you have contact with a lot of people that are not highly tech savvy, although they do use some social media. May be a lot more useful for a corporation trying to sell something or raise awareness. Of course, libraries also want to raise brand recognition, but at the same time don't want to appear TOO corporate, as it may turn people off or lead voters to believe we have plenty of money. A bit of a tightrope.
Reminder Tools: I am definitely going to have to play around with these. I have used Outlook Calendar in the past for this sort of thing, but I have found recent versions more cumbersome and clunky to use. Or maybe I'm just more used to the functioning of web-based tools now. I could definitely use some reminders, although a paper calendar works pretty darn well for organizing my days and seeing the big picture of my month at a glance.
join.me: This looks like something that could be very useful to CDLC Digital Collections. I watched the video, and it appears that you can share anything that is on this desktop during a call/online meeting using join.me We have a lot of calls from CDLC Digital Collections participants for help with troubleshooting CONTENTdm, our Digital Asset Management System. Using join.me means that a remote user can see exactly what we are talking about. It also means that users who are having a problem could share their desktop with us, and we could more quickly identify whether the problem is something going wrong with the software or the user doing something incorrectly. I really like the fact that you do not need to download any software with join.me I don't think I'm ready to have a remote user take control of my desktop, though! Maybe some of our project participants have a lot of faith in us, and would be willing to allow our staff to temporarily take control of their desktop to help with CONTENTdm.
Doodle: We use Doodle all the time to schedule meetings at CDLC. We have so many people from so many different institutions participating in CDLC committees and task forces that it can be almost impossible to figure out when people are free to meet. This tool gives you that information in a glance (as long as the people you poll respond). I highly recommend it.
I have several questions and concerns related to all of these tools. The first is how much disk space is taken up by those tools that require a download of some sort. With one or two tools, it is probably negligible, but if you really want to take advantage of the great things many of these things can do, it could greatly slow down your computer. My home computer has lots of space on it - 3 drives, in fact - yet I still often have to clean up the drives because they are almost full due to the downloads my kids do to play their games.
The second concern I have is privacy/security. Most tools have security safeguards. However, we have all read stories of big corporations whose records have been compromised. These corporations have a huge incentive to keep this from happening, and yet happen it did. What's to keep some tiny tool from being hacked, other than the fact that it is tiny. The trick might be to stick with the less well-known tools. And perhaps it's irrational, but just putting things like my passwords together in one document using one tool freaks me out a little. It would be very useful, however, so weighing the risks versus the benefits is something I do with every tool.
My final big concern is related to the obsolesence of these proprietary products. I am reluctant to rely too much on these tools that might be gone tomorrow. I think they are good as a help or a back-up, but if you are relying on them to do your day-to-day work, you may find yourself out of luck one day when you wake up and find that tool is gone. That's why I always advise people to put the photos and other documents they really want to save onto multiple media formats. Flickr is fine for distribution and back-up in case your disks fail, but it cannot be counted on to be there tomorrow. What happens to tools like Flickr is totally up to those running it. If they wake up bored with it, they could simply stop providing the service.
Paul Rapp had an excellent column, "Hey Hugh Get Offa McCloud," in the May 19, 2011 edition of Metroland ("The Capital Region's Alternative Newsweekly"). In this column, he basically says that by using tools where your information is in "the cloud," you lose a lot of control. You are at the mercy of how Google, Flickr, Facebook or whoever, maintain their servers. You also have to rely on being able to connect to the Internet, something that isn't always (or even often, in places like the Berkshires or the Adirondacks) guaranteed. He makes some very good points that warm the cockles of this archivist's heart.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Thing 6: Online Meetings and Webinars
Attending online meetings and webinars is old hat for me. Maybe because there are many fewer archivists than librarians, most archivists seem to be more familiar with these methods of getting additional training than librarians are. There are so few of us archivists that we often have to travel a distance to get in-person training on more advanced topics or to meet with one another.
I find webinars be a useful and easy way to gain knowledge. The most successful and enlightening webinar experiences for me have been those where several of us gather in a room to participate in the webinar. We usually gather together like this to spread the cost among many people. The Society of American Archivists offers their webinars for the same price to one location whether there is one person in the room or twenty. An unexpected benefit of this economically-motivated decision has been the engaging discussion in the room after the webinar is over. The webinars are usually short enough that people don't feel the need to rush off afterwards, and often there is discussion of what people liked, didn't like or learned in the webinar. Because of the medium and short format of webinars, people leading webinars often have to generalize. The discussion in a room after a webinar helps participants better understand the nuances of the topic.
I find Rose, the librarian at Maria's post on online meetings interesting. She said that she found it easier to ask questions in the online format than in a large meeting. When I have been in group webinar meetings, I have not found that to be true. People who often ask questions at in-person workshops do not ask them at webinars. I don't know why - maybe because they know there are LOTS of people in the class? Maybe because they don't know who else is in the class - there maybe some people prominent in the profession and the participants don't want to look dumb?
A difference between online and in-person training is the role of discussion between the participants. Last weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference meeting in Alexandria, Virginia. I ran into a former supervisor of mine who is now teaching both in-person and online courses at the iSchool at Drexel University. She said one of the hardest things to get used to was the etiquette of chat in online courses. Students would have side conversations in online courses in a way that they never would in-person. She did not want to squelch student interaction, which can be difficult to develop in online courses, but she was finding it extremely difficult to keep track of the conversation and conduct her lesson. She finally told her students that if they had a question that they wanted her to respond to right then - espcially on parts of the lesson that they were having difficulty understanding, they should type the question in the chat box in all caps. Otherwise, she ignores most of the chat during the class and reads it after the class is over so she can discuss it and incorporate the ideas in future lessons. I thought this was a good solution to the problem, but it also got me thinking about how many students might be missing the main focus of the lesson by getting too involved in side conversations through chat. In an in-person class, it is easier for the instructor to teach and pause for questions, making sure that everyone is getting the benefit of both the lecture and the discussion.
Online learning is great for the motivated learner, especially when limited to a specific topic. However, if the training is required for staff or something you really want your staff to learn, and they are not signing up of their own accord, you may want to stick to in-person instruction. A certain attorney I know, who shall remain nameless, does some of his continuing education online. He just turns on the computer, loads up the training, and then goes about other business. Although I would like to think that the library profession is more responsible than the law profession, this is probably a temptation for everyone who is required to learn something for which they did not take the initiative.
I have added Web Junction to my RSS feed, something I probably wouldn't have done without this class. So that in itself is probably worth the class's price of admission. I have taken advantage of Web Junction classes before, and I have found them very useful. Previously, I was only aware of classes that I received an email about.
I have never moderated a webinar. The tools look fairly easy to use, so Thing 6 is motivating me to take charge of a webinar or online meeting in the future. However, I only learned how to moderate a conference call this morning. First things first!
I find webinars be a useful and easy way to gain knowledge. The most successful and enlightening webinar experiences for me have been those where several of us gather in a room to participate in the webinar. We usually gather together like this to spread the cost among many people. The Society of American Archivists offers their webinars for the same price to one location whether there is one person in the room or twenty. An unexpected benefit of this economically-motivated decision has been the engaging discussion in the room after the webinar is over. The webinars are usually short enough that people don't feel the need to rush off afterwards, and often there is discussion of what people liked, didn't like or learned in the webinar. Because of the medium and short format of webinars, people leading webinars often have to generalize. The discussion in a room after a webinar helps participants better understand the nuances of the topic.
I find Rose, the librarian at Maria's post on online meetings interesting. She said that she found it easier to ask questions in the online format than in a large meeting. When I have been in group webinar meetings, I have not found that to be true. People who often ask questions at in-person workshops do not ask them at webinars. I don't know why - maybe because they know there are LOTS of people in the class? Maybe because they don't know who else is in the class - there maybe some people prominent in the profession and the participants don't want to look dumb?
A difference between online and in-person training is the role of discussion between the participants. Last weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference meeting in Alexandria, Virginia. I ran into a former supervisor of mine who is now teaching both in-person and online courses at the iSchool at Drexel University. She said one of the hardest things to get used to was the etiquette of chat in online courses. Students would have side conversations in online courses in a way that they never would in-person. She did not want to squelch student interaction, which can be difficult to develop in online courses, but she was finding it extremely difficult to keep track of the conversation and conduct her lesson. She finally told her students that if they had a question that they wanted her to respond to right then - espcially on parts of the lesson that they were having difficulty understanding, they should type the question in the chat box in all caps. Otherwise, she ignores most of the chat during the class and reads it after the class is over so she can discuss it and incorporate the ideas in future lessons. I thought this was a good solution to the problem, but it also got me thinking about how many students might be missing the main focus of the lesson by getting too involved in side conversations through chat. In an in-person class, it is easier for the instructor to teach and pause for questions, making sure that everyone is getting the benefit of both the lecture and the discussion.
Online learning is great for the motivated learner, especially when limited to a specific topic. However, if the training is required for staff or something you really want your staff to learn, and they are not signing up of their own accord, you may want to stick to in-person instruction. A certain attorney I know, who shall remain nameless, does some of his continuing education online. He just turns on the computer, loads up the training, and then goes about other business. Although I would like to think that the library profession is more responsible than the law profession, this is probably a temptation for everyone who is required to learn something for which they did not take the initiative.
I have added Web Junction to my RSS feed, something I probably wouldn't have done without this class. So that in itself is probably worth the class's price of admission. I have taken advantage of Web Junction classes before, and I have found them very useful. Previously, I was only aware of classes that I received an email about.
I have never moderated a webinar. The tools look fairly easy to use, so Thing 6 is motivating me to take charge of a webinar or online meeting in the future. However, I only learned how to moderate a conference call this morning. First things first!
Monday, May 2, 2011
Thing 4: Online Communities - Facebook Tidbits
After looking at a number of teens' Facebook pages for determining a proper approach to Internet safety programs, I was feeling negatively about the value of Facebook. Even if 96% of kids are using social media, like the video I discussed in my previous post implies, they appear to be using it mainly for the following sorts of banter:
"Justin Bieber ROXXX!"
"No, he Sux, like you."
and
"
"Justin Bieber ROXXX!"
"No, he Sux, like you."
and
"
Thing 4: Online Communities - Some Musings
The video Polly gave us to watch asks whether social media is a fad or a revolution. I would have to say neither, or maybe a little bit of both. People are excited about it because it is new and exciting, but even at this point, I am starting to see the novelty beginning to wear off. For instance, most of my Facebook friends are on much less frequently now than they were when I first joined.
However, people still use social media a lot, and I don't think it's going away. I think it's akin to cell phones. Remember when they first became affordable? How people who had them would use them ALL THE TIME to give a play-by-play? This one-side of a cell phone conversation I heard about 10 years ago while shopping was typical:
"I am walking down the sidewalk. I am going past Frank Adams. OK, now I am going into the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza. I am going to buy a book."
People don't (usually) do that anymore, yet they continue to use cell phones in their daily lives to do work, make live easier, and, yes, ocassionally annoy others on the train, at restaurants, and in the doctor's office. (Do you really have to tell your spouse, mother or whomever about what should be your private, personal, and sometimes graphic medical problems right now?) I think we are still in the early part of the romance with social media where we just can't get enough of it, but soon the bloom will wear off and we will move into a more solid and stable relationship with it like we have now with cell phones.
Back to the video. I know this video was made to sell something, so it's probably not fair to pick it apart, but several things about it really bugged me, so here goes. First of all, they put two facts together at the beginning of the video: 1) 50% of the world's population is under 30 & 2) 96% of Millenials are on Social Media. They put these two facts one right after the other, so it makes it sounds like these two go hand-in-hand - that 96% of people under 30 (are Millenials under 30?) are on social media. But I'm guessing the 96% of Millenials that quote refers to are Millenials living in the USA. A big chunk of that 50% of the world's population that is under 30 are scrounging just to get water and electricity. The richer countries tend to skew older.
The video also states that students who learn online do better than those who learn face-to-face. Who are they talking about, and what do they mean by "better?" Having just done some reading on standardized tests, I know that tests can easily be gamed by those that know the ropes. The jury is still out on whether those who score higher have learned more. I teach adults informally in face-to-face workshops, and I am involved in a PTA at a school with a lot of "at-risk" students. Although I don't have any empirical data, in both cases I think the face-to-face contact helps the students. In workshop evaluations, normally at least half of the participants state that what they liked best about the workshop was interacting with the instructor and other students in-person. Perhaps this is because many of them work in isolation and appreciate the fact that, for once, they are among others who understand their work. Maybe people who have more in-person camraderie at work would not have such a strong preference for in-person workshops.
With at-risk students, I cannot imagine having a whole education online. Perhaps some portion of it, but not all of it. The physical school and schedule gives structure to the students, and faculty and staff do so much more than just teach. They talk with parents, set up meetings with guidance counselors, listen to students' problems, line up social workers or other services as needed, identify learning disabilities, and so much more. My fear with "facts" like those stated in the video is that people wil be tempted to replace teachers with computers and software, and those children who are already on the edge will fall farther behind. Human interaction is an especially important part of learning in those vulnerable years of early adolescence.
That said, I was very interested in the many examples of ways that libraries are using social media. The book discussion over Facebook could be very attractive to people who can't get to the library at a particular time for a book group or who may be intimidated at first by long discussions of books. I can see this being a great tool for school librarians and a fun way to get students to recommend books to each other. Sometimes kids will be more forthcoming online than in person. Reading is often seen as nerdy, so kids don't often talk about it among their friends, but I know lots of kids are "closet readers," and this forum might be a good way to draw them out.
I can also see social media as a great tool for connecting staff members in libraries with long hours. Some staff members will see each other only rarely in libraries like this, and social media can help them connect. I do find, however, that people are often misinterpreted online. This is especially true for people that don't know each other well. A person's off-beat sense of humor may come off as simply rude online. It may be a good idea to come up with a continuing education course on writing for online communities.
Thanks, Polly, for pointing us to the Librarian In Black's blog post on Social Media Capital. This is a great practical article on things librarians should consider when entering the world of social media. She talks about policies, registering names, finding followers, finding mentions of your library on other sites, and more. Even if your library has no interest in officially using social media, this is a great article to read. Because, like it or not, every library has a presence on social media, and this article can help you figure out what that presence is. If you read just one article on Polly's list for "Thing 4," it should be this one!
However, people still use social media a lot, and I don't think it's going away. I think it's akin to cell phones. Remember when they first became affordable? How people who had them would use them ALL THE TIME to give a play-by-play? This one-side of a cell phone conversation I heard about 10 years ago while shopping was typical:
"I am walking down the sidewalk. I am going past Frank Adams. OK, now I am going into the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza. I am going to buy a book."
People don't (usually) do that anymore, yet they continue to use cell phones in their daily lives to do work, make live easier, and, yes, ocassionally annoy others on the train, at restaurants, and in the doctor's office. (Do you really have to tell your spouse, mother or whomever about what should be your private, personal, and sometimes graphic medical problems right now?) I think we are still in the early part of the romance with social media where we just can't get enough of it, but soon the bloom will wear off and we will move into a more solid and stable relationship with it like we have now with cell phones.
Back to the video. I know this video was made to sell something, so it's probably not fair to pick it apart, but several things about it really bugged me, so here goes. First of all, they put two facts together at the beginning of the video: 1) 50% of the world's population is under 30 & 2) 96% of Millenials are on Social Media. They put these two facts one right after the other, so it makes it sounds like these two go hand-in-hand - that 96% of people under 30 (are Millenials under 30?) are on social media. But I'm guessing the 96% of Millenials that quote refers to are Millenials living in the USA. A big chunk of that 50% of the world's population that is under 30 are scrounging just to get water and electricity. The richer countries tend to skew older.
The video also states that students who learn online do better than those who learn face-to-face. Who are they talking about, and what do they mean by "better?" Having just done some reading on standardized tests, I know that tests can easily be gamed by those that know the ropes. The jury is still out on whether those who score higher have learned more. I teach adults informally in face-to-face workshops, and I am involved in a PTA at a school with a lot of "at-risk" students. Although I don't have any empirical data, in both cases I think the face-to-face contact helps the students. In workshop evaluations, normally at least half of the participants state that what they liked best about the workshop was interacting with the instructor and other students in-person. Perhaps this is because many of them work in isolation and appreciate the fact that, for once, they are among others who understand their work. Maybe people who have more in-person camraderie at work would not have such a strong preference for in-person workshops.
With at-risk students, I cannot imagine having a whole education online. Perhaps some portion of it, but not all of it. The physical school and schedule gives structure to the students, and faculty and staff do so much more than just teach. They talk with parents, set up meetings with guidance counselors, listen to students' problems, line up social workers or other services as needed, identify learning disabilities, and so much more. My fear with "facts" like those stated in the video is that people wil be tempted to replace teachers with computers and software, and those children who are already on the edge will fall farther behind. Human interaction is an especially important part of learning in those vulnerable years of early adolescence.
That said, I was very interested in the many examples of ways that libraries are using social media. The book discussion over Facebook could be very attractive to people who can't get to the library at a particular time for a book group or who may be intimidated at first by long discussions of books. I can see this being a great tool for school librarians and a fun way to get students to recommend books to each other. Sometimes kids will be more forthcoming online than in person. Reading is often seen as nerdy, so kids don't often talk about it among their friends, but I know lots of kids are "closet readers," and this forum might be a good way to draw them out.
I can also see social media as a great tool for connecting staff members in libraries with long hours. Some staff members will see each other only rarely in libraries like this, and social media can help them connect. I do find, however, that people are often misinterpreted online. This is especially true for people that don't know each other well. A person's off-beat sense of humor may come off as simply rude online. It may be a good idea to come up with a continuing education course on writing for online communities.
Thanks, Polly, for pointing us to the Librarian In Black's blog post on Social Media Capital. This is a great practical article on things librarians should consider when entering the world of social media. She talks about policies, registering names, finding followers, finding mentions of your library on other sites, and more. Even if your library has no interest in officially using social media, this is a great article to read. Because, like it or not, every library has a presence on social media, and this article can help you figure out what that presence is. If you read just one article on Polly's list for "Thing 4," it should be this one!
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