library+instruction+technology

Laurel Ofstein from DePaul University's Center for Creativity and Innovation was the plenary speaker for LOEX 2008 in Oak Brook, IL. She described the nine dimensions of a creative environment:

• Idea support – are new ideas encouraged or judged?
• Trust and openness – are staff free to share ideas?
• Discussion – are staff comfortable enough to discuss the idea freely?
• Challenge and involvement – do staff feel that they own the organization and have a stake in success?
• Idea time – do staff have time to work on new ideas as part of normal job?
• Humor and play – are staff comfortable enough to be humorous at work?
• Freedom – are staff macro or micro managed?
• Risk taking – do staff feel they can fail and not be punished?
• Degree of conflict – are staff in competition with one another or other groups within organization?

 Laurel suggested a few tactics to focus creativity:

• Work backwards from the end solution.
• Ask the question, "Wouldn't it be nice if…" to help define outcomes.
• Ask the question, "In what ways might we…" to help define options.
• Challenge an assumption by writing down its opposite, identify advantages that could come from the challenges of the opposite assumption, study the challenged assumptions and identify new opportunities.

She recommended the book, Ideas are free: how the idea revolution is liberating people and transforming organizations for further reading.

Every librarian and faculty member should read the CIBER briefing paper Information behaviour of the researcher of the future (2 MB PDF). CIBER conducted this research for the British Library and JISC . The report focuses on information seeking behavior of students born after 1993 (the Google Generation). The paper also ties in research from OCLC's Perceptions studies. You may also want to listen to presentation given and Q&A's when the paper was released on January 16, 2008.

Found via Stephen's Lighthouse. 

I worked with a world mythology class back in April. I didn't run this group through the normal modified PBL activity. The class was in a tech enhanced classroom, so we did live searching using topics that the students were planning on researching. One student was interested in researching different versions of the great flood story. We found articles, but I think I would have had an easier time with the topic if I had already read The buried book : the loss and rediscovery of the great Epic of Gilgamesh by David Damrosch.

I finished The buried book during my first week of vacation. I highly recommend it if you are interested in the story of Gilgamesh, the history of Mesopotamia, or Victorian era archeology. Damrosch recommended the books below for further study.

Books about Gilgamesh

• The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation by Andrew George ("best and most complete translation")
• The Babylonian Gilgamesh epic : introduction, critical edition, and cuneiform texts  by Andrew George (scholarly)

Akkadian literature

• Myths from Mesopotamia : creation, the flood, Gilgamesh, and others by Stephanie Dalley 
• Before the muses : an anthology of Akkadian literature by Benjamin R Foster 
• Ancient Near Eastern texts : relating to the Old Testament by James Bennett Pritchard 
• Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature

Mesopotamian history

• A history of the ancient Near East, ca. 3000-323 B.C. by Marc Van de Mieroop 
• The ancient Near East : a history by William W Hallo;  William Kelly Simpson 
• Ancient Iraq by Georges Roux 
• Mesopotamia : the invention of the city by Gwendolyn Leick 

Victorian Era Archaeologist Writings

• Nineveh and its remains by Sir Austen Henry Layard 
• Early adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia, including a residence among the Bakhtiyari and other wild tribes before the discovery of Nineveh by Austen Henry Layard, Sir 
• The Chaldean account of Genesis, containing the description of the creation, the fall of man, the deluge, the tower of Babel, the times of the patriarchs, and Nimrod: Babylonian fables, and legends of the gods; from the cuneiform inscriptions by George Smith 
• Asshur and the land of Nimrod: being an account of the discoveries made in the ancient ruins of Nineveh, Asshur, Sepharvaim, Calah, Babylon, Borsippa, Cuthah, and Van. Incl. a narrative of different journeys in Mesopotamia, Assyria, Asia Minor, and Koordistan. by Hormuzd Rassam
• Narrative of the British mission to Theodore, king of Abyssinia ; with notices of the countries traversed from Massowah, through the SoodaÌ‚n, the AmhaÌ‚ra, and back to Annesley Bay, from Mágdala. by Hormuzd Rassam 

Victorian views on the Middle East

• Orientalism by Edward W. Said 
• The conquest of Assyria : excavations in an antique land, 1840-1860 by Mogens Trolle Larsen 
• Empires of the sand : the struggle for mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 by Efraim Karsh;  Inari Karsh

It's been an interesting week and it's only Wednesday. I find myself sitting at the Reference Desk twelve hours after arriving to work. Our Director is in Columbus for OPAL (not the one that gets all of the biblioblogosphere hype) and OhioLINK meetings. One coworker is out sick with something that sounds like bronchitis and another coworker is recovering from major surgery.  So, that leaves just two of us and Brian normally works late on Thursdays…so here I am writing this blog post.

I have been able to use this time to catch up on some recent journal articles. Steven Bell has a good article, "Stop IAKT syndrome with student live demos," in the latest issue of Reference Services Review. [OhioLINK link | everyone else link] Steven does an excellent job of laying out the benefits and challenges to turning over the keyboard to a student during instruction.

I don't think we are running into many students that are suffering from "I already know it syndrome" in our classes. If they feel that way, they are doing a good job of hiding their boredom.

Kate and I have been using students to demonstrate searches during instruction this academic year. We don't have student computers (yet) in our instruction room. We reserve computers in the lab on the first floor and have the students work together for about 15 to 20 minutes at the start of class. Then we go back upstairs and ask for volunteers to show us what they searched, what they found, and why they chose certain articles. It has worked out well for introductory speech, composition, and some disciplinary entry level classes as well. We have received positive faculty feedback. We have be doing 3-2-1 assessment and the student comments are positive too. 

So if you're still being the "sage on the stage", you might want to give this a try. 

The latest edition of the Horizon Report is now available for your browsing/reading pleasure. This is a joint publication from The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. The technologies forecasted along with their time to adoption include:

• user created content (1 year or less),
• social networking (1 year or less),
• mobile phones (2 to 3 years),
• virtual worlds (2 to 3 years),
• new scholarship and emerging forms of publication (4 to 5 years), and
• massively multiplayer educational gaming (4 to 5 years)

The executive summary identifies several trends and challenges impacting higher education. "Information literacy increasingly should not be considered a given." [page 4] I agree with this statement, but would like to know who really considers information literacy a given in the first place? We try our best to teach students how to use our resources, but we know we don't reach everyone and even the ones we do reach are not always receptive to learning because it's all free on the web anyway.

The authors continue, "Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the information literacy skills of new students are not improving as the post-1993 Internet boomlet enters college." [page 4] Yep. The continual challenge we face is helping our students straddle the digital and analog worlds during information research. We are also challenged to help faculty understand that their students do not approach research the same way that they did 10-20 years ago when they were in college.

I enjoy reading/browsing this report. However, I am always concerned about how I can really apply any of these technologies locally.

The Pew Research Center for People and the Press has released a new report on Millennials attitudes, A Portrait of "Generation Next": How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics. They are defining Generation Next to be those born between 1981 and 1988. The data comes from a survey conducted in September 2006 and from data collected in earlier polling.  The report includes comparisons with polling of previous generations to show how attitudes are shifting over time.

The uniqueness of this report is the compilation of technology and social software usage data with their views on their lifestyle, politics, religion, and social issues. Some of the findings include:

• 80% talk to their parents daily and 75% see their parents weekly
• 50% have modified their body with a tattoo or piercing
• 20% have little or nothing to do with religion
• 33% pay attention to politics "most of the time"
• 48% identify as Democratic Party and 35% as Republicans
• 40% feel that as a citizen they have a "duty" to vote
• 23% read the newspaper
• 67% feel that immigration is good for the country
• 74% support privatizing Social Security [They obviously didn't loose their 401K when the Internet bubble burst a few years back...]
• 47% support gay marriage

I just saw read about the new EDUCAUSE ebook, Learning Space , over on the EDUCAUSE Connect blog. 

Learning Spaces focuses on how learner expectations influence such spaces, the principles and activities that facilitate learning, and the role of technology from the perspective of those who create learning environments: faculty, learning technologists, librarians, and administrators. Information technology has brought unique capabilities to learning spaces, whether stimulating greater interaction through the use of collaborative tools, videoconferencing with international experts, or opening virtual worlds for exploration.

I know we don't have the money to configure and equip the instruction room right now. I'm hoping to get some ideas out of this book that we can use when we can find the funding.

I was on vacation last week trying to burn the rest of my days off before the end of the fiscal year. I was able to finish one of the books recommended at a LOEX session, Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever by John Beck and Mitchell Wade. It's a relatively short book coming in at 180 pages. Beck and Mitchell surveyed 2,500 business professionals in the US. Their research subjects included recent MBA grads from two programs (unidentified universities on the West Coast and in the Midwest) and business professionals working in all sizes of companies and in a wide range of fields. Their research focused on finding out if worker's abilities, expectations, and attitudes were different between those that grew up playing or being around games versus those that did not.

I was a little disappointed in their choice to make 1975 the starting point for what they called the Gamer generation. I don't agree with this choice, since I was born in 1970 and I consider myself to be a gamer. I also know many other people born anywhere from 1968 to 1974 who are active gamers.

Beck and Mitchell set the stage for their findings by starting out with a quick overview of the development of the game industry. They then explore some of the common concerns about video games: sexism, violence, stereotypes, and isolation before jumping into the analysis.

Their research shows that gamers:

• are driven to compete;
• care about the fate of their employer;
• are very loyal;
• are engaged in their work;
• prefer to multitask;
• prefer compensation tied to actual performance; 
• enjoy being the hero;
• value teamwork;
• are comfortable taking risks; and
• learn best through trial and error.

Throughout the book Beck and Mitchell offer suggestions on how managers can best use a gamer's strengths. The book doesn't have much to offer for those interested in the use of games for learning. However, I would still recommend this book to anyone with management responsibility.

I hadn't planned on writing a review of this The First Verse. However, I think many librarians and book lovers would find it an interesting read. This is Barry McCrea's first novel. The story is set mostly in Dublin, Ireland with a brief jaunt to Paris at the end.  Books play an unusual role throughout the story.

Niall Lenihan, the main character, is attending his first year at Trinity College in Dublin where he is studying French and English literature. He is excited to be away from home and also coming to terms with his sexuality as a gay man. Niall meets an interesting couple at a party during the first month at college.

John and Sarah practice an ancient form of divination using books. They call this process "sortes." A person asks a question and then randomly chooses a book and reads a passage from it to find the answer. The answer can be found or inferred from the passage chosen. Additionally, they use a process of reading random passages aloud at the same time to find new meaning.

As you would expect, Niall gets caught up in John and Sarah's activities and joins them in their quest to find the meaning of the "sortes" and the mysterious cult-like group, the Pour Mieux Vivre.

I found the story a bit tedious to follow at times, because I don't have a working knowledge of Dublin. The author makes reference to many streets, buildings, and pubs. I still found this to be a good story and would recommended, though at times confusing because of the geographical references.   

OCLC has issued a new report focused on the college student subset of it's Perceptions report that came out earlier. Their web site indicates that this report has new graphs and additional analysis of the data collected from their original Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources report.

(Thanks to Candi Clevenger's all OhioLINK email today.)