This idea came from a film maker last year. He [...]]]> The White Plains Public Library is doing some amazing things with their teens (claymation, LEGO catapults, and more) with Teen Librarian Erik Carlson at the helm.  Recently, they finished up a minute long PSA about distracted driving.  I’ll turn it over to Erik for more:

This idea came from a film maker last year. He wanted to work with the library & the only money we had was from a grant from the Allstate Foundation. It was a large project where over a dozen teens worked on a PSA that lasted 5 minutes. We took that as a learning experience.

This year we found another local film maker named Mike LaVoie. I contacted the White Plains High School SADD chapter to see if they would like to work on the project. We had a smaller group…I think there were about 7 teens altogether. Mike put togethera no-budget script and explained it to the teens. I (Teen Librarian Erik Carlson) worked on locations, the library parking garage, a co-workers home & a local cemetery. Mike showed them some movie magic to make the car to appear to be moving, using fake smoke, lighting tricks. I came up with the eye drops for tears & one of the teens was able to talk a local medical supply store to loan us a wheelchair for the afternoon (this was a last minute thing).

You can check out the final cut of the PSA here: http://frontboxcreative.com/wplains

-Post by Justin Hoenke, Tame the Web Contributor

http://slisapps.sjsu.edu/blogs/wp/ciri/2013/05/11/mooc-meets-learning-2-0-by-dr-michael-stephens/

Although educators and scholars are debating the advantages and downsides of MOOCs, with many asserting that MOOCs have the potential to provide new insight regarding online learning, [...]]]> I have a new post up at the Center for Information Research and Innovation (CIRI)  blog at the San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science:

http://slisapps.sjsu.edu/blogs/wp/ciri/2013/05/11/mooc-meets-learning-2-0-by-dr-michael-stephens/

Although educators and scholars are debating the advantages and downsides of MOOCs, with many asserting that MOOCs have the potential to provide new insight regarding online learning, research regarding MOOCs is in its infancy.  A recent study by The Chronicle of Higher Education found that 79% of MOOC instructors believe MOOCs are “worth the hype” (Kolowich, 2013). John Daniel’s 2012 paper Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility explores emerging issues that educators should consider and scholars should research: technology platforms, for-profit versus nonprofit models, effective pedagogy, and student success within large learning environments. A scan of recent research includes assessing the experiences of students and professors in MOOC environments, and evaluating various MOOC platforms and their impact on student learning. Clearly, evaluating MOOC environments is an area ripe for exploration.

The parallels between the MOOC movement and 23 Things/ Learning 2.0 programs, my research area for the past few years, are intriguing. Might we argue that Learning 2.0 (L2.0) programs, offered in hundreds if not thousands of organizations, are precursors to the evolving, open and large scale learning landscape we’re experiencing now?

Read the whole post at CIRI!

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/05/opinion/michael-stephens/best-of-both-worlds-office-hours/

It’s a response to this letter last month in LJ by Krystal Taylor, an LIS student at IUPUI Indianapolis:

Something quite disturbing is happening to my LIS program…. As of next semester, the program is going almost exclusively to online courses. Due to low enrollment [...]]]> My new “Office Hours” column is up at Library Journal:

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/05/opinion/michael-stephens/best-of-both-worlds-office-hours/

It’s a response to this letter last month in LJ by Krystal Taylor, an LIS student at IUPUI Indianapolis:

Something quite disturbing is happening to my LIS program…. As of next semester, the program is going almost exclusively to online courses. Due to low enrollment of our courses on campus, the school has decided to move online in an attempt to keep the program alive. I understand this need, but at what cost will this be to the library and information science field?

From the column:

Taylor writes, “Having taken both types of courses, I am convinced that face-to-face [F2F] courses are the better option.” I might argue the tide is turning on that sentiment. In 2011, I wrote “Online LIS Education or Not”on the choices between F2F and online programs. In just a few short months we’ve seen the announcement of a new online library management degree at the University of Southern California and now the evolution of the IU program to mostly online classes. Frankly, a brick-and-mortar LIS school without a fully online option may become a quaint reminder of days gone by in the next decade. With this shift comes a few important considerations for the various stakeholders: students, faculty, hiring librarians, and accrediting bodies.

“Developing”, as it pertains to my title of this blog, is defined as the ongoing development, utilization, and management of my personal learning network. It is not something that “is done” and then complete, it is something that will, with careful nurturing and management, follow me throughout the rest my [...]]]> Personal Learning Network – Presentation

“Developing”, as it pertains to my title of this blog, is defined as the ongoing development, utilization, and management of my personal learning network. It is not something that “is done” and then complete, it is something that will, with careful nurturing and management, follow me throughout the rest my learning life.

The journey began years ago without realization when I signed up for Facebook, popped on (and then quickly off) Twitter, set up a LinkedIn account, and checked out various apps via my mobile phone.  It wasn’t until taking Transformative Learning and Technology Literacy course with Dr. Michael Stephens that the potential of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) came to life!

My favorite explanation of a Personal Learning Network is by Anya Kamenetz who writes on her blog post titled 8 Ways to Build Your Personal Learning Network with Twitter, Google Plus, and More  that “no one learns alone”. The leads to the various discussions about transformative learning we have had in our course this semester – where learning is a transformative process from where we begin in our learning, to how where we end, and most importantly – the resources, tools, and people that helped us through that transformation. David Hopkins (2013) highlights this well in his own blog post when he said “I know my work and perception of my role has been transformed since I joined Twitter and other networks, and it has been because I wanted it to.” That’s the beauty of the PLN – we create it purposely so our learning can be transformed, so we can continuously expand and explore our understanding, and then share that understanding continuously with others.

In the attached “My Personal Learning Network” presentation, I present my PLN as it stands right now. As will always be the case, the network is not yet complete. For example, I have not yet explored or compared bookmarking sites, yet they are on my list of things to check out.  I need to revisit other LIS type social sites such as Goodreads and LibraryThing, both which I have explored before, to see if they should be added as well. And there are so many others. What news feeds will help support my PLN? What list serves should I explore?  What professional associations should I engage with online? What potential employers should I follow?  The process will be ongoing.

VIEW “MY PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK” PRESENTATION VIA SLIDESHARE!: 

For those of you who do not have the time to view my presentation, I offer an outline below of my PLN development process.

My PLN Mission Statement: 

My PLN will…

• be transparent and open for others to view, to participate, and to learn from
• foster lifelong learning for myself and others
• permit both creativity and curiosity
• be used to share ideas, to play, to have fun, and to continuously explore.

Goals of My PLN: 

• Commit to lifelong learning
• Constantly add to my skillset
• Develop professional identity
• Curate information
• Find a mentor – be a mentor
• Foster balance between professional and personal life

Scope of MY PLN:

The scope of my PLN is to focus on issues and trends relating to academic librarianship and will include a strong focus on the following areas:

• Academic Libraries
• Information Literacy
• Information Technology
• Research Methodology
• Reference Services
• Online Learning
• Assessment
• Learning Environments
• Social/Hyperlinked Media

Objectives: 

• Connect
• Contribute
• Converse
• Request

My Primary Networks: 

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Google+
• Pinterest
• Netvibes

My PLN Tools: 

• Google Docs
• Box.net
• Slideshare
• Mindmeister
• Google Scholar
• Flickr
• Tumblr
• YouTube

Maintaining My PLN: 

• Contribute at least one blog post per week
• Participate in at least 3 discussions per week
• Connect/follow those I meet in discussions
• Tweet and re-tweet daily
• Connect by sharing personal interests as well as professional interests
• Re-evaluate dashboards and collections at each life milestone
• Review blogs every six months – weed out inactive ones
• Network at live events, receptions, conferences
• Introduce others within my network and ask to be introduced

Advice to Others 

BE PATIENT! 

• Building a PLN doesn’t happen quickly
• It takes time to make connections
• It takes time to build relationships
• It takes participation to determine the value of a community
• It takes perseverance when you receive no comments or replies
• It requires patience to build your social presence

BE AUTHENTIC! 

“Don’t try to game the system, worry too much about your online “brand,” or in any way cajole people into following you or responding to you. The more you reveal your humanity the more people will trust you, identify with you, and respond to your reflections and appeals. More importantly, the more you seek out the humanity in others, the more they will want to connect with you – and share with you.”    Wagner, 2012

PLN Success! 

The following items are examples of outcomes as a result of developing my personal learning network. These results happened naturally as I explored the potential of my PLN: what I wanted it to do, how I wanted to use it, how it could build my personal and professional networks, and how to not only participate in but also build community. It is evident by the immediacy of the results, that my PLN has only begun its potential as an essential tool to lifelong learning.

ACTION: Used Pinterest to do a search on PLN’s. Received numerous resources, suggestions, presentations, mindmap, etc. to reflect upon for my own PLN development.

RESULT: This led to developing my own Pinterest PLN board which has since been followed by others

ACTION: Inquired about favorite tools and resources from graduate students in a MLIS program via Facebook SLIS Students group

RESULT: over 13 responses with over unique 20 suggestions. Not only resulted as a tremendous resource for my project, but also resulted in shared file for future students to access the recommendations. 

Resources supporting both this blog post and the “My Personal Learning Network” presentation: 

Hopkins, S. (2013). Developing your own Personal Learning Network (PLN) #edtech. Technology Enhanced Learning Blog. Retrieved from: http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/developing-your-own-personal-learning-network

Inquisitive Learning: http://inquisitivelearning.wordpress.com

Howlett, A. (2011). Connecting to the LIS online community: A new information professional developing a personal learning network. ALIA 5th New Librarians Symposium 2011: Metamorphosis: What will you become today. Perth, Australia.

Kamenetz, Anya (2011). 8 Ways to build your personal learning network with Twitter, Google Plus, and more. Fast Company. Retrieved at: http://www.fastcompany.com/1770997/8-ways-build-your-personal-learning-network-twitter-google-plus-and-more

Rajagopal, Kamakshi, Joosten-ten Brinke, Desirée, Van Bruggen, Jan, And Sloep, Peter. “Understanding personal learning networks: Their structure, content and the networking skills needed to optimally use them” First Monday [Online],  17(1). Retrieved from:  http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3559/3131

Wagner, D. (2013). Personal Education Networks for Educators. Getting Smart. Retrieved from: http://gettingsmart.com/2012/01/personal-learning-networks-for-educators-10-tips/

Elaine Hall is a MLIS student at San Jose State University studying and working in the field of Library and Information Science with special focus on research, academic libraries, and information technology.

The library with the support of Honors and Student Activities will be organizing a campus-wide game that [...]]]> One of my projects for the fall semester my library will be organizing a special, active-learning opportunity for students, staff, and faculty that is part of our One Book, One College program on Max Brook’s World War Z.

The library with the support of Honors and Student Activities will be organizing a campus-wide game that we are calling, World War M: Humans vs Zombies, https://zombies.apps.morainevalley.edu/.

Our game is loosely based on the Humans vs Zombies games played on campuses across the country. We have changed the rules a little bit and tried to give it a technological and academic twist.  The goal of the game is to model a virus outbreak across our campus where “infected” players report their infection on the game website. At the same time, we will be releasing clues to an antidote that will cure the disease. We will use the game’s website to track how the disease and the antidote spread. Faculty members in sociology, microbiology, literature, and mathematics have already expressed an interest in developing assignments around this game.

To play the game, students will receive free playing materials from the library. We will also provide faculty members with playing materials for their classes if they choose to use the game as part of a class project. To kick off this game, several faculty members from our math department and biology department will be hosting a panel discussion called “Zombie Math” where they will discuss mathematical models for how viruses spread and the ways that a “zombie” outbreak can be connected to the real world. We are working to create an engaging & innovative opportunity for students to connect ideas across disciplines.

Troy A. Swanson is Department Chair and Teaching & Learning Librarian at Moraine Valley Community College. He is the author of the book, Managing Social Media in Libraries. You can follow him on Twitter at @t_swanson.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/239835/StephensLearningEverywhereMarigold.pdf

Yesterday I did the keynote presentation for the Embrace Change, Invent the Future conference sponsored by NORWELD in Ohio. Thanks to all who attended and for the great discussion afterward.

The slides are here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/239835/StephensUPDATEDLearningEverywhereOhio.pdf

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/56603-meet-your-makers.html

I love his take:

What’s radical about maker spaces in libraries? Pretty much everything. Maker spaces are messy in a library world that values order, disruptive in a culture run by schedules, chaotic in a profession that did, after all, develop the Dewey [...]]]> Brian Kenney’s new piece in Publishers Weekly is on Maker Spaces:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/56603-meet-your-makers.html

I love his take:

What’s radical about maker spaces in libraries? Pretty much everything. Maker spaces are messy in a library world that values order, disruptive in a culture run by schedules, chaotic in a profession that did, after all, develop the Dewey Decimal System.

Hill, who has an empty floor she is using for her maker space, says it’s up to the community to determine how they use it. The library is there to provide support, but she has no idea what direction it will take.

Maker spaces also utilize STEM skills (science, technology, engineering, and math), skills that public libraries are notoriously poor at supporting. Traditionally staffed by a bunch of English majors, there’s not much on our shelves between DK 101 Great Science Experiments and the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. STEM makes us anxious.

And maker spaces are inherently intergenerational in institutions that make rigid distinctions—about place, access, and behavior—based on age. Just how comfortable will most libraries be with an environment in which a fifth-grader collaborates with a 40-year-old?

http://anz23mobilethings.wordpress.com

http://librariesinteract.info/2013/04/12/23-mobile-things-join-the-australian-new-zealand-course/

So what is the NZ/Australian Cohort for 23 Mobile Things all about?  Read on.

What are the 23 Mobile Things?

The many benefits of mindfulness [...]]]> Malcolm Gladwell famously defined the “tipping point” as that magic moment when an idea or practice crosses some invisible threshold, tips, and spreads widely throughout a culture or society.  Lately I’ve been wondering if the practice and benefits of mindfulness meditation are hitting that tipping point.

The many benefits of mindfulness meditation have been known to Buddhist monks and western scientists alike for many years.  But it is only recently that mindfulness seems to be recognized in the workplace as a valuable practice worth promoting and fostering among employees.  In the past few months there have been a flurry of articles in publications ranging from Forbes and the New York Times, to The Chronicle of Higher Education, reporting on the benefits of mindfulness and the increasing adoption of the practice in businesses and organizations across the country.

Show me the Research

Some of the recent media coverage was generated by a study published in March, 2013 in the journal Psychological Science, by researchers who found that a two-week mindfulness training program resulted in decreased mind-wandering and improved memory.  Likewise, a study published by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2012 reported that meditation could increase one’s focus and ability to deal with distraction. The NSF research showed that those who received meditation training were more focused in their work, switched tasks less frequently and spent more time on each discrete task, while also seeing a reduction in stress and an improvement in memory.

These experiments only added to the growing body of neuroscientific studies that show that meditation improves emotional regulation, attention, and other aspects of what is known as emotional intelligence, or “EQ.”  And it is this demonstrated improvement in emotional intelligence that has attracted the attention of mainstream businesses and opened the door to more widespread acceptance of mindfulness meditation in the workplace.

Search Inside Yourself: A new kind of leadership institute

Google is perhaps the most notable company to embrace mindfulness meditation, citing improvements in employee EQ and the attendant benefits to the teamwork, creativity, and productivity in the workplace. To what extent has Google embraced mindfulness?  So much so that they’ve created a leadership institute cheekily dubbed, “Search Inside Yourself”, which focuses on developing five key aspects of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Originally conceived as in internal leadership offering, Google is now offereing their institute to the world, putting videos of the curriculum online, and publishing “Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness”, authored by Chade-Meng Tan, Google’s very own “Jolly Good Fellow (which nobody can deny).” How’s that for a job title!?

Keep in mind that Google, for all their California new-age vibe, is at heart a company of engineers; of scientists. They are trained to be highly skeptical, focus on data, and care only about obervable results.  As Tan points out in Search Inside Yourself, Google has gone all-in on mindfulness for one reason: It works. And it’s not just super-rich, California-new-agey, “do no evil” Google that has wrapped its organizational arms around the benefits of mindfulness. In a wide-ranging article published in March, 2013, the Huffington Post reported that one quarter of U.S. companies, including General Mills, Aetna, Apple, Nike, Procter & Gamble, Target, and AOL have instituted mindfulness programs.  William George, Harvard Business School professor and former CEO of Medtronic, explains why businesses across the country are adding meditation rooms and fostering mindfulness.  George says, “The main business case for meditation is that if you’re fully present on the job, you will be more effective as a leader…you will make better decisions.”

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy

So why is mindfulness meditation so effective?  Why does it result in improved emotional intelligence, and therefore improved work relationships, creativity, and problem-solving ability?

In a word, happiness.

In his book, Search Inside Yourself, Google’s Chade-Meng Tan writes, “What I really care about is happiness for my coworkers.  That is why emotional intelligence excites me.  It doesn’t just create conditions for stellar success at work; it also creates the conditions for personal happiness for everyone.”  In his book, The Happiness Advantage: Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, Shawn Achor reviews a decade’s worth of research suggesting that happier employees are more also more productive AND more accurate.  (Achor also gives a pretty mean Ted Talk.)

And happy employees are not only more productive and accurate, they are also… wait for it… contagious.  Yes, we actually catch happiness from each other.  Research from the Harvard Medical School and the University of California suggests that happiness spreads through social networks “like a virus” finding a “statistical relationship not just between your happiness and your friends’ happiness, but between your happiness and your friends’ friends’ friends’ happiness.”  (Researchers find that sadness is contagious too, but not as contagious as happiness.  Yay!)

Since mindfulness meditation leads to happiness, and happiness makes us more focused, productive, and accurate, AND happiness is contagious, it easy to see how a positive, reinforcing loop of happiness and productivity can easily be set in motion by a few people sitting quietly for a few minutes a day.  And I think that’s pretty cool.

Of course, all of this research around the benefits of happiness will likely come as no surprise to librarians considering that as far back as 1899 none other than John Cotton Dana was sharing his view (in A Library Primer) that the public library is a “center of public happiness first.”  And I think that’s pretty darn cool too.

Peter Bromberg is just a simple librarian trying to make it in this crazy world.  He is also the Associate Director and the Princeton Public Library in Princeton, NJ.  He has meditated on and off for 25 years (currently on.)  He occasionally tweets at @pbromberg and blogs at CuriousKind.  His website is http://peterbromberg.com/

———————————————————————–

For information about the beneficial physical effects of meditation on the brain see:

• Growing the Brain Through Meditation, On the Brain: The Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Newsletter, Fall 2006, Vol. 12, No. 3.
• Re-Wiring Your Brain for Happiness: Research Shows How Meditation Can Physically Change the Brain, ABC Nightline, April  28, 2011.
• 

Being adaptable in a flat world, knowing how to “learn how to learn,” will be one of the most important assets any worker can have, because job churn will come faster, because innovation will happen faster.”

Thomas Friedman

http://www.tadl.org/stats/

Please take a look at their Web site and catalog – built on Evergreen. To me, this library is an outstanding example of making [...]]]> I am honored to be spending the say at my hometown library: Traverse Area District Library.  Take a look at this page of stats they make available:

http://www.tadl.org/stats/

Please take a look at their Web site and catalog – built on Evergreen. To me, this library is an outstanding example of making things WORK on so many levels. I’m speaking this afternoon – the slides are here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/239835/StephensTADLStaffDay.pdf

Social Media in Libraries (here’s a link to the show notes: Bibliotech 26 show notes)

Troy A. Swanson is Department Chair and [...]]]> I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Bibliotech Podcast. We talked about social media in libraries, library website design, libraries as loosely coupled systems and other topics.

Social Media in Libraries
(here’s a link to the show notes: Bibliotech 26 show notes)

Troy A. Swanson is Department Chair and Teaching & Learning Librarian at Moraine Valley Community College. He is the author of the book, Managing Social Media in Libraries. You can follow him on Twitter at @t_swanson.