08.26.09
PLS Fall Retreat – Still on
We met today to decide the fate of the 2009 PLS Fall Retreat and the verdict is in…”We Can Do It!” is a GO!
As past-Chair of the Public Library Section of the Kansas Library Association, this makes me very happy. I would have taken it as a personal failure if the retreat were canceled!
It may be small and intimate, but we have enough bodies staying overnight at the Spiritual Life Center that the $850 Main Assembly rental fee will be waived. Toni Boyles is the keynote on Friday, discussing personnel/HR challenges in tough times – how to deal with stressed out employees, lay offs, stressed out patrons, and such. I know a lot of libraries have completely lost their travel budgets, but many Library Systems have CE grants to help off-set the costs for individuals who want to attend. I mean, who would want to miss the chance to sit in a room surrounded by paintings of patron saints for two days?? It’s good for the soul!
We did decide to go old-school with conference registration in hopes of drumming up some additional retreaters, so the next email will have a paper registration form attached for folks to print out, fill out, and mail back to the KLA offices. We’ll see if it works.
08.20.09
New York Times: Online Ed beats Classroom
Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom
Given the program with Pat Wagner earlier this week, I thought this article Heather found in the NY Times was spot on!
08.18.09
Successful Online Education with Pat Wagner
The State Library of Kansas and System Consultants participated today in a Wimba training session, “Improve Successful Use of Online Education Opportunities” with Pat Wagner (presenting from home in pink silk pajamas). Pat works as a consultant and trainer with the University of North Texas LE@D program (Lifelong Education @ Desktop) and was invited to present by Cindi Hickey, my KU obsessed friend at the State Library in charge of Library Development and WebJunction Kansas. I tweeted some of this today, but thought I would try to improve my retention by blogging about it…and then I’ll take this and rework it next month into a nekls.org newsletter article…because I’m efficient like that.
What we did NOT focus on was ‘for-credit’ and academic education, mentoring, and face-to-face training. Instead, the scope was continuing and professional education, formal online classes, workplace skills and knowledge and the fact that ANYTHING can count as online, including watching a video or downloading a handout to print out! Baby steps like that build confidence and make ‘online class’ a less intimidating undertaking.
What are some of the impediments to having a successful online learning experience?
- Lack of bandwidth & technology
- Lack of time – everyone chooses how to spend their time, is online learning a priority?
- Lack of experience with online learning
- Poor history with online classes – one failure is all it takes to scare folks away
- Resistance from educators (I guess some trainers don’t like to provide online training…go figure)
- Poor support from the workplace – we need to sell it to the top and encourage the ‘top’ to join the fun
How is it different teaching adults from teens or children?
- Training for adults needs to be pertinent to their lives – they (we) need context, so the training builds on associative memory – let the learner make the skills/knowledge there own, even if this means letting them use their own (incorrect) vocabulary.
- Adults need applicability – Make a point to show how the training content can be used immediately.
- Failure haunts many learners. Reinforce, reinforce, reinforce and set them up for success.
What do Adult learners value?
- Collaborative training, where the learners create and add to the content – pull from their experiences and allow the learners to share, thus becoming co-teachers! Include the audience and encourage feedback.
- Participatory – most folks like to write and speak
- Interactive – folks also need to listen and respond
- Egalitarian – refrain from using that bad teacher voice and realize that in many ways, the students know a lot more than the teacher – treat them with the courtesy and respect they deserve as adult learners and peers.
- Productive – how can the lessons be used in the workplace?
- My addition: entertaining! Humor makes everything easier and less intimidating.
The Six ‘Difficult’ Learners
- passive learner – pour the knowledge into my head with no effort from me
- lone eagle learner – I need no one, I can learn alone (and teamwork feels like cheating)
- pass-the-test learner – They do only what they have to do to get credit for the class for the certificate for the raise
- perfect learner – Perfectionists need reassurance that it’s OK to not get it all right the first time
- competitive learner – It’s all about the status
What We Want Instead
- active learners
- team learners – play well with others
- knowing learners – apply what is learned
- brave learner
- resourceful learner
- learner as teacher – “students learn better from each other than the teacher” and “the more important conversations are between students than between the student and the teacher.” Pat argues that Web 2.0 conversations count – so start blogging, tweeting, and having back channel IM discussions!
[Aside - I have this poster on my wall because I think it's important to remember, although I admit I often don't.]
How the Brain Learns – retention after 24 hours
Lecture = 5%
Reading = 10%
Audio-Visual = 20%
Demonstration = 30%
Discussion = 50%
Practice by doing = 75%
Teaching others = 90%
Before We Learn Online
- Get back to basics
- Take education seriously
- Communicate the who, what, when, where, and why
- Promote intrinsic value – Learning is Fun!
- Model what we believe – the Director best be doing some online learning along with the staff! Do as I do.
- Provide environment & tools – as in, time and a computer OFF THE DESK. Ok, I was guilty of this, but at 7 pm on a Thursday, the desk was pretty darn quiet and conducive to online training…
- Follow-up is required – without follow up, using online tools and interactions – the learning goes away in 3 months according to Dr. Phil Turner (Dean of UNT’s SLIS program)
If We Were In Charge…what would we change?
- schedule time for staff learning
- Support use of Web 2.0 social networking tools
- Make folks feel safe
- See the archive for more – this collaboration bit is hard to keep track of with notes!
The 7 Myths of Online Education
- E-learning means expedient – It’s not quick and dirty – take time to do the job well, read, learn, participate, digest
- Needs no preparation
- Most adults are self-directed
- Learning takes place in class – Not…the learning takes place with the student teaches the skills to someone else!
- Needs no budget or time
- Needs no supervision – Pat argues that supervisors need to be teachers and coaches
- Needs no follow-up – Follow up is necessary for retention and application
Online Research Profile
- Who are your typical students? older, self-taught on technology, overworked, underpaid
- Some online education research uses: college settings, younger subjects, an environment where classes are about credit (not learning) and use subjects with a LOT of online exprience
- How do yours compare? The point being, they don’t!
Reports from the Field
- Pat shared the Amarillo experiment with LE@D online classes – they found that while participants reported 90% completion rates, the data showed that only 10% of the participants were finishing the online courses!
- Leadership resistance makes it difficult to promote online education – time and a commitment from the ‘Gate Keepers’ is needed.
- “Just hit the return key” – folks are just going through the motions without absorbing the knowledge
- “It’s only about the credits!”
- Self-directed is mostly a myth: if we mean behavior change – There has to be follow up and involvement from a supervisor if the skills are to be retained and used (both soft and hard).
- Our truths:
- learners are habitual
- there has to be interest in the subject from the learner
- online learning has a ‘human interaction’ element akin to online dating
- once a person has found the answer, they quit the class! Especially true with software-related online classes
- learning should be fun (mine)
- sometimes, you have to learn the same thing more than once
Why Online is Worth Using?
- Riches beyond your fingertips – especially for rural librarians isolated from many CE opportunities
- Accommodates many learning styles – visual, auditory, participatory
- Networking around the world
- Self-paced – go as slow or as fast as YOU want to go
- Don’t have to compete in class – know-it-all’s like me are neutralized
- Quality at a great price
- It is the 21st Century, after all
This next part had to do with roles and responsibilities – much of which was directed to large organizations with a lot of bueracracy and layers of management.
- Regional Library Leaders – talk with, not at, people, provide and promote online training, and Association leaders need to take a role, too (i.e. PLS Fall Retreat)
- Individual Library Leaders – Take it seriously, take time to take a class WITH staff and then talk about what you’ve ALL learned, and provide time to take online training (especially if you require it)
- HR Experts and Trainers – Provide live support to help with tech issues, use a LE@D video at a staff meeting or for the basis of staff training and follow up with discussion/demonstrations/etc. and reward participation
- Managers and Supervisors – Notice – give feedback, be a teacher, give group classes – pay attention and SAY something when you see skills/knowledge from an online class being utilized and reinforce that great behavior by commenting on it. Have a ’sharing session’ where the students can teach
- The Online Participants (aka Students) – Are they held accountable and find the class content applicable? If students want a challenge, go find some college courses to take for the sheer fun of it – ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’
- 7-11 minute videos are optimal for retention
- “do it in your pajamas”
- “Enter to win”
- “Find a specific problem that can be addressed with an online course (ex., Excel problem)”
Online Learning Tricks
- Create written goals: what
- Create a curriculum: how
- Three times is the charm: 1. Scan for an overview, 2. Take the class, and 3. Revisit the key points
- Find a study buddy – make it interactive
- Yes, you can take notes – with online learning, you can stop, rewind, take notes – take time to think and write DURING the course
- Seek out other versions – online sites, articles, books, experts (explore those tangents as discussed in danah boyd’s blog Apophenia - I want my cyborg life)
- Teach to someone else
- What would you add?
- 1. Tell what you’ll teach, 2. Present the content, 3. Tell what was taught and 4. Have them explain what they learned (from Richard)
Cool Cheap/Free Resources
- Librarything – library-relevant and book-based
- TED – Based on video presentations, important ideas from everywhere (Heather recommends)
- Slideshare – Stockpiled presentations – I’ve used one of these for WordPress training before.
- TalkShoe – find some library-related audio conversations (need to explore this one)
- ALAConnect – free to nonmembers with registration, based on online communities (again, need to explore this)
- WebJunction – WJ rocks, I’ve used this for the basis NEKLS Tech Work Days in the lab
The plus/delta model
- Pick a skill set list (core competencies) that people may need to learn
- Go through list asking – “What do you do well” and “What could you do better”
- Build further training from there – an easy assessment tool
I’ll link to the archive, just as soon as it’s posted.
08.17.09
Post Tech Day
As a Director, I celebrated the end of Summer Reading but here, I celebrate the end of Tech Day. Last week was spent catching up, but also processing the information Amy shared with us. I’m happy to report that the feedback on Tech Day was overwhelmingly positive, with David’s program on Digitization and the lightning rounds as highlights. The ‘feel’ of Tech Day was definitely more relaxed this year, partly because of Amy, partly because of the chaotic nature of lightning rounds and partly because I wasn’t new to the job. I hope people enjoyed themselves, along with learning a few things.
We’ve compiled a list of electronic resources mentioned throughout the day at the NEKLS Tech Blog. Heather, the academic of the Tech Team, also put together some great articles and such about Open Source Resources that are well worth a read, also at the NEKLS Tech Blog.
It was a treat to meet Amy and talk to her on Wednesday about how Howard County Library (HCL) has implemented their open source solutions via Groovix and how that has positively impacted the customer service and ’soft’ tech support she and her team are able to give staff now. With so few broken computers, she has time to help people improve workflows and use of the technology, most of which they taught themselves to use in the first place.
Amy inherited the HCL open source experiment during “Phase 1: Let’s explore open source” when two of the technicians wanted to explore an alternative to upgrading every computer from NT to XP, so they played with loomix back in 2001. They were able to use ‘bad’ machines successfully with loomix and eventually hooked up with Mike Pardee at Open Sense Solutions, who developed and supports the Groovix product.
“Phase 2: Outsource” – Howard County contracted with Mike to use Groovix.
Groovix is a web-based ’solution’ (software) that combines an ubuntu operating system, web browsing, word processing, multi-media, web-based applications and security. The software is deployed, supported, updated and monitored remotely by Groovix. According to the project site, “Groovix was designed from the ground up to provide a secure public access computing environment. Groovix gives you functionality, customizability, security, and support.” As anyone who’s thumbed through a browser history or looked at cookies and temp files on a public machine (that hasn’t been rebooted to clear all of that) knows, there is a ton of private information out on public machines. In Sept. 2007, Groovix was deployed system wide. Amy shared that HCL bought used PCs (GX150s), but now deploys GX270s at $170 a piece. The extra money is used for monitors and 3 year maintenance for those monitors. They keep hard drives and fans in stock and replace these parts when they break.
They went with the “internet cafe” model for public computing, with games for kids that can be accessed on ANY PC, not just the ones in the children’s area (a plus when the parent wants to go find a book and have the child nearby). With the staff, all went well except for about a dozen folks who needed to keep their Windows clients. Not everyone is comfortable going from operating system to operating system (from Mac to PC to Linux), but that is definitely a goal. For email and file sharing, they use DeskNow or Zimbra.
With less time spent troubleshooting hardware and software because of Groovix, HCL tech staff were able to spend time on site at various branches, including Administration where a majority of the Windows clients were located. Through observation and being available for one-on-one training, many software/workflow issues were resolved and much good will has been built.
Another decision made at HCL, due to the money saved from going to open source, was to provide the marketing department with Macs. Rather than convert every file sent to the vendor, the library staff just used the same OS.
We asked a lot of questions of Amy, here are some random answers:
- What’s the replacement cycle? “Just when they die, not every 3 years.”
- Budget issues? “It’s hard to budget for this kind of PC replacement.” Her budget has stayed flat since she’s been there ($75,000). She buys new PCs with free DOS, spends evenly across the year, buys big hardware at the end of the budget year and uses high school students to deploy. Groovix comes out of the software budget, along with the ILS and Koha developments budgeted for completion prior to migration. Groovix support is paid for annually and Mike manages all imaging for new PCs.
- How do you sell this to a Board? “Put OpenOffice and FireFox along side Word and IE.” Why do we pick Microsoft? For the support? How often do we use that support? How often do we instead go to Google and the community of users for support? The numbers speak for themselves and Groovix proves itself. She recommends keeping one retired machine, put it in as an OPAC machine or as a staff email machine for people to play with.
When changes come, Amy says, “I see nothing but opportunity.” I think I’ll leave it at that!
08.06.09
Tech Day 2009
UPDATE: Internet was maxed out today, so I gave up and just listened and took paper notes, which I’ll put into a coherent type blog post tomorrow or this weekend. I have a lot of links to post at the Tech Blog, too. So much INFO.
+++++++++++
Having issues with Twitter, but hopefully someone in this room has access and will share their mini-notes.
Amy Begg De Groff – Open Source in Libraries
“Knowledge is freedom; freedom in knowledge.”
“I write code, so you don’t have to” – quote at Danny’s (Developer) desk
LibX toolbar – Amy mentioned.
Amy is starting with the many definitions of Open and Freedom.
What are your computers for? Did they sneak in as catalog computers and have become vital.
“Find your answers the old fashioned way…you Google them.”
Freedom – ‘grant freedom to’ – ‘free from confinement’
Don’t tell me what software to use – does the drive through not serve me because I’m driving a volvo?
Dynamic software development, example = Koha – put the idea out there and everyone is free to take up the task.
Free – relinquishing.
