29 January 2012
Screencast: how to store and search your twitter account
Here's a link to the screencast I made for class this week. I can't figure out how to embed the file in a blog post--does anyone know how to make that work?
Week 3: Reading Reflection
This article caught my eye because it seemed like something that would be assigned for SI 500. It draws some interesting--if well-traveled--parallels between the current tech/data boom and other historical events like the invention of printing. It also suggests that many of the perceived problems with contemporary information practices are defined and exaggerated by those in the information profession, and asserts a need to verify the existence and importance of these problems before mounting efforts to repair them. I do not like the accusatory tone the article takes on this point, but I agree that in some cases we may tend to spot problems that are only momentary and will be resolved by the simple fact that humans are adaptable creatures. The authors seem to agree with this, tracing problems of information overload from antiquity through the present, not as an escalating problem but as an ongoing and ever-changing constant.
Buschman, John. "Information Literacy, 'New' Literacies, and Literacy." The Library Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 95-118.
This article takes a look at shifting approaches to information literacy among the academic community. In particular, this includes the exposure of privileged, academic forms of literacy and attention to emerging and marginalized texts and readers. There is also a strong emphasis on distancing the connotation of "information literacy" from what Buschman sees as the historic form--the actual ability to read text. I think this is a smart move, especially since both the old-fashioned and the new-fangled forms of literacy are facing plenty of problems right now. And the fact that a distressing number of Americans can't read at all is a separate problem from the fact that some other Americans can't successfully navigate a web search. By separating the two, there is a better chance that real problems can be isolated and addressed.
This article takes a look at shifting approaches to information literacy among the academic community. In particular, this includes the exposure of privileged, academic forms of literacy and attention to emerging and marginalized texts and readers. There is also a strong emphasis on distancing the connotation of "information literacy" from what Buschman sees as the historic form--the actual ability to read text. I think this is a smart move, especially since both the old-fashioned and the new-fangled forms of literacy are facing plenty of problems right now. And the fact that a distressing number of Americans can't read at all is a separate problem from the fact that some other Americans can't successfully navigate a web search. By separating the two, there is a better chance that real problems can be isolated and addressed.
Lorenzo, George, and Charles Dziuban. "Ensuring the Net Generation is Net Savvy." ELI PAPER 2: 2006. September 2006.
This paper is basically an explication of challenges in information literacy faced by people--namely college students--who are so accustomed to having web access that they don't think about how they make use of it. Most of it is familiar, and it's the sort of topic that gets thrown around at SI on a daily basis, but it's nice to have it all laid out in one place. Some of the ideas in the article definitely show the wear and tear of six years, but most of it seems relevant to the current situation.
Week 3: Class Reflection
A concept that really struck me in class last week was the separation between teaching people who are your students versus teaching people who are you peers. The former is a pretty well-explored subject, so I'll leave that out for the moment, but the latter is a situation that comes up a lot without necessarily being discussed, or at not least anywhere I can hear.
With a few exceptions (tutoring jobs), everyone I've ever formally or academically taught anything to has been either my peer or, in some cases, my superior. In the case of the latter it is usually a matter of showing a boss or professor how to use a piece of technology they haven't encountered before. This sort of instruction tends to be fairly quick and more or less informal--they look over my shoulder while I click through whatever it is they need to understand, and then I go back to whatever I was doing and they go on to use the tool I've just explained to them.
When it comes to teaching peers, though, I feel like I have a deeper experience. Being the sole English major in a social circle packed with engineers meant that I spent a good portion of undergrad helping people patch up papers and lab reports, often from scraps that could only very loosely be defined as coherent writing. I always demanded that we go over the piece together, rather than just fixing it myself, so that they could see why I made the changes I did, and maybe learn how to do it for next time. I don't mean to make my friends sound illiterate--they were all very intelligent people, and I needed their help just as often as they needed mine. They just weren't writers. We were peers, more or less alike in age and experience and status, but I had a skill set that most of them lacked completely.
Despite the lingering awe-of-the-reference desk that some library patrons seem to exhibit, it seems to me that most of them see librarians as some hybrid of teacher and peer. Especially in public libraries, our jobs are likely bounded by similar hours and similar wages to a great number of our patrons. Some classes have encouraged me to approach library customer service in an open, direct manner that suggests a peer-type relationship to the patron, while others have suggested a more directly teacher-like strategy. My personality is more suited to the former option, and so I am thinking about my college friends and their lab reports--when I helped them edit their papers, they helped me write code for my blog, or figure out the calculus for a particularly brutal astronomy class. We traded.
So what am I trading with library patrons when I help them? The only thing I can think of is that all experience of this type is helpful--the more people I help, the more resources I am familiar with and the more able I am to interpret the kinds of questions that patrons ask. Do you think there's something else, or is it mostly a one-way exchange?
With a few exceptions (tutoring jobs), everyone I've ever formally or academically taught anything to has been either my peer or, in some cases, my superior. In the case of the latter it is usually a matter of showing a boss or professor how to use a piece of technology they haven't encountered before. This sort of instruction tends to be fairly quick and more or less informal--they look over my shoulder while I click through whatever it is they need to understand, and then I go back to whatever I was doing and they go on to use the tool I've just explained to them.
When it comes to teaching peers, though, I feel like I have a deeper experience. Being the sole English major in a social circle packed with engineers meant that I spent a good portion of undergrad helping people patch up papers and lab reports, often from scraps that could only very loosely be defined as coherent writing. I always demanded that we go over the piece together, rather than just fixing it myself, so that they could see why I made the changes I did, and maybe learn how to do it for next time. I don't mean to make my friends sound illiterate--they were all very intelligent people, and I needed their help just as often as they needed mine. They just weren't writers. We were peers, more or less alike in age and experience and status, but I had a skill set that most of them lacked completely.
Despite the lingering awe-of-the-reference desk that some library patrons seem to exhibit, it seems to me that most of them see librarians as some hybrid of teacher and peer. Especially in public libraries, our jobs are likely bounded by similar hours and similar wages to a great number of our patrons. Some classes have encouraged me to approach library customer service in an open, direct manner that suggests a peer-type relationship to the patron, while others have suggested a more directly teacher-like strategy. My personality is more suited to the former option, and so I am thinking about my college friends and their lab reports--when I helped them edit their papers, they helped me write code for my blog, or figure out the calculus for a particularly brutal astronomy class. We traded.
So what am I trading with library patrons when I help them? The only thing I can think of is that all experience of this type is helpful--the more people I help, the more resources I am familiar with and the more able I am to interpret the kinds of questions that patrons ask. Do you think there's something else, or is it mostly a one-way exchange?
23 January 2012
Week 2: Perceptions of Intelligence
In the last class we discussed perceptions of intelligence, which can be "fixed" or "flexible." Fixed apparently means that one is convinced one is either clever or not, and anything that doesn't fit into your skill set immediately is either dismissed as uninteresting or impossible. Flexible means you learn from failures and are open to new and uncomfortable experiences. Well, it's pretty obvious which one the vocabulary wants you to strive for.
We were asked to raise our hands based on which one we think we are. I raised my hand for the "fixed" category, but I was hoping to be called on. I'm kind of uncomfortable with this dichotomy--but maybe I've misunderstood it. My reaction was "That's ridiculous... not being naturally good at something doesn't make me either doubt my own intelligence or doubt the validity of the task." I can't sing for beans, but I love listening to other people do it. I have no athletic ability, but physical feats are still impressive. I'm way too busy and lazy to make my own clothes (even though I technically know how), but I deeply envy people who have the time and patience. So... did I just misunderstand something, or is this dichotomy extremely reductive?
Note: sorry this post is up so late, I accidentally left it as a draft last week!
We were asked to raise our hands based on which one we think we are. I raised my hand for the "fixed" category, but I was hoping to be called on. I'm kind of uncomfortable with this dichotomy--but maybe I've misunderstood it. My reaction was "That's ridiculous... not being naturally good at something doesn't make me either doubt my own intelligence or doubt the validity of the task." I can't sing for beans, but I love listening to other people do it. I have no athletic ability, but physical feats are still impressive. I'm way too busy and lazy to make my own clothes (even though I technically know how), but I deeply envy people who have the time and patience. So... did I just misunderstand something, or is this dichotomy extremely reductive?
Note: sorry this post is up so late, I accidentally left it as a draft last week!
22 January 2012
Week 2 Reflection
In our first class we discussed the importance of teaching in libraries, and how the place of the librarian has in many cases shifted from behind the reference desk to more mobile, personal interactions. My entire interest in the field hinges on this shift--before I decided to become a librarian, I was planning on being a professor. I love teaching, and I'm starting to think I am going to like teaching as a librarian more than I'd like teaching as a professor. Of course, I'm aiming for a combination of different types of teaching--college-level courses on literature (if I'm as lucky as my old boss at the Fales Library) as well as day-to-day tasks like showing patrons how to find the resources they need.
The text on creating one-shot library workshops seems like a useful one, though it's a bit difficult to gauge from just one chapter. Some of the language rubbed me the wrong way, especially the assertions that certain things will automatically go wrong, and that people won't be able to get along peacefully--I'm sure the author only means to cover worst-case scenarios, but this sort of pessimism always gets to me (being constantly told "you're going to have team conflicts" in 501 while my team got along fantastically didn't work for me either). There seems to be an assumption that the hypothetical team members have never worked together before, which seems unlikely to me. Most libraries don't have a big enough staff for people in the same department to be total strangers to one another.
That said, the ADDIE method seems like a solid guideline for this sort of project, and probably for most other types of project. The emphasis on background analysis is key, since in many cases this sort of workshop would be initiated simply by pinpointing a needed piece of instruction. Analyzing the situation will allow the workshop-creator to see the problem in context, and possibly identify related topics that can be incorporated into the lesson plan. The production of a workshop template that can be modified for future use and shared between different instructors is another excellent point, and justifies the rather extensive amount of time needed to go through the ADDIE process. In the case of the online tutorials mentioned in Johnston, creating a high-quality initial product is essential, as it will be used more or less without oversight by a librarian or other instructor.
Overall, I think the One-Shot reading does a lot to acknowledge the time and budget constraints that librarians attempting to implement these methods, but doesn't necessarily give solutions to these limitations. Perhaps the rest of the book provides strategies for working around a paucity of resources as well as concrete examples of how to implement the very appealing strategies presented in this excerpt.
The text on creating one-shot library workshops seems like a useful one, though it's a bit difficult to gauge from just one chapter. Some of the language rubbed me the wrong way, especially the assertions that certain things will automatically go wrong, and that people won't be able to get along peacefully--I'm sure the author only means to cover worst-case scenarios, but this sort of pessimism always gets to me (being constantly told "you're going to have team conflicts" in 501 while my team got along fantastically didn't work for me either). There seems to be an assumption that the hypothetical team members have never worked together before, which seems unlikely to me. Most libraries don't have a big enough staff for people in the same department to be total strangers to one another.
That said, the ADDIE method seems like a solid guideline for this sort of project, and probably for most other types of project. The emphasis on background analysis is key, since in many cases this sort of workshop would be initiated simply by pinpointing a needed piece of instruction. Analyzing the situation will allow the workshop-creator to see the problem in context, and possibly identify related topics that can be incorporated into the lesson plan. The production of a workshop template that can be modified for future use and shared between different instructors is another excellent point, and justifies the rather extensive amount of time needed to go through the ADDIE process. In the case of the online tutorials mentioned in Johnston, creating a high-quality initial product is essential, as it will be used more or less without oversight by a librarian or other instructor.
Overall, I think the One-Shot reading does a lot to acknowledge the time and budget constraints that librarians attempting to implement these methods, but doesn't necessarily give solutions to these limitations. Perhaps the rest of the book provides strategies for working around a paucity of resources as well as concrete examples of how to implement the very appealing strategies presented in this excerpt.
08 January 2012
Week 1 Reflection
This post (and others in the future) consists of reflections on sections of the book How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, which can be found here.
Chapter 1
The idea that teachers need to pay attention to the preexisting notions students bring to the classroom is extremely important, and not just in the case of small children who may or may not know that the Earth goes around the Sun. The (wonderful, beautiful, inspiring, irreplaceable, and potentially incredibly dangerous) advent of the internet means that all sorts of information is available to anyone with web access and a bit of curiosity. A well-educated person knows that not all the information is valid, and has a general idea of how to figure out what is fact (or at least useful opinion) and what is random raving, but young students and adults who haven't learned the kind of skepticism that comes as second nature to academics of all stripes can easily end up with information that is at best confusing and at worst dead wrong. When taking a student's preconceived notions into account, a teacher's job is not only to repair faulty ideas but to impart the methodology for evaluating ideas and their sources at all times. The ability to critique not only ideas suggested by texts or other people but one's own ideas is a critical skill for being a consumer of information in any context.
From my experience, I feel like schools focus on citing sources more than vetting them--I have sat through at least two anti-plagiarism lectures per year since I started college in 2004 (not to mention all the threats and stern faces they applied to the topic in high school), but only a handful of instructors have offered strategies for choosing and evaluating research materials. This aligns with the book's proposition that current educational methods are too focused on assignment performance rather than actual learning. A student who is writing a paper based on his or her own conclusions and gathered information is far less likely to plagiarize than one who is trying to construct a "perfect" answer to a pre-set question (producing the paper he or she thinks an instructor wants to see).
One of the most important roles that librarians can fill is picking up where teachers fail and presenting students with the means to perform thorough and effective research, both in academics and areas of personal interest. Unfortunately, limited time and resources mean that librarians often do not have time to impart this knowledge, even if students have time to hear it. In my high school experience, school librarians were mostly called in to reinforce the endless anti-plagiarism spiel and to point students at a small handful of resources that were quickly discarded by anyone writing something deeper than a ninth grade term paper. In college, they were so busy dealing with circulation issues and explaining MLA citations to confused undergrads that they didn't do much beyond answer specific questions. I'm not sure what the solution to this is, seeing as budgets and time aren't going to magically multiply any time soon, but I think increased communication between teachers/professors and librarians is probably the key.
My last thought on this chapter is that I must have had a much better (high school) education than it felt like I was getting, at least compared to the educational styles that this book is critiquing. It still bored the heck out of me on a regular basis, but at least I know they were trying?
Chapter 2
This chapter focuses on the way that experts in a given subject approach problems within their field, as opposed to the methods used by novices in the same field. The fact that expertise on a topic does not confer the ability to teach that subject is one of the most prominent points, and one that I think deserves further discussion. The last tech class I took was taught by a professor whose ability to clearly (and humorously) explain the very basic programming concepts he was teaching made a somewhat startling contrast to his seriously impressive CV. Part of his advantage, he explained, is that he is not a natural programmer--he is talented and has many years of experience, but he came to the field because it was fascinating, not because it was intuitive for him, so he learned it in a way that was probably much like the simple, systematic way he taught it to us. He wasn't trying to teach us to be experts, but to think like experts--using a set of basic tools and strategies to approach problems in context, rather than individually.
I've found throughout my education that the most important quality in an instructor is a somewhat unacademic enthusiasm for a subject--having an emotional response to a topic keeps people a bit off balance, causing them to constantly reevaluate their position. Being able to observe an instructor's shifting thought processes is one of the best learning tools I've ever found, because it allows me to mirror and to reform those processes in my own mind. Sometimes my conclusions are the same, and sometimes they're different, but an expert who can make his or her own cognition transparent has a much better chance of actually teaching a novice than one who cannot reveal the way that he or she comes to conclusions. For this reason, I have a particular love for lecture-style classes, but only with a teacher whose lecture has this sort of openness. It is similar to the function of a seminar class, where different people's thoughts and opinions combine to bring the group as a whole to a new perspective.
Where do librarians fit into this? Well, as librarians, our primary enthusiasm is for information (at least in theory). By drawing students/patrons into our methods for finding information, we can show them how to think like an information-gathering professional in a personal, tailored way. Like the programming professor above, we can show people how to approach research as a set of strategies and methods applicable to any situation, rather than a means for finding the quickest, simplest answer to one specific problem.
Chapter 1
The idea that teachers need to pay attention to the preexisting notions students bring to the classroom is extremely important, and not just in the case of small children who may or may not know that the Earth goes around the Sun. The (wonderful, beautiful, inspiring, irreplaceable, and potentially incredibly dangerous) advent of the internet means that all sorts of information is available to anyone with web access and a bit of curiosity. A well-educated person knows that not all the information is valid, and has a general idea of how to figure out what is fact (or at least useful opinion) and what is random raving, but young students and adults who haven't learned the kind of skepticism that comes as second nature to academics of all stripes can easily end up with information that is at best confusing and at worst dead wrong. When taking a student's preconceived notions into account, a teacher's job is not only to repair faulty ideas but to impart the methodology for evaluating ideas and their sources at all times. The ability to critique not only ideas suggested by texts or other people but one's own ideas is a critical skill for being a consumer of information in any context.
From my experience, I feel like schools focus on citing sources more than vetting them--I have sat through at least two anti-plagiarism lectures per year since I started college in 2004 (not to mention all the threats and stern faces they applied to the topic in high school), but only a handful of instructors have offered strategies for choosing and evaluating research materials. This aligns with the book's proposition that current educational methods are too focused on assignment performance rather than actual learning. A student who is writing a paper based on his or her own conclusions and gathered information is far less likely to plagiarize than one who is trying to construct a "perfect" answer to a pre-set question (producing the paper he or she thinks an instructor wants to see).
One of the most important roles that librarians can fill is picking up where teachers fail and presenting students with the means to perform thorough and effective research, both in academics and areas of personal interest. Unfortunately, limited time and resources mean that librarians often do not have time to impart this knowledge, even if students have time to hear it. In my high school experience, school librarians were mostly called in to reinforce the endless anti-plagiarism spiel and to point students at a small handful of resources that were quickly discarded by anyone writing something deeper than a ninth grade term paper. In college, they were so busy dealing with circulation issues and explaining MLA citations to confused undergrads that they didn't do much beyond answer specific questions. I'm not sure what the solution to this is, seeing as budgets and time aren't going to magically multiply any time soon, but I think increased communication between teachers/professors and librarians is probably the key.
My last thought on this chapter is that I must have had a much better (high school) education than it felt like I was getting, at least compared to the educational styles that this book is critiquing. It still bored the heck out of me on a regular basis, but at least I know they were trying?
Chapter 2
This chapter focuses on the way that experts in a given subject approach problems within their field, as opposed to the methods used by novices in the same field. The fact that expertise on a topic does not confer the ability to teach that subject is one of the most prominent points, and one that I think deserves further discussion. The last tech class I took was taught by a professor whose ability to clearly (and humorously) explain the very basic programming concepts he was teaching made a somewhat startling contrast to his seriously impressive CV. Part of his advantage, he explained, is that he is not a natural programmer--he is talented and has many years of experience, but he came to the field because it was fascinating, not because it was intuitive for him, so he learned it in a way that was probably much like the simple, systematic way he taught it to us. He wasn't trying to teach us to be experts, but to think like experts--using a set of basic tools and strategies to approach problems in context, rather than individually.
I've found throughout my education that the most important quality in an instructor is a somewhat unacademic enthusiasm for a subject--having an emotional response to a topic keeps people a bit off balance, causing them to constantly reevaluate their position. Being able to observe an instructor's shifting thought processes is one of the best learning tools I've ever found, because it allows me to mirror and to reform those processes in my own mind. Sometimes my conclusions are the same, and sometimes they're different, but an expert who can make his or her own cognition transparent has a much better chance of actually teaching a novice than one who cannot reveal the way that he or she comes to conclusions. For this reason, I have a particular love for lecture-style classes, but only with a teacher whose lecture has this sort of openness. It is similar to the function of a seminar class, where different people's thoughts and opinions combine to bring the group as a whole to a new perspective.
Where do librarians fit into this? Well, as librarians, our primary enthusiasm is for information (at least in theory). By drawing students/patrons into our methods for finding information, we can show them how to think like an information-gathering professional in a personal, tailored way. Like the programming professor above, we can show people how to approach research as a set of strategies and methods applicable to any situation, rather than a means for finding the quickest, simplest answer to one specific problem.
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