Automate Me
Posted: May 1, 2013 Filed under: digital-literacy, librarianship, technology | Tags: automate, IFTT Leave a comment »If 2012 was my year of the iPad, then 2013 is my year of automation. I credit ProfHacker for many things in my development as a technologist, and I am going to add automation to the list.
I started my automation journey slowly. Last year, I began using an online calendar tool called Lizibot to cut down on the number of emails I passed back and forth with students about arranging appointments. It changed my life in a small but measurable way. I wrote fewer emails, students knew right away when they could meet with me, and now – for the class I co-teach – I have a link right to my calendar, so there’s no more messing around with weekly, mercurial schedules for me. Following my foray into Lizibot, I began experimenting with text expansion tools, specifically by downloading TextExpander for iOS. Again, It’s a pleasure to be able to write drafts of emails without having to type my phone number, email address, or standard closing salutations for email.
The next automation wave crested after reading a Profhacker post about IFFT. IFFT is essentially “if this, then that” moderated by a third party. It’s dead easy. The Profhacker post breaks it down well. Since that’s been published, many more time-saving ”recipes” have been added to the voluminous library. I especially like the “if I change my profile photo on Facebook, then it changes on Twitter, too,” recipe. But the recipe with the most impact on my working life is the once which states: “if @en appears on my Google calendar appointment, then a meeting note template in Evernote is created.” Thanks to this blog post, I now have a powerful tool to take meeting minutes easily.
Automation might make me sound like a robot, but it allows me work smarter. The meeting notes template is a great example of that. I realized that having a template for taking meeting notes wouldn’t just make me more organized, it forced me to take more effective notes, making the task of acting as minute taker less tiresome. By having predetermined fields like ‘attendees’ to fill in immediately and ‘action items’ to fill in throughout the meeting, I could listen more actively and my notes ultimately would make more sense. And I added a section called ‘to do’ that allows me to remember complementary activities long after the meeting is done. Gone were the panic moments when I didn’t know what was talked about or remember action items I needed to add to a list. Awesome.
Here’s my take on Rubin’s original recipe that I referenced in the first paragraph.
Automation saves me time, but it also gives me something else: headspace. By automating parts of my working life, I have the headspace to think; I have a few extra minutes to daydream, an ability to carve out an outlet to think about my work in new ways. By having those few moments to take a step back and reflect, I can actually think about what’s next, what’s coming, where I want to go, where we need to go. Automation allows me to sit back like the West Wing‘s president Josiah Bartlett and ask: what’s next?
Social Media: Inventory & Reflections (Updated)
Posted: November 21, 2012 Filed under: digital-literacy, hampshire-college, higher-education, librarianship, teaching, technology | Tags: facebook, instagram, social media, spotify, tumblr, Twitter, wordpress, zotero 1 Comment »Last week, I had the pleasure of teaching a research education section on social media for a Division I tutorial class. The class will contribute to a Tumblr that compiles theater reviews from around the Five College consortium. Collectively, the class will write critical reviews that demand the serious effort and rigorous analysis that one expects in scholarly communication in a venue where many of them write for ‘anyone who will read’ or ‘their friends and family.’ It was fun to interrogate ideas of audience in social media and think about norms for different regions of the internet. We did some concept mapping that was quite revealing:
Of course, thinking about social media, audience, and scholarly communication got me thinking about why I write what I write where I do on the internet. Do I write different in different places, do I share different things on different channels? Where am I on the internet?
Hence, I thought I’d offer a social media inventory loosely defined as the social places where I create and share content with people – friends, colleagues, students, family:
Facebook the social media platform we love to hate. This is for my friends, a good cross section of whom are also colleagues. I’ll share photos, wish friends a happy birthday, occasionally throw in an article I really liked from Instapaper. I keep my privacy settings pretty locked down so people not in my immediate network can’t see my activity. It’s strictly personal.
Twitter: the social network some people hate. I love Twitter. It’s professional with some personal stuff thrown in, too. Cat photos, beer reflections, New England sports agita. Again, many of my friends are also colleagues. I live-tweet relevant lectures and conferences I attend. I love participating in robust back channel conversations. I love the second screen experience during elections, sporting events, and cheesy award shows.
Tumblr: the social network of gif aficionados. I used to post there more regularly before I transitioned to this space on WordPress,but I still share photos, occasional musings, and reblogs from different voices I admire. I read my Tumblr stream religiously in Flipboard.
Instagram: The emo, hipster social network. With photos. Sometimes with hastags. I favor individuals who post photos of CATS or other cute animals. But mostly CATS. Some of what I photograph for Instragram will end up on Twitter or Facebook. But nearly everything I photograph comes from my iPhone and Instagram. I really enjoy social photography with my friends. (Note: I deleted my Instagram account in Jan 2013)
Spotify: Music. All the time. I am strangely guarded about what I listen to at work, at the gym, at home when I’m writing or when I’m on the bus to work. Music has been a constant in my life whether it was performing classical music in high school, hosting my own radio show in College (holla 919.9 WOZQ!), or blasting in it in my car. Music is personal, so it’s not open for the world to see and discover. I social network with myself.
Zotero:See my research, comment on my research, share your research. I evangelize about Zotero on the regular. And the group element is powerful. What better, more expedient way to share information with collaborators than in the bibliographic management system I use to do research?
WordPress:The blogging place. I follow some sites on WordPress and I get pretty psyched when I see certain blogs’ freshly pressed content in my inbox. It’s where this site lives and where my professional voice feels strongest.
In all of these channels or contexts, I have an audience in mind. Audience pervades conversations around social media as our concept map in the above image conveys. Where and when you create/consume/comment on the internet matters. And we all have to evaluate what we are doing and what we are saying on the internet so we are not just howling at the moon.
It’s not JUST about GUARDING against our reputations as the conversation so often goes, but social media is also an opportunity to explore our voices, tell our stories, cultivate a room of our own, so others may find us.
FIRED UP.
Posted: October 17, 2012 Filed under: digital-humanities, digital-literacy, higher-education, librarianship, teaching, technology 2 Comments »I did a research session for an education class just after the second presidential debate. No better object lesson than to imbue in students how the skills we learn in doing research for academic papers be be applied outside of the library’s walled garden into the wild, wild web, a piece of inspiration I received during a char booth lecture last year. The session was energetic, the students invested. And then it came up, “did you always want to be a librarian?”
No. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a librarian; I didn’t even think about becoming one until I was in grad school studying history. I had this other life before becoming a librarian, historian. Then it also hit me; I wasn’t always ‘technically’ a librarian, I was an archivist. In a sense, since graduating from Smith College in 2004, I’ve had three careers; grad student, archivist, librarian. How did I manage those transitions? I leaned on my liberal arts training to retrain myself to learn the skills I needed to attack the tasks at hand. Or, as I said to the professor, “no one can repossess my education; I’ve always been able to make sense out of my world and learn what I need to learn to keep going.”
Which brings me to this article by Cathy Davidson forwarded to me by a colleague at Mount Holyoke while I was walking back to the library and this quote:
“The new liberal arts curriculum I am advocating is about the ability to learn, the ability to learn any time, any where, to have the skills and the networks and the communities and the practices and the introspective capacities to see what you need to get you beyond your old habits and cultivate new ones that serve you better.”
The research education that I’m providing for my students isn’t just how to do research for a paper or how to use this tool to complete this project, but a framework about how to effectively seek new information to learn new skills. In a changing economy, college educations shouldn’t be the training for just the next five years, but the methods, networks, and support to sustain people for the next fifty.
But this quote was the most pressing for me:
“That should be the starting point of educational reform. The quest to give every graduate the tools to fight off ignorance. In a changing world, ignorance is only one technology away. “
As everything changes, we can’t just teach people ‘just in time’ skills, but we need to teach students to be able to teach themselves new skills ‘just in time’ to use them. Without a robust framework to seek and evaluate information, our students will not be able to reinvent themselves ten or twenty years out of college. And then what?
I get fired up about higher education and librarianship because I truly believe that going to college can change one’s life. It’s not just about future earnings or rooting for a football team, but sense making, equipping students with the tools to reinvent themselves and lead meaningful lives. The same skills we impart on students to apply in their research papers are the same ones we need them to apply later in life when they need to decide how to vote. College is all about expanding one’s world, learning in global context, learning to live with ambiguity, and asking new questions. Cathy Davidson is absolutely right, “If we can recast the liberal arts curriculum to train resilient global citizens, we will be offering the most valuable education imaginable.”
Step 1, take the iPad out of the box (Primer)
Posted: October 7, 2012 Filed under: digital-literacy, higher-education, technology | Tags: edtech, faculty, ipads, peer learning, students, tablets, teaching, technology, users Leave a comment »Technology is ubiquitous!
Tablets are so easy to use!
No one needs any advice about how to use digital tools and devices – ever!
Working in higher education debunked such myths. Recently, iPads have joined laptops as standard college-issued productivity gear all throughout higher education. Through my own experiences and hearing from other colleagues and friends, handing iPads to employees can lead to a few scenarios (good and bad) that I put into three rough categories:
1. Early/eager adopters: Employees tear iPads out of boxes, download a suite of productivity apps, and begin using device as if it is a part of them. These folks experiment with new ways of using the devices at work. Other employees are envious of their newfound productivity. Others roll their eyes. These users can be spirited instructors for less advanced users, but sometimes they might be reluctant to share their knowledge.
2. Competent adopters: Employees take iPads out of the box, use some pre-installed apps, download others, fumble, and use the device in moderation.
3. Reluctant/Anxious adopters: iPads remain in box until further instruction or encouragement. If these employees don’t receive instruction or encouragement, they may not use the device at all.
Bearing in mind that these are rough descriptions of groups of users, it’s worth noting there are many more users who fall into the latter two categories than you might expect. So, how do we help them?
- Peer learning. Sometimes, groups of peers get together to talk about new and neat apps.
- Organizations and departments can identify power users who can rove among coworkers, dispensing advice about how to use the new devices. Having acted as a power user in a limited role in a previous position, it can be a neat way of getting to know other coworkers in a more relaxed setting.
- Giving informal, orientation slides or infographics to all users who get an iPad or other tablet so everyone can be on the same page, setting expectations for how employees should use devices. Better yet, add on some good tech resources for employees can learn about new apps and features on their own. How else would people know about new iOS upgrades or new features to apps like Mail?
Finally, 3 things every new iPad user should know:
- There’s a mute button! Minds have been blown before my eyes when learning that one can make the clicking and clacking noises stop. Colleagues in meetings and who otherwise work in close corners will be happy for the silence.
- Calendars can sync to multiple calendars like Google and Exchange.
- You can read *and* watch videos on iPad
Summing up, it’s easy to make generalizations about different people’s proficiencies with technology. It’s convenient to apply a ‘one size fits all’ strategy for introducing workers to a new device or suite of technology, but we must try to find new ways of reaching all of our users and encourage our teams to collaborate on how to find enriching, productive, and meaningful ways to use technology in our work.
Right now.
Posted: October 18, 2011 Filed under: digital-literacy, higher-education, scholarly-communication | Tags: future of reading, teaching Leave a comment »
“In this I join two friends and colleagues who’ve made related calls. Siva Vaidhyanathan has coined the phrase “Critical Information Studies” to describe an emerging “transfield” concerned with (among other things) “the rights and abilities of users (or consumers or citizens) to alter the means and techniques through which cultural texts and information are rendered, displayed, and distributed.” Similarly, Eszter Hargittai has pointed to the inadequacy of the notion of the “digital divide” and has suggested that people instead talk about the uneven distribution of competencies in digital environments.”
via The Late Age of Print: http://www.thelateageofprint.org/
Moonlighting
Posted: October 14, 2011 Filed under: digital-literacy, hampshire-college, librarianship, outreach | Tags: Hampshire Leave a comment »That’s my guest post on Hampshire College’s Technology for Teaching and Learning Blog
Posted: October 7, 2011 Filed under: digital-literacy, hampshire-college | Tags: hampshire college Leave a comment »I’m on your blog, moonlighting away.
The spectrum of scholarly resources
Posted: October 5, 2011 Filed under: digital-literacy, hampshire-college, higher-education, librarianship, teaching | Tags: research education, teaching Leave a comment »As someone who dislikes unhelpful binaries like librarian versus archivist and scholarly versus not scholarly, I enthusiastically teach an exercise introduced to me by a Yale colleague that introduces students to the spectrum of scholarly resources. In this interactive device, I give students excerpts from a range of sources-social media, trade journals, popular media, and peer reviewed journals and then ask them to match the blind excerpts to the source type.
I explain to students that in the world of research, there are many types of sources beyond peer reviewed journals and not peer reviewed journals. I talk about how effective researchers reach for all of it and that there is more to evaluation than just making the peer reviewed and not peer reviewed distinction. It works well and always generates good class discussion.
This semester, I added a new category; the content farm. I wanted to make the distinction between news found on Yahoo.com or AOL and news found in the New York Times. I’ve also made an effort to talk about how Twitter is a useful source to engage with current events, provided students use the same skill set to evaluate tweets they do types of sources. It’s a work in progress, but with positive results.
Content Farms are not your Friends.
Posted: June 19, 2011 Filed under: digital-literacy Leave a comment »AOL Hell: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out
