ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Aaron Schmidt spoke to the Internet @ Schools crowd this morning on Gaming and Learning. To entice them, he emphasized the social nature of gaming, the fact that players are reading a great deal, and often doing the equivalent of research while gaming online and cooperatively.
A sampling of Aaron’s remarks:
Games reinforce:
- Risk taking and experimentation
- Collaboration
- Prioritizing
- Continuous partial attention/multi tasking
- Persistence
- Decision making skills
… all are skills we teach in schools (and "21st Century learning behaviors")
Games that are directly about learning? Among others, Aaron mentioned Big Brain Academy – who has the biggest brain! Cooking Mama—gets you measuring, timing … For the Nintendo DS dual screen, one game, Hotel Dusk, involves a lot of reading and moving around … uses the dual screen Nintendo DS as an "e-book reader."
Host a gaming event—to create good feelings about your school library. OK, if it’s too much for your library space, Aaron said, he’s known some school librarians to set up gaming events in cafeteria after school.
Interestingly (to me, at least), there was no sign of skepticism in the room. This group of school library media specialists buys in to the idea that it’s necessary to "understand the culture" of their learners and reach out to them; they appear willing to go to considerable effort (and expense?) to get kids into library, create good library vibes. There’s got to be more to it, though, and I’d say we/they all need to ponder "what’s the next step?" after that.
Got a comment about the usefulness of gaming in your particular library environment? School librarians … public librarians … legal librarians (well, maybe not the latter.)
–Dave Hoffman
Internet @ Schools co-moderator
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ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Kathy is right–you couldn’t capture everything Lee Rainie said in his keynote. But I managed to get several of his lists recorded, which were really interesting.
Here are 8 hallmarks of the new digital ecosystem:
- Gadgets are a part of everyday life.
- Broadband communication has become a standard part of the Internet.
- New gadgets allow people to enjoy media, gather information and carry on communication anywhere. Wirelessness is its own initiative.
- Ordinary citizens have a chance to be publishers, movie makers, artists, song creators, and story tellers.
- All those content creators have an audience.
- Many are sharing what they know and feel online, and that is building communities.
- Online Americans customizing their online experiences thanks to Web 2.0 tools.
- Different people use these technologies in different ways.
Here is what connectivity is doing to us.
- Volume of information grows; the Long Tail expands.
- Velocity of information increases; "smart mobs" appear.
- Venues of information intersecting with people multiply.
- Venturing (searching) for information changes.
- Vigilance of information changes attentivity behavior.
- Valence (relevance) of information improves.
- Vetting of information becomes more “social".
- Viewing of information is disaggregated and more horizontal.
- Voting on and ventilating about information proliferates.
- inVention of information and visibility of new creators is enabled.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL2007 Blog Coordinator
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ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
I just had the pleasure of listening to another session this afternoon that also related a lot to library promotion.
Dean Frey of Red Deer PL in Alberta, Canada, told listeners about how he used Web 2.0 tools to reach out targeted communities such as people with developmental disabilities, seniors, teens, aboriginals, low-income people, etc. Since RDPL’s mandate is to reach every person in the community, the staff found ways to engage and excite everyone. They started arts programs, an election forum w/ candidate info, blogs, and more. There’s a great article in here somewhere for Marketing Library Services (and I already talked to Dean about writing it!). Stay tuned for that.
You can learn a lot about these programs at www.rdpl.org, but for now I’ll center on one point I found especially important. He told listeners how vaulable it was to hire a community development (ie, outreach) librarian, and how it led to so much PR and exposure. In fact, near the end of his talk Dean said "I will no longer hire anyone but community development librarians," adding that even tech people and paraprofessionals will have to have those skills. That’s how much targeted outreach has meant to his library.
Again, you can have lots of cool tech and fun programs, but if people don’t know about them, they won’t matter. So get onboard with outreach! Do 2.0 if you can, do 1.0 if you need to. The bottom line, though, is promotion.
~Kathy Dempsey
CIL & MLS Editor
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ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Some of you know me as Editor in Chief of Computers in Libraries magazine, but I’m also the editor of the Marketing Library Services newsletter. http://www.infotoday.com/mls/default.shtml. Promoting libraries is my real passion, and unless people know about your services, then none of your great tech stuff matters.
So I was happy to start my day of regular sessions with one called Online Marketing for Libraries: Outreach & PR in a 2.0 World. Sarah Houghton-Jan and Aaron Schmidt recommended lots of strategies and tools that you can use to reach out to people so they realize the value of libraries. Many of their tips were simple and either free or low-cost. Some examples:
- search engine optimization - make sure lots of search engines, big & small, can find your site.
- list your blogs in blog search engines.
- write wikipedia and wikimapia entries about your local area.
- check social review web sites to see what people are saying about your library.
- have a presence on social networking sites.
- if you offer free wi-fi, list your org in wi-fi directories.
- use tools such as twitter, IM, and SMS to show your tech-savvy.
All of these actions are essential for comprehensive library promotion. Check the speakers’ web sites and blogs soon to see the full list of tools along with the URLs to get you going on everything. Don’t ignore this valuable information!
~Kathy Dempsey
CIL & MLS Editor
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ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
During today’s lunch break, we provided a (limited) number of power strips in selected areas of all conference session rooms, to accommodate attendees using laptops. We appreciate your suggestions, and we endeavor to do everything we can to make your experience here at Internet Librarian 2007 as pleasant and productive as possible.
The Conference Organizers
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ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Popular speaker Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet & American Life Project energized the record-sized crowd with more fascinating facts from Pew’s ongoing studies.
Since this conferene is all about 2.0, he began by showing the crowd some blog comments about him and his previous talks. Some were pretty funny! Seeing what Internet users think is a cornerstone of his work, and he went on to reveal a lot of categorizations of people and statistics about them in today’s online world. Rainie admitted to being a fast-talking New Yorker, and assured the crowd that he’d have his talk and slides posted on our Web site so people could study them later. Good thing! I couldn’t have written it all down (or even typed it all out) in less than half a day.
When you find his talk later at www.infotoday.com/il2007, you’ll see his 8 Hallmarks of New Digital Media Systems and his 10 Major Tech User Groups. These categorizations of different levels of tech users (from "omnivores" to non-believers) reminded me of the Beloit Mindset lists that come out every year to give us an overview of what people in the next graduating class know and relate to. Definitely worth checking out!
The favorite quote that I took away from all of this came when he commented on how people used to just read news and content, but now they can simply create their own: "Now the audience is on stage." Bravo, Lee, for all that you & the Pew organization bring to our stage.
~Kathy Dempsey
CIL & MLS Editor
Info Today
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ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Keynoter Lee Raine spoke to what could only be described as a capacity crowd this morning in Monterey. Here delegates overflow from the ballroom into an annex, where delegates could watch the address on screen.
Raine took time to speak with delegates after his keynote talk, in which he personified various types of information users.
Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content
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ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to do conference registration? Here are some scenes of this morning’s registration at the height of the rush.
Checking the message board for tonight’s DineArounds
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL 2007 Blog Coordinator
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ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
This used to be one of the busiest areas between sessions–the phones. Now it’s deserted because everybody has a cell phone.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL 2007 Blog Coordinator
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ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
The 11th Internet Librarian conference (8th in Monterey) opened with a preliminary count of 1,385 registrants, 102 exhibitors, and 67 Exhibits-only registrations, for a total of 1,554, which makes this the largest Internet Librarian conference to date. Attendees are here from 48 states, the District of Columbia, and 11 countries.
Tom Hogan Sr, Information Today’s CEO, told us about "retronyms": old names for objects that need new clarification. For example, watches became "digital watches" and "analog watches", and "Coffee" became "regular coffee" and "decaf coffee". So now we have "Internet Librarians". What is a Non-Internet Librarian? Fill out your attendee questionnaire and give us your suggestion. The person submitting the best definition will win a $200 American Express gift certificate.
Tom Hogan Sr. and Jane Dysart chat with Lee Rainie at the opening session before Lee’s keynote address.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL2007 Blog Coordinator
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