Passion Quilt Meme: Tools

All of us CEBuzzers got tagged for the Passion Quilt meme by Pete, so I’ll take the plunge. (Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.)

Original photo: http://flickr.com/photos/sadams/495544926/

Don’t let the tools determine what you build. Tools are wonderful but they are only tools. What you build should spring from your interests and enthusiasms, from the needs of your family, friends, or community. Once your imagination has conceived a project, then decide which tools will help you accomplish it best.

Tools won’t build for you. There isn’t a tool invented yet that will substitute for determination and good planning. You’re the driver. You’re the one who has to exercise quality control and see the process through to completion.

Enjoy the process. The final product may be the goal but don’t forget to immerse in the journey. Feel the satisfaction in the smooth operation of a good tool. Absorb the sensation of forward motion, of working with a good team. Laugh at your mistakes, learn from them and move on.

Keep your tools sharp. There’s nothing so counter-productive as a dull edge. Just make the time to sharpen your chisels, sharpen your mind, sharpen your awareness. Keep your eyes open to new tools that may help you be a better builder, but (cycling back to the first point), don’t let the new tools control your direction.

I tag:

Janie Herman
Marianne Lenox
Rochelle Hartman
Andrea Mercado
Marilyn Mason

 

Evaluating Learning Management Systems

Learning management systems (LMS) have been around forever, and it appears, at least in my anecdotal observations, that public library land is jumping on the bandwagon.  

An LMS empowers an organization to manage, track, and quantify all learning activities. 

 

No system is perfect, but there are several things to consider before purchasing an LMS.  We recently acquired an LMS here at Gwinnett County Public Library after evaluating several vendors.  I began this process very green, but have learned several valuable lessons along the way.  Here is some wisdom I’d like to share:

 

v     What exactly do we need from our LMS?

Sure, as the training manager, I have many ideas for what I want the system to be able to perform, but this purchase isn’t just about me.  Does HR have specific needs?  What role will the IT department play in the implementation?  What strategic benefits do the Executive Director and other department heads hope to reap from this large purchase?  Know your core needs before contacting any vendors.  You’ll be quickly embarrassed if you don’t.

 

v     What features must the LMS have?  What’s optional?

After you know your business needs, you can begin thinking about core features of the LMS and any extra bells and whistles.  What kind of reports do you need?  Does your LMS come bundled with courseware?  How scalable is the system?  Is the LMS SCORM and/or AICC compliant?  Only you know your budget.  It goes without saying that you cover the core features first.  Do not go gadget crazy and purchase features you don’t need (ie, learning management system vs. talent management system).  There are some thirsty sharks out in the ocean of sales reps.

 

v     Who is this company, anyway?

Be sure that you are buying from an established company.  Can your vendor provide references of clients who have benefitted tangible returns after implementing the vendor’s LMS? 

 

v     Should I buy or rent?

Buying your LMS software may sound appealing, and if you have the IT resources in your organization, maybe this works for you.  If you purchase your LMS, it’s yours.  The implementation, upkeep, and upgrades also become your sole responsibility.  However, if you rent, the vendor implements, upkeeps, and upgrades using this software as a service model.  The LMS is hosted on the vendor’s servers, and you don’t have much to worry about… except the yearly fee for service.

 

v     Will the LMS work with other systems our organization uses?

This is a huge consideration, especially if your library already has a human resources management system.  Is it important that your LMS be able to communicate with your HRMS?  Can the LMS talk to the HR system?  If so, how much will it cost to customize the LMS?  Customization is expensive!

 

 Hopefully these tips will save you some grief.  If only I knew then what I know now.

 

~Jay

 

Wow them with Wii hacks

There is clapping, cheering, and laughter from the audience for this TED talk, in which innovator Johnny Lee demonstrates how to turn a Wii game remote into a trendy teaching tool. Lee is highly motivated to bridge the divide between those organizations that can afford to experiment with the cutting edge of technology and those who can only sit back and watch.

In this video, Lee demos how to create an affordable interactive whiteboard by taking advantage of the “high-performing infrared camera” that is in the tip of a Wii controller. He combines the motion-sensing camera of the Wii with a $50 infrared pen (available from Radio Shack)—you just have to see the video to appreciate it.

Since posting this idea on his website, there have been over half a million downloads.

“Teachers and students around the world are already using this.”

Check out Lee’s website for other “little great ideas.”

 

Think (and train) the unthinkable

I posted on BlogJunction about the Dangerous Ideas session at PLA, where a panel of “dangerous” thinkers* posed a series of “what if” questions about the future of libraries, and the audience responded with their own “what ifs.” I saved the staff training thoughts for CEBuzz.

• What if ALL library staff were required to have expertise with technology?
• What if we learned to embrace mistakes?
• What if the tech-savvy library staff owned the responsibility for bringing everyone else up to speed?
• What if all training was based on the premise of our shared passion for library service?
• What if continuing education was required at a national level?

Are you feeling uncomfortable? Good. Do you have any dangerous ideas lurking in your head? Good. The panel suggested that every library should stage “Unthinkable Thought Days.” Gather, brainstorm, and ask your group these three questions:

• Why does this thought make me uncomfortable?
• What are the opportunities in this idea?
• What actions can be taken to pursue the opportunities?

Get into the dangerous mix at whatiflibs.wetpaint.com.

*Panelists: Deirdre Routt/Omaha PL, Stacey Aldrich/California State Library, Brian Auger/Howard County Library, Amy de Groff/Howard County Library, Rivkah Sass/Omaha PL

 

Training, David Weinberger, and Those Messy Crossroads

Trainer-teacher-learners are, in many ways, the hunter-gatherers of our times. We love to find nourishing new pieces of information, transform them into knowledge, and share them with the other members of our global learning tribe. Which, if we are to believe David Weinberger in Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, makes us among the richest people in the world.

“It’s not what you know, and it’s not even who you know. It’s how much knowledge you give away. Hoarding knowledge diminishes your power because it diminishes your presence,” he writes near the end of the book (p. 230). And who among us would argue with that sentiment?

Weinberger’s charm lies in his ability to make us think, initially, about how information is organized or dis-organized, and then to nudge us along a path which makes it more likely that we’ll find more of what we’re seeking and then be willing to share it. He proposes, in the first chapter of his book, that there are three orders of order: physical objects which themselves can be organized (books, for example); physical catalogs and other forms of inventory which help to organize our access to the first-level objects being ordered; and the third order comprised of those things which appear to be in more than one place at a time (digital items which can be accessed online through messy yet effective ordering systems such as user-created tagging).

By the time we reach the final sections of Everything Is Miscellaneous, we’re happily flying high in messiness and miscellany with Weinberger. He reports that network analysts “have found that innovation happens at the intersections” —as we interact with colleagues from other fields of study or with backgrounds much different than our own, we are most likely to have the breakthrough moments in learning and creativity. It is, he suggests, similar to standing at a busy intersection in a city: “at those messy crossroads you’re more likely to get splashed” (pp. 181-182), and this leads to the enviable and disorderly position in which we now find ourselves: “We can make connections and relationships at a pace never before imagined” (p. 221).

We can almost feel the trainer-teacher-learner community growing as we read Weinberger’s words and think of other similar treatises. In Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures, for example, we find a similar world of crossroads and intersections—the Intersection which develops through meetings of dissimilar yet inquisitive minds. And there is even more encouragement to be found in Kevin Kelly’s WIRED magazine article “We Are the Web” (published in August 2005), which suggests that our collective efforts at creating and sharing networks makes us more than a “part” of the Web; it actually makes us the Web as we all contribute to what could be the first real example of artificial intelligence through the digital community we help build every time we create and/or post something on the Internet and make it accessible through tagging/folksonomy.

The truism that knowledge is power, and the selfish corollary that we must hoard rather than share that knowledge, seems to be quickly evolving into the Everything is Miscellaneous and “We Are the Web” world where giving knowledge away is the greatest indicator of wealth. And we couldn’t be more lucky than to be part of it through the CLENE/CE Buzz community.

 

PicLens –wish I had this yesterday

My learning style is about as visual as they come. Which means I like to load up my PowerPoint presentations and online instruction modules with images. Just yesterday, I spent a lot of time in Google Images and Flickr searching for the just right photo or graphic to illustrate an upcoming presentation. I’m sure you know how tedious it is to scroll down each page of results, click to the next page, scroll down, click, …until eye and mouse fatigue set in.

Now there’s PicLens! It wasn’t until this morning that I found Jenny Levine’s recommendation for this very cool tool. Tedium transforms to levitation. There is a sense of flying past the 3D image wall, hovering over sections, zooming in and out for near and far perspectives—a dragonfly view of the online image world. Using the same Google Image search that I had performed yesterday sans PicLens, pictures that I hadn’t noticed before jumped out at me. I could scroll the length of the few hundred results with fluid ease instead of giving up after 3 or 4 pages. You’ve just got to try it to appreciate the experience.

Downloads are available for Firefox, IE, and Safari. It only works on certain sites like Google Images, Flickr, Facebook. I found it pretty intuitive to use, but tutorials are available just in case.

 

Using Trading Cards as Promotional Tool

At SOLINET, we are trying new and funky ways to make sure not only our fellow staff members know what we do, (hitting my co-workers on the head with a club hasn’t helped so far) - but also people we meet out in the field.  We created trading cards to give out - including some fun facts about ourselves but also some relevant information that would be useful to explain what we do and who we are, to people.  What we found was that some fellow staff members weren’t always sure who taught what - and who was responsible for what subject matters.   Hopefully this will be a fun way to get that information across.

If all goes well - meaning the cards have a warm reception by our staff members, we may give some out to attendees at our upcoming SAMM - (SOLINET Annual Membership Meeting).   The cost was quite good, and we even had them printed on post-consumer waste paper to fall in with our green initiatives this year. Just to give you an idea of the cost of the trading cards - we made 40 cards of 6 people each and it cost $70. The size of the cards when printed will be 3.5″ X  2.5″. We are doing a Training Showcase here next Monday (24 March) to promote our newest classes to staff members and each will get one of our cards.

Here is an example of the front of my card:

And the back of my card:

What sorts of interesting promotional things do you do?

 

Mind Mapping Tools: From Pencils to Web 2.0

If you haven’t ever tried mind mapping tools, you may be surprised at how valuable they are in helping people learn.

My first introduction to the technique was over 20 years ago at a presentation by David Thornburg, author of Unlocking Personal Creativity: A Course in Idea Mapping. In those days we used paper and color pencils to be creative.

One of the exercises I currently use in teaching Effective Time Management for Library Staff online for Infopeople involves mind mapping. The goal of the exercise is to create a life map, i.e. a visual recap of the roles one plays in life. Below is my most recent life map. I designed it using Inspiration software. There is a free 30 day trial download available for both Macintosh and Window users.

Here’s another mind map I also did using Inspiration for one of my courses; I loved having such a wide variety of shapes, colors and graphics. This map recaps a concept from Many Moons by James Thurber—that each of us has a unique perception of what exists. If you missed the book when you were young, be sure to look for it at your local library.

If this quick look didn’t give you enough of a flavor of the technique, I suggest you look at the Mindmapping in 8 Easy Steps tutorial by Joyce Wycoff, author of Mindmapping: Your Personal Guide to Exploring Creativity and Problem-Solving.

And for those of you willing to try a free web 2.o mind mapping tool, there is Bubbl. Below is a simple example I did as a very simple introduction to Bubbl for my time management course participants.

 

The Post-it™ Way

“… the widespread use of Post-it™ notes and cheat sheets reveals a lot about the way people learn and how they apply that knowledge to their jobs.”

This is from an intriguing post by Tom Kuhlman on the Rapid E-Learning Blog: What We Can Learn About Instructional Design from Post-it™ Notes. I have to admit that I recognized myself in the description of a typical e-learning designer, who has a tendency to include “more information than is necessary to learn the task.”

After reading it, I did a quick tour of my office to see how many people had post-it notes scattered around their desks. Fourteen out of sixteen desks had visible post-its or equivalent note scraps. Why is the Post-it note such a winner?

• Its small size forces you to record the bare essence of a thought or instruction. In Kuhlman’s words, a note does not contain all you need to know, but what you need to do.
• It can be stuck on things to easily catch your attention.
• It can be grouped with other Post-its and rearranged as needed.
• Only the most immediately relevant bits of information stay within view, limited by the area of your desk.

I’m not going to convert all my training materials to Post-it notes, but I could do more to apply the “what you need to do” filter to instructional design. Along the same lines, Presentation Zen tells us we need to choose between deep or wide scope. “How much can I cover today vs. how much can my students absorb today?” Why not think of a PowerPoint presentation as a series of Post-it notes? Pare each slide down to the shorthand essence of what you want to convey.

Think Post-it! This is my new mantra. I have a Post-it on my laptop to remind me.

 

Conference on Learning Announcement

THE FIFTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LEARNING The University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 3-6 June 2008: http://www.LearningConference.com

The International Conference on Learning is for any person with an interest in, and concern for, education at any of its level - from early childhood, to schools, to higher education - and lifelong learning in any of its sites, from home to school to university to the workplace.

Main speakers include James R. Gavelek, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Juana M. Sancho Gil, Educational Technology Professor at the University of Barcelona; Susan R. Goldman, Chair of the Governing Board of the Society for Text and Discourse; Fernando Hernandez, Professor in the Unit of Art Education at the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Barcelona; James W. Pellegrino, Distinguished Professor in Psychology and Education and Co-Director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Salim Vally, Senior Researcher at the Education Policy Unit, School of Education, University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.

The Conference will also include numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by practitioners, teachers and researchers. We would particularly like to invite you to respond to the Conference Call-for-Papers. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in the fully refereed International Journal of Learning. If you are unable to attend the Conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication in this fully refereed academic Journal, as well as access to the electronic version of the Conference proceedings.

The deadline for the next round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is 13 March 2008. Proposals are reviewed within two weeks of submission. Full details of the Conference, including an online proposal submission form, are to be found at the Conference website - http://www.LearningConference.com