Rabey, Lisa. [Lita-L] Internet Of Things. 2016. E-mail.
A month or so ago, I asked on ALA Think Tank if anyone was using IoT in their libraries, and if so: what, how, when, where; details man, details! Other than someone asking me what the IoT is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things), I got crickets.
traditional technologies have important limitations
when teaching about efforts many agencies are making to break down functional stovepipes, which often involves having functional experts spend significant time in offsite cross-agency teams with “functionals” from other specialties. This has a number of advantages, but creates risks that employees won’t have anywhere to go to get answers to questions or refresh their knowledge base. My students and I also discussed communities of practice, which allowed employees to ask questions to fellow experts not at the same location.
“social intranet” — a one-stop shop where agency employees can go to find or request information in a number of different ways to help them do their jobs. The social intranet consists of wikis; places for people to go to ask questions or solicit collaboration; publicly available conversation threads; central places for blogs; and opportunities for people to create profiles and (in a professional context) “friend” each other. These elements all appear at one web address, with its common home page, to which an employee can link.
These different features work in different ways. Wikis, for example, allow a group of employees to add knowledge to a text that is then accessible to the whole organization — and to which everyone can edit and add. Other employees can subscribe to the updates. Blogs, on the other hand, allow longer text to provide project updates, comment on industry developments, or introduce new issues more transparently than blast e-mail updates can manage.
Most intranet collaboration platforms do not require an approval chain to publish, which lowers the barriers to quick sharing. And while the personal profiles and “friending” often start by providing occasions for social conversations, the intention is for these to be a gateway to knowledge sharing; Mergel quotes a manager as saying, “The social feeds into the professional.”
Around the world, in both developing and developed countries, too many primary and secondary students are falling below proficiency levels. Measuring and monitoring performance and understanding the factors at play in student achievement can help educators create the right conditions and design the most effective interventions for student success.
Instructors: Jessica Olin, Director of the Library, Robert H. Parker Library, Wesley College; and Holly Mabry, Digital Services Librarian, Gardner-Webb University
Offered: April 11 – May 27, 2016
A Moodle based web course with asynchronous weekly content lessons, tutorials, assignments, and groups discussion.
Universal Design is the idea of designing products, places, and experiences to make them accessible to as broad a spectrum of people as possible, without requiring special modifications or adaptations. This course will present an overview of universal design as a historical movement, as a philosophy, and as an applicable set of tools. Students will learn about the diversity of experiences and capabilities that people have, including disabilities (e.g. physical, learning, cognitive, resulting from age and/or accident), cultural backgrounds, and other abilities. The class will also give students the opportunity to redesign specific products or environments to make them more universally accessible and usable.
Takeaways
By the end of this class, students will be able to…
Articulate the ethical, philosophical, and practical aspects of Universal Design as a method and movement – both in general and as it relates to their specific work and life circumstances
Demonstrate the specific pedagogical, ethical, and customer service benefits of using Universal Design principles to develop and recreate library spaces and services in order to make them more broadly accessible
Integrate the ideals and practicalities of Universal Design into library spaces and services via a continuous critique and evaluation cycle
Jessica Olin is the Director of the Library, Robert H. Parker Library, Wesley College. Ms. Olin received her MLIS from Simmons College in 2003 and an MAEd, with a concentration in Adult Education, from Touro University International. Her first position in higher education was at Landmark College, a college that is specifically geared to meeting the unique needs of people with learning differences. While at Landmark, Ms. Olin learned about the ethical, theoretical, and practical aspects of universal design. She has since taught an undergraduate course for both the education and the entrepreneurship departments at Hiram College on the subject.
Holly Mabry received her MLIS from UNC-Greensboro in 2009. She is currently the Digital Services Librarian at Gardner-Webb University where she manages the university’s institutional repository, and teaches the library’s for-credit online research skills course. She also works for an international virtual reference service called Chatstaff. Since finishing her MLIS, she has done several presentations at local and national library conferences on implementing universal design in libraries with a focus on accessibility for patrons with disabilities.
Dates:
February 29 – March 31, 2016
Costs:
LITA Member: $135
ALA Member: $195
Non-member: $260
Technical Requirements:
Moodle login info will be sent to registrants the week prior to the start date. The Moodle-developed course site will include weekly new content lessons and is composed of self-paced modules with facilitated interaction led by the instructor. Students regularly use the forum and chat room functions to facilitate their class participation. The course web site will be open for 1 week prior to the start date for students to have access to Moodle instructions and set their browser correctly. The course site will remain open for 90 days after the end date for students to refer back to course material.
Webcast One: Learning Analytics and the Academic Library: The State of the Art and the Art of Connecting the Library with Campus Initiatives
March 29, 2016
Webcast Two: Privacy and the Online Classroom: Learning Analytics, Ethical Considerations, and Responsible Practice
April 13, 2016
Webcast Three: Moving Beyond Counts and Check Marks: Bringing the Library into Campus-Wide Learning Analytics Programs
May 11, 2016
My note: the US News and World Report is behind times on its reporting, unless this article has been held for a while by their editor: teenagers moved from Snapchat as quickly as they moved away from Facebook to Twitter and from Twitter to Snapchat. The generation, which is running US News and World Report is way too slow to notice the nomadic social media moves of the Millennials.
The cited case from Nebraska, Katelyn Gilroy, a library media specialist, who is using Snapchat or school purposes, can undoubtedly have a niche in education, enticing students to learn about their library, reading, etc.
However, it is questionable to present the media specialist’s case from Nebraska as a blank statement; a case, which can be adopted nationwide. Ms. Pannoni fails to mention that since 15 years ago, when instant messaging was the “snapchat” of the times, U.S. students consider these applications their “virtual mall,” where they like to hang out, but are not keen to consider them for educational purposes. In the same fashion, U.S. students are somehow unique in considering Facebook, later Twitter, then Snapchat and now Kik, Yammer, Celly, or Elgg a domain reserved for their private, extracurricular activities.
More about use of social media in education in this IMS blog:
April 22-24
For 48-72 hours across the world, problem solvers like you join us for NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge, one of the largest hackathons in the universe. Empowered by open data, you collaborate with strangers, colleagues, friends, and family to solve perplexing challenges in new and unexpected ways — from designing an interactive space glove to natural language processing to clean water mapping.
In 2013, the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) released the first-ever global data on how the U.S. population aged 16 to 65 compared to other countries in terms of skills in literacy and reading, numeracy, and problem-solving in technology-rich environments (PS-TRE).
Overall, revealed the data, despite having the highest levels of educational attainment of any previous American generation, Millennials, on average, demonstrate relatively weak skills in all skill sets researched compared to their international peers.
In literacy, U.S. millennials scored lower than 15 of the 22 participating countries. Only millennials in Spain and Italy had lower scores.
Our best-educated millennials—those with a master’s or research degree—only scored higher than their peers in Ireland, Poland, and Spain.
“If we expect to have a better educated population and a more competitive workforce, policy makers and other stakeholders will need to shift the conversation from one of educational attainment to one that acknowledges the growing importance of skills and examines these more critically,” writes Kirsch. “How are skills distributed in the population and how do they relate to important social and economic outcomes? How can we ensure that students earning a high school diploma and a postsecondary degree acquire the necessary skills to fully participate in our society?
Rogers, T., & Feller, A. (2016). Discouraged by Peer Excellence: Exposure to Exemplary Peer Performance Causes Quitting. Psychological Science, 27(3), 365–374. http://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615623770
exposure to exemplary peer performances can undermine motivation and success by causing people to perceive that they cannot attain their peers’ high levels of performance. It also causes de-identification with the relevant domain.
pedagogy can be easily overlooked for convenience or cost.
as educators I think it is in our best interest to realize that just because one modality provides better instructional or assessment models than another, doesn’t mean people won’t sacrifice out of need. As my favorite boss used to say, products and services are all about Time, Money, and Quality… pick two. Progress updates work.