by A close-to-home call to remove Philip Pullman’s book The Golden Compass. It’s always saddening to see such calls. especially after only 1 complaint.
Update – Looks like others in the area are following suite.
Library and Archives Canada
Go LAC! They’re doing some neat things lately. There is a new show on CBC called Who Do You Think You Are? – they take Canadian celebs and trace their genealogy – and it’s presented in part by LAC! They also have recently launched a Goverment of Canada web archive. They’ve also been looking into Second Life. I’m sure they’re doing other neat and nifty stuff. It’s great to see our National Library doing some amazing things.
Webinar Wonders
Well, I just finished my first webinar. It was a very interesting experience. I’ve attended a number of webinars but never presented one before. I’m quite comfortable with presenting in front of a group. I like being able to read the audience and adjusting as necessary. Webinars remove this important aspect from the presenter. I talked into a phone for 45 minutes, hoping that all was technically right and that everyone could here me and the ppt was moving well. I opted to leave questions until the end which meant lines were muted while I talked. It’s very difficult to tell if you’re connecting with your audience.
The experience reinforced one of the advantages of Second Life. The webinar made it difficult to connect properly with the participants. I find I have the same problem with distance education – chatting and email are fine but very impersonal in a way. Second Life allows me to connect a person with a physical representation through their avatar. It makes a profound psychological difference for me as it creates a different connection than chat alone can not allow – I can picture someone/something when I think of the person. If Second Life was robust enough, the webinar could have been much more personal and interactive. I can only hope that Linden Labs will reach the point where webinars can be held their effectively (I know that there are some offered now, but there is room for improvement).
All in all, the webinar was interesting experience and one I hope to do again. Thanks to all who joined me today!
It’s Here!
Well, it’s here finally! We have an island! It came a couple of days ago. I didn’t post about it because we don’t have anything there yet, in fact, we still don’t. Access is limited at the moment, until we have things up and running. I’ll send out full information (including island name) once we have it terraformed and at least 1 building there, so stay tuned!
Helicopter Help?
I’m the liaison for First Year Experience and am familiar with the term helicopter parents. These are parents who hover around their children, contacting the university to keep tabs on their children. We’ve all heard of the extreme cases (ie. asking to go on job interviews with their children). A recent study however, suggests that those students with close ties to their parents are more satisfied with their university experience. On the flip side, these students often have lower grades. An interesting point – are the parents involved because the students need extra help or is the relationship hurting the students but not allowing for full growth?
I’ve grappled with what role we should have with parents. I’m not convinced that over involvement at the university level is a good thing but it is a fact that students still approach parents and friends as first line help. I’d considered holding a parent’s orientation, and this year our marketing, communications and outreach librarian held our first parent’s night and it was a success. Parents appreciated knowing where to send their children for help. I think that’s a role we can be happy with. Parents want to see their children succeed and often don’t know how to help – by having a night to highlight the support available to their children, we’ve played an important role but not one that has to perpetuate the helicopter syndrome.
Gamers Gallore
By now, we’ve all heard that gamers are not just kids. Here’s another study by The Entertainment Software Association of Canada that suggests that almost half of our adults are gamers and the average age of gamers is 39. Most are computer game players rather than console gamers (XBox, etc).
Universal Avatars
I’m catching up on blog reading and finding all the neat stuff I missed. In case you missed this, here’s another one that Stephen’s Lighthouse pointed to – this time on the work IBM is doing to create a universal avatar. This avatar would ideally be able to work in any virtual world (and possibly game). Another thing that struck me was that over $1 billion has been invested in virtual worlds in the last year.
Innovation and Change
Innovation and change – this has been a central idea at our libraries for over a year now. We’ve seen a lot of both and I think we’ve moved in a lot of good directions. Stephen’s Lighthouse pointed to a neat post on innovation and change which lists 33 things to consider. The one that stuck me the most was to change buy-in to join-in. I think this makes a lot of sense. To me, buy-in suggests varying levels of commitment. You can buy-in to an idea that you don’t completely believe in. Join-in suggests a higher level of commitment. By joining in, you are actually taking part in the change or innovation. It suggests an exchange of ideas, participation, and active community. I think innovation and change might be less scary to some if they just joined in.