Tag My Doc - QR Codes

It's interesting when you're giving a one-time presentation to people, students or otherwise. Some people absolutely need a handout and are somewhat put-off if you don't have one for them. Others just toss it or leave (which feels worse than if they just toss it later! My experience is - and this is purely anecdotal - is that this is a generational thing.

This service - Tag My Doc - might be a good alternative or middle-ground. You could provide handouts for those who want them and also provide a QR code to link to your document for those who don't. Also, on the blog, Free Technology for Teachers, it is suggested that you could use the QR code instead of handing out extra copies after the students lose the first copy you gave them!

My question is - how is this service any different than any other QR code system?

A library is not a publisher's enemy

This post from the blog, Librarian By Day, about the issues between publishers and libraries (summarized below) is, I think, really born of the frustration that libraries are experiencing because publishers are trying to change the rules now that books and other resources are available electronically. On the surface this article is really about libraries, but the reality is that this about the paradigm shifts that we are facing in almost every walk of life.

The format of information should not matter and cannot matter. We deal with this with students and unreasonable assignment requirements all the time. Students need books – book-books, not e-books. Except libraries are buying more and more e-books because of space restraints and the ability to serve the books to online students and distance-ed students – so finding book-books is going to be increasingly difficult.

Publishers and teachers need to stop worrying about the format of the resource. What they should be worried about is the quality and the reliability and the demand for the information IN the resource.

9 Reasons Publishers Should Stop Acting Like Libraries Are The Enemy and Start Thanking Them

Libraries let people read your books.

Libraries introduce people to your books

We celebrate books and authors everyday, all year long.

Archives.

Publicity.

We WANT to buy your books.

We love books too.

Who else is going to pay those ridiculously high database and journal prices?

Library users are your best customers.

Free online conferences!

Has anyone heard about this K12 Online Conference? This is an interesting trend in conferences that we are experiencing in the library world as well. Just a couple of weeks ago the Library 2.011 Conference occurred. What's really quite amazing about these conferences is not only are they a) online and b)free but c)archived so you can watch them later on your own time.
For those of us with ever decreasing travel budgets or no travel budgets, these online conferences are wonderful opportunities to learn about new topics, thoughts, and trends in our fields. Or to present to our colleagues on what we know or what we've tried! Ironically I still haven't taken the time to listen to any of the talks or watch any of the slideshows from the Library 2.011 conference but I know some colleagues who have and said they've learned quite a bit from the talks. Based on the list of topics and speakers, I know there are many that I definitely plan to get too.
This 2011 K12 Online Conference just started yesterday, as far as I can tell, but I plan to go back to the site and see if there are any topics that pertain to the classes in this program or libraries or information literacy and critical thinking.
So what do you think? Do you think online conferences are a good idea given how much it costs to travel and stay in a hotel room not to mention the time you have to take from work? Or is it too difficult to carve out time from your busy schedule? In that case, maybe "going to" somewhere forces you to take the time for this professional development that you can't force yourself to do otherwise. Does not paying for it for make a difference? For me it does because if I haven't paid for it, I really have a harder time disciplining myself to find the time.

Vizlingo and Qwiki

If any of you have ever tried to create a Powerpoint or any other kind of presentation using more images than text, you will know the frustration of trying to visually represent a concept. Here at my university the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning really encourages a style called Presentation Zen which is a more visual presentation style, and I struggle with this very issue.
I just discovered this website, Vizlingo, which is really intriguing. Though it is video and not images, it still could be good for generating ideas of what images you might use to represent a concept. Type in a phrase or concept and Vizlingo finds images to represent that phrase or concept. Sometimes it works pretty well. Other times...well...not so much. But I like the idea!
Another website that does something similar is Qwiki. You type your phrase or concept into Qwiki and it creates a multimedia video based on what you typed in. I had more success with this than Vizlingo, but the videos were not always on target and all seemed to end abruptly. Still I think there is something to these presentations, and I think they could be interesting ways to represent information you are trying to get across to students - particularly those students who learn better visually.

Are you an early adopter?

Seeing as the Kindle Fire came out this week, and I don't have one, I thought this article that appeared on Wired's website might be interesting to react to. Now that I think about it though, yesterday my husband did bring home a Google Chromebook from the Google conference he was at - and that's brand new.
So anyway - on to early adopters. This will show my age, but I great up in a family of early adopters. I didn't necessarily realize that at the time, but my mom and I took a computer programming class in 1979 (TRS-80) and my dad brought home a IBM PC in 1981. (I think it's the one featured in the Wired article.) It had no internal storage that I recall and you had to boot it with a floppy disc. There were program you could get from PC Magazine but you actually had to type the code in (BASIC). There was no way to load the program. The only games for it were text-based games, and I clearly remember playing Leisure Larry games (wildly inappropriate) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I had a laptop my Freshman year of college - September 1988!

(http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/pc/index.htm). It was Zenith Supersport 8088 and weighed about 8 pounds without the battery. Very few people had a computer of any kind, let alone a laptop. I remember we had a really hard time getting it to work with the campus network. Speaking of the campus network, we had email but it only worked on campus!
I know this was all my Dad's doing and he still today loves technology and the Internet. My mom does as well. So when I heard about older people not liking all "these new technologies," I find that difficult to believe. (My grandmother would have LOVED the Internet!) I think that's important to remember because I've also heard several younger people say they don't like technology. We hear all this talk about digital natives and digital immigrants, and I'm obviously not either. (I evidently immigrated when I was quite young!) I definitely see how my daughter and our students just assume certain givens with technology, but I think most of us have a lot of the same tendencies and we have to be careful not to oversimplify the matter when we are thinking about how people approach and use technology.

I watched this video today that was featured on Free Technology for Teachers. The message and title is "What's Obvious to You is Amazing to Someone Else". I think it's a positive message for students, but I also think it's good for us to remember as well. I know that I often forget that just because I know something doesn't mean others do as well. Also, when I think all my ideas are boring - they won't necessarily be boring to other people - that may just be self-criticism on my part. This is also true when I'm answering a reference question or teaching a class. I don't know if it's true for teachers who teach all day, every day, but I need to remember that just because I've answered this same question twenty-five times already in the last two weeks, it's the FIRST time this student has asked this question. Also, just because I've explained how to use this databases over-and-over again for eight weeks, I have explained it to this group before. So I think I need to challenge myself to both remember this and also - in the case of the classroom - to try to change things up to keep it fresh for myself as well as for the students!

Teaching with Graphic Novels

Believe it or not, many librarians definitely believe that graphic novels really do count as reading and they are not just "comic books!" But this article published in ALA last month (October 2011) talks about how graphic novels can provide more than great reading, but also can be used to teach with. In one example about immigration, the author discusses how the graphic novel "creates a layered experience that affords the opportunity to expand the emotional understanding of the subject" in the way it's images create emotion and understanding. As the author says, it does this in a way no textbook chapter on immigration can do.

Wired Magazine - Why Kids Can't Search

Wired magazine just reported on something that we librarians have known for quite some time. Though students look tech-savvy and think they're tech-savvy, the reality is that, for most of them, their tech-saviness is only surface-level. Students are rarely taught how to search or judge the credibility of what they find (it's not on the standardized test so who has time) and when they get to college, professors assume that they have that knowledge, but they don't.

In the end, it's of matter of learning to think critically. I'm concerned because I know there must be good teachers out there trying to tackle this topic, but as school librarians are cut as non-essential, and teachers lose more and more of their ability to teach what's not "on the test, " students aren't learning to be inquisitive and to question what they locate, to determine it's value and credibility, and to take whatever "comes up first" (and that would include library resources as well as Internet search results).

I just spent almost two hours working with at least four people that were so frustrated by this mismatch of their knowledge and assumptions of what there knowledge should be. It was frustrating for everyone, and it makes me question our ability to do this around at this late stage in the game, but if given the opportunities, I know we can help the students to understand. I just would like to get started on it earlier!

I'm going to figure out how to do that...someday!

This is brillant and here's the link, but I'm also going to re-post the entire blog post here because it's so good.

What if private companies were run like public schools? Posted by Mr. Franco on October 14, 2011

I asked myself this question a while ago, and here are a few thoughts I found worth mentioning…

What if companies ran more like public schools, with teachers as managers and students as employees?

-Every company in America would be forced to employ everyone in the immediate area who is between the ages of 18 and 65.

-No interviews would be allowed, and all employees must be accepted, regardless of qualifications, willingness, or ability to do the assigned job.

-All employees must be held to – AND MEET – the same standards for job performance and competence. Any office that fails to reach this standard loses corporate funding and may fire all managers (while moving all employees to another office). In addition, this job performance standard would be increased every year until ALL employees are performing at 100% of the government-mandated “standard.”

-A company’s manager would oversee 6 or 7 shifts of about 30 in excess of 35 employees, each for an hour a day (the shift number and length may differ slightly among offices). After each shift, all employees would move on to completely different – and generally unrelated – job functions.

-All employees would be promoted to a more difficult set of job functions every year (or two), regardless of past performance or readiness.

-Family members of the employee would be allowed – and many times encouraged – to come to the office and tell managers how to better do their jobs, while simultaneously claiming that the managers’ evaluations of the employee’s job performance is incorrect.

-No employee could be fired, even in light of poor work performance, absenteeism, insubordination, theft of company property, or physical violence toward coworkers or managers.

-Instead of being fired, if an employee’s behavior is deemed inappropriate, the supervisor of the office may give that employee up to 10 days’ worth of vacation. During the employee’s vacation, all managers who oversee the employee must put together all missed work in advance (after all, that under-performing, insubordinate, violent worker still needs to reach the same performance and competency standard as everyone else).

-The government would regulate not only the rules of every company, but also the products being produced, how the products are marketed, how the products are packaged, and how many of each product must be produced (and to what quality) in order for the company to stay in business – all without knowing what products the company even manufactures.

Anyone else have anything to add?

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So, like I wrote, I think there's a lot to think about here. We in colleges and universities have been isolated somewhat from these issues and difficulties considering we have admission standards and all, but this is definitely changing in higher education too. There's a bigger and bigger push to accommodate (right or wrong) students who are not prepared to be in college. Professors are under many of the same pressures that K-12 teachers face (though definitely not at the same intense level!) And we do have some consequences that are more profound - mainly in the wallet - but that increases the belief among students that we are somehow beholden to their tuition dollars (we are) and are here to tell them what's on the test and then pass them. How can we create transformative educational moments where students move from external motivators to internal motivators?

Harry Potter Can Fly!

I cam across this blogpost today on copyright and it talks about using the mnemonic Harry Potter Can Fly to "to remember copyright and fair use guidelines relating to media sharing and fair use." This is one of the hardest things, I think, for educators to understand and remember. Some people are oblivious to it and some are completely terrified that they are going to do something wrong. I like this mnemonic and plan to share it with the professors I work with. H=homegrown. Did you create it? Was it given to you by the creator to use? P=public domain. These are works shared by everyone. Some things automatically belong to the public domain and this INCLUDES government documents. This is not something that I think most people know. However, other things pass into public domain eventually - though that seems to becoming more and more difficult as copyright laws are extended. Determining whether or not something is in the public domain, especially orphaned works, is one of the most difficult things to figure out and is part of what's behind the Google Books lawsuit. C=Creative Commons. This is something many of us are familiar with. And it's pretty easy to understand! And find! People who copyright their resources and materials under Creative Commons licenses give you permission to use their information - under certain circumstances - right up front. F=Fair Use. I think this is some is the most confusing of the concepts to understand. Fair use is not a right, and it is not clearly defined. It's actually a legal defense if you are accused of copyright violations. But basically, it provides for some use of some material that is copyrighted without prior permission of the author or creator. Definitely check this post out. It includes links to videos and provides more commentary. Copyright is definitely NOT simple!

Critical Thinking

I found the Edutopia blog post, "Deeper Learning: The Coaching Method" to be quite interesting. Just yesterday I sat in a meeting where we started discussing all the companies that offer online proctoring to online students. We could spend a lot of money and time on these products and still not be guaranteed that students aren't cheating. Some of this stuff is extreme - no hats, hair away from your face, you have to stay in front of your web camera the whole time and not look like you're looking down and so on. In the end, though, I think we just have to face the fact that we need to create assessments that students can't cheat on. A huge part of this would be designing projects, assignments, and assessments that require critical thinking. Much like universal design, this would lead to a higher quality and more authentic educational experience for all students. But yes, I do think teachers would need help - coaching - in developing and redesigning what they do in order to encompass higher levels of critical thinking.

Constantly Changing Formats

I was looking at my Amazon orders yesterday, and I noticed that my order for the last Harry Potter DVD (the DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital Copy combo pack) now said "Ultraviolet Digital Copy." Ultraviolet digital copy? I've never heard of that. I noticed though, alarmingly, that many, many commenters said "don't buy ultraviolet " and other such negative statements. Their implications are that that is a digital copy that can't be downloaded (only streamed), expires after a year, only works on certain equipment, and is of an inferior quality. Needless to say, this did not please me at all! So I did a little research on my own, and now I'm still not sure what the deal is, but I guess I'll find out soon. This is because all the Blue-Ray copies come with this Ultraviolet digital copy, so I can't choose not to get it. I'm still miffed though because it is not what I ordered. So what does this have to do with libraries? Well, Warner Brothers which owns the Harry Potter movies and is part of this Ultraviolet project, also is being very aggressive toward rental companies like Netflix as well as libraries. In this article from TechDirt you can read that Warner Brothers is imposing a 28-day embargo on the ability of the rental companies AND libraries to loan their movies. On top of that, libraries will only be allowed to purchase copies that do not contain bonus copies or the extras! What could possibility be the harm in libraries have copies with those features? The company obviously has the right to make money off it's product, but this is a first - and it doesn't bode well for the future. There was a time that when libraries purchased materials, it meant that they kept those materials forever (as long as there was the equipment to run the material). However, as we move to a subscription model, we pay for what we have access to - over and over and over again. And when we can no longer afford it - or when the vendor decides that we don't have the rights to it any more - we don't own it anymore. That might be okay for most items, but for an institution trying to preserve some sort of cultural record, it could prove to be a disaster in the long run.