My First (Official) Instructional Experience and Enriching Scholarship

This week at the University of Michigan, Enriching Scholarship consumed my time.  Enriching Scholarship is an annual week-long technology event (FREE to anyone with a uniqname) around the University presented by many departments including Literature, Science, and Arts, the Duderstadt Center, Communications, the Library, and many more.  For a little history on the people who produce Enriching Scholarship, taken directly from the Enriching Scholarship home page:

The TTC is a group currently comprised of staff from these units across campus. An annual initiative of the TTC is Enriching Scholarship, a conference offered for instructional faculty every May, showcasing over 100 workshops and sessions that address the use of technology in teaching and research.

Anyway, Enriching Scholarship is pretty great.  It brings together people who know technology, who want to know technology, and who want to share information about technology.  I attended four sessions - one each day - and learned about Productivity Tips, Tools and Tricks, Embracing Facebook in Your Teaching, Using Everyday Technologies for Teaching, and Find, Use, Remix and Create Open Learning Materials. Each of these sessions brought something new to my work and gave me ideas to move forward as I think about instruction and my professional practice.  


Additionally, I had the opportunity to co-teach one of these sessions: The New Basics: Computing 101.  What a valuable and great experience!  Our session was attended by very receptive folks who gave us great feedback about what they wanted to know and about what they learned in the session. 

While it seems our participants had a valuable experience, I learned a lot too.  Not so much about Computing 101 (though I did learn some tricks and tips too :) but about presentation style, preparedness, and adaptation during workshops.  As this was the first iteration of this workshop, we planned too much (or differently) than the participants wanted or needed.  The first part of the workshop - browsers, bookmarks, tabs, etc., took much longer than expected but it was mostly because people were asking so many (great!) questions.  So, timing of the workshop will need to adjust - either into a Comp 101 and Comp 102 or adding another half hour, or... so many possibilities!

Secondly, I could have been more prepared.  Part of me is always hesitant to actually practice presentations (which I did, but not enough).  I need to get over that and just practice, practice, practice!  Which actually leads to my third point - adaptation.  I had practiced, but only to the point where I could pretty much repeat information - and this did not serve me well when we had to adapt.  I got frazzled and tried to do way too much in the last 15-20 minutes, which I think was confusing for the participants after the first 1 1/4 hours was at the perfect pace.  But, the participants stayed after and asked questions so I think people were truly interested in the topic and glad to be there.

I am excited to reflect on and revamp this workshop with the feedback and observations that were made on Tuesday.  Plus, I got the first instructional experience out of the way and am more confident moving forward knowing what I can do better next time :)

Readings: Semadeni, Blowers and Reed, Fontichiaro,

Wow, final week for blogging for SI 643.  My goal is to continue doing so weekly, with a focus on my library work.  But for now, I'll discuss the readings for this last class...

Semadeni - When Teachers Drive their Learning
Semadeni's article about professional development (PD) in his district was quite encouraging.  The Fusion method of professional development for teachers based on coaching, mentoring and observing simply made sense and seems to be much more effective than what I know about other PD (where teachers mostly sit in a room all day and hear presentations).  The interactive ideas of involving teachers in their learning process in a real way seems effective and motivating.  I also like how time is set aside for this (and he makes great points about the amount of time that teachers don't have outside of school) and also how it provides teachers choice in how they develop professionally.  Finally, the idea of fostering leadership within schools is something I see is lacking - it is quite hard to "advance" professionally in a traditional school system while this method provides teachers with those opportunities.

At first I thought, why are we reading this?  We aren't going to be teachers.  But, we are, in our own ways - we will be in instructors who have a say in how things are run in our libraries and we can bring these ideas of professional development with us.  Why can't librarians do this for each other?  Maybe not in exactly the same way, but in a similar way - coaching observing mentoring.  I bet that anyone in a new position could use an approach to professional development that is highly engaging and where they can direct their own learning.

Blowers and Reed - The C's of our Sea Change: Plans for Staff Training, from Core Competencies to Learning 2.0
This was an interesting article - written in 2007 but still applicable today.  It seems that staff do need to have core competencies when it comes to technology but that very few libraries take the time to do training on things that are assumed people would know.  I like the Four Tier's model and the idea of play - a lot.  When people get to play, they don't think of things as work.  Further, this model pushes collaboration which provides automatic community building among staffs.  The more collaborative and "fun" something is, the more people will want to discover how new Web 2.0 tools can be useful to them and their work.  And, I'm betting that those who needed this instruction in 2007 most definitely need it in 2011.  With all of the new tools available online, it can be overwhelming to jump into one that people have been using for years now (ahem, Twitter). 

This article, in it's own way, applies to something on which I'll undertake soon.  For the Enriching Scholarship, U of M's week-long technology symposium, I'm co-instructing a Computer 101 class.  We'll talk about what a browser is, how to open multiple tabs without closing a browser, what right-clicking can do, how to download something from a website, how to put a usable link into a PowerPoint presentation... etc.  These all may seem like things people know how to do - but they don't and it hinders their efficiency and abilities to understand how to use computers and not fight them in their work.  I'll follow up with a blog post about this in the first week of May :)

Fontichario - Planning an Online Professional Development Module
What I liked most about this article was that it recognized the changing needs of staff and how, even in tough financial times, librarians can do outreach for instruction and purposes of getting others excited about new tools.  Again, the idea of "play" was emphasized and I cannot express enough how glad I was to see it.  Even children don't play enough anymore in schools - their experimental classes like music are being replaced with training for standardized tests.  So, the ideas of adults playing - and passing that passion onto students - is pretty exciting.   Further, this module forces instructors to pave the way for thinking about how Web tools can be used personally AND professionally and to consider the privacy and safety issues which are still being defined overall in the world of the web. 

This week's reading, like many of the others, provides me with resources to consult when thinking about technology instruction and training, and how to truly engage the learners in the process.  Paired with the Fusion model, I can envision a comprehensive PD program involving both social and technological learning.  Pretty exciting stuff :)