Taming Technolust and my 5 TED talks for librarians
Posted: 09 Jun 2011 Filed under: Technolust, TED | Tags: Technolust, TED 3 Comments »I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to spend Thursday in Ithaca, NY attending Michael Stephens‘ Taming Technolust Workshop. Michael and I have communicated via social networks for the last few months and it was great to finally meet him in person and to take part in his workshop. Additionally, due to the interactive nature of Michael’s workshops, I was able to meet several librarians and hear their perspective on everything from Ebooks to QR Codes to social media to mobile devices – and everything else in between. It is surprising just how much was covered in 6 short hours.
During the workshop Michael briefly touched on the fact that librarians should be ready and willing to learn from sources outside LIS and then apply it to the profession. This is something that is of particular interest to me. In fact, I even wrote a guest post on Hack Library School about non-LIS blogs that LIS students should follow.
This leads me to TED. Throughout the course of the day topics would come up that kept reminding me of some TED talks that I have seen. I have been an avid TED viewer for years and watch one while I eat lunch almost every day. Following Andy Woodworth’s lead, I’ve compiled 5 TED talks that I think every librarian should watch. All five of these relate back to something that was discussed (briefly or in-depth) during the Taming Technolust workshop.
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Early in the day the term “Learning Analytics” was used. In this TED talk Salman Khan discusses the Khan Academy, which gives us a good idea of the direction that learning is headed and how educators can track their students progress and offer them focused help.
During the short augmented reality discussion the topic of museums came up. What are they going to look like in the future? Will everyone just be walking around looking at their gadget? Well, what if we don’t even have to go to the museum at all? Amit Sood explains how he created a very detailed digital museum. This talk has a lot of implications for digital libraries as well.
An entire group dedicated 30 minutes of their time to thinking about gaming in libraries. In this talk, Jane McGonigal discusses how gaming is shaping young minds and the learning potential she sees in them.
The workshop was called Taming Technolust; so, obviously, there was a lot of talk about new gadgets. Though there seemed to be a lot of “techno-uncertainty” with both librarians and patrons, I ask how someone could watch Mike Matas give this demonstration of what a book could look like on the iPad and not be excited. I also wrote a bit about what this can mean for education HERE.
As libraries move towards more “social” spaces focused on access to the Internet and electricity, the future of the web is something in which librarians are going to be heavily invested. Kevin Kelley explores what the next 5000 days of the web might look like in this talk.
BONUS TALK:
Kostas Grammatis: Internet as a Human Right
Class in a Pad
Posted: 28 Apr 2011 Filed under: Education, Library School | Tags: Education, Library S, TED 2 Comments »In today’s TED Talk Mike Matas describes the first full-length interactive book that has been designed for the iPad. Users can scroll through the contents or the pages of the book, fold out pictures and videos or engage with some of the interactive features e.g. location mapping or application of the books materials. It is a pretty impressive demonstration.
At the end of the talk Matas mentions that they hope to make this available to publishers who can then produce beautiful and complex digital books. I wonder why they don’t also make it available to educators. I think this could be a powerful tool for “online” classes. The professor can create the entire class on this format (rather than on Blackboard). Instead of chapters they create sections for different parts of the course. Then they embed outside readings, their own notes, videos and pictures. Since the iPad can connect to the Internet all the students can collaborate together within the “book.” With the addition of some sort of discussion board, blogging tool or wiki feature students (or anyone with access to the book) could comment and connect to all the different parts of the course, add their own thoughts and explore a new medium for education. I’m sure there are many other possibilities that I am missing too.
I would love to see something like this experimented with within LIS education. There are so many “meta” elements about this that overlap with a lot of the things the LIS profession is confronted with. Not to mention that just experimenting with learning in this new way would be an education in and of itself. Sure, there are plenty of barriers to attempting this and we could find out that and interactive digital book actually is not a good way to organize an online classroom – but we will never know until we try. I’ll be first in line to volunteer for a class attempted this way.
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Previous blog post about education: LINK
Internet as a Human Right
Posted: 16 Feb 2011 Filed under: Internet | Tags: Internet, TED Leave a comment »As we are seeing the role that the Internet and social media are playing in Middle Eastern countries right now, I think that it is time we get serious about the notion of the Internet as a Human Right. This does not just mean for countries around the world, but it means making a serious effort to bridge the digital divide here in the US as well.
Kostas Grammatis discusses his ideas about this and what we can do to get involved at the recent TEDxAthens event.
