Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Looking forward to induction week

We had a meeting of local business librarians today to talk about our plans for induction. At this time of year induction week starts to loom large on the horizon, so it was a good opportunity to compare notes and share ideas. It was also an excellent excuse to spend a morning in our wonderfully air-conditioned meeting room.

Somehow I managed to drag blogs and RSS feeds into it towards the end. So hello to anyone who may be reading this blog as a result!

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

biz/ed podcasts

While I'm on the subject of podcasts I ought to mention biz/ed's excellent weekly series on business issues currently In the News. The latest one (at the time of writing this) looks at whether Airbus or Boeing have made better strategic decisions about the way their market is going.

HBR Podcasts

I see Harvard Business Online are now offering a free bi-weekly podcast called IdeaCast.

My favourite was Episode Four's segment on how to make really great mistakes. I hope this blog is the kind of mistake they're talking about!

Monday, July 17, 2006

Courses: Planning and Designing Technology-rich Learning Spaces

The most inspiring part of this one day JISC course was the tour of the University of Warwick’s Learning Grid. Not just for the flexible layout, although that was an excellent example of it's kind, with tables and chairs, whiteboards and screens that could be positioned to suit whoever was using the space. Not just for the technology-rich environment, with desktop pc’s, space and power for laptops, smartboards, plasma screens and bookable presentation rooms.

For me the highlight was all this plus a deliberate move away from the traditional rules beginning with ‘NO…’! That gave it a very different atmosphere to the usual library or IT resource centre, and it must be even more so in term time.

Most student support is provided by student helpers, rather than librarians or IT staff, so it's largely run by and for students. The emphasis is very firmly on being positive and finding solutions. For example, if the Grid is getting close to full capacity then staff might suggest using the nearby café – also within the wireless network area - or might help negotiate moving furniture around to create a better use of space.

Talking of café’s, cold food and hot and cold drinks are allowed. It seems that many students go to the traditional library (which is still available, and hasn't been replaced by the Learning Grid) to borrow books, then bring the books plus drinks and sandwiches to the Grid and settle in for the whole day. As well as food, talking is allowed. Mobile phones are allowed. Moving the furniture is allowed. Accessing audio and video content via internet is allowed, with or without headphones. Hot food is just about the only thing not allowed, not for worries about it being dropped on the books or equipment, but simply because of the smell that tends to linger. Basically pretty much anything is allowed that helps people to get on with their work the way they want to.

I know it wouldn't be everyone's idea of what a library should be, but I liked it, and it seems like a lot of students do too.

You can take an online tour to see what it's like.

The most uninspiring part of the day? The technology-rich, laptop friendly Virgin train breaking down in Basingstoke on the way home, leaving us going nowhere, in a train with no air-con and doors that wouldn't open (thankfully only briefly) on one of the hottest days of the year!

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Podcasting

I suppose it's because CW and I are doing quite similar jobs, in academic libraries on opposite sides of the planet, but it's remarkable how often she blogs about something that I'm trying to get to grips with. We'd decided that July was going to be the month we investigated the possibilities of podcasts, and look what today's entry is! I really ought to comment more often but it might be a bit embarrassing to keep popping up saying, "ooh yes, me too!"

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Elit 2006 - light bulb

I thought I'd highlight a few of the 'light bulb moments' from Elit 2006 but then I realised that there was really only one key theme that cropped up in several different sessions.

eliteracy is obviously a key concern of librarians but it is not something that librarians alone can address. It does not fall neatly into any one group's remit. It crosses the boundaries of library, IT, learning technologists, study skills tutors, and lecturers. We all have a tendency to concentrate on and so sometimes to over-estimate the importance of the bit of the process that we know best. We need to get over this and learn to work together in a much more joined up fashion, keeping an appropriate balance between IT skills, information retrieval skills, research skills, thinking skills, skills in analysis, argument and presentation. Someone needs to take a strategic overview and connect up the pieces. This really has to be led by academic staff. When I can do a library training session that fits into a structured course that is looking at all aspects of eliteracy, I find it works much better than if I do a session that is just library training in isolation from the rest of the learning process.

Monday, July 03, 2006

work/life life/work

I wasn't sure where to put this blog entry. It's about writing so maybe it should go on my writing group blog, but it's about work, so perhaps it should go on my work blog. Sometimes life is not so neatly compartmentalised!

I've found that creative writing and ordinary, everyday writing are more closely related than you might think. Since I've been doing writing exercises (fiction and non-fiction) I've found it easier to write anything. I'm not so daunted by word counts. I have an idea how much I can convey in 500 or 1000 words and what kind of structures work. I've some experience of how to write differently when the words are to be spoken aloud, which helped in writing the same paper for delivery at a conference and for subsequent submission for publication.

Having to read out my writing group exercises - something I hated doing at first - has helped to get me used to the idea of public speaking to a wider audience.

I'm pretty sure that blogging contributes to this as well. It's a form of regular writing exercise that helps me focus on how to express thoughts and record events in a reasonably concise format.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

eLit 2006 - black hat

I got back from the eLit 2006 conference yesterday and am trying to get some thoughts down in writing as soon as possible. I know that if I go back to my scribbled notes in a week's time I'll end up frowning at them, wondering what on earth I meant. After two or three weeks, if I haven't followed up an idea and done something about it then, realistically, I probably won't ever get around to it. After a conference or training session it's easy enough to be enthusiastic and full of ideas, but doing something about it is another thing.

I want to sort out which of all the many ideas that were discussed would be the most practical to take forward. I know that some, if not most, would involve collaboration with others who have the necessary skills to enable things to actually happen and won't be practical without that. I know that my time is limited and if I try to do too much I'll risk failing to complete anything. I think I ought to set myself a deadline of one month to prioritise things I want to take forward and actually do something about them.

Having blogged that thought, of course it's now date stamped and I can't easily wriggle out of it!

eLit 2006 - yellow hat

eLit 2006 was a very positive experience. It's encouraging to know that I'm part of a profession that can put on events like this where there are not just librarians present but a mix of different people who all have an interest in e-literacy issues. It's good that we can look beyond the boundaries of our traditional roles and think about new ways of working for everyones benefit.

The experience of presenting a paper has helped me extend the boundaries of my comfort zone. I can't say "I couldn't do that" any more, because now I've done it!

There were a huge number of ideas generated by the various sessions, as well as by conversations over breakfast, lunch and dinner. It would be good to make use of some of these ideas. I need to set aside some time at work in the next couple of weeks to go through my notes and extract the best ideas, and to share them with colleagues.

eLit 2006 - green hat

At times during eLit 2006 you could have imagined you were at a creative thinking conference. I suppose the theme of digital literacy tends to attract those who are interested in doing innovative things with all the new technologies that are now available, but people were also finding new ways to use old tools and technologies. Presentations included using mind mapping software to convey complex information previously held in inch thick instruction manuals; using blogs and wikis for collaborative work; providing students with furniture on wheels to organise their own learning spaces; using online discussion lists to encourage cross-gender academic debate in remote areas of the Middle East; using web-based survey tools to gather research data, and using a variety of social networking software in all kinds of ways.

At one point a small light bulb lit up for me when a lecturer expressed the hope that librarians would help the academic staff they work with to keep up with the potential uses of all the new developments that are going on, and how they might be relevant for research and for teaching. I think I could be doing a lot more in this area.

Perhaps we could produce a series of podcasts or a wiki covering how various new tools and technologies could contribute to teaching and learning and research? We know that information like this is more useful if it can be provided at the right time, when it's most relevant to people, rather than en-block in a training session. Podcasting or wiki would suit the rapid pace of change and might be a good way to enable people to access what they want, when they want it.

This is all green hat, blue sky type thinking of course, so I don't have to worry about who 'we' might be or any other practicalities at the moment!

eLit 2006 - white hat

There were around 80 delegates to the eLit 2006 conference from I think I counted 15 countries. They were a mix of librarians, IT, learning support and academic staff, although librarians easily outnumbered the rest. Quite a high proportion of the delegates were also involved in presenting in some way which gave it a strong sense of being a participative event.

Those presenting papers were also invited to submit them for publication in a joint issue of the journals Italics and JeLit, soon to be renamed Journal of Digital Literacy, which will give me the chance of seeing what I missed in the parallel sessions I didn't manage to get to.

eLit 2006 - red hat

Affective reaction and emotion was a theme that came up in the panel discussion and Q&A session at the end of the eLit 2006 conference. It was suggested that sometimes we address cognitive development in isolation, not giving enough attention to how people feel about issues like e-literacy. I found this interesting as one of the issues in the paper I was involved in presenting was that of library anxiety and how this needs to be addressed before we can hope to develop information skills.

In personal terms I had my own anxiety to deal with as I was, along with a colleague, presenting my first paper at an external conference. I had originally said that I was happy to be involved in writing the paper but didn't want to do much, if any, of the speaking. Eventually I decided that it would be good for me to step out of my comfort zone far enough to do some of the actual presenting. It was scary to find myself at the front of a room full of expectant looking conference delegates, but once we got started I realised that it was actually quite fun to have people's attention for a while to talk about a subject that I'm interested in. I was very glad I was not on my own up there though, so I must thank my co-presenter for helping to make it a slightly less stressful and much more enjoyable experience than I'd anticipated it might be!

The atmosphere of the conference overall was one of active involvement and sharing of experience. Some difficult questions were raised and no easy answers were forthcoming, but there was lots of energy going into trying to find ways forward. One presentation summed this up for me. It started as a very proper academic research paper, describing methodology and analysis and so on, but as the presenter got involved in talking about their work with students it was like a light had been switched on, the tone of voice changed, and suddenly you could see and hear the enthusiasm.

eLit 2006 - blue hat

Last night I got back from the eLit 2006 conference in Loughborough with so much to think about that I couldn't possibly do it justice in a single blog posting. So what I thought I'd do is a series of postings based on a Six Thinking Hats structure. This one is the 'blue hat' posting, concerned with the process of how I'm going to record my reflections.

I think this structure will allow me to present a rounded view of my experience of the last three days. I'll try to write something with each one of the hats on, and it will be interesting to see which I find most comfortable!