Elluminate

I watched the archived Eluminate session for collections over the weekend. This is such a thrilling tool! some students have commented how it makes classes as good as live classes--I think it is BETTER. I have difficulty learning by hearing, but taking notes helps--be Ellumintate does it for me. I can see, I can ask questions, but best of all I can REVIEW. I can watch when I am able to pay attention, rather than at the end of the day (like normal class time) when I am exhausted from kids and work. I can watch the good parts over and over, and review later when needed. BRILLIANT!

How could a live class be better?

Now not all people learn visually, or through demonstration, and many people like the class situation, the other students, the personalities. I am too busy for that! I need to get my information and get out so I can complete the huge amount of tasks I have in a day. For me, online classes are perfect--and Elluminate is an amazing tool.

My college is talking about getting the Rumba upgrade for Blackboard. I must tell them about Elluminate--and demonstrate it to Kristin, our distance education head. My librarian supervisor was amazed by it when I demonstrated it after the first class. I bet Kristin would be too. What an amazing tool!

Exciting week

We had our first class in Second Life this week--I had a tough time setting it up, but got it to work in time for class. The story:

I had worked on Second Life at my home computer--I had registered and begun weeks ago--but the graphics were fuzzy and took ages to load, if they loaded at all. Bad times. After searching the help pages (and talking to my classmates) we thought it might be my computer.

So the Sunday before class I loaded Second Life on my mum's computer. It worked as it should! Bright graphics, easy to understand. I was able to change my outfit and customize my avatar a bit. The only problem was I had to go to mum's for class--on the other side of town--and I had to take the kids. Once there it was no problem.

So I did. The kids were fascinated by the whole thing. My niece asked if she could play my game, and mum did not believe that this was class! It was funny. This week, more of the same.

I also have two big projects going at work--I gave a talk to the president's board (president of the college) about blogging. It was very last minute--they called and said please come tomorrow--and I had a lot of information to get together in a short time. Fun though! We have also been doing some podcasts for a book discussion group--writing them and recording them--and that takes extra time. PLUS I had a huge group for library instruction on Thursday. Usually I squeeze some schoolwork into my workday--with my supervisor's permission--but NOT this week!

Back to mum's for Second Life class on Wednesday.

Working towards final projects

I emailed off my proposal for my final project today--I have many things I want to work on.

Individual Projects:
In the spirit of Knitting is Everywhere I was very disappointed that the IPL has only one knitting link. THIS MUST CHANGE! I want to work on Craft blogs as well. I feel like a subject collection librarian on this--I would not call myself and expert, but certainly a high-intermediate in this area.

I hope that my own projects will be approved.

Group work:
To help coordinate my group I added a FINAL PROJECTS page to the wiki and put my proposal there. I asked everyone else to do the same. If the SAY HELLO project gets off the ground we will create a separate Wiki page for it and then coordinate it from there. I also think we should each take a section to proofread.

Its exciting to see it all develop!

Slam the boards!

I did it! I managed to get approved this weekend (the IPL never sleeps!) and was approved to answer reference questions. I answered two this morning--one about genealogy and one about author's birthdays. It was straightforward and fun--but answering questions usually is fun. New things to research is helpful--I always learn new things.

I hope to answer one more tonight, maybe after I get off work.

Elluminate!

I was excited by class this week--this was my first time using Elluminate! and I thought it was brilliant. All of us together, sharing information and meeting, but so far apart geographically. I found too that I have less distractions online--seeing it all happen on my desktop, and participating, was a much deeper learning experience than sitting in a live classroom.

In fact, I showed the librarian at work the class recording, complete with the SHOW SCREEN section (which I thought was exceptionally helpful.) She found the whole thing exciting as well (the college has been looking at Rumba, but E! can only be better!) I think E! fulfills some of the promises of Online Ed--the things that we could see were possible, but that we did not yet have the technology to do.

I wonder if Second Life will be even more exciting!?!

Nearly there!

I finished my practice question this morning--I had chosen a question about Ireland, and it was really fun to prepare the answer. I had no idea that Kerry was known as the Kingdom County of Ireland! That certainly puts the old Kerryman jokes in a different light.

I submitted my evaluation form as well, so I should hear back from the IPL soon--and it looks like I will make the deadline for Slam The Boards!

I missed the 24 hour deadline by a few minutes--I have been very ill this week, and I have had to cut back on my hours working at the computer. I should hear back from the doctor about the tests that were run last week; my fingers are crossed that it is nothing ultra-serious or incurable.

Limbo

I was very excited in class about doing the Slam the Boards event on Monday. I worked through the tutorials and emailed Cathay Crosby for a login yesterday, but I have not heard anything back. I REALLY want to participate, but I fear that I have missed it this time.

If I have missed it, I will just use the time to study the IPL more carefully. I certainly want to answer some questions, whether it happens by Monday or not. I can set myself the goal of one a week.

Fingers crossed!

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UPDATE! Cathay got back to me! I am doing my practice question this am--and I chose one on Ireland (my husband is from Ireland and we visit his family every year. Maybe I should ask him if he has ever heard of this factual piece? Protecting the identity and privacy of the quester, of course.)

Week 1: The journey begins

This week class began; the blog begins as well.

I had been watching Dr. Mon's blog and knew we had to choose an area and a group for our work. I was torn on this; I do reference work at work, so that I need less practice with. I am taking Dr. Chavez-Hernadez's Collection Development class this semester, and Helen (my mentor and the librarian at work) and I try to do some collection development there. We both read Library Journal and pick out things we think would be read--generally more popular works, like Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

I have a huge gripe with the (tiny) fiction collection at work (it is a community college, so fiction is not a huge part of the mission statement.) The collection is almost completely Middle Everything--white bread, hardback romances, realistic fiction, with a few mysteries thrown in. I am not a fan of realistic fiction. In that library, we hope to add more variety to the purchasing--science fiction is probably going too far, but to have SOME minority writers, some variety of any sort would be an improvement.

So when I start this semester, this problem will be on my mind. What are the holes in the collection? How can we reach more readers, how can we interest more people? I volunteered to be the Team Leader for Collections, mostly because no one else spoke up. I hope that after the nightmare of group work in the spring semester, where one person quit our group, I will be able to do ANYTHING! Maybe not.

This week I assigned myself the task of looking around the IPL, getting familiar with what is there. I know that when I looked at the Knitting section of the IPL there was only ONE entry! That must be improved!