Back to back conferences with just days back home in Tallahassee between travel to Library Research Seminar IV (London, Ontario) and ASIS&T (Milwaukee, WI), and my travel luck which had been holding up pretty well finally ran out; I caught some sort of flu/cold on the last day as I headed for the airport in Milwaukee. Still, I managed to teach class from a hotel room in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, flew all day then drove home from the airport to teach class in Tallahassee on Thursday night before the real collapse hit; dragged myself through my appointments Friday, spent a long hour afterward struggling through Homecoming parade traffic jams; pretty much collapsed into the worst of the illness at that point, but fought back to vertical again and managed to join Convocation on Saturday morning (aha! so that's what the display near virtual Shores Building was all about, I noticed it earlier and wondered; cheers to Dr. Paul Marty & Dr. Michelle Kazmer on bringing Second Life into the Commencement ceremony, and fun to see Dr. Peter Jorgensen sitting there too.)
I'm feeling slightly better today, and about ready to start the process of posting up grades. I enjoyed reading all the student papers, as always! Getting to hear all the interesting things that FSU students are doing and exploring is one of the joys of teaching. Will be back to talk a little more later, but for now had better stick to using the energy that I have for getting grades and feedback posted. Great to be home for a while (or at least until Thanksgiving week!)
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Almost Home
Sitting in the airport in Charlotte, NC, which gets my vote as one of the world's Civilized Airports because it has free wireless (Tallahassee, FL and Richmond, VA are two other Civilized Airports.) Airports without free wireless are useless, bleak, forsaken places.
It's been a long week at the Library Research Seminar IV conference in London, Ontario, Canada. Both on the way out and coming back I had to be up at 3am to start a long day of travel. I packed wearily and in a hurry at midnight...never do that. At the conference on Thursday 10/11, my presentation was on the geography of virtual questioning - GIS mapping of chat questions asked of Florida's statewide Ask a Question service.
Classwise - the wiki paper is due 10/15 and links are up for posting; if any links go south, you can put in your own by clicking the 'chainlink' button and using NameInfoev as your wikipage link text (e.g. MonicaInfoenv) and then the clickable text itself can be your name. I think I accidentally deleted a couple of students' names at some point when I was making a correction to the list, but they should be back now.
Connectivity was iffy at the LRS-IV conference so I thought it best to cancel the live class for Week 7 (since we've put up with enough tech hassles already); actually this was a big problem at the conference hotel that so many LIS educators were needing to get access to their class web sites and couldn't because of some glitch with the hotel's wireless. Which is why I tend to avoid staying in conference hotels - pick some cheaper place nearby and you'll likely have better and free or cheap Internet rather than paying an arm and leg for little or no Internet access. You can have your mint on the pillow, I'll take the free wireless.
We'll pick it all back up in next week's class, discussing more about why Karen Schneider says that "the user is not broken" as well as issues of anonymity, privacy, roles and move into teaching and learning in the virtual reference interaction; and then I fly right out again to ASIS&T Conference in Milwaukee. My plane will arrive too late for my favorite SIG's session on Saturday, but I'll participate in Internet Public Library meetings and I also have two posters in the conference (morning and afternoon poster sessions). One poster is on the GIS mapping of virtual questions, the other on a study of how LIS graduate students and informatics undergraduate students perceived the role of librarians in handling questions about Web 2.0. After ASIS&T, hoping to be able to stay in Tallahassee and avoid all further travel until the Xmas holiday. Since all of Xmas and New Year 2006/2007 was spent in the hospital and dealing with crisis, really hoping in 2007/2008 for the happy time we didn't get last year.
It's been a long week at the Library Research Seminar IV conference in London, Ontario, Canada. Both on the way out and coming back I had to be up at 3am to start a long day of travel. I packed wearily and in a hurry at midnight...never do that. At the conference on Thursday 10/11, my presentation was on the geography of virtual questioning - GIS mapping of chat questions asked of Florida's statewide Ask a Question service.
Classwise - the wiki paper is due 10/15 and links are up for posting; if any links go south, you can put in your own by clicking the 'chainlink' button and using NameInfoev as your wikipage link text (e.g. MonicaInfoenv) and then the clickable text itself can be your name. I think I accidentally deleted a couple of students' names at some point when I was making a correction to the list, but they should be back now.
Connectivity was iffy at the LRS-IV conference so I thought it best to cancel the live class for Week 7 (since we've put up with enough tech hassles already); actually this was a big problem at the conference hotel that so many LIS educators were needing to get access to their class web sites and couldn't because of some glitch with the hotel's wireless. Which is why I tend to avoid staying in conference hotels - pick some cheaper place nearby and you'll likely have better and free or cheap Internet rather than paying an arm and leg for little or no Internet access. You can have your mint on the pillow, I'll take the free wireless.
We'll pick it all back up in next week's class, discussing more about why Karen Schneider says that "the user is not broken" as well as issues of anonymity, privacy, roles and move into teaching and learning in the virtual reference interaction; and then I fly right out again to ASIS&T Conference in Milwaukee. My plane will arrive too late for my favorite SIG's session on Saturday, but I'll participate in Internet Public Library meetings and I also have two posters in the conference (morning and afternoon poster sessions). One poster is on the GIS mapping of virtual questions, the other on a study of how LIS graduate students and informatics undergraduate students perceived the role of librarians in handling questions about Web 2.0. After ASIS&T, hoping to be able to stay in Tallahassee and avoid all further travel until the Xmas holiday. Since all of Xmas and New Year 2006/2007 was spent in the hospital and dealing with crisis, really hoping in 2007/2008 for the happy time we didn't get last year.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Week 6: Projects
A long time ago, a wise man once said to me, "The IPL is what you make of it." (His name was Joe Janes.) I remember seeing that myself as a student at the time; some of us made a lot of the opportunity, contributing our efforts and gaining experience, building our skills and our resume. On graduation, we walked into job interviews with completed projects that we could point to that showed we had a lot to offer our employers.
During grad school, we were always pushed by our professors to be leaders and to take the initiative. Common phrase heard in the IPL in the old days: "What a good idea...why don't you do that?" Common response from professors when any LIS student asked a question: "You're a librarian - why don't you look it up?" This was really annoying, at the time...but ultimately, learning is not about what a professor does. Learning is about the effort that a student puts in.
We've been finalizing projects and tackling some of the specific details, getting people what they need; I've met with some students for individual training outside of class hours and Mike Galloway came in and met with a group; many offers of help, training, resources have been made to all and things are moving forward. I've been bragging a bit about my students and all the great things they're doing. There's a great discussion going on now too about technology and the future of libraries, and I had a big grin on reading the line, "The time will come when we are in charge of the libraries..." Yes, and I'm looking forward to it!
I'm leaving Tuesday for Canada and the LRS-IV conference so that will be a full day of travel (Tally to Charlotte--Charlotte to Detroit--Detroit to London, Ontario); will post up about Internet access and class as soon as possible Tuesday evening. "Exploring the Virtual Environment" papers will be due Oct. 15 on the wiki site. There are a lot of individual details being handled right now and if I didn't get to yours, ping me again. A few things are still in various stages of being checked on. And - onward into Week 7!
During grad school, we were always pushed by our professors to be leaders and to take the initiative. Common phrase heard in the IPL in the old days: "What a good idea...why don't you do that?" Common response from professors when any LIS student asked a question: "You're a librarian - why don't you look it up?" This was really annoying, at the time...but ultimately, learning is not about what a professor does. Learning is about the effort that a student puts in.
We've been finalizing projects and tackling some of the specific details, getting people what they need; I've met with some students for individual training outside of class hours and Mike Galloway came in and met with a group; many offers of help, training, resources have been made to all and things are moving forward. I've been bragging a bit about my students and all the great things they're doing. There's a great discussion going on now too about technology and the future of libraries, and I had a big grin on reading the line, "The time will come when we are in charge of the libraries..." Yes, and I'm looking forward to it!
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