Recently in Teaching Category
I was responsible for today's LST097 lesson, "Organization of Information." In preparation for the day, the students were required to read chapters 1 & 3 from Everything is Miscellaneous, by Weinberger. I used these chapters to set the stage for a quick lesson in CAT searching.
Points I pulled out from chapter 1, "The New Order of Order."
The CAT. The way the public - our students - access that which has been organized by catalogers using the Library of Congress cataloging system.
I did a CAT demo here, hopefully effectively illustrating the technique of moving from keyword searching into subject searching - showing students how to find out what subject terms to use, and how to access the books they need and that are relevant. - it was a very quick demo and so the students went away with our great Savvy Searching in the CAT guide.
The next step was to move beyond the CAT, and what LC subject headings have to offer us, and into chapter 3 of Weinberger, "The Geography of Knowledge." This chapter started with Dewey, who was definitely a bit out there, as was his system, but he also held the core tenet that library patrons needed to be able to walk into a library and know where to find what they were looking for. No more one library arranges things by size, another by color, and another by date acquired...Libraries are for the people, they're democratic.
And what Dewey did way back then set the stage for - jump in your time machines and travel with me to the 21st century - what companies like Amazon.com are doing now. We live in an age of the Democratization of Information.
Pause here: I ask the class what this means. No response. So I ask what democracy means. Also, no response - not even lightbulbs in eyes. One student finally offers that it's people choosing our own leaders.
Close - and yes, that is a part of it. I explained Democracy as "anything for the people, by the people - something that we create together." Information creation is now democratic.
Which brings the question of, "What's next?"
Who will be the authors of our information?
Who will catalog that information?
How will we access that information?
I emphasized how exciting this state of being is. We all - and they all - have the opportunity to influence how information is created and accessed on a daily basis, and will chart the course for future interactions with knowledge.
Some heads nodded, others spun. I'm happy to say that no one had glazed eyeballs :) One student astutely pointed out that "Hey wait a minute! Doesn't that mean that anybody can post whatever the heck they want, even if it's not right?" (ahhhh, teachable moment!)
I closed with this: "Information creation, storage, and access is changing, and you will be a large part of how that comes to pass..."
My hope is that I inspired the students, helped them to understand more about the system we currently have in place @ the library, and sparked thought about what new systems might look like.
Blog topic for the week: How do you think library materials should be organized, and how should patrons/customers gain access to them?
Feel free to join the LST class in posting on this topic...I look forward to reading their, and your, ideas!
Points I pulled out from chapter 1, "The New Order of Order."
- "If only there were a way to arrange the stuff in stores so that every possible interest could be captured." - This quote set the stage. Isn't it everyone's desire to be able to walk into the place that houses what you want (whether it be a store, library, or something else) and easily find what you are looking for? - Students cited many different reasons they liked their own favorite stores: good service, easy-to-find products, specialization in a type of product, spontaneous discovery...
- The Library has a lot to do with how our world is organized, and it all stems back to Library of Congress subject headings (according to Weinberger - and I think he has a point or two to make here!) - There are many different ways to organize things, subjects being a primary way. Beyond that there are paper catalogs, shelf finding aid systems, or online methods of organization, which leads us to...
The CAT. The way the public - our students - access that which has been organized by catalogers using the Library of Congress cataloging system.
I did a CAT demo here, hopefully effectively illustrating the technique of moving from keyword searching into subject searching - showing students how to find out what subject terms to use, and how to access the books they need and that are relevant. - it was a very quick demo and so the students went away with our great Savvy Searching in the CAT guide.
The next step was to move beyond the CAT, and what LC subject headings have to offer us, and into chapter 3 of Weinberger, "The Geography of Knowledge." This chapter started with Dewey, who was definitely a bit out there, as was his system, but he also held the core tenet that library patrons needed to be able to walk into a library and know where to find what they were looking for. No more one library arranges things by size, another by color, and another by date acquired...Libraries are for the people, they're democratic.
And what Dewey did way back then set the stage for - jump in your time machines and travel with me to the 21st century - what companies like Amazon.com are doing now. We live in an age of the Democratization of Information.
Pause here: I ask the class what this means. No response. So I ask what democracy means. Also, no response - not even lightbulbs in eyes. One student finally offers that it's people choosing our own leaders.
Close - and yes, that is a part of it. I explained Democracy as "anything for the people, by the people - something that we create together." Information creation is now democratic.
Which brings the question of, "What's next?"
Who will be the authors of our information?
Who will catalog that information?
How will we access that information?
I emphasized how exciting this state of being is. We all - and they all - have the opportunity to influence how information is created and accessed on a daily basis, and will chart the course for future interactions with knowledge.
Some heads nodded, others spun. I'm happy to say that no one had glazed eyeballs :) One student astutely pointed out that "Hey wait a minute! Doesn't that mean that anybody can post whatever the heck they want, even if it's not right?" (ahhhh, teachable moment!)
I closed with this: "Information creation, storage, and access is changing, and you will be a large part of how that comes to pass..."
My hope is that I inspired the students, helped them to understand more about the system we currently have in place @ the library, and sparked thought about what new systems might look like.
Blog topic for the week: How do you think library materials should be organized, and how should patrons/customers gain access to them?
Feel free to join the LST class in posting on this topic...I look forward to reading their, and your, ideas!
Emily, Dan, and I just got done with our first 50-min. class. First days are always whirlwinds, but I think this year was the most hectic ever. And when my head is left spinning, I know my students' heads are. Here was the agenda:
- Meet @ Central Pattee and walk to classroom
- Roll call - introductions - Lots of students from Philly this year. Many from State College. One from China who's never been abroad before. Several nicknames to remember!
- Syllabus introduction - Syllabus is Bible (we redesigned this year and the format seems to be working well).
- Explanation of Blogging assignment/assignment of teams/instructions for weekly reports - Students seem eager to blog, anxious about grading criteria (already had ? about length of posting), and a bit frustrated with getting MT4 working for them. We anticipate a 3-week learning curve.
- Sony Reader project intro/description of study/consent form administration - Students seem to <3 their Readers and are eager to put their own content on the devices. Battery Suck, here they come! Great research material - here we (the instructors) come!
- Assignment of first blog post topic - Describe a memorable (or not so memorable) trip to the library (any library). What made the visit memorable?
- Post-class troubleshooting time - most people had to rush off so there will be furious emailing between now and next Wed.
I LOVE this time of year. As much as I may be prone just like everyone else to groaning about how quickly August rolled around, I must admit that I have this closet love of all things "Back to School." There's a bustle about town - and Walmart; the hallways of the libraries smell like fresh wax; students everywhere are worrying about what color backpack to buy and whether to bring a pencil or pen (or maybe now a laptop) to the first day of classes. When I was growing up, from age 5 - 22, I could never sleep the night before school started. It wasn't because I was scared. It was because I was excited, and I wanted, above all, to be prepared.
Fast forward not so many years, and here I am - FACULTY!!! (I still haven't shrugged the little voice in my head asking, 'How did that happen?!') Next Wednesday, August 27th, is my first day of school. For the second Fall in a row, I will be team teaching the Libraries' first year seminar with my colleagues Dan and Emily. The seminar (woops! I just almost typed seminary - I hope not!) is titled Research Skills for the 21st Century. We hope to deliver on that title for the 19 DUS students from Discover House who have enrolled.
Last year when the three of us taught the course together, we pretty much did it up "old school." Lecture - activity - homework assignment in class and readings/assignments in between, all culminating in a final project powerpoint presentation at the end. Our students liked the class, and learned a lot, but these methods of learning, communicating, and presenting didn't seem to jive with the 21st century portion of our course title.
Fast-forward to today. We're doing some really exciting things this Fall. First of all, we're thrilled to be part of a Libraries' pilot project, testing the Sony Reader and its application in an academic environment. (Disclaimer - I am also a Project Leader for this endeavor so I have both the administrative and participant viewpoint.) Today our students received an email message instructing them to come to the library to pick up a Sony Reader which will contain their course readings. The readers also have some interesting titles just thrown on. We want to see how they use the devices. Will they add content of their own? Will they bring them to class every week? What features are helpful? What functionality would make a device like this better-suited to academia? I can't wait to see and hear their reactions!
The other new thing we're doing is (hopefully) encouraging a community of learning in and out of the classroom by requiring the students to create a blog on the Blogs @ Penn State platform. They will have to do a weekly entry on an assigned topic, and each week a different pair of students will be charged with monitoring the feed and summarizing the high points for the rest of the class at the start of the next session. Signing up for a blog was also a pre-assignment, and so far no questions about how to do it. This is either scary or encouraging - probably both!
Throughout the course, students will learn about where libraries and research have been, and where we are going. They'll learn how to look for a book (and use it!), as well as how to create an online research desktop. Lots of readings will come from Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, and there will be others as well. We are hopeful that we'll be able to distribute things "on the fly" for students to just load onto their Sony Reading devices.
I am hopeful that our students will embrace these new opportunities and experiences - if not today, down the road when they have the chance to reflect and think "I'm really glad I took that class. It made me a better researcher/thinker/person/student/etc."
Stay tuned for more. I am committed to at least one weekly reflection on how the class is going :)
Fast forward not so many years, and here I am - FACULTY!!! (I still haven't shrugged the little voice in my head asking, 'How did that happen?!') Next Wednesday, August 27th, is my first day of school. For the second Fall in a row, I will be team teaching the Libraries' first year seminar with my colleagues Dan and Emily. The seminar (woops! I just almost typed seminary - I hope not!) is titled Research Skills for the 21st Century. We hope to deliver on that title for the 19 DUS students from Discover House who have enrolled.
Last year when the three of us taught the course together, we pretty much did it up "old school." Lecture - activity - homework assignment in class and readings/assignments in between, all culminating in a final project powerpoint presentation at the end. Our students liked the class, and learned a lot, but these methods of learning, communicating, and presenting didn't seem to jive with the 21st century portion of our course title.
Fast-forward to today. We're doing some really exciting things this Fall. First of all, we're thrilled to be part of a Libraries' pilot project, testing the Sony Reader and its application in an academic environment. (Disclaimer - I am also a Project Leader for this endeavor so I have both the administrative and participant viewpoint.) Today our students received an email message instructing them to come to the library to pick up a Sony Reader which will contain their course readings. The readers also have some interesting titles just thrown on. We want to see how they use the devices. Will they add content of their own? Will they bring them to class every week? What features are helpful? What functionality would make a device like this better-suited to academia? I can't wait to see and hear their reactions!
The other new thing we're doing is (hopefully) encouraging a community of learning in and out of the classroom by requiring the students to create a blog on the Blogs @ Penn State platform. They will have to do a weekly entry on an assigned topic, and each week a different pair of students will be charged with monitoring the feed and summarizing the high points for the rest of the class at the start of the next session. Signing up for a blog was also a pre-assignment, and so far no questions about how to do it. This is either scary or encouraging - probably both!
Throughout the course, students will learn about where libraries and research have been, and where we are going. They'll learn how to look for a book (and use it!), as well as how to create an online research desktop. Lots of readings will come from Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, and there will be others as well. We are hopeful that we'll be able to distribute things "on the fly" for students to just load onto their Sony Reading devices.
I am hopeful that our students will embrace these new opportunities and experiences - if not today, down the road when they have the chance to reflect and think "I'm really glad I took that class. It made me a better researcher/thinker/person/student/etc."
Stay tuned for more. I am committed to at least one weekly reflection on how the class is going :)
