My day started at 6:00 am when my husband and I got Reed fed, dressed, and ready for daycare. Adam drove him to daycare today since I was nearly out of gas and didn’t want to stop with him in the car. I’ll pick him up in the afternoon. I took a quick shower myself, skipped breakfast since I’ve been feeling nauseous the past few days, filled my water bottle, and headed to work.<\/p>\n
Arrived at work by 7:45 and checked my email. Always amazing how much comes in after\/before business hours.<\/p>\n
Called Adam to make sure Reed got off to daycare ok (he did).<\/p>\n
Met with our new Systems Librarian to talk about his evaluation of my teaching in the Popular Culture of Modern Europe (a senior seminar) class I taught last week. (We just started doing a peer evaluation of instruction project this semester for the first time and I\u2019m really excited to see how it goes.) I had tried some new activities and was really happy with how it went for the most part. He really liked the primary source activity I did and though that most of the students really got into it (I chose some pretty fun primary sources for them to analyze). The weak points he noticed were the same ones I had noted that I wanted to improve upon. I also talked to him about instruction in general. He\u2019s new to instruction and not yet confident in what he\u2019s doing, so I talked to him about my own experiences early on with instruction (and how much I sucked) and told him that he just needs to keep doing it and find his own style of teaching.<\/p>\n
Got a request for information literacy instruction from a faculty member in political science I\u2019ve never worked with before. She asked me to teach in all four of her classes. AWESOME! I\u2019ve been on a mission over the past two years to convince the faculty in the social sciences that I have something useful to offer, and finally, over the past few months, I feel like I\u2019m at a tipping point. I\u2019ve been offering faculty workshops on different topics and have been creating more online tutorials in areas they find valuable. Most importantly, I\u2019ve made sure to tell them about everything I\u2019ve been doing, and one faculty member who has become a \u201cfan\u201d has also been singing my praises. I\u2019ve been getting emails from people who for years have never responded to any emails I\u2019ve sent and I\u2019m getting asked to do instruction for faculty I\u2019ve never taught classes for before. It\u2019s nice to know that the slow-and-steady strategy does sometimes work!<\/p>\n
Got into a friendly debate on FriendFeed <\/a>about Clay Shirky\u2019s “Rant about women.”<\/a> I love when you can discuss something with a group of people where you might disagree, but you\u2019re still respectful and like each other at the end of it all. I didn\u2019t stop work to go be on FriendFeed, but I\u2019d peek at it every once in a while when I was working on other stuff and put my 2 cents in.<\/p>\n Wrote to the faculty member teaching the political science research methods course this semester to see if he\u2019d be interested in my teaching an information literacy session for his students. He never responds to my emails that I send out to all faculty in his department, so I thought I\u2019d try the personal route. Not sure he\u2019ll see a need for it, but it\u2019s worth a try.<\/p>\n Talked to the Head of Reference about scheduling a reference\/instruction meeting for next week. I want to review with everyone how the first few peer reviews have gone and answer any questions I can for people who haven\u2019t done it yet. Lots more to discuss in reference though.<\/p>\n Talked to our new Systems Librarian about teaching one of the classes I have coming up. He chose History 108, where students need to do research for a recreation of the Paris Peace Conference (where each group of students will represent one of the countries or interests there \u2013 it\u2019s a cool assignment!). I\u2019ve got six sections of this class coming in, so he\u2019ll be able to observe me before doing it himself. Made a mental note to email the faculty member and let him know \u2013 he\u2019s a really nice guy, so I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll welcome the opportunity to give my colleague more experience teaching.<\/p>\n Started to work on course guides for the upcoming political science classes. Will have to create three in a hurry plus one on Modern Russian History, so my workload just increased!<\/p>\n Shoved some food in my mouth before running to give a brown bag lunch presentation for the School of Graduate Studies on using Drupal in education and talked about my experiences using it at San Jose State. One faculty member is interested in using it as a community platform for students in his online program where they could communicate across classes and share resources. It sounds like an ideal use of Drupal. <\/p>\n Attended a library all-staff meeting where our new Systems Librarian unveiled his idea for the new front page of our website. I like the concept and with some polishing on the graphical design end, it\u2019ll be a great improvement to our site. Must say that I\u2019m glad it\u2019s not me having to do that anymore \u2013 I was the webmaster for several years and, while it was nice to have that sort of control, it was a pain to try and make everyone happy. I\u2019m not sure our Systems Librarian really knows what he\u2019s in for!<\/p>\n Checked feeds, took a look at recent issues of C&RL and C&RL News. Checked out some flights for two conferences I’ll be attending in April and May. I want to minimize my time away from Reed since I’ve never actually been away from him for even a 24-hour period yet! Just thinking about being away from him for a few days makes me teary.<\/p>\n My class for San Jose State started today and I commented on some of the posts students have been making. Looks like a really great group of students!<\/p>\n Worked more on course guides for those upcoming classes. I\u2019m particularly excited about teaching the one on Asian Politics!<\/p>\n At 4:30, I headed over the mountain to Reed\u2019s daycare to pick him up. He was playing happily with toys and didn\u2019t even notice me when I came in until I called his name. Then we headed home for play and bath-time. He\u2019s got a little cold and is SO CLOSE to getting his first tooth, so he\u2019s been in a not-so-great mood on-and-off. Still, we had a pretty nice evening and he got to bed at his usual time (though he woke up 5 or 6 times that night, sigh). After he went to bed (around 7pm), I answered some emails, made some comments in my Drupal classroom, and folded and put away some laundry while watching “Chuck” on our TiVo. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My day started at 6:00 am when my husband and I got Reed fed, dressed, and ready for daycare. 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