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.
Even as an LIS student, I have to admit I'd never heard the term embedded librarian before. Either we didn't have those at my undergrad or I just had no idea that we did. It's an interesting concept to learn about, though.
ReplyDeleteI'm also with you on the history stuff. I was an English major, but I dabbled in college history, and the college-level classes were so much more fascinating to me than the high-school level stuff, which was largely about facts and dates. I also wonder how we can practically apply these ideas to librarianship, though.
I, too, question whether students would really take advantage of on-demand webinars. In a distance learning situation, I think this is much more likely to happen, but we also have to keep in mind that distance learning students tend (generally) to be more technologically behind "traditional" students. Would a webinar be too intimidating to try, or would they have a solid enough background in webinars from their coursework to feel comfortable? Food for thought.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about embedded archivists? If archivists were able to spend their time in academic departments or public libraries to drum up interest?
ReplyDeleteI like how your posts always try to relate back to archives-- I always learn something new and look at the material from a new perspective. I think that what you mentioned about the embedded model in an archive setting being restrained by geography could be mediated with webinars. I just watched a webinar that brought together different experts to converse over a certain topic with a ton of audience participation-- it was something that couldn't really be done outside of a formal conference. The webinar I watched didn't have visuals, but that could be an interesting way to merge expertise, interest, and participation with the collections housed in the archive.
ReplyDeleteI am now thinking about what you said about embedded archivists. I too wonder how effective it would be when most of the users of an archive users are going to the archive to study but otherwise they are not near the archive. Perhaps archivists need to go the embedded webinar route and meet their patrons on line to get people interested in the archive or the vary least answer questions.
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