Comments on: Technology education and the “real world” http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/ A librarian, writer and tech geek reflecting on the profession and the tools we use to serve our patrons Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:59:34 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Tim Trevathan http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/comment-page-1/#comment-187324 Tim Trevathan Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:23:23 +0000 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/?p=951#comment-187324 http://slislife.spartasocialnetworks.com/messageboard/MBView.do?tc=77b1ae6be955316d7234f2bc5a409cdd posted on: 01-03-2009 07:05 PM I have seen really nice usage of technology to encourage students (or patrons) to collaborate with the library staff and other patrons, such as mini videos of book reviews, blogs about certain topics or books, and wikis. One librarian who is a friend of mine showed me this nice, neat little site called teacherlibrarian.ning.com, where she had a page life Facebook, and she had an entire virtual tour of her library (which was helpful in tooting her horn, because the principal of this school doesn't even walk in the door all year, much less care what goes on in there). She also had several pod casts, book reviews, and it was just a really impressive use of several types of technologies. The teachers aren't even half as sophisticated and should take note of what she has done. I tried creating a wiki of my own on pbwiki.com (I named it a really long name: librarydevelopmentpowow) and found it rather user friendly. It will allow collaboration with other teacher-librarians as they are free to share their views, introduce other ideas, and add it to my wiki. I am also engaging in online collection development through nice, easy collection analyses that yield tons of data about a collection that one couldn't possibly do manually. It earns libraries money by showing their needs and makes a HUGE difference in how teacher-librarians work on their libraries--they take their emotion out of the equation and just work with the facts. Without technology, I don't think type of online collection analyses could happen. Thanks for letting me add my 2 cents worth! Tim Trevathan Posted on: 01-06-2009 02:24 AM Nicole, Can your Wiki be accessed from the outside world ? I would like to highlight home-grown examples from our student base as we come across usage and real life examples of web 2.0 technologies in place at SJSU..... Nicole Mardian Posted on: 01-09-2009 00:12 AM Hi Tim! To access it, one can just go to www.librarydevelopmentpowow.pbwiki.com (which I know is WAY to long). But I have not allowed anyone to actually have access to changing or adding anything yet. This may or may not be something I ever allow for awhile. If I chose to, however, I can put in someone's email and assign certain privileges. I hope that intelligently answers your question, given my growing (yet limited) knowledge of Web 2.0 skills. Nicole, once you come to understand what the instruments of Web 2.0 are, things like RSS feeds that 'push' information out to your email instead of having to find time to surf all of the website you may like, and things like youtube, facebook, twitter, wiki's and other tools that already exist, it is just a matter of finding out where these tools can be effectively used to deploy our assests as information managers and community organizers of activities that aid our user community, we can look at many examples of how other libraries are using these tools to reach out to our user communities to stay relveant and offer other facilities for social contact, job opportunity development for communities, training capabilities for those un-employed or under-emplyed and stay viable as assets to our communities to stay literate in both information and technology. Our evolution as librarians is assured to be a steep one, but a fun challenge. The best way I know is to sign up for accounts on all of these tools [one at a time], play with them a little bit, see what they have to offer and how people use them and offer same services or access to these services and extend their aplication into library environments. The most active usage I have seen is in libraries that continue to offer more terminals and access to be able to download podcasts, access social networks and create points of connectivity and outreach to the community as the page you suggested shows; Posted on: 01-06-2009 02:47 AM http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/group/morethings Create Your Own Social Network Search tim tevathan Inbox Alerts Friends A community for teacher-librarians and other educators Main Invite My Page Members Photos Videos Forum Events Groups Blogs All Groups My Groups Join More things: Applying 2.0 tools More things: Applying 2.0 tools Created by Joyce Valenza Send Message Add as Friend View Groups Information Inspired by Helene Blowers' Learning 2.0 and California's School Library Learning 2.0, let's use this space to explore new things to prepare ourselv… Members: 154 Latest Activity: Jan 3 Discussion Forum http://slislife.spartasocialnetworks.com/messageboard/MBView.do?tc=77b1ae6be955316d7234f2bc5a409cdd

posted on: 01-03-2009 07:05 PM
I have seen really nice usage of technology to encourage students (or patrons) to collaborate with the library staff and other patrons, such as mini videos of book reviews, blogs about certain topics or books, and wikis. One librarian who is a friend of mine showed me this nice, neat little site called teacherlibrarian.ning.com, where she had a page life Facebook, and she had an entire virtual tour of her library (which was helpful in tooting her horn, because the principal of this school doesn’t even walk in the door all year, much less care what goes on in there). She also had several pod casts, book reviews, and it was just a really impressive use of several types of technologies. The teachers aren’t even half as sophisticated and should take note of what she has done.

I tried creating a wiki of my own on pbwiki.com (I named it a really long name: librarydevelopmentpowow) and found it rather user friendly. It will allow collaboration with other teacher-librarians as they are free to share their views, introduce other ideas, and add it to my wiki.

I am also engaging in online collection development through nice, easy collection analyses that yield tons of data about a collection that one couldn’t possibly do manually. It earns libraries money by showing their needs and makes a HUGE difference in how teacher-librarians work on their libraries–they take their emotion out of the equation and just work with the facts. Without technology, I don’t think type of online collection analyses could happen.

Thanks for letting me add my 2 cents worth!

Tim Trevathan

Posted on: 01-06-2009 02:24 AM
Nicole,

Can your Wiki be accessed from the outside world ? I would like to highlight home-grown examples from our student base as we come across usage and real life examples of web 2.0 technologies in place at SJSU…..

Nicole Mardian

Posted on: 01-09-2009 00:12 AM
Hi Tim!

To access it, one can just go to http://www.librarydevelopmentpowow.pbwiki.com (which I know is WAY to long). But I have not allowed anyone to actually have access to changing or adding anything yet. This may or may not be something I ever allow for awhile. If I chose to, however, I can put in someone’s email and assign certain privileges. I hope that intelligently answers your question, given my growing (yet limited) knowledge of Web 2.0 skills.

Nicole,
once you come to understand what the instruments of Web 2.0 are, things like RSS feeds that ‘push’ information out to your email instead of having to find time to surf all of the website you may like, and things like youtube, facebook, twitter, wiki’s and other tools that already exist, it is just a matter of finding out where these tools can be effectively used to deploy our assests as information managers and community organizers of activities that aid our user community, we can look at many examples of how other libraries are using these tools to reach out to our user communities to stay relveant and offer other facilities for social contact, job opportunity development for communities, training capabilities for those un-employed or under-emplyed and stay viable as assets to our communities to stay literate in both information and technology. Our evolution as librarians is assured to be a steep one, but a fun challenge. The best way I know is to sign up for accounts on all of these tools [one at a time], play with them a little bit, see what they have to offer and how people use them and offer same services or access to these services and extend their aplication into library environments. The most active usage I have seen is in libraries that continue to offer more terminals and access to be able to download podcasts, access social networks and create points of connectivity and outreach to the community as the page you suggested shows;

Posted on: 01-06-2009 02:47 AM
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]]> By: Karlonia http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/comment-page-1/#comment-187267 Karlonia Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:50:29 +0000 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/?p=951#comment-187267 I agree that hardcore programming is not really a necessary skill set -- even for webmasters like me, it's possible to survive with some basic HTML knowledge and learn whatever else is necessary as we go along. For cases where we encounter something that actually requires the services of a real programmer, we can often outsource this type of work as long as we are earning at least a modest amount of revenue from our other activities. I agree that hardcore programming is not really a necessary skill set — even for webmasters like me, it’s possible to survive with some basic HTML knowledge and learn whatever else is necessary as we go along. For cases where we encounter something that actually requires the services of a real programmer, we can often outsource this type of work as long as we are earning at least a modest amount of revenue from our other activities.

]]> By: gershbec http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/comment-page-1/#comment-187251 gershbec Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:13:19 +0000 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/?p=951#comment-187251 Another perspective that you don't touch on is regarding the corporate world, which many people who actually want full-time jobs and benefits will be entering after library school. I spent many years in the corporate world and while it is full of people who will understand the technology much better than most MLSers will, there is a huge need for people who can sit between the technology people and the line / business people and articulate needs. This will require some understanding of the technology while letting others accomplish the dirty work. For these people, things like requirements documents and the core technologies are useful to understand, while also having an understanding of the business that the company actually does. This can potentially be an MLSer/MBA/programming type of hybrid who can speak the language of programming and of business to a certain extent, but does not have to be a master of either. I know many library students are scared of or uninterested in the corporate world, but if you are in the right company this type of thing can be a really fulfilling and interesting role (potentially with great pay!) As far as public libraries are concerned, knowledge of Drupal implementation should not be considered the culmination of a library education. If it is, then students are being miseducated. An apt comparison is to my classes in dialup Lexis-Nexis and Dialog, the technology of which is essentially dead but which offered more useful core skills. More important is a general comfort with technologies and a lack of fear in playing with them and offering them to your clientele. I work in a small library that will not likely be using Drupal, but which is doing lots of cool and useful stuff online, all of which is being driven by user needs. Another perspective that you don’t touch on is regarding the corporate world, which many people who actually want full-time jobs and benefits will be entering after library school. I spent many years in the corporate world and while it is full of people who will understand the technology much better than most MLSers will, there is a huge need for people who can sit between the technology people and the line / business people and articulate needs. This will require some understanding of the technology while letting others accomplish the dirty work. For these people, things like requirements documents and the core technologies are useful to understand, while also having an understanding of the business that the company actually does. This can potentially be an MLSer/MBA/programming type of hybrid who can speak the language of programming and of business to a certain extent, but does not have to be a master of either. I know many library students are scared of or uninterested in the corporate world, but if you are in the right company this type of thing can be a really fulfilling and interesting role (potentially with great pay!)

As far as public libraries are concerned, knowledge of Drupal implementation should not be considered the culmination of a library education. If it is, then students are being miseducated. An apt comparison is to my classes in dialup Lexis-Nexis and Dialog, the technology of which is essentially dead but which offered more useful core skills. More important is a general comfort with technologies and a lack of fear in playing with them and offering them to your clientele. I work in a small library that will not likely be using Drupal, but which is doing lots of cool and useful stuff online, all of which is being driven by user needs.

]]> By: Bill Fitzgerald http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/comment-page-1/#comment-187250 Bill Fitzgerald Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:59:53 +0000 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/?p=951#comment-187250 Hello, Meredith (and others), First, Meredith, great post -- you do a great job articulating some frequently overlooked points, particularly with regards to how we prioritize our time. Also, we frequently have perfection as our goal (which is great to aim for); however, if we allow the goal of perfection to impair our ability to experiment we also curb our potential to grow. @Jon Gorman, re the list: to the xml item, I would add an overview of metadata formats and what types of information they can carry. For example, knowing the difference between Atom and RSS, or the uses and potential of Dublin Core, RDF, etc, would all be useful things to understand. @Chris O: the site you and your group members list is a great example of what can be done with Drupal, without any custom code. Have you considered writing it up as a case study in either the Library or Education group on groups.drupal.org? There are many people who are looking for exactly that type of information. @Meredith, re: "I’m happy to see that my projections about Drupal aren’t completely off." -- one of the most pernicious Drupal myths is that you need to be a developer to access the power of Drupal. As you and others in this thread discuss, this just isn't the case. Much of Drupal's power and flexibility can be leveraged without writing a line of code, or knowing any html. Cheers, Bill Hello, Meredith (and others),

First, Meredith, great post — you do a great job articulating some frequently overlooked points, particularly with regards to how we prioritize our time. Also, we frequently have perfection as our goal (which is great to aim for); however, if we allow the goal of perfection to impair our ability to experiment we also curb our potential to grow.

@Jon Gorman, re the list: to the xml item, I would add an overview of metadata formats and what types of information they can carry. For example, knowing the difference between Atom and RSS, or the uses and potential of Dublin Core, RDF, etc, would all be useful things to understand.

@Chris O: the site you and your group members list is a great example of what can be done with Drupal, without any custom code. Have you considered writing it up as a case study in either the Library or Education group on groups.drupal.org? There are many people who are looking for exactly that type of information.

@Meredith, re: “I’m happy to see that my projections about Drupal aren’t completely off.” — one of the most pernicious Drupal myths is that you need to be a developer to access the power of Drupal. As you and others in this thread discuss, this just isn’t the case. Much of Drupal’s power and flexibility can be leveraged without writing a line of code, or knowing any html.

Cheers,

Bill

]]> By: Meredith Farkas http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/comment-page-1/#comment-187249 Meredith Farkas Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:27:38 +0000 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/?p=951#comment-187249 @Walt - thanks for sharing your experience. Many of the decisions I've made in my life have been based on someone telling me I can't do it as well. It's fun to push boundaries! @Andrea, great to hear from you again! Hope you're still pushing the professors at your library school to give students more practical library experience during the program. Of course you can share my website with others and please feel free to email me any time if I can be of help. :) @Chris, that is AWESOME! Very nice work. I think it's so great to get experience like that while in library school and I assign a similar project for students in my class. I'm happy to see that my projections about Drupal aren't completely off. @Walt – thanks for sharing your experience. Many of the decisions I’ve made in my life have been based on someone telling me I can’t do it as well. It’s fun to push boundaries!

@Andrea, great to hear from you again! Hope you’re still pushing the professors at your library school to give students more practical library experience during the program. Of course you can share my website with others and please feel free to email me any time if I can be of help. :)

@Chris, that is AWESOME! Very nice work. I think it’s so great to get experience like that while in library school and I assign a similar project for students in my class. I’m happy to see that my projections about Drupal aren’t completely off.

]]> By: Chris O. http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/comment-page-1/#comment-187248 Chris O. Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:30:11 +0000 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/?p=951#comment-187248 I was in Michael Stephens's Library 2.0 class this past semester, and as part of it, a group I was in created a mock library website using Drupal (which is <a href="http://dev.tametheweb.com/" rel="nofollow">still online</a>). None of us had any prior Drupal experience at all, the project lasted about a month, and I think that what we have up there would be a perfectly good site for the small library we designed it for, certainly much better than what they actually have online now. It is very doable, you just have to be willing to dive right in and search around for answers when you're stuck. I was in Michael Stephens’s Library 2.0 class this past semester, and as part of it, a group I was in created a mock library website using Drupal (which is still online). None of us had any prior Drupal experience at all, the project lasted about a month, and I think that what we have up there would be a perfectly good site for the small library we designed it for, certainly much better than what they actually have online now.

It is very doable, you just have to be willing to dive right in and search around for answers when you’re stuck.

]]> By: Andrea Ævars http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/comment-page-1/#comment-187247 Andrea Ævars Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:45:27 +0000 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/?p=951#comment-187247 Hi Meredith. My name is Andrea Ævars and I'm the LIS student from Iceland, you talked about in one of your posts :-) I'd just like to say I'm glad to have found your site and will tell my fellow students about it if you don't mind! Thanks for a great lecture and I hope to have the good fortune to meet you again someday. All the best. Hi Meredith.
My name is Andrea Ævars and I’m the LIS student from Iceland, you talked about in one of your posts :-)
I’d just like to say I’m glad to have found your site and will tell my fellow students about it if you don’t mind!

Thanks for a great lecture and I hope to have the good fortune to meet you again someday.

All the best.

]]> By: Trista http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/comment-page-1/#comment-187246 Trista Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:15:43 +0000 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/?p=951#comment-187246 Great post! If we all had to know programming to use these technologies there would be a lot less blogs, websites, etc. The hard part in my experience is getting those who have never had any classes on technology to feel comfortable with new systems. Great post! If we all had to know programming to use these technologies there would be a lot less blogs, websites, etc. The hard part in my experience is getting those who have never had any classes on technology to feel comfortable with new systems.

]]> By: walt crawford http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/comment-page-1/#comment-187245 walt crawford Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:43:09 +0000 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/?p=951#comment-187245 Good post--but I'm moved to comment thanks to T Scott's comment. Other than "right on," I'll elaborate: I got started on what apparently was a 39-year distraction from writing, namely systems analysis, design and programming (a LOT of programming) at UC Berkeley--where I designed and implemented a punch-card circulation system in 1968, primarily based on deep knowledge of UC's five call number systems (from years as a student page). The "brains" of this system was an IBM 188 Collator, essentially the input mechanism for early System/360s with two card readers and five output bins--and, I think, something like 64 bytes of core (or RAM, if you prefer). The temporary distraction became a career, I think, when our IBM rep brought some higher-ups in for a tour and I described the system and what the collator was doing. The response: "You can't do that with a collator." I was hooked. And have always been a little suspicious of "you can't" when it comes to programming. Sometimes it's true, but that's only acceptable after you've applied some creativity to working around apparent impossibilities. You don't need to be a trained programmer to apply creativity, think about alternative meanings of what "that" (which is "impossible") really is, and push the envelope a little. Good post–but I’m moved to comment thanks to T Scott’s comment. Other than “right on,” I’ll elaborate:

I got started on what apparently was a 39-year distraction from writing, namely systems analysis, design and programming (a LOT of programming) at UC Berkeley–where I designed and implemented a punch-card circulation system in 1968, primarily based on deep knowledge of UC’s five call number systems (from years as a student page). The “brains” of this system was an IBM 188 Collator, essentially the input mechanism for early System/360s with two card readers and five output bins–and, I think, something like 64 bytes of core (or RAM, if you prefer).

The temporary distraction became a career, I think, when our IBM rep brought some higher-ups in for a tour and I described the system and what the collator was doing. The response: “You can’t do that with a collator.” I was hooked.

And have always been a little suspicious of “you can’t” when it comes to programming. Sometimes it’s true, but that’s only acceptable after you’ve applied some creativity to working around apparent impossibilities. You don’t need to be a trained programmer to apply creativity, think about alternative meanings of what “that” (which is “impossible”) really is, and push the envelope a little.

]]> By: Meredith Farkas http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2008/12/15/technology-education-and-the-real-world/comment-page-1/#comment-187244 Meredith Farkas Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:51:23 +0000 http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/?p=951#comment-187244 Lisa, I think you have to base your decision of what tech classes to take on what you really want to do. I knew that I absolutely would never want to be a cataloger or a systems librarian. I enjoy tech, but I'm a public services person through and through. So I learned the sort of tech that was valuable to reference/instruction/distance learning librarian work (instructional tech, web 2.0 tech, and web design). And I've built upon that knowledge on the job, stretching my skills way beyond what I could do when I graduated from library school. If you are sure that you want to work in a specific area of librarianship (or have at least ruled out what you don't want to do) then focus on the sort of skills relevant to the sort of work you're interested in. Being able to maintain an ILS will not get you a job as a Reference/Instruction Librarian. Lisa, I think you have to base your decision of what tech classes to take on what you really want to do. I knew that I absolutely would never want to be a cataloger or a systems librarian. I enjoy tech, but I’m a public services person through and through. So I learned the sort of tech that was valuable to reference/instruction/distance learning librarian work (instructional tech, web 2.0 tech, and web design). And I’ve built upon that knowledge on the job, stretching my skills way beyond what I could do when I graduated from library school. If you are sure that you want to work in a specific area of librarianship (or have at least ruled out what you don’t want to do) then focus on the sort of skills relevant to the sort of work you’re interested in. Being able to maintain an ILS will not get you a job as a Reference/Instruction Librarian.

]]>