Working Together

So, I finally have a workshop scheduled to teach!  All on my own!  Well, wait... not all on my own.  In fact, I'm team teaching... with a colleague... who is teaching his first workshop too...

We're really excited to get started on instruction, but I really did not know where to begin when I was asked to do this.  I've learned some on this topic, and feel confident that we'll be able to produced a productive session, but it was kind of a deer-in-the-headlights moment when I knew I would actually have to conduct a workshop.  My supervisor offered to send me their latest outline of the session that I'll teach, but I didn't just want to do what someone else did because that was the way it was done.  I searched our old instructional outlines and found four more.  Now, where to start with that?

In the planning meeting with my colleague, he had a great suggestion.  Why don't we just start a google doc, go through these outlines, and pick out the things we like?  So that's what we decided to do.  Hopefully after we come up with our own outline, we can add some interaction and our own personal touch.  However, as the first workshop, it might be good to do it, get comfortable and then start playing around.  Any thoughts or suggestions on this? 

Stepping out of the box...How-to

If you thought this would be a how-to guide, my blog title worked and I fooled you just a bit.  I'm actually hoping for some discussion, thoughts and advice.  Here's the context...

This week I was given some more concrete projects on which to work such as finding or creating content for training modules, creating Lib Guides for updated software, and re-thinking how we present hand-outs and guides to supplement our workshops which requires me to research, gather, and decide on effective materials to use - or produce them myself.  It's been interesting to start to see what others are doing with videos, websites and Lib Guides; the difficult part is thinking outside the box and stepping into a new realm of learning using online tools.  In my early research, I've seen some good stuff (on which I'll report in a post later this summer) but haven't yet come across something that really said, wow, this is new and exciting and something I've never seen before and, and, and.  So the question is, motivation?  How to step out of the box?  I'd love to hear suggestions for thinking of new, innovative, and creative ways to make learning fun.

Not that thinking about this and learning as I go isn't fun, because it is.  This is the first "job" I've had where I have the autonomy to think in this way and consider creating new content that has not yet been produced.  It's really exciting, and, what I think being a librarian of the future is all about.

Now, back to brainstorming... :)

Not even going to go there... and here's why.

So, if you are knowledgeable about the "information world," or follow any librarians on Twitter or in the blogosphere, you've most likely seen something about Seth Godin's Monday blog post on "The Future of the Library."  I happened to read this on Monday, and on Tuesday my Twitter feed was full of remarks, comments, posts, responses, criticisms, and so on.

When I originally read the post, I bookmarked it to comment on in my blog this week.  However, after seeing the uproar on Tuesday, I think I learned a valuable lesson... the easy way?  I'd wanted to analyze this blog post, remark on my agreements and disagreements, provide my thoughts on the future of the library.  But then I thought about my credibility.  Just starting to put myself out there, it could be a huge mistake, I realized, to comment on this article without reading responses of my colleagues and those in my networks.  If I want to be viewed in the information and education world as a reliable and innovative source, I absolutely cannot repeat what those who are very visible have already said without adding something new.

Yes, I have thoughts on Seth Godin's blog post.  Yes, they are thought out.  And yes, they've probably already been hashed out somewhere in this vast digital space.  I just cannot, therefore, justify creating a passionate post that ignores what others in the field are saying. 

To me, part of being a strong, successful professional is considering what my colleagues are saying - whether I agree or disagree.  To ignore these people would be to ignore the fact that we all need to work together - on some level - for the success of our field.  To ignore my colleagues would be to ignore what they have learned in their institutions, from their patrons, and from their experience. 


So, before I go running my mouth (or fingers, in this case) about what I  think, I need to consider what others think.  And, I'm realizing that that takes time, energy, thought, and more time.  To all you who do this consistently - kudos.  And to myself, lesson learned.

Another reason I love my field and the people in it

Librarianship is part of a professional field - the field of information - and while we have the ALA code of ethics it is often up to librarians themselves to to determine their level of professionalism.  In any field this is a balance, but working at a large, liberal, academic library, there is a certain level of freedom in this area.  However, professionalism comes with balance.  In an attempt for a somewhat comical post today, I'll tell my story of how I balanced professionalism.  But the story goes beyond that; it speaks to the good of librarians, the people who use libraries, and the amazing atmosphere of U of M and Ann Arbor in general. 
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On this past beautiful Wednesday evening, I was participating in my recreational women's soccer league as I do every Monday and Wednesday in the spring, summer and fall.  Three quarters of the way through the game, the unexpected happened.  With my toe planted in hopes of scoring our team's first goal, a completely legal side check sent my quad to the left and my shin to the right, with my body immediately withering to the ground in black-out pain.  Having played soccer for 12 years as a teenager, then taking a several year break before picking it up last spring, I was finally feeling strong and good on the field.  So ironically this knee injury would happen now.

However, the irony continued.  I not only live near one of the best research hospitals in the nation, but my primary care physician works in that hospital.  And not only would I try to get an appointment with her that next morning, but I was already scheduled to be in the hospital that next morning at 9:00 sharp - for a website consultation for my job.  Now, while my job is partially instructional technology, we don't often make office calls.  It just so happened that I needed to be at the hospital that following morning, so I decided I would still do the website consult as long as it didn't overlap with an open doctors appointment.  All of my friends thought I was crazy.  "Why are you going to a work meeting - your knee is the size of a grapefruit?"  "Everyone will understand if you cancel..."  I agreed with them, but seriously, if I didn't already have to be at the hospital, I wouldn't have gone to the consult!

So I went.  On the way to the meeting, I called for a doctors appointment.  They had an opening at 9:30 am.   Perfect; it was 8:35.  I got to the hospital, where apparently you can just grab a wheelchair if needed, hopped into a seat, asked the volunteer where I could find the location of my consult, as he cheerfully wheeled me up.  The appointment went just as planned and the woman I was working with even offered me coffee and a  ride to my doctors appointment right down the hall.  She really stood out as a person who was willing to help someone else out and helped me balance that work and life stuff that inevitably happens. 

There was no good reason not for me to go to my consult; it was at the hospital where I needed a doctors appointment.  But I wouldn't have been able to do both the work consult and the doctors appointment without good people.  I know librarians are good people - wanting and willing to work with others when they need something - but this story is really telling of the people who use our services.  This woman went out of her way to make me comfortable and help ME out, when - while it may have looked like I needed it - I could have been OK on my own.  The people at the hospital were all so kind and helpful - making lighthearted jokes and offering to help.  OK, so helping is their job, but the joking and caring tones are not in their job description. 
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This all goes to saying that we learn things every day - I am learning what it's like to be less able.  But the moral of my story is that it is wonderful to be a part of a city and University setting where people use their resources and their privilege for good.  UM is such a large - yet small - community where what goes around comes around.  Over the last two days, I've experienced that first hand, and couldn't be more grateful.

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 :)

The Next Steps

Last Wednesday, April 20, I finished my first year of graduate school in Information at the University of Michigan.  The final assignment that I had to complete was a project working with the Chelsea District Library, helping them gather information so that they can start revolutionizing the way their library can work with youth in order to empower teens and the Chelsea community as a whole.  It was quite an interesting project that coincided quite a bit with my visit to Chicago's YouMedia Center, that I wrote about a few weeks ago, and one to which my prior knowledge contributed. 

I worked with the Chelsea District Library to find metrics of other successful youth organizations across the state, country and world.  Metrics included such information as what does the program look like/how is it organized?; board members, development, and responsibilities; sustainability; and partnerships.  I put this information into a report that also included recommendations for their own youth initiative, a framework for them to outline their specific goals, and policy information that they will need to consider as they move towards implementation.

It was a very exciting project and I felt very lucky to be a part of it.  It will be exciting to see the model that Chelsea creates as it changes the way it's community thinks about the possibilities of a public library.

Presentation - Chelsea District Library from alissa talley on Vimeo.

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 :)