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.
Actual adoption by professors, however, has been a different, slower story. Just over half of students reported using an LMS in most or all of their courses as recently as two years ago, two decades after the creation of modern learning-management software. In short, professors aren’t as sold on using an LMS as administrators are.
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.
Students who participate in the course will do a project in which they pick a commercial game and describe how it integrates with their chosen content area. They also need to watch kids play their favorite games and play alongside them, then reflect on those experiences.
U-Spatial is pleased to announce the 2016 University of Minnesota Summer Spatial Boot Camp, an intensive, five-day geospatial workshop held on the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus from June 6th to 10th, 2016. Over the course of five days, participants will learn the fundamentals of Remote Sensing, GPS, LiDAR, Cartography, and more. Emphasis is on foundational skills in gathering, creating, managing, analyzing, and communicating spatial data. In addition to short courses, guest speakers will present on applications of geospatial tools and techniques.
Prerequisites
Working knowledge of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a prerequisite for admission to the workshop. In particular, familiarity with ArcGIS or comparable software packages is required.
Course Fees
The non-refundable participation fee for the entire workshop is $250.
Accommodation
U-Spatial has reserved a block of single-occupancy rooms in an on-campus dormitory at a rate of $46.95/night.
This course will introduce students to a range of techniques for analyzing and presenting spatial data in the humanities. We’ll start with a survey of popular GUI-based tools (Neatline, Google Fusion Tables, CartoDB, QGIS, etc), exploring both their capabilities and their limitations. Motivated by the gaps in existing software, the last part of the course will consist of a basic introduction to web map programming in the browser, making use of popular open-source libraries like Leaflet, d3, and Turf.js. Along the way, we’ll touch on the basic concepts needed to get up and running with front-end software development – HTML, CSS, Javascript, and more. This course is designed for enthusiastic beginners who are looking to learn about new tools and and get started with the basic skills needed to create custom GIS applications. No previous programming experience is required.
This article explains how the University of Nebraska Kearney Calvin T. Ryan Library improved their social media strategy by using an RSS 2.0 feed to update and sync social media tools and create a slideshow on the library’s home page. An example of how to code a well-formed RSS 2.0 feed with XML is given, in addition to PHP, HTML, and JQuery utilized to automate the library home page slideshow.
My note: such use of social media + blog was exactly what I have been proposing to the SCSU library for several years to no avail.
In order to sync content, and coordinate those channels, libraries can turn to enterprise solutions, such as Gremln, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or Hootsuite; however, a simpler approach is to utilize an RSS (Really Simply Syndication or Rich Site Summary) feed to disseminate content to various social media channels.
using a WordPress blog for news and events in the library that grew to include items of potential interest to the campus community connected to the library. Categories were created to describe posts in more detail, structure content and link related posts, such as “Library Info” or “E-resources”.
Digital humanities (DH) has been heralded as the next big thing in humanities scholarship and universities have been creating initiatives and new positions in this field. Libraries, too, have moved to create a presence in the digital humanities community, setting up centers and hiring librarians to staff them. This course is designed as an introduction for librarians or library school students who have little or no exposure to DH and wish to be better positioned to offer DH support or services in a library setting. Participants will read and discuss DH scholarship, learn about frequently-used software, and think about why and how libraries and librarians engage DH. While I will encourage participants to explore more complex computing approaches (and I will support those who do as best I can), this course does not presuppose computing skills such as programming or use of the command line and will not ask participants to do much more than upload files to websites or install and use simple programs. Participants should have an interest and background in humanities scholarship and humanities librarianship and while the readings will focus on activities in the United States, our discussions can be more geographically wide-ranging.
Objectives:
– A basic knowledge of what digital humanities is and how it effects scholarship in the humanities disciplines.
– Exposure to core tools and approaches used by digital humanists.
– An understanding of how libraries and librarians have been involved with digital humanities.
– Critical engagement with the role of librarians and libraries in digital humanities.
This class has a follow-up, Introduction to Text Encoding
John Russell is the Associate Director of the Center for Humanities and Information at Pennsylvania State University. He has been actively involved in digital humanities projects, primarily related to text encoding, and has taught courses and workshops on digital humanities methods, including “Introduction to Digital Humanities for Librarians.”
Read an interview with John Russell about this class:
You can register in this course through the first week of instruction (as long as it is not full). The “Register” button on the website goes to our credit card payment gateway, which may be used with personal or institutional credit cards. (Be sure to use the appropriate billing address). If your institution wants us to send a billing statement or wants to pay using a purchase order, please contact us by email to make arrangements: inquiries@libraryjuiceacademy.com
This course will introduce students to text encoding according to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines. Why should you care about text encoding or the TEI Guidelines? The creation of digital scholarly texts is a core part of the digital humanities and many digital humanities grants and publications require encoding texts in accordance with the TEI Guidelines. Students in this course will learn about the use-cases for text encoding and get a basic introduction to the principles of scholarly editing before moving on to learning some XML basics and creating a small-scale TEI project using the XML editor oXygen. We will not cover (beyond the very basics) processing TEI, and students interested in learning about XSLT and/or XQuery should turn to the LJA courses offered on those subjects. Participants should have some experience with digital humanities, as this course is intended as a follow up to the Introduction to Digital Humanities for Librarians course.
Objectives:
A basic understanding of digital scholarly editing as an academic activity.
Knowledge of standard TEI elements for encoding poetry and prose.
Some engagement with more complex encoding practices, such as working with manuscripts.
An understanding of how librarians have participated in text encoding.
Deeper engagement with digital humanities practices.
John Russell is the Associate Director of the Center for Humanities and Information at Pennsylvania State University. He has been actively involved in digital humanities projects, primarily related to text encoding, and has taught courses and workshops on digital humanities methods, including “Introduction to Digital Humanities for Librarians.” Interview with John Russell
Course Structure
This is an online class that is taught asynchronously, meaning that participants do the work on their own time as their schedules allow. The class does not meet together at any particular times, although the instructor may set up optional synchronous chat sessions. Instruction includes readings and assignments in one-week segments. Class participation is in an online forum environment.
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Spatial Data Analyst & Curator
University Libraries / U-Spatial
University of Minnesota
Overview
The University of Minnesota Libraries and U-Spatial (https://uspatial.umn.edu/) seek a knowledgeable and proactive Spatial Data Analyst & Curator to advance the Libraries’ efforts in the areas of geospatial projects, geospatial data curation and management, and digital spatial humanities. Residing in the John R. Borchert Map Library, the Spatial Data Analyst & Curator works under the management and direction of the University Libraries, which holds institutional responsibility for supporting the products and processes of scholarship through the collection, provisioning, and preservation of information resources in all formats and media. As such, the work of the Spatial Data Analyst & Curator uses a life-cycle data management approach to serve the specific needs of the spatial data creator/user community while ensuring that processes and methods employed are strongly aligned with enterprise strategies and systems.
Required Qualifications include a Master’s degree in library/information science from an American Library Association accredited library school, GIS-related field, or equivalent combination of advanced degree and relevant experience, as well as experience with geographical information systems, including/especially Esri’s ArcGIS software, experience with scripting languages, such as Python or JavaScript, and experience with metadata creation, schema, and management.