IM (#21)

IM me, baby! Or not. Or maybe.

Hey, I know all the kids are IMing and that IM is replacing email as their communication tool of choice. My initial reaction to Thing 21 was that I’m just not into IM, don’t want to do it (don’t want to Twitter either). Since I did not have the time to post yesterday – or perhaps couldn’t work up the energy to write about IM, truth be told – I’ve been doing some more thinking. And, in no particular order, here are some thoughts.

1. I IMed back in graduate school when you had to know Unix to do it and there wasn’t an IM slang dictionary (a friend and I had our own slang, though, including a way to say “someone’s walked up to the desk and I have to help them; back in a few minutes). It was great at the time – a good way to chat with a friend when you both happened to be online and other communication tools weren’t feasable. I suppose I stopped doing it so much when a) I had a full-time job and more to do and b) GUI interfaces took over and I didn’t have Unix windows open so much.
2. I use text chat a lot in my teaching. I teach in a graduate program that uses voice-over technology (my voice is broadcast to my students in real-time) combined with a chat room where my students can chat (send written messages) with me and each other. I’m actually quite proficient at this form of communication – I can type fast, I know the abbreviations, I can read fast and, most importantly for my work, I can follow multiple conversations at one time (and one a good day, lecture too!). It’s IM with 25 people at a time and it serves a professional purpose.
3. My graduate students and I have been having a conversation about small group work in online classrooms – whether it works (or, the better question might be, for who does it work?), when to use it and how to best structure it. One interesting suggestion from a student was to foster small discussions through whispering (in our context, one person talking to another) rather than small groups, as it is easier to get coordinated and stay on topic where there are only two people. Essentially, they’d rather IM than have small group discussions, at least in the online environment. The article that Mary pointed us to about IMing in the classroom dovetails into that, so I’m having a nice confluence of work and Learning 2.0 this week.  
4. Many reference libraries offer IM-based reference service, something I discuss with students in my reference course. I even have an assignment where they use and analyze an e-reference service.

So, I’m neither oblivious nor incapable. I’m just not interested in IM’ing for personal communications. Does that make me unhip or in denial (or something worse)?

Can I Read that Podcast? (Thing #20)

I do love my iPod – it has my relaxing music for airplane travel (ah, my traveling days are so much better with music) and my upbeat music for working out. I wish I could listen to it more, but with two small kids I usually need my ears available to listen for trouble.

If I had more time for listening, I would definitely be downloading NPR. So many great programs! I did some browsing and found some radio favorites, like Whad’ya Know?, as well as some new things, like In Character. The Podcast Directory is also full of fun stuff, like Grammar Girl.

Once I found Grammar Girl and realized I could add it to my feedreader, where I check my RSS feeds daily (rather than my iPod, which I update infrequently), I started to poke around the site a little more. When I found the Grammar Girl written transcript I was in heaven – I’d much rather read it than hear it (I did listen to one five minute clip, which I could concentrate on for oh, three minutes). Now I’ve added a bunch of podcasts to my feedreader, where I can either read the transcript or listen to the podcast on the computer, whichever I feel like at the time. 

My excitement over the written transcripts of what is supposed to be an auditory experience was a good reminder of the power of learning styles – just as I am print oriented, many of my students are auditory oriented and learn better from the spoken word.

Side note: A great use for podcasting are feeds to help people learn languages. The Podcast Directory has lots of programs on different languages. These would be a great supplement to classroom instruction.

YouTube (Thing #19)

I’ve been a YouTube fan for a while. I don’t spend much time surfing the site for fun, but I love the educational uses people have found for it. Although I am strong print oriented, I recognize that many people are visually/aurally oriented. Just as I’d much rather read my news, others would much prefer to see or hear it.

Libraries have started to use YouTube for publicity. There are serious videos like Welcome to Jonkoping University Library and then more entertaining ones like Tour the Library  and The L-Team.

A few libraries are starting to integrate videos with their teaching, like this film noir piece that is part of an orientation program: Library Mystery Tour 2007. It’s creative and engaging to an audience of 18-19 year olds.

The “…in Plain English” videos on GoogleDocs and Del.icio.us that Mary pointed us to are great examples of educational videos. They are short, clear and fun to watch. If only libraries could do the same! There is enormous potential for short research tutorials in this format.

YouTube can also be used to engage users by letting them create videos about the library. Check out Common Misconceptions about the Eden Prairie Library, which was submitted as part of a teen contest.

And, finally, I have to link to two videos of IT humor (Introducing Le Book) and library humor (March of the Librarians).

Google Docs

I have mixed feelings about Google docs at the moment. On the one hand, I see its potential to ease collaboration, especially in our department of four people. Instead of emailing everyone a copy of a document, such as our Ten Year Plan, and then having to edit all the comments into my master, I can share it online for everyone to edit together. Not only does this ease my work in editing, it fosters group discussion about the document (and by extention, the issue at hand).

On the other hand, I had terrible trouble with Google today. It did not want to recognize my existing account and kept pushing me back and forth between a regular Google Account and a Blogger account (and, really, why are these two different accounts anyway?). After five minutes of monkeying around, it did let me login, but then I wasn’t able to read the “learn more” page to learn how to use Google docs. I finally did what seemed logical and it appears to have worked, but the whole experience was frustrating enough that it turned me off Google docs. I know that’s a bad attitude, so I’ll have to try Google docs again when I have a reason to use it and perhaps a fresh experience will sell me on its virtues.

Learning Makes My World Go Round

I really enjoy learning. In fact, I’m happiest at work when I am learning new things. For the last couple years my “new thing” has been assessment and accreditation, which is fascinating and fun; lately my “new thing” is web 2.0 technologies. It’s just flat out cool to learn new stuff. In fact, I nice benefit to being a librarian is the constant contact with new books and new ideas.

If I think about my own learning style, the habit that is hardest for me is really two in combination — #3, “view problems as challenges” and #5, “create your own learning toolbox.”  There’s that point when learning something new is frustrating or seems overwhelming, yet I’m reluctant to ask for help. I’m getting better at using my “toolbox” of friends and colleagues, but my natural inclination is to try and figure it out myself, even if that strategy isn’t working and I feel like giving up (or screaming).

On the other hand, the habit I find easiest is #2, “accept responsibility for your own learning.” There may be a connection between my easiest and hardest habits. As Shane likes to remind me, our greatest strengths are often our greatest weaknesses. Or is that Susan who says that? Hmm, guess I better consult my toolbox.

The Pain of Learning

I’ve had my blog for ten minutes and I’ve already managed to delete my first post (I recreated it since I did not want to lose the sentiment).

As a teacher, I believe it is important that we commit ourselves to learning new things on a regular basis — not just for “professional development,” but to remember what it is like to learn something completely new. Losing two sentences of a post is not that big of a deal, but it is still frustrating and reminds me to empathize with my students as they struggle to learn. This week I’ve been reading Robert Leamnson’s Thinking About Teaching and Learning where he talks about the difficulty of learning the unfamiliar (he also encourages us to periodically learn something new in order to experience what our students go through when we ask them to learn the unfamiliar) and talking to my graduate students about learning theory. Yesterday I was talking about learning, today I’m experiencing it.

PS If you are reading this, I managed to edit a post without deleting it — progress!