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« Previous EntriesRethinking online learning
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010This was another amazing semester teaching at San Jose State University. I had significantly more students in my class this semester than in the past (more than double), which at first made me nervous about the workload I’d have to take on. But it actually ended up leading to an even better class experience, IMHO. [...]
Tips for library job applicants in a tight market
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010Another semester of teaching at San Jose State’s SLIS program has ended. Many of my students are graduating and others are starting to think about applying for jobs so they’ll have one when they do graduate. For so many of them, the job search is going to be a struggle. It wasn’t an easy job [...]
Coming to terms with Twitter
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010I’ve been teaching a class on Web 2.0 since 2007, and this semester is the first time that I’ve actually had a full week on Twitter (well, microblogging and lifestreaming to be specific). Before, I treated it sort of as an afterthought, including some information on Twitter during the two weeks that I covered blogging. [...]
Teaching Web 2.0 with Web 2.0
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010After a year off from teaching to take care of baby Reed, I’m getting back up on the horse. I’ll be teaching a class on Web 2.0 and Social Networking Software for San Jose State University’s SLIS program starting this Tuesday. As usual, I’ll be using Drupal for my online classroom (rather than Angel, which [...]
Technology education and the “real world”
Monday, December 15th, 2008I just love that feeling of serendipity when I find that people are thinking about the same things I am at the same time. Karin Dalziel made an impassioned case for every librarian to learn how to program. Dorothea Salo responded to it and described how she thinks technology should be taught in library school. [...]
Validation of my crackpot teaching ideas
Thursday, December 11th, 2008Last week, my students in the Web 2.0 and Social Networking class I teach (at San Jose State) presented their fantastic proposals (via web conference) for implementing a specific social tool at a specific type of library. I was so impressed with their creativity and professionalism. Each of them made a very good case for [...]
Fomenting revolt in Iceland
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008I got back from Iceland this weekend just in time for a storm to knocked our power out at home. It’s back on and I’m slowly recovering from the travel, jet lag and mountains of emails and to-dos. Iceland was absolutely amazing! The landscape is so unique — I got to see lava fields, double [...]
The Abbreviated Fall Speaking Tour
Monday, October 13th, 2008With the pregnancy, I tried to keep my speaking schedule light for Fall. However, all three of the talks I’m giving fall within a two-week period, so it’s made me a bit harried in October. Last Tuesday, I gave a webinar for METRO NYC which was very fun, but it’s always weird to give a [...]
Teaching the “soft skills” in library school
Saturday, September 27th, 2008From the library school survey, looking at the list of skills and competencies people think are important for librarians to have , there are a lot of “soft skills” on that list. You probably won’t find classes on customer service, openness to change, flexibility, commitment to continuous learning, developing a willingness to beat things with [...]
Library school survey results
Saturday, September 27th, 2008A few weeks ago, I posted a survey to Survey Monkey to get people’s views about their library school education and what they think should be taught in library school that isn’t (or wasn’t when they were in school). The 91 responses I got were really interesting and I wanted to post them so everyone [...]
How I got started blogging
Monday, September 8th, 2008A student in the class I’m teaching for San Jose State University asked me the following the other day:
How did people first learn about your blog? Do you have a previous blog post on how it became popular? It would be an interesting read!
It’s a good question and one I thought I’d post here [...]
Future of LIS education?
Monday, September 8th, 2008In October, I’m speaking at a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland entitled The Future is here: Are we prepared? New thinking in education for public librarians. (PDF). My talk is entitled “Librarian 2.0: The Future of Library Education and the 2.0 Organization.” I want to look at the skills/competencies librarians need in a 2.0 world and [...]
Teaching online with Drupal
Sunday, August 17th, 2008In the Spring, I taught a class for San Jose State University on social software in libraries. Last week, I received both the student review of my teaching (which is anonymous) and the peer review of my teaching by a permanent faculty member at SJSU. I was beyond pleased by the comments and by my [...]
Building 21st century librarians AND libraries
Sunday, March 9th, 2008There were three recent posts that got me thinking a lot about the growing necessity to have tech-savvy people in public services positions. The first was Dorothea Salo’s post about how many librarians outside of Systems see learning about (or doing anything with) technology as being something outside of their sphere of responsibility. The second [...]
When you wish upon a blog
Saturday, August 25th, 2007Remember a few weeks ago when I wrote that I really wanted to be an online adjunct instructor at a library school so I could teach social software to LIS students? And how I’d broached the idea with the Dean at FSU? Well… funny thing about that. The next morning I got an e-mail from [...]
Library school 0.5?
Saturday, August 11th, 2007How can a library school teach their students to be user-focused if they model the exact opposite behaviors?
Check out the assertive (and admirable) way that Jennifer tried to confront the issues she and other students had with the distance learning program at the Information and Library Science Department at Southern Connecticut State University. I [...]
Does distance learning have to be like this?
Sunday, January 21st, 2007Jennifer Macaulay, who really just has to stop writing such insightful pieces or I will never get anything done, wrote a piece on her experiences as a distance learner a couple of weeks ago. And if I didn’t know better, I would have thought that I had written the entire thing myself, so much did [...]
The 21st Century Librarian: Further Thoughts and Your Comments
Thursday, July 20th, 2006I’m on vacation in Florida this week and have happily been away for the computer for long periods of time, so I was very surprised to find all of the comments on what I had written a few days ago on skills for the 21st century librarian. I guess it really touched a chord (it’s [...]
Skills for the 21st Century Librarian
Monday, July 17th, 2006A few weeks ago, I finished a chapter I was writing (not for my book — another one) on the topic of technology in LIS Education. I think Rachel asked me to write it because I had complained about my own library school education in the past and the fact that many schools create this [...]
Promoting your grads: what all library schools should be doing
Saturday, June 24th, 2006When I graduated from FSU with my MLIS, I didn’t come out of it with job searching tips, an alumni network or really any help of any kind in finding a job. The College of Information, as it is now called, wasn’t great with the mentoring, networking, support stuff. So when I saw the Prospectus [...]
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