I mentioned this back in February: I’m co-teaching “They’re Googling You: Online Identity for LIS Professionals,” an online continuing education class for librarians and other LIS professionals. It’s a four-week class running through the month of May.

More info on the Simmons site, and you can register here. My co-instructor is the awesome Beth Gallaway. I hope you can join us.

Catherine Pellegrino has a great post over at Spurious Tuples called “Why I’m a teaching wimp” about teaching fatigue that pretty well sums up how I feel this semester:

“What do you mean, only three preps per week?” you’re probably howling. “I do three preps per day some terms.  What a total wimp!”

Yep, I admit it.  But here’s the thing:  every class I teach is the first day of class.

I did ten classes in January and eight in February, so I’m right there with you, Catherine. Spring break is coming wooo!

Link: “Why I’m a teaching wimp“

For a couple of years now my friend Beth Gallaway has been asking me to submit a proposal with her for a Simmons College LIS continuing education class. We finally did it this year, and I’m pleased to say we’re co-teaching an online workshop together this spring:

They’re Googling You: Online Identity for LIS Professionals

May 1 – 31, 2010

Should you separate your professional online identity from the personal, and if so, how? Self-promotion and branding is becoming increasingly important as library professionals face dwindling traditional employment opportunities, due to layoffs, downsizing, budget cuts, and library closings. On a more positive note, library staff wishing to contribute back to the profession may want to hone a professional identity that makes one marketable for teaching and training purposes, conference speaking or consulting. Developing a professional online identity for either purpose may be a challenging and rewarding endeavor.

More info on the Simmons site, and you can register here. If you’ve never set up a blog or personal website, you’ll learn how — if you have, we’ll talk about how to use it and how to augment it. Topics will include privacy, professional development, personal branding, and technology how-to.

One of my favorite authors, Cory Doctorow, just put up some Youtube videos discussing students and media literacy. I’m embedding this one since it’s the most directly relevant to library instruction, but it’s worth listening to the whole series (on his blog). I really love his ideas for assignments using Wikipedia.

This short article by Rob Weir on Inside Higher Ed, “Boring Within or Simply Boring?” is one of the best teaching how-to pieces I’ve read recently. I’m tempted to print out and post Weir’s formula to look at next time I’m planning a class:

Mix with enthusiasm and repeat the following:

• Stated Objective(s)
• A Plan
• Hook
• Body
• Repetition
• Summary
• Restated Objective(s)

Props to Boing Boing for the link.

So without my planning on it, this has been a podcast-intensive week.

At work, I posted the first episode of the GSU Library Insider podcast for students, about EndNote and Zotero (since it’s the end of the school year and students are furiously writing papers).  (Episodes, RSS Feed)

On my own time, I’m pleased to debut the Adventures in Library Instruction podcast, co-produced with my friends Anna Van Scoyoc of New Jersey PL and Rachel Borchardt of American U.  This will be a monthly thing, and we’re hoping to get other people involved in future episodes.  (Episodes, RSS Feed)

Update: I was also on T is for Training! I promise to stop podcasting now.

I try not to just link to other posts very often, but I’ve been in catch-up mode since returning from Computers in Libraries late last week and haven’t had time to blog about it.  However, among the many other cool things I did and saw at CiL was meeting Catherine Pellegrino, who this morning posted on her blog about What Instruction Librarians Could Teach The Rest Of Us About Conference Presentations.

This is one of those head-slap moments.  I’m supposed to know how to be a good teacher; why don’t I use any of those active learning techniques in my presentations?  I have no idea.  I’m going to think about this before the next time I give a presentation.

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.)

Download PowerPoint Version

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.