Jason Puckett.net

This is the audio and slides from Rachel Borchardt’s and my presentation at the GALILEO/GOLD Users Group Conference, August 1st 2008.  (PS: I finally remembered to post the handout.)

 

 Creating an Instructional Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The following Creative Commons license applies to both the audio and the slideshow file:

Creating an Instructional Podcast by Rachel Borchardt and Jason Puckett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

My library is offering an XML workshop for staff, even those of us who don’t work in archives or cataloging.  This is a very cool idea (um, if you’re a library nerd), and I love that departments are offering basic training in their skills to those outside the area where it seems directly applicable.  These things can surprise you; I was a serials cataloger for a few weeks before I started working in reference and instruction, and I found that knowing a little bit about cataloging helped me come up with some non-stupid OPAC tricks later on.

Anyway.  For this XML class we’re working with actual digitized archival documents that need metadata.  I’m finding that this is a real motivator for me to do a good job and actually learn what I’m doing, even during a very busy week when otherwise
I wouldn’t feel very engaged with the material.  I’ve discovered the same thing in a web design class I’m taking in library school.  We’re designing websites for real-world clients, and I recruited our client — a good friend of mine who at this writing really needs a better website.  (Hopefully if you read this a few weeks from now there will be a lovely home page at that link.)  The fact that we’re learning, and creating, something that has a real-life application makes all the difference in the world; I care a lot more about the work I’m doing.

Why on earth should I be surprised to realize this?   I talk constantly about making my library teaching directly relevant to what students really need for their classes if I want to actually reach them with the material.  It makes me hope that I’ve unconsciously realized some more good teaching principles from the student side of the equation.

I just posted my teaching outline for my new Zotero workshop.  Consider it CC-licensed, and please let me know if you find it useful.  I’d be particularly glad to get feedback from Zotero users or instructors.

By chance, yesterday’s maiden voyage for this class ended up being a small group of my library colleagues, which was a great beta test.  They grilled me pretty thoroughly, and thought of many questions I hadn’t considered!  It was a very useful way to try out a new class, and if possible I’m going to try to  arrange a similar test run for future workshops.  I’m thinking if I just sent an e-mail to my team (30 or so librarians) saying I’m offering it as a training session, I’d get a good turnout.

That’s one more thing crossed off the spring semester to-do list, which feels really really good.

I’ve posted my RSS workshop materials. If you find them useful, please let me know!

I’ve been thinking a bit about my use and abuse of Powerpoint in the classroom. I don’t use it much, but I taught a new workshop on RSS this week and found it useful to organize my thoughts with new material. I ran across this blog post on iLibrarian: 4 ways to spice up your presentations. If you use Powerpoint at all, at least watch Meet Henry and Death by PowerPoint for some great ideas and examples of PPt done right and wrong.

(Wow, Henry gives me a Clark from Smallville vibe.)

This afternoon I gave a presentation on library services to a group of student residence advisers.  I wasn’t quite sure what to show them — my directive was “a sampling of library services that they might find useful.”  So I made a slide show called “Ten things you (or your residents) might not know about library services.”  I went really broad, and showed them everything from placing storage requests, to interlibrary loan, to borrowing agreements with other local schools, to EndNote.  Since these were sophomores to seniors, I didn’t do any of the real basic stuff I might show to first-years, but tried to pick out tips and techniques that students often seem not to know about.

I was anxious about it, because I have a lot of back-to-school work going on this month (we all do!), and I didn’t feel I’d done as much preparation as I’d like.  Then again, I never do, and I rarely bomb completely.

Everything went great.  They were mostly a very outgoing bunch, asked intelligent questions, and kept the session going with some good back-and-forth discussion.  They loved EndNote and I got some “whoa”s as I created a bibliography out of thin air.  I put in a plug for them to request library programming in their residence halls, took them on a visit to our archives and technology centers, and I dare to think they even enjoyed themselves.  A very encouraging way to start the semester’s instruction work.

I’m very proud of my colleagues on our instruction team.  We had been teaching about the same batch of workshops for several years now, and we typically get very lackluster turnouts for most of them (except EndNote — I’ve occasionally had to turn people away from full EndNote workshops in the fall because there weren’t enough seats).  We put out a call for some new and revised workshops this semester, with a particular eye to some new technology-related content.  I’m really pleased with some of the new stuff we’re offering.

I’m going to teach one about using RSS in research; it’ll be an intro to what RSS is and how to subscribe to a feed, and I’ll lead into some databases that offer RSS feeds.  Our brand-new GIS librarian is offering at least three different ones (!) on digital mapping tools.  Another colleague is doing one on collaboration using del.icio.us, Google Docs and wikis.  Someone else is planning a Zotero workshop for next semester.

I really feel like this will revitalize our workshop program.  I’m just hoping we get some good turnout for these.  I had to restrain myself from offering to teach every new workshop idea I thought of.  I’m also going to be offering a new EndNote Web workshop this semester, and I was afraid of making a commitment to create too much new material and running out of time.  (I’ve got a heavy instruction load the first few weeks of the semester already.)

Yesterday a few of my colleagues gave a presentation on teaching portfolios, which is something I’d never thought of putting together.  I was thinking of putting a small one online at some point.  Anyone done this?  Any tips?