Planning, learning and growing

Greetings BRAIN_blog readers.

Even though its almost the end of January, I seem to still be in New Year mode. You know, thinking about new things, planning and making those dread resolutions! Foremost on my mind? Professional Development, both receiving and giving. I’m planning, trying to wrap up a research project with a colleague. We’re gearing up to present our findings to folks and get an article ready. I’m looking at the conference calendar and trying to decide what would be best for my learning goals this year. Do you make goals like this? Maybe your learning path is already well established and you’re moving along it just fine. Did you know that our employer will put $600.00 annually towards all full-time employees’ professional development? Whether your learning path is underway or this is the year you start – talk to your supervisor, talk to HR, make this a great learning year for you.

Your Mohawk librarians are gearing up for one of their favourite annual PD experiences. Next week, we’re off to the Ontario Library Association conference. It is held annually at this time of year in Toronto. We always come away from it brimming with enthusiasm for our profession and with lots of good ideas. The seed for this very blog was planted at the OLA conference a few years ago! It is so good to see what others are doing in their libraries and to be able to blow our own horns a bit. Presentations at OLA will be done this year by 4 Mohawk librarians! Don’t worry about being abandoned though – our excellent Information Services staff will be here, on the front lines, giving the same fabulous service that they always give.

I am also excited that the annual Ontario community college conference called This is I.T. is being hosted here at Mohawk this spring. Our colleagues over at the Centre for Teaching and Learning are organizing this one for us. Check out their blog for more information. They sent out a call for session proposals not too long ago, there’s still time to submit something. I hope to see lots of Mohawk folks telling others about the exciting things they’re doing in their classrooms with technology. Be sure to mark this one on your calendar. I attended in Durham last year, its a great learning experience.

Maybe your professional development this year will involve writing and publishing? Maybe self-publishing is an option. A reliable self publisher allows you as the author to publish your writing as you would like to see it published. It gives you lots of editing and creative control over the final product. If this appeals to you then maybe Lulu is for you. The ever reliable Resource Shelf pointed me to an Educause article about a web-based, self-publishing service called Lulu, it’s called 7 Things you Should Know About Lulu. Check it out.

Lastly, I promised you some more information about our Library@Mohawk Book Review. Ladies and gentlemen, start your reading and writing engines. We’d like you to read a book from the Mohawk fiction collection and send us a review, around 250 words long. If you really prefer to read non-fiction, we’ll take reviews about it as well. I’ll keep you posted about dates but at some time towards the end of the semester, a judging panel (made up of instructors and librarians) will decide on the best reviews submitted. We at the BRAIN will publish them on the BRAIN website. We hope to make this an annual affair so please join us and get the first one off to a roaring success. Keep an eye on Mocomotion for more information about final deadlines and maybe some incentives or prizes along the way. Happy reading. We’ll post more information about where to send your reviews on the BRAIN, stay tuned.

Technology Trends for 2008

Happy January Everyone!

This time of year a lot of the blogs I follow are doing top technologies for 2008 lists so I feel compelled to join in.  I don’t think I’m going out on too much of a limb with anything I have to say.  We’ll have to remember to check back in December to see if I was right or not.

1.  Social software sights like Facebook and MySpace will continue to be popular with folks.  There are those predicting their decline, MySpace in particular has not had the huge growth that Facebook has had in the past year.  I simply feel that people have become accustomed to using these sites and the habit won’t be broken easily.  In Libraryland, we’re still wrestling with how much of a presence we should have on these sites, I think more libraries will figure that out this year.  My own feeling is that a little bit of promotion is not a bad thing but that we really shouldn’t be too actively seeking friends, poking people or writing on their walls.  I’m wondering what, if anything, instructors are doing with these sites.  I know some who have accounts and interact with their students on Facebook.  Post something here and let us know what you do.

2.  Open Source Software will become more well known and used by more people.  Open source software, that is software developed by communities of programmers and usually free, is becoming more common place.  Libraryland in particular is seeing movement towards open source software for library resource management.  The Library@Mohawk will have news on our own open source venture soon!   Open Office is an example of open source software that you might want to try – it’s a free software suite very similar to MS Office.    There is even an open source Course Management System called Moodle that many people are using.

3.  E-books will become more popular.   I think lots of people have predicted this every year for what seems like many years but this may be the year that we’re finally right.  You will remember that I wasn’t so thrilled with the Kindle e-book reader but I do think it will help e-books take a leap forward this year.  I’m looking for an e-book version of a textbook for an instructor and I think the book store get some e-book requests this year too.  The publishers still need  to get more comfortable with licensing and access issues, but, I repeat, I think this will be a break out year.

4.  Software as a Service will really make its mark.  SaaS is software that you access via your web browser.  You don’t have to download it to your hard drive.  The software is hosted on a server with a vendor and you access it there.  The big plus – your stuff is available wherever you are.  No remembering to save files to your usb drive or email things to yourself (my favourite file saving method).  For busy I.T. folks, it means no servers to purchase and maintain. I’ve been using Google Docs, which, in many ways falls into the SaaS category, to work on a  project with a colleague.  It’s great, we can each edit and add things to what more or less looks like a Word document and everything is all in one place.  If you have a Gmail account, check out Google Docs, it is really neat.  Wikis and blogs are a good example of this kind of web-based software, like Google Docs, they’re great for collaboration and highly mobile folks.  It is the savings on servers and maintenance for big commercial software purchases that will really push people towards this option.  As an example, there is library software that can cost almost $200,000 including servers or you can allow the vendor to web host it for you and spend under $80,000 – it makes a big difference.

5.  Computers are going to continue to get smaller and more mobile and the touch screen will become more popular.  You heard me singing the praises of the Apple iPod Touch in December.  It’s popularity and the popularity of the iPhone, which has similar touch screen technology, will spark some imitation I think.  Our phones really are turning into mobile computers and, increasingly,  making our library’s online resources compatible with these mobile devices is going to be important.  I’m proud to say that the BRAIN website has been mobile compatible for quite a while now.  Do you find that your students are accessing resources on hand held devices and not just phoning, taking pictures and texting each other?

Some Library@Mohawk news:  We’re going to be sponsoring a book review contest and e-publishing book reviews written by students.  Watch theBRAIN for more information in the coming weeks.

Lastly, I’d like to send out kudos to our food services folks, Chartwells.  They’re now offering fair trade, organic coffee at the Moco Cafe in i-wing.  Yay!  And kudos to all of you out there drinking it, I went down for coffee at 9:00am this morning & the fair trade container was already empty and just being refilled!  Now if everyone could just remember to bring in their own mugs and stop throwing all those Tim’s paper cups in the garbage, we’d really be going in the right direction!

Happy New Year!

Here at theBRAIN_blog, we’re looking forward to 2008. We hope you are too. This week, just a quick check in and hello to all.

During the writing of this post, it’s chilly and sunny outside, just the kind of weather to get us moving and trying to stay warm. Maybe that means moving some brain cells and learning something new.  Is there something new you’d like to try this year? Why not make a positive resolution to learn something new instead of the usual fitness, diet and budgeting stuff?

Can I make a suggestion? Why not make 2008 the year you learn about a new technology? Try a blog, or how about set up a Flickr account to share all the holiday photos you took with your new digital camera? I’m learning more about my MacBook – learning Keynote, Apple’s presentation software.  It’s the software Al Gore used to create his presentation in an Inconvenient Truth – now that’s a great slide show!  This will be the year that the library switches to new software, I have lots of learning to do about it too. You’ll hear more about that as the year progresses.

We’ll be back next week with predictions for 2008 technology trends.