Last time to ruminate on readings! Probably, last blog post for SI 643. :(
I really liked all three readings this week, and thought they were a great way to finish out the semester. Semadeni's article was a great explication of a professional development program in education that's gone really well. It was apparent from the article that a lot of the teachers in the Fusion program had really embraced it and taken charge of their own development, which is obviously the goal. As the article notes, finding motivation is always the hardest part of professional development, especially when you're dealing with professionals who are as busy as teachers are and have so many things to worry about. The program really seems to have found a way to get "buy-in" from its audience. I do worry about a couple of things with the Fusion program, though. The first is how to navigate the whole "everyone is a specialist in something" aspect. There are always going to be some people who feel for whatever reason that one of their colleagues is just not a very good teacher at all, and they'll blanch at the thought that they might have something to learn from that person. Obviously sometimes their impressions of their colleagues' abilities will be misguided, but often they aren't. Dealing with this could be tricky. My other concern is the "roaming substitute." In terms of the program, it's obviously a great idea and was essential to making everything work. But I can see this being just the sort of thing that's going to upset taxpayers-- "why are we paying an extra teacher so these teachers can stay at school and not teach? Shouldn't they be in the classroom?" etc. So I think you need to anticipate this criticism and be prepared to make a case for why this professional development time is so vital to good education.
I was also really impressed by the Bowers and Reed piece. I feel like the sort of programs they set up at PLCMC are just the sort of thing libraries and similar institutions should be doing to familiarize staff with technology. In implementing these programs, they really took time to think about why what they were currently doing wasn't working, what the needs of their staff really were, and how they could best meet these needs in a different way. The Learning 2.0 program is a really obvious approach to professional development for its subject matter, but it's certainly non-traditional for professional development in general, which is why it was so innovative. I really think lots of libraries could learn from this approach and implement something similar in their own context. I'm not surprised at all that people responded so positively when there was so much potential for exploration and fun. Overall, just a really cool program to read about. Because I always like to read the short bios of the people who write articles I read, there's another thing I'd like to note: neither of the authors of this article is a librarian; the authors are training and development professionals. This shows just how much we librarians can learn from other professionals we work with in libraries, and also the value of having these other professionals, with diverse backgrounds, in the library in the first place.
Kristin's article, then, really pulled things together by showing how she implemented a Learning 2.0-like program in her own specific professional environment. I really liked how she explained the ways in which she adapted and modified the open access tools provided by PLCMC to build a professional development program geared toward elementary school teachers rather than public library staff. I think it provides a good basis for others to think about how to do the same in their own environments. As usual, I'm already thinking about ways you could adapt something the tools to fit in an archival environment, where tech education is a real need a lot of the time. These articles were a really great way to close a semester of thinking about professional development.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Class in Review: Week 11
So last class we talked about everyone's impressions of Twitter. I have to say I was surprised at how many people shared my skepticism about Twitter. SI students are supposed to be on top of all this new technology to the extreme, right? And for the most part, we are, and I'm sure a lot of people at SI do effectively use Twitter for professional development purposes. But overall people in SI 643 just seem really unsure how to do so, and I can't say I blame them. In particular, I wasn't surprised that people were annoyed at the degree to which people's personal and professional lives intersected on Twitter in ways that were annoying to the person who wants to use the service for professional purposes.
I have to say that though the tools we talked about in class for making Twitter less information overload-ish seemed interesting, I'm still not sure that they'd make Twitter a worthwhile use of my professional time. As we looked at Hootsuite and Google Reader integration and whatever else, I just really couldn't imagine myself ever doing this. I was particular struck by Kristin saying how she could lose so much time just to keeping up with this sort of professional networking without realizing it. I already know I can lose hours of time in my personal life to social networking and blogs (and when you're in grad school, "personal life" means "time to do homework," so that doesn't work out so well), and the thought of the same thing happening when I should be doing work that I'm actually getting paid for-- even when said social networking/blogging/whatever relates to the work I'm doing-- is a little terrifying. And I already know how much time people lose due to email processing alone in work environments. Email is unavoidable, and of course the benefits and convenience of using it generally outweigh the annoyances. But for everything else, is it really worth it? For some people, you can probably manage it just fine. For me personally, probably not.
On the other hand, I see the value of Twitter in professional development and networking in general-- the whole professional learning network thing. But how do you get a balance between that and your "actual" work? Obviously, each enhances the other, but it's tough to justify spending too much time on the former to the detriment of the latter. I suppose figuring this out is part of our obligation as professionals, but Web 2.0 makes these things a little more complicated, doesn't it? Overall, a lot of really interesting reflections on professional development and where to go from here as we close out a very interesting semester.
I have to say that though the tools we talked about in class for making Twitter less information overload-ish seemed interesting, I'm still not sure that they'd make Twitter a worthwhile use of my professional time. As we looked at Hootsuite and Google Reader integration and whatever else, I just really couldn't imagine myself ever doing this. I was particular struck by Kristin saying how she could lose so much time just to keeping up with this sort of professional networking without realizing it. I already know I can lose hours of time in my personal life to social networking and blogs (and when you're in grad school, "personal life" means "time to do homework," so that doesn't work out so well), and the thought of the same thing happening when I should be doing work that I'm actually getting paid for-- even when said social networking/blogging/whatever relates to the work I'm doing-- is a little terrifying. And I already know how much time people lose due to email processing alone in work environments. Email is unavoidable, and of course the benefits and convenience of using it generally outweigh the annoyances. But for everything else, is it really worth it? For some people, you can probably manage it just fine. For me personally, probably not.
On the other hand, I see the value of Twitter in professional development and networking in general-- the whole professional learning network thing. But how do you get a balance between that and your "actual" work? Obviously, each enhances the other, but it's tough to justify spending too much time on the former to the detriment of the latter. I suppose figuring this out is part of our obligation as professionals, but Web 2.0 makes these things a little more complicated, doesn't it? Overall, a lot of really interesting reflections on professional development and where to go from here as we close out a very interesting semester.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Readings: Week 11
.... or Twitter: Week 11.
So, per our instructions, I took the plunge into Twitter. And? I just don't know. Like a lot of people, I've long thought Twitter is just kind of silly for most people. (I always say, "It's like Facebook with just status updates. Who needs that?") I can see how it'd be useful for certain types of people-- politicians, celebrities, and the media. And they're the type that are largely known (in the public consciousness) for using it. But the more time I spent around SI, the more I came to think there might be something to Twitter having professional uses too.
And, after spending some time there, I think it probably can. But like every other professional tool, it takes some time to get used to and some figuring out to use well. Personally, just jumping in and following some people, I'm just overwhelmed. Figuring out who to follow and then finding the things they say that are actually useful is just too much; I'm not able to find information I actually want or like.
I'll admit I haven't spent that much time on Twitter, and I know there are tools that can help make the abundance of info less overwhelming. But I still feel like it may not be the most efficient tool for staying professionally connected. Hard to tell, though.
One thing I think is key is having a good strategy for who you follow, and not just following random people who look interesting. For one thing, if I'm going to use Twitter for professional purposes, I really don't want to follow people who fill it up with non-professional updates. I'm really not that interested in the personal lives of random people I don't know. But some people only feel comfortable if they're able to really merge their personal and professional identities, so that's the only way they'll feel comfortable tweeting. That's just not me, though. What this means is that it's not a good idea to just click "follow" on someone whose tweets you aren't familiar with just because you think their description looks interesting. Finding people to follow is thus more complicated than I anticipated.
Overall, I'm still on the fence about Twitter, but it'll be interesting to hear other people's observations in class tomorrow. There's a lot to be said and a lot of different perspectives out there, I'm sure.
So, per our instructions, I took the plunge into Twitter. And? I just don't know. Like a lot of people, I've long thought Twitter is just kind of silly for most people. (I always say, "It's like Facebook with just status updates. Who needs that?") I can see how it'd be useful for certain types of people-- politicians, celebrities, and the media. And they're the type that are largely known (in the public consciousness) for using it. But the more time I spent around SI, the more I came to think there might be something to Twitter having professional uses too.
And, after spending some time there, I think it probably can. But like every other professional tool, it takes some time to get used to and some figuring out to use well. Personally, just jumping in and following some people, I'm just overwhelmed. Figuring out who to follow and then finding the things they say that are actually useful is just too much; I'm not able to find information I actually want or like.
I'll admit I haven't spent that much time on Twitter, and I know there are tools that can help make the abundance of info less overwhelming. But I still feel like it may not be the most efficient tool for staying professionally connected. Hard to tell, though.
One thing I think is key is having a good strategy for who you follow, and not just following random people who look interesting. For one thing, if I'm going to use Twitter for professional purposes, I really don't want to follow people who fill it up with non-professional updates. I'm really not that interested in the personal lives of random people I don't know. But some people only feel comfortable if they're able to really merge their personal and professional identities, so that's the only way they'll feel comfortable tweeting. That's just not me, though. What this means is that it's not a good idea to just click "follow" on someone whose tweets you aren't familiar with just because you think their description looks interesting. Finding people to follow is thus more complicated than I anticipated.
Overall, I'm still on the fence about Twitter, but it'll be interesting to hear other people's observations in class tomorrow. There's a lot to be said and a lot of different perspectives out there, I'm sure.
Class in Review: Week 10
1. Books are for use.
2. Every reader his [or her] book.
3. Every book its reader.
4. Save the time of the reader.
5. The library is a growing organism.
So this week in class we covered the apparent library-school necessity of talking about Ranganathan's five laws of library science, as seen above. Though I'd heard of the five laws in passing, I'd never really reflected on them much before. Overall, I agree with people who think the laws have aged pretty well. I think all of them save perhaps #3, if you substitute some broader term for book, still hold up pretty well today. I was surprised it took us so long to talk about #4, because I think it's the most compelling and challenging still today. If we aren't saving users' time in finding resources, what are we really doing in libraries?
2. Every reader his [or her] book.
3. Every book its reader.
4. Save the time of the reader.
5. The library is a growing organism.
So this week in class we covered the apparent library-school necessity of talking about Ranganathan's five laws of library science, as seen above. Though I'd heard of the five laws in passing, I'd never really reflected on them much before. Overall, I agree with people who think the laws have aged pretty well. I think all of them save perhaps #3, if you substitute some broader term for book, still hold up pretty well today. I was surprised it took us so long to talk about #4, because I think it's the most compelling and challenging still today. If we aren't saving users' time in finding resources, what are we really doing in libraries?
As usual, I'm going to ponder a little how these "laws" do or don't apply or can be transferred to an an archival setting. As far as I know from my ARM coursework, there isn't a similar succinct formulation of what archives are or should be. So let's try to substitute "archival materials" (an unwieldy term, but the best we can do) for "books" and think about how the laws hold up circa 2012. Part of the complicated history of archives is the tension between archivists thinking of themselves as historians versus thinking of themselves as librarians. My contention is that we have a lot to learn from doing the latter, so this ought to be a helpful exercise.
I think laws #2 and #4 transfer pretty easily. With the complexity and overwhelming-ness of archival materials, everything we do in archives should definitely be geared toward saving users' time. Since archives (almost always) have closed stacks, this becomes especially important when archivists still have to for the most part mediate access. With digital materials there's pretty much a direct analog to libraries, though archives sometimes have to deal with more complicated digital content. Likewise, "every user his or her archival materials" (as awkward as that sounds) should be broadly accurate, though I think what this actually means is a little complicated, just as it is for libraries. Basically that's my way of saying this is the "law" I think is the vaguest and least helpful.
Beyond this, things get complicated. We noted in class that for non-academic libraries, law #3 really doesn't make sense as a guiding principle. For archives this is true to the extreme. Deciding what archival materials to preserve and keep, and why, and even constitutes "archival materials" is one of the most complicated areas of the field. We have a whole class on Archival Appraisal (SI 632), and I think those of who've taken it would still say we've only touched the basics of this issue.
.... which brings us to law #1. Are archival materials "for use"? What does that mean in the context of archives? You could touch off a lot of controversy among archivists from the questions that leap of off this law. Obviously, we want people to use materials in archives, but what does that mean for our collecting/appraisal decisions? Do we only collect things people want to use or we judge likely to be used? Or is our job as archivists to preserve those documents/artifacts/whatever that best represent whatever we're documenting the history of? What does "best represent" mean? As you can tell, the role of "use" in archival collecting is controversial to say the least. So I'm not so sure this law should be one we try to "transfer" to archives.
This leaves us with law #5. This seems like an easy proposition to agree with, and certainly it should apply to archives in terms of technology and access in many of the same ways it does for libraries. I guess I'm a little wary about the word "grow" because it implies getting bigger. Change, if done well, can be good. Growth for the sake of growth (because we're supposed to be "growing") usually is not. I think pondering whether this applies to archives can lead us into complicated philosophical territory about what our mission is and what we should or shouldn't be doing. Then again, the same thing can probably be said for libraries. And a lot of this is contextual; there are so many different types of archives that do different types of things that it gets very complicated. (Not that this isn't true for libraries as well.)
The other big thing I recall from class is hearing about the webinars people watched. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had a disappointing experience with my webinar, but it was really fun to hear about the cool things some people's webinars did. I hope ours in this class can meet the high expectations!
(Edited to make this look... like it should. I blame Google.)
(Edited to make this look... like it should. I blame Google.)
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Readings: Week 10
Our first reading this week was another chapter of How People Learn, this time offering specific examples of effective teaching in the areas of history, math, and science. I found a lot of the conversation fascinating, especially the history part, since I have a history degree and went to school with a lot of people who were planning to be (and today are) history teachers. History is maybe the core subject area in American K-12 education where "theory" and critical thinking are most de-emphasized in favor of memorization of facts, which might have something to do with why it's so unpopular. It was really great to see examples of history teachers who are really engaging their students and teaching historical thinking. I was also really pleased by the emphasis on content knowledge and knowledge of how a discipline works as a vital component of teaching in a discipline. This is something I've believed for a long time is a really big deficit with our educational system. Like with a lot of the book, though, I left this chapter really unsure about how teachers begin to put these techniques into action. The examples presented are really amazing, but they're not always things that teachers, especially beginning ones, can just pick up and go with these strategies. How does a teacher try to get to that point? What are the first things you can do? This is what I'd want to know.
Reading about our webinars made me excited but also nervous. I think it'll be a fun activity but will take a lot of prep time. I think the comments from last year's students will be really helpful.
The Montgomery article was simplistic in some ways, but I think it made a really good case for areas in which webinars can be a really effective tool. Communicating with students who are off-campus is a really big advantage, and I think webinars really could potentially provide some exciting results there. I think one thing that's key is promoting this service. For example, Montgomery mentions an institution where librarians will actually do on-demand webinars with off-campus students. That's really awesome, but I wonder how many students don't take advantage of this and would but don't really know it's an option? And there are going to be students who are just put off by the idea of watching a video to start with, but could really benefit from the help.
The article on traditional v. hybrid embedded librarians was probably the most informative for me. This is because (confessions of a non-LIS student here), I didn't actually know what an embedded librarian was! It's a term I've heard before but not one I was really familiar with as someone who's only taken ARM classes. And it's not something we had at my undergraduate institution, so I don't have experience with it personally. So I learned a lot, needless to say. As to the specific content, I found it really interesting that the hybrid embedded librarian saw distinct advantages and opportunities in his position that wouldn't have likely been there if he were a traditional embedded librarian (like conducting classes using online meeting systems). On the other hand, the traditional embedded librarian saw huge advantages in being actually "on-site" with her department. A lot of this, of course, comes down to the culture of a business school versus a music school, and I think that's key. One of the most important things in librarianship is really having a sense of who your patrons are and being able to serve them in the ways that are most relevant technologically, culturally, whatever-ly. This article made me think of that in ways I never had before.
Also, since I'm always trying to what we talk about to archives, I pondered a bit how the concepts that make embedded librarianship work well could be extended to archives as well. The tricky part, I think, is that for academic libraries and public libraries, your core user base is generally speaking geographically situated in one place. For most archives, the thing that unifies a core user base is intellectual interest in certain topics, which isn't going to line up with geography. Of course there are exceptions both ways; many archives are located within academic libraries or other institutions that have a geographically defined user base (though they also have other outside users), and lots of academic libraries are coming up with new ways to work with distance learners. There's definitely territory to learn from both ways. I think the key takeaway for archivists, though, is that even if you can't be physically close to your users, it's important to as much as possible try to become a part of their professional worlds and communities and share in their culture. This is possible in a lot of ways.
For my webinar, I watched one of the Wyoming State Library ones on social networking. I was pretty disappointed in a lot of ways; it wasn't very interactive and I didn't feel it used the time very well. Some of the information was also a little sketchy, and it couldn't seem to decide if the target audience was people who were familiar with the sites it was discussing or brand new to them. Still, it did give a lot of good information on a lot of things, like ways libraries can use Flickr and the advantages of putting photos there rather than just in local storage online.
Whew, I'd better stop now before this post gets any longer! Lots to think about this week.
Reading about our webinars made me excited but also nervous. I think it'll be a fun activity but will take a lot of prep time. I think the comments from last year's students will be really helpful.
The Montgomery article was simplistic in some ways, but I think it made a really good case for areas in which webinars can be a really effective tool. Communicating with students who are off-campus is a really big advantage, and I think webinars really could potentially provide some exciting results there. I think one thing that's key is promoting this service. For example, Montgomery mentions an institution where librarians will actually do on-demand webinars with off-campus students. That's really awesome, but I wonder how many students don't take advantage of this and would but don't really know it's an option? And there are going to be students who are just put off by the idea of watching a video to start with, but could really benefit from the help.
The article on traditional v. hybrid embedded librarians was probably the most informative for me. This is because (confessions of a non-LIS student here), I didn't actually know what an embedded librarian was! It's a term I've heard before but not one I was really familiar with as someone who's only taken ARM classes. And it's not something we had at my undergraduate institution, so I don't have experience with it personally. So I learned a lot, needless to say. As to the specific content, I found it really interesting that the hybrid embedded librarian saw distinct advantages and opportunities in his position that wouldn't have likely been there if he were a traditional embedded librarian (like conducting classes using online meeting systems). On the other hand, the traditional embedded librarian saw huge advantages in being actually "on-site" with her department. A lot of this, of course, comes down to the culture of a business school versus a music school, and I think that's key. One of the most important things in librarianship is really having a sense of who your patrons are and being able to serve them in the ways that are most relevant technologically, culturally, whatever-ly. This article made me think of that in ways I never had before.
Also, since I'm always trying to what we talk about to archives, I pondered a bit how the concepts that make embedded librarianship work well could be extended to archives as well. The tricky part, I think, is that for academic libraries and public libraries, your core user base is generally speaking geographically situated in one place. For most archives, the thing that unifies a core user base is intellectual interest in certain topics, which isn't going to line up with geography. Of course there are exceptions both ways; many archives are located within academic libraries or other institutions that have a geographically defined user base (though they also have other outside users), and lots of academic libraries are coming up with new ways to work with distance learners. There's definitely territory to learn from both ways. I think the key takeaway for archivists, though, is that even if you can't be physically close to your users, it's important to as much as possible try to become a part of their professional worlds and communities and share in their culture. This is possible in a lot of ways.
For my webinar, I watched one of the Wyoming State Library ones on social networking. I was pretty disappointed in a lot of ways; it wasn't very interactive and I didn't feel it used the time very well. Some of the information was also a little sketchy, and it couldn't seem to decide if the target audience was people who were familiar with the sites it was discussing or brand new to them. Still, it did give a lot of good information on a lot of things, like ways libraries can use Flickr and the advantages of putting photos there rather than just in local storage online.
Whew, I'd better stop now before this post gets any longer! Lots to think about this week.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Class in Review: Week 9
This week we presented our one-shot workshops in class. I was pretty excited about the other workshops my group was presenting, and there were others in other groups that looked really interesting that I wish I could've gone to as well. Since (as with the book club) there's inconsistent overlap between my group of workshops and my blogging cohort, I'm going to make some more general observations about the workshop experience, both as a presenter and as a participant, instead of focusing on individual content of workshops.
As a presenter, the biggest thing that surprised me was how well we managed the time we had. Because there's no way to really practice group activities, we were pretty worried about things taking longer than we had planned and eating up our 20 minutes. As it happened, the time flowed pretty well and some things didn't take as long as we anticipated, while others took a little longer and used up that time. Generally, I think this aspect of our workshop went well. Another thing I realized was that you can't do group discussion very well when you've given a group hardly any time to learn about and process the new concept you went to discuss. We had two discussion periods in our workshop, and the one that followed a portion where the participants were more engaged in and had more time to learn about the content we were discussing went much better. This should be obvious, but I'm not sure it was something we really anticipated per se while we were planning.
I had a lot of thoughts about the other workshops, and obviously I thought some went better than others. One thing about workshops that run well is that they 1) have an intense focus on each individual topic (or sub-topic) discussed, and 2) keep things moving. A lot of short, different activities that each have a clear goal is going to be more successful than a couple big, broad, fuzzy things, it seems.
Another thing that I noticed is how much the content of your workshop influences the way you conduct it. There were a couple of presentations where I initially thought, "This is really uninteresting." Then I reflected on how I would teach the same content in a more interesting way, and I wasn't really sure. So I decided that was content I probably wouldn't have tried to present at all. But it was useful and interesting information. Finding a way to really engage people in something that's important but not necessarily the easiest to teach or demonstrate takes a lot of work, and obviously some people did a better job of this than others.
As a presenter, the biggest thing that surprised me was how well we managed the time we had. Because there's no way to really practice group activities, we were pretty worried about things taking longer than we had planned and eating up our 20 minutes. As it happened, the time flowed pretty well and some things didn't take as long as we anticipated, while others took a little longer and used up that time. Generally, I think this aspect of our workshop went well. Another thing I realized was that you can't do group discussion very well when you've given a group hardly any time to learn about and process the new concept you went to discuss. We had two discussion periods in our workshop, and the one that followed a portion where the participants were more engaged in and had more time to learn about the content we were discussing went much better. This should be obvious, but I'm not sure it was something we really anticipated per se while we were planning.
I had a lot of thoughts about the other workshops, and obviously I thought some went better than others. One thing about workshops that run well is that they 1) have an intense focus on each individual topic (or sub-topic) discussed, and 2) keep things moving. A lot of short, different activities that each have a clear goal is going to be more successful than a couple big, broad, fuzzy things, it seems.
Another thing that I noticed is how much the content of your workshop influences the way you conduct it. There were a couple of presentations where I initially thought, "This is really uninteresting." Then I reflected on how I would teach the same content in a more interesting way, and I wasn't really sure. So I decided that was content I probably wouldn't have tried to present at all. But it was useful and interesting information. Finding a way to really engage people in something that's important but not necessarily the easiest to teach or demonstrate takes a lot of work, and obviously some people did a better job of this than others.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Class in Review: Week 8
This week's class was focused on ethics in librarianship and the ALA Code of Ethics. In reflecting on class, I'm not really sure there's much specific I can say beyond what I said in last week's post, but I think the situation we drove home solidified the views about ethics I expressed there.
When we did the "case studies" of ethical issues (about Random House and the ads in Toronto), we were asked to derive guidance from the code of ethics for what we would do in the situation. My group found that pretty difficult to do in any sort of specific way. We talked about different approaches to the situation, how we should respond as librarians, and agreed that the situations raised a lot of interesting issues and things worth talking about. But it was hard to find provisions in the code of ethics that we could really use as justification for whatever decisions we'd make. Obviously, the code notes that this isn't really its purpose; it's supposed to provide a general set of viewpoints and values, not anything that tells you to do a certain thing at a certain time. And it's important as a profession, I think, to have some broad view of what your values and ethics are. So the code serves something of a purpose. In many ways, though, that set of shared values is sort of inherent and intangible-- it's something people share before they go into the profession, and it certainly serves as a reference point for their decision making, but it's hard to articulate in a list of values like the code of ethics gives.
I wish we would've talked a little more about the implications of some of the provisions in the code, and maybe about how "virtue ethics" does or doesn't fit in with the code, because I found that approach really helpful for the reasons I laid out in my previous post. Overall, I think the "case studies" drove home the value of circumstances-based decision-making and an approach to professional ethics overall in line with the virtue ethics approach, though.
I have nothing more to say, except that I'm looking forward to the opportunity to learn something in an interesting way from my peers in our workshops tomorrow.
When we did the "case studies" of ethical issues (about Random House and the ads in Toronto), we were asked to derive guidance from the code of ethics for what we would do in the situation. My group found that pretty difficult to do in any sort of specific way. We talked about different approaches to the situation, how we should respond as librarians, and agreed that the situations raised a lot of interesting issues and things worth talking about. But it was hard to find provisions in the code of ethics that we could really use as justification for whatever decisions we'd make. Obviously, the code notes that this isn't really its purpose; it's supposed to provide a general set of viewpoints and values, not anything that tells you to do a certain thing at a certain time. And it's important as a profession, I think, to have some broad view of what your values and ethics are. So the code serves something of a purpose. In many ways, though, that set of shared values is sort of inherent and intangible-- it's something people share before they go into the profession, and it certainly serves as a reference point for their decision making, but it's hard to articulate in a list of values like the code of ethics gives.
I wish we would've talked a little more about the implications of some of the provisions in the code, and maybe about how "virtue ethics" does or doesn't fit in with the code, because I found that approach really helpful for the reasons I laid out in my previous post. Overall, I think the "case studies" drove home the value of circumstances-based decision-making and an approach to professional ethics overall in line with the virtue ethics approach, though.
I have nothing more to say, except that I'm looking forward to the opportunity to learn something in an interesting way from my peers in our workshops tomorrow.
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