VRE Recap in Week 2

Class in Week 2

Mike Galloway and Cathay Crosby of Internet Public Library visited the class; we used Elluminate with audio and visuals to talk, and to show Powerpoints and web pages, and did a collections exercise together in Hypatia. Mike and Cathay did a terrific job which went above and beyond, as I know they hadn't originally planned to spend the entire two hours with our class. Also prior to the class, they had met with me twice in Elluminate planning and testing sessions...so a big thanks and many kudos to them for all their hard work!

Slam the Boards, 9/10

Cathay's also been coordinating with the Reference Team Leader on "Slam the Boards" for IPL on Monday, Sept. 10. I know at least four students, if not more, are planning to participate; if you're one of those students, be sure to stay in touch with Cathay and your team leader for details - and rock on, 5916 Reference Team!

Second Life, 9/19

I posted up a Second Life discussion board in advance of our Week 4 Second Life class activity on 9/19/07, in which we'll visit the virtual island created by librarians at Florida's Clearwater Public Library. The librarians are very supportive of helping the next generation of library students, and they've even arranged for mentors to come in and help us learn more about Second Life. In advance of this session, students need to set up a Second Life account and go through the initial orientation; I've posted up a thread on this with suggestions, and students can also instant-message me when they get in-world (SL name: Lorri Momiji, use the Search button and the People tab). If I'm available, I'm happy to help, and in fact one student has already IM'd me in Second Life; we exchanged 'add friend' links and met up at Info Island.

Whew!

Overall, I taught four class sessions this week which is a record for me (three sessions that were online and 2 hours long, and one that was face-to-face for one hour). Two were the first time of using a new software, Elluminate, which (eventually) worked very well in the first session but had some problems in the second session. Lots of technical issues to figure out, and had to make many calls to technical support to pull it all off. Feedback from the students has all been positive thus far, and I do like that this makes the learning experience so much richer and more personal for students. It makes a lot more work for me though, adding on an extra technical layer of hassle to everything else that already goes into preparing a class. At some point while on yet another phone call, I uttered the primal cry of ordinary users everywhere: 'You know, this is not my job and not my problem...this is YOUR problem...why can't you tech guys just talk directly to each other and fix it, and leave me out of it?' Which is good to remember in any information service as we start babbling nonsense at the poor users about how things work and who's job it is to do what in our organization...it's not the user's job or problem to know all this, it's YOUR job. Less finger-pointing and buck-passing, and more attention to problem-solving would go far to create happier users.