Seminars on Academic Computing 2007
August 7, 2007
I’m in Snowmass Village for the 2007 Seminars on Academic Computing. It’s my first time at SAC, and, after 33 years, the last time SAC will be held in Snowmass Village.
I’m not the type that pays much attention to the venue of a conference. I’m not usually interested in exploring the towns that host these events. I am interested in making connections with colleagues, in learning, and in reflecting on what I have learned and on how I can apply what I’ve learned to my work back on campus.
But Snowmass is beautiful. The flight into Aspen was breathtaking. I haven’t seen mountains and valleys like this since Jean and I visited Salzburg in 1989. Even after I had landed, I found myself staring at the mountains that surround everything. There are few places I find myself wanting to revisit, but I would really like to come here again someday to explore.
My first morning here I took a walk on some bike trails on the mountain, and came across flowers in each of my girl’s favorite colors.
More on the seminars in my next posts.
Technorati Tags: EDUCAUSE, EDUCAUSE_SA07
Congratulations to Jim Rettig
May 1, 2007
Congratulations to Jim Rettig, University Librarian at the University of Richmond and now President Elect of the American Library Association!
It’s been a long, hard run for office, and I know Jim is going to do a great job over the next three years for the ALA.
EDUCAUSE 2006 - Information Fluency in the Digital Age
October 11, 2006
I attended the Gartner session earlier, but it was unremarkable.
For this session, Susan Curzon, Dean, University Library at California State University, Chuck Dziuban, Director, Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, and Martha Marinara, Director, Information Fluency Quality Enhancement Program at the University of Center Florida presented.
Chuck started by introducing a photo from their web site promoting Information LIteracy, Technology, Critical Thinking mediated by effective communication.
Story number 1. At the beginning of their initiative, they had trouble getting students to go to their web site. The student president suggested they advertise in the campus newspaper and in Facebook. One week later they had 27.000 hits to their web site.
Chuck profiled the generations: Matures, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials.
Matures (prior to 1946)
- Dedicated to a job they take on
- Respectful of authority
- Place duty before pleasure
Baby Boomers (1946-1964)
- Live to wrok
- Generally optimistic
- Inflience on poilcy & products
Generation X (1965-1980)
- Work to live
- Clear & consistent expectations
- Value contributing to the whole
Millennials (1981-1994)
- Live in the moment
- Expect immediacy of technology
- Earn money for immediate consumption
Millennials are least satisfied with online learning; they are least able to integrate and are not able to change their approach to learning.Â
Millennial learning styles are twitch speed, parallel processing, graphics first, connected, active learning, learn by play, learn by fantasy, technology friendly; Lifestyles are special, sheltered, confident, team oriented, achieving, pressured and conventional.
CHallenges include in learning styles: surface functioning, difficult to teach, research by “surf”, weak critical thinking skills, naive beliefs regarding intellectual property, technology preferences have little institutional context. Lifestyle is sefl focused, artificial self esteem, anything is possible orientation, cynical, life by lottery and a “yeah right” attitude.
Martha presented next. Millennials want control over their education. It should be quick and convenient. Information LIteracy, Technology Literacy and Critical Thinking are a continuum and communication is a mediating force that transforms all three into Information Fluency. While UCF has funding ($5 million) and time (5 years), it will take longer to complete the transformation. Resources from across the campus were included in the effort: Library, Faculty Center, Career Resources, Faculty, etc. were all involved).
They have four pilot projects at present, and larger projects are in discussion now. They’ve launched a web site to promote Information Fluency.
Susan began by providing an overview of the CSU system. The libraries launched a program years ago to promote information literacy. Eventually every campus in the system became involved in the program.
Questions we should all consider:
- Is the definition of information literacy known? People often confuse this with computer literacy.
- Why are we engaging with information literacy? Why is it important? IL gives students a strategic advantage as workers and citizens.
- Have clear goals been developed for the information literacy program?
- Is information literacy part of the educational strategy of the University? It can’t be a focus of the LIbrary alone. Everyone must contribute to the educational strategy.
- Is there a plan for collaboration across the university?
- Does one size fit all?
- Is there administrative support?Â
- Is there a collective will for a long-term sustained effort?
- Is there a willingness to market the program?
- What about an assessment program? How will we know when are students are information literate? This has been very challenging for CSU.
- What else is going on at the University at this time? Is this the right time for this initiative to be launched?
- What about accreditation?Â
These questions (along with several I missed) should all be considered in approaching an information literacy program.
Technorati Tags: EDUCAUSE2006, information literacy, information fluency
Info Island in Second Life
October 1, 2006
I spent some time this weekend going through Second Life. Most of the time I stay on the NMC Campus, but it’s quiet most of the time and after a while I’m looking for something to do. So this weekend I visited several other places in Second Life. The most interesting was Info Island. The librarians have run amok!
It’s an entire island of libraries. And they’ve got a second island on the way. I started outside the main library.Â
I was impressed that even in the cyber world librarians take pains to help us all fulfill our civic duties. They had signs you could click on to connect to each state’s voter registration web site.
Inside the main library they’ve got audio books. They call them Audio Navigators.Â
Everything is arranged by author. When you select the text you want to hear, your web browser loads an MP3 file of someone reading the text to you.
And the audio files are yours to keep. I listened to “Taming the Bicycle” by Mark Twain - it played in my web browser while I kept Second Life going up front.
They have a tower with information for many disciplines. Some of the floors aren’t finished yet, but they’re linking to useful web sites from each discipline’s floor.
This is the first floor of the tower. There’s a transporter you use to teleport to the other floors. I missed that the first time I visited - I was looking for stairs. But the transporter works well, complete with Star Trek sound effects. The top floor is a theatre you can use for presentations. There’s also a very nice classroom. NMC may want to look at that for their campus.
My favorite room in the tower was the Humanities room. The circular desk in the center links to some good web sites, and there’s even a cabinet containing maps you can have. But the look of the room is almost as important as the things you can access, and I think I’ll be spending some time on this floor of the tower.
NMC’s Teacher’s Buzz is going to be visiting the Thompson NETg campus tomorrow. I’ve been there and it’s an interesting place. They’ve got some casual spaces for you to relax while you’re listening to or watching their training materials. But the environment that’s been created on Info Island is what I’d like to to see NMC consider. Maybe the Teacher’s Buzz can arrange a field trip there too.
Technorati Tags: nmc2006, library, Second Life
NY Times on Wikipedia
December 4, 2005
The New York Times has an article in today's paper, “Rewriting History: Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar” (free registration required), which tells the story of how an anonymous editor implicated John Seigenthaler, a former editor of the Tennessean in Nashville, with the murders of John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby.
The article does a good job explaining Wikipedia's weak point: anyone can maliciously create or update an entry in the online encyclopedia, and there are no checks-and-balances, no peer review before mis-information is accessible by anyone who happens to come across a bad entry.
The article does achieve some balance, however, by discussing some of the steps Wikipedia plans to take to make it harder for malicious editing. They also point out that once discovered, errors can be corrected quicker on Wikipedia than other encyclopedias.
As I've said before, the best practice is to have more than one source to back up your work. Don't just take Wikipedia as the gospel; find other sources to verify the information you find. That should be a practice not only for web-based information, but for all research.
Counterpoint: Can You Trust Encyclopedia Britannica?
November 9, 2005
This week's Library Blog entry cites an article where several authorities discuss problem entries in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
As a counterpoint, I'd like to offer Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia. I suspect if we undertook an exhaustive search, we'd learn that there isn't an encyclopedia on the planet that doesn't have issues of quality and authority.
Authority is the primary issue you will have using Wikipedia as a reference source. Since anyone can edit, you stand a good chance of coming across an entry containing errors. But even reference sources that are reviewed - like Encyclopædia Britannica - can have some errors, and information changes over time. The Wikipedia article on errors in Britannica doesn't back away from Wikipedia's own shortcomings. In the introduction to the list of errors in Britannica, the authors state:
It must be noted that errors are but one measure of the quality of a reference work. The level of trust one has in a reference work is built from the uniformity of high quality entries, the repeatability with which accurate entries may be found at random, and the lack of entries that are either wholly inaccurate, or heavily biased, among many other measures. Wikipedia is a work in progress in this regard.
Wikipedia is by its own admission a work in progress in many regards. Caveat emptor. Don't go with just one source. But don't dismiss this source out of hand, either. Approach your research with a critical mind, not only to your subject but also to your sources…all of them.
Question authority.
