Hip Hip Hooray!

I was reading MLA News, as one does, in a vain attempt to keep informed about the events of one's profession, and I saw that Steven L. MacCall, of the University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies, received Library Journal's Teaching Award at ALA Midwinter.

I had a number of classes with Dr. MacCall at ye olde UA SLIS, and I had to give a cheer at the news.

I was especially impressed by the article's noting,

Further, the announcement of the award led to a string of congratulatory remarks on the school's online discussion lists with the subject line, "Dr. MacCall's awesomeness."

I am no longer subscribed to SLIS-L (in a vain attempt to keep down the flood of messages in my inbox), but that made me wish I were.

I would totally have participated in that email string, for Dr. MacCall's awesomeness is indeed immense and far-reaching.

His enthusiasm for librarianship and for interesting new ways to do address the old and new questions of the work is undimmed even by the inevitable technology issues and the many miles between teacher and students--he definitely proves that distance education can work.

Also, in a feat that will long be lauded by my legions of devoted followers, he is pretty much the reason I have this blog, and part of the reason I work in a medical library today.

Congrats, Dr. M. That award could not have been more well-deserved.

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Sometime Social Networking

We had a Medical Education Day at work, and I was perusing some posters and saw that someone has done a project on using Second Life as an educational tool.

We've heard a lot about the exciting potential here, but I was interested to see an attempt to evaluate the success. The poster presented a study in which an educational module was presented in Second Life and a survey assessed how well the material was learned and how well the participants liked the format.

They got positive results for both measures.

The way in which this study was presented made me realize that I may have been thinking about Second Life in a limiting way.

I've remained interested in it, but have kind of written it off as something I'm personally thinking about at the moment since I haven't signed in in a long time. I've been thinking of it something like a game or social network, where if you're not at least semi-regularly involved, you're not really taking full advantage of the medium.

But you could also think of it as a platform for education, like a course management program or a web conferencing site. You don't have to log into an online classroom or a web conference site on a regular basis--you only sign in when you've got a conference. And that's perfectly fine.

Maybe Second Life makes a good online environment for teaching and learning, without participants needing to be involved with it outside of that context.

Hmm.

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Learning to Count

Interesting post on iLibrarian about online education and what it suggests about our ideas of the educational system in general.

I was intrigued to learn that "Thomas Frey, an expert on online education, compares our growing reliance on the education system to the reliance of ancient Romans on their numeric system."

I'm always interested in how education resembles Roman numerals! The basic argument is that our current educational system, like the Romans' attractively retro but clumsy numeric system, worked OK for a while but is on the verge of being replaced by something more sophisticated and capable of more.

Check it out!

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I've Missed You, Wimba

Went back to school this evening, to address the latest Distance Ed class at University of Alabama SLIS. The old Wimba classroom looked just the same, except the window seemed so much smaller than I remembered! [Nostalgic sigh.]

Although this was possibly because I had shrunk it up into a corner of the desktop in order to be able to cast an eye on my notes in case I forgot something I meant to mention.

You will be proud to know that I refrained from shrieking "Run! Run while you still can!" despite how obviously hilarious that would have been.

It made me fondly remember my own days in class, all of a year and half ago. [Nostalgic sigh.]

On the other hand, I am also thankful that I don't have homework at the moment. Workwork is keeping me busy enough right now. I like to imagine I'll take more classes in something one of these days, but not just this minute.

Maybe Tuesday, when I have an online class in MARC scheduled ('cause if I'm cataloging, I might as well have a refresher).

National Distance Learning Week

Whee! We get a week?

The Distant Librarian advises that November 10-14 is National Distance Learning Week. This celebratory event was declared by the US Distance Learning Association, which I am humbled to admit I only just heard of despite my own distant learning.

Apparently I was too busy doing far off schoolwork to be bothered about associations. This is why I argue school should include less work: so we have time to get deeply involved with supportive associations.

Anyway, hooray for long-distance education! There's a message of support from Ted Kennedy and everything. 

I was very pleased with my personal remote education, and am definitely inclined to take another distance course someday, when I'm done writing novels and so forth. (Only 36,000 words to go. Yeah, that's still a lot.)

There's just something about being in class in your own house that's pretty darn convenient. Plus, I'm antisocial and hate human contact. It comes of being a home-schooled weirdo; you can look that up.

Writin' About Distance Education

As one who had a recent satisfying experience with distance education myself, I was interested to hear from the Distant Librarian that the Journal of Distance Education/Revue de l'Éducation à Distance has made its archives (dating from 1986) available online.

Cool! I don't at this time have any very pressing distance ed questions that I need to research, but it's nice to know that this resource is available should any arise. 

It would also be very interesting to see how the field has changed in the time the journal has been publishing. Someday, if I get a few spare hours, it would be fun to look back at older issues and see what concerns and approaches remain constant, and which ones differ, as computers and the internet become widespread. 

Since I didn't participate in distance education before a couple of years ago I have no personal comparison, but I'm sure it must have been very different in the 1980s. 

If nothing else, I imagine the sheer expense and hassle of having to set up a loft for the carrier pigeons must have deterred a lot of would-be distance students.