Webinar Recap

I finally got done watching the archived webinars and they were all so great! My SI peers never stop wowing me with their knowledge and skills. I watched the following titles:

We're Not in Kansas Anymore: How librarians in rural communities can help students in their college search

Out of Network:  How to Reach Patrons Who Don't Use Social Media

Steppin’ Out: Providing Library Services to Homebound Individuals

They were all just so awesome and full of wonderful insight and ideas. Oh my the ideas! I feel bad, since not a certain one stands out of the other, (partly because I watched them back to back) but also I think because the quality of each of them were so great. I really enjoyed all of the topics and found them interesting. I think one of my favorite topics was reaching out to rural communities to help students in their college search. I attended a private liberal arts undergrad with 1200 students and it was located in a small rural town in Indiana. I worked a lot of middle school and high school students to and get them excited about the potential of college. There are still a lot of students out there who are the first to even consider college. I think the role of the librarian in this is such a great and positive way to help! 

Our own webinar titled: Can You See Me?: Visual Impairments in the Library went really well! A lot of our feedback was wanting more direct practical solutions for in the library. Which was really awesome to see such a strong want to help (but what else do you expect from SI?). We are going to see if we can get it into the Library 2.013 Conference this coming fall. We're planning on doing a lot of shuffling around of information and adding a lot more practical tips (Also hoping to get in contact with Joyojeet Pal who works with development and adoption of assistive technologies!). I'm looking forward to the changes we can make and grateful for the wonderful feedback! 

Excellent way to end the semester and my first year at SI. Thanks everyone! 

Oops ...

Another apology to my blogging cohort:

I had set the time for when my blog posts were to launch, and realized earlier today that even when you do that you still need to hit the "Publish" button. Eep! I'm so sorry!

Sorry for the mass serge of posts in your RSS feeds.

I really need to consider getting a better assistant ...
 

from: fifteen animals on computers http://www.forkparty.com/1257/15-animals-on-computers

Post on Webinars to come ...

Just a quick apology. The post on the webinars and how our webinar went will be coming shortly.

Last week was personally crazy and full of unexpected events of a week, so there is a bit of catch-up happening, but I'm glad to say everyone is now safe and healthy!

23 things

The readings for this week were all about Professional Development (PD). I thought they were really interesting and actually a lot of what I read reminded me so much of what we are doing at Michigan Makers with the middle schoolers. The idea of continual learning, being able to tinker with something, create mentors for each other, and earn prizes for every bench mark made me so excited! Reminds me of learning badges ...

I also thought that Kristin's piece and the Wyoming piece did a great job of showing how you don't have to re-invent the wheel. There are already so many great ideas out there, that you should take advantage of them and use them (with attribution of course ;)). I really like how in the Wyoming piece that they were respectful and understanding of the teachers' time. One thing when I was first reading about the 23 things is it seems like a lot. But seeing how Kristin and the Wyoming public school worked with the basic framework, it was clear that when you do PD you don't have to do just 23 things. I also liked how there was a lot of choice in what the teachers could choose to learn about.

The Monday Evening Post

Today's discussion was around Twitter and using Twitter as a professional tool in building our professional networks.

We discussed the pros and cons of Twitter along with different websites you can use to better organize all the tweets (Like Hootsuite ... so many bird references, I love it). Just a quick summary of some of the Pros and Cons of Twitter are:

Pros

• It is quick publicity
• It is fast and easy to read
• Easy way to connect with people professionally
• Easy way to see what conversations are out there about different topics in library

Cons

• A lot of information - a running faucet! 
• Hard to have one account both professional and personal

We also discussed how Twitter can help in building our professional learning network or PLN. A PLN is a community of people outside of your co-workers. It is a network you can rely on for being a sound board for ideas, projects and problems you may face.

Tonight we asked ourselves who do we want as our peers for our PLN?

I really liked this question, and it is something that I need to continue thinking about and developing. I definitely know there are many people here at SI that I want to stay in touch with and have as apart of my PLN. There are just so many creative, smart and fun people here. But I'm not really sure yet who outside of SI, I want in this network. I think it will come with more experiences with listening to speakers at conferences etc. But I'm glad I'm thinking about it and starting to develop it!

I also think it is interesting that this idea of building a network, especially through social media really didn't seem too strange to me. It seemed only natural. I think it may be because I've been on Facebook since high school. In a way, this is what we did in high school. Someone might friend you on Facebook... comment on your things, then the next thing you know you're talking to each other more in class and sound boarding ideas of your assignments, or what you want to do in the future. Maybe not everyone has had that positive of an experience, but I wonder if there might be something generational for the comfortability and naturalness of using social media for building your PLN. Just something to think about!

Spring is in the Air: Can't you hear the Tweeting?!

#si643 takes to the Twitter streams this week! I have to say, I'm new to Twitter but I'm loving it! Microblogging is a lot of fun, easy, and fast to get your thoughts out there and share cool news. It's been great being able to follow librarians and see the conversations they are apart of. It's also been great seeing what everyone is class is finding.

So, one thing I've noticed that I really like about Twitter is how it is pretty easy to pick up. At first, I'll be honest, I didn't really know what a hashtag was. If I were to use a hashtag for my knowledge about hashtags it would be: #clueless. I didn't realize that they linked you to other posts where people also used that hashtag. Which is really fun and really cool.

I also really like how easy it is to share articles that you have found or retweeted with other people. I can see this being a great tool for keeping up-to-date with everything in libraryland, and it is all there on one site, and quick headliners. With my attention span, this is great! I would like it to be a little bit more organized. I'm still figuring out what everything does, but I'm glad we had to start using it!

So far I've been following YALSA, School Library Journal, ALA, DML (they are probably one of my favorite tweetters. I love their articles!), and librarians like Buffy Hamilton and David Lee King. I also really like the suggestions it comes up with for who to follow. I have a feeling though, I'll probably actively manage who I follow. Some librarians really enjoy sharing personal life things, that I'll be honest, I'm not that interested. I'll just consider who I follow on Twitter like a little collection that I'll actively develop through collecting and weeding #suchalibrarian.

Feel free to tweet at me or follow: @kmaforester

The Monday Evening Post

In class today we talked more about webinars. And it was confirmed that they do seem weird, but Kristin said with practice you become more comfortable talking to your computer. Just like my piano and viola teachers always said, Practice makes perfect!

Tonight, I felt more like a sponge just soaking up what I could about how to do webinars.

Here are the main points I took from tonights class about webinars:

Before the webinar, minimize the number of things you have to worry about. Plan who will be the moderator for the chat, how transitions will go, all of the nitty gritty logistics you typically don't need to worry to much about in a face-to-face setting.

Be more explicit in your webinar. This means there will be more slides, and more words then if you were presenting to a face-to-face audience.

First ask questions to get a sense of your audience to see what background information they are coming with into the webinar on the topic you are discussing. This also helps to make sure

• people hear you, 
• that they are able to use the tools (like hand raise, magic wand, thumbs up/down)
• allows people listening to the webinar get to know each other
• allows you to see how much wait time is needed for responses since there is a delay in audio

To make a great webinar try to identify someone's pain point and provide solutions for them

My group and I have decided to work on creating a webinar about making libraries more accessible for visually impaired and blind users. This is something I am very interested in, partly because I have a visual impairment and it is something people know about but may not necessarily have a clear understanding. I think it is really important to create an environment in the library that is welcoming to all kinds of users. When I was in elementary, I had to use big print books, because it was a lot easier for me to read, I also had to ask for large print rulers for math class etc. I was a shy kid, so this task was very difficult and usually relied on my parents letting the librarian and teacher know. I also didn't want to be treated differently from my friends. I use to hate reading when I was younger. It wasn't until my mom, who was a volunteer at our school librarian had picked a large print book out for me (Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards) in the fourth grade, which was an idea my school librarian had and brought it home, did I really see reading was fun... because I could see the font better! Now,  although my vision has improved, I still rely on some zoom-in functions for computers. I hope our webinar can make these things more aware for all librarians. Especially school librarians, and to help patrons who have a hard time seeing or are blind to feel comfortable, welcomed and accepted.