Enhancing Learning Anytime, Anywhere: Spread Your Reach
Chad Boeninger, Joe Murphy, and Madeline Kriescher
Chad started the presentation by talking about how libraries typically teach. He's a business librarian and most training in his library happens through one-shot sessions which have no follow-up. Learning and Outreach, says Chad, is a way to reach out to and extend to our users. Chad encourages us to look beyond library learning trends, perhaps looking at busineses for how they train and teach and what tools they are using. Major Nelson is a manager for the X-box system – he has a blog, he Twitters about work and life stuff both, and a one-minute segment on new games that can stream through your X-box. His face is all over the place – real photos of him, not posed. Chad gave another example of a bike company mananger who does similar social networking. Chad gave some examples how he social networks with his learners. He has a business blog he's had for 4 years to reach out to business students, including posts about classes he's teaching. He also takes photos during classes and puts them up on the blog. He does small polls on the site to see what the learners are interested in. The library also has a blog promoting a large program they are holding later in the year. He also has "The Biz Wiki" which points students to subject-based resources. Chad talked about assessing learners through small quizzes. A tool called phpESP which is a server applicatioin and has more functions than SurveyMonkey for the same price. You can also connect to users via IM. Chat also talked about a Skype kiosk on the 4th floor of his library that lets people talk to libraries through the Skype connection instead of traveling to a different floor to find the librarian. They have also offered several tours of the library, in different languages. Interestingly people that speak the non-English langauges don't use them so much but people trying to learn the language do (fun!). He mentioned some good software: Wink, Audacity, Odeo Studio, and Captivate. He really plugged Wink as a screencasting tool; the output is a Flash file. He used CamStudio to do screen video capture, used a DV camcorder to record the in-person stuff, edited with a Windows tool which he does not recommend. He recommends the Flip Camera – record a video, pop out the USB, and upload automatically to YouTube, Blip.tv, etc. Chad says – don't demand perfection. He recommends not trying for perfection in videos – if you do that, it will take you forever to do the work and you'll likely never get it perfect. Settle for "good enough" as long as the video is serving its purpose for teaching your users. Chad also records himself giving some of his classes so that the students can go back and see it again, or other students can see the material. He also recommends QuickMediaConverter – which lets you compress the video, change file formats, etc. He mentioned "12 Seconds" which works with WebCams and Twitter and you get literally 12 seconds to say what you need to. Vyew and Dim Dim is a tool that could be used for online office hours. Try to find tools with an eye for potential library use and see how you could potentially use that to help your learners learn!
Madeline continued the session and discussed the problem with her library, the Kline Library (law), and the security and privacy issues that exist in the overall Court system. The IT department that supports her library also supports the judges, law clerks, etc. She wanted to use Flickr as a way to create tutorials online. She starts by converting her PowerPoint slides to .jpgs, uploading them individually in reverse order, entering metadata for each slide and batch-editing if possible, saving slides as labeled sets, and creating a collection to house the sets. The benfits of using Flickr for presentations is that it is easy to sign up and use, you can add notes to your slides, share it via a link or send out to Friends/Family on Flickr. Some of the weaknesses are that the links are difficult to work with, creating metadata is cumbersome, the slideshow can look cluttered, you dont' get information about who is looking at your tutorials, and for some people the uploader tool doesn't work. Flickr tracks the number of views, but you don't know who is looking.
Joe finished the session by talking about using Flickr to enhance asynchronous library instruction. Flickr offers the possibility of image-based instruction, including still images and video. Best practices for using Flickr instruction include: adapting the images to maximize their impact (text clarity, using outlines on the slide); never upload anything without titles, descriptions and tags; Every field can support links except title and description, but you can use notes to link. It's a good idea to create a badge for sets on the web so that people get pointed to your training resources from other sites. Market yourself by joining the appropriate groups, and adding friends/contacts. On the profile page, show that it's official, a disclaimer that you don't necessarily promote Flickr, include contact information, etc. He recommmends getting a Pro account in order to use all of the available features (and it's super cheap so why not). The management of the Flickr presentations is essential – ensure that the metadata is correct, hold people accountable for what they post, and figure out staffing (who is responsible for posting or for responding to messages). They also limited the tags to 75 set tags, but he's found that that's not enough for their needs. They do have to deal with questionable content from users – e.g. requests to join a group that is inappropriate. Friending people in Flickr is harder than it is in other social networks, so it doesn't happen as much. He emphasized that it's core to always link back to your library webpages and resources.
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