Ponderings about On-line Learning

In a past life, over 30 years ago, I spent a few years working for a now-defunct computer learning school.  You know the kind I mean – you see their ads on the channels that show re-runs of Bonanza and Gunsmoke.  I was in charge of filing VA forms for the veterans who were taking classes there but still had much interaction with the instructors who taught programming languages.  We had many heated discussions regarding the possibility of using the computer for teaching classes online.  While I’m now ashamed to admit it, I was the person who argued against this ever happening.  I said that a machine could never replace a live person in a classroom setting.  Those programming instructors would certainly be laughing at me now!

Last week I taught two sessions of my Intro to RSS class to a group of librarians from two different states using Centra software and VOIP technology.  My first few years of using this technology were hard since I didn’t teach frequently enough to become comfortable with its features.  I think I’m finally at ease switching between text chat and live talk while running my web presentation.  My students are unfailingly patient when a new window doesn’t show up on their own computer monitors.  I always have lots of interaction during the course of the two hours.  I’ve asked myself if this would be better done in person – and I’m not sure of the answer.  Certainly, seeing people face to face leads to a natural exchange of ideas and comments, but we had a pretty lively conversation online last week.  The over-riding feature in teaching online is that a librarian from the U.P. in Michigan and two librarians from western Indiana could join with other librarians from the metro Detroit area in discussing the advantages of using RSS without leaving their desks.  That alone makes a huge difference to me in judging the merits of on-line vs. in person classes.

With the threat of widespread H1N1 flu in the upcoming months, colleges are requesting their professors to plan ahead and put their lectures online so that students may view them from home or dorms.  I wonder how many of these teachers have the skills and/or desire to do this.  The image I’ll always carry with me from the various universities I’ve attended is that of  an older professor either pointing to something on the board, reading out of a book, or sitting on a lecture desk earnestly discussing a topic.  Other than actually watching my teachers waving their arms in the air to get across their point of view, most of these other activities will easily lend themselves to the on-line technology.  My mother and my brother were both college professors.  If they were still alive, I wonder what they would think of this shift in the method of educating their students.  Personally, I love it!!

Adding Twitter into my Blogging Class

It’s time again for me to update my web page for the Blogging for Librarians Class that I teach for Michigan Library Consortium.  I felt it was time to add a small segment on Twitter since it’s defined as a “micro-blogging” service.   In doing research for this update, I was amazed at the number of libraries already having a presence on Twitter.   The Library of Congress is using it as well as Penn State and Yale.  I feel humbled that Plymouth District Library has joined such noble ranks.

Followup on my New Class

I had a full house for my first Sharing Photos Online class last Thursday evening.  Not even the snow nor the cold kept folks away.  No one brought any personal photos in digital format, so I spent the entire class doing a “show and tell” with my own pictures.  I was glad that I thought to bring a card reader, several different cameras with different memory sticks, and a flash drive for demonstration purposes.  My students seemed as interested in this aspect of the session as in the various web sites I showed them.  I was able to upload photos on all four photo-sharing sites in a respectable amount of time.  The class was also interested in my use of Photoshop Elements to resize and crop my photos. 

If I had to critique myself, I’d be pretty happy with the results.  Of course I’ll change the class a bit the next time I do it in March, but folks left after 90 minutes telling me how much they enjoyed the class and how much they learned.  I may provide a few more handouts, but that’s about it for now.  I had about as much fun as my students did, and that makes for a successful program.

Putting my new class together

I’ve always loved photography, perhaps because my grandfather was a photographer and my parents always had a camera close at hand while we were children.  When I was a museum curator in North Carolina, the first exhibit I created was one on the history of photography.  So, with that in mind, when digital photos became popular, I jumped in with both feet!  I’ve spend hours on Flickr uploading both videos and pictures.  I’ve created beautiful scrapbooks on Kodak, and printed photos from Shutterbug.  Now I’m hoping to share my knowledge with our Library patrons in a new class called Sharing Photos Online.  I plan to discuss the sites I’ve already mentioned as well as Photobucket.  Since I only have 90 minutes, I can’t predict how much “hands on” we’ll actually get to, but I hope folks will leave the Library having had some fun and taking home a bit of expertise.