I really loved this class. Not only did I learn a lot, I also had a lot of fun. I thought I was pretty up to date on emerging technologies, but there were several things that I learned about for the first time in this class, such as augmented reality, the backchannel, QR codes, and all the cool things you can do with an iPhone (I’m still completely in love with my iPhone).
I think my favorite part of the class was the backchannel. Although I was completely unfamiliar with the concept at the beginning of the class, I got sucked in very quickly. I’d had a Twitter account for a while, but I’d only ever tweeted a few times. Now I’m tweeting several times a day. I think it really helped that we all followed each other. Part of the reason I hadn’t used it much is because most of my ‘real life’ friends aren’t on it, so I felt like I was talking to thin air. After the first weekend, though, I suddenly had 25 followers to interact with. Once I really started getting into it I got several more followers. It has quickly become my preferred method of keeping up with everything. I also think that having everybody follow everybody else helped me to feel more connected to my classmates. Normally with this sort of weekend class it’s hard to get to know people, but I feel like I’ve really gotten to know the people who have been active on Twitter.
This class was kind of an interesting hybrid between an online class and a regular class. In the online classes I’ve taken in the past, I’ve never felt remotely connected to my classmates. Even when I took 753 last fall and we had to write regular blog posts and read each other’s blogs I didn’t really know who my classmates were. I really liked the mix of online and in-class. Online classes are nice because they fit my schedule much better and I can work at my own pace, but you really miss something by not being in the class. I think the hybrid model worked really well, because we had the interaction of being in class, but still kept in touch outside of class.
I also really liked Michael’s teaching style. It seems like a lot of professors are far more concerned with whether you’re rigidly follow their syllabus than whether you’re learning anything. It was clear to me on the very first day that that was not the case in this class. I liked the flexibility we had to explore and discover the aspects of Library 2.0 that most interested us. We got to choose our own topics for our group project, the blogging was pretty open-ended, we could read a context book that wasn’t on the list (though the books on the list were so great I’ve read several of them out of class) and we could choose our own topic for the final paper. I think this was my biggest AHA! moment – that the learning was the most important thing. Too often it seems like I’m only learning the material so I can get a good grade and the learning is just a means to an end. I learned more in this class than I do in most classes, and I think that’s due in large part to the fact that I could explore what interested me – and almost all of it interested me! In many ways, Michael was more of a facilitator than a teacher, letting us guide the discussion and the topics we covered. I wish more profs could be like that.
I’m sad that this class is over, but I’m looking forward to following future LIS768 classes on Twitter and seeing what their AHA! moments are.
The Digital Generation and Learning, Literacy, and Education
Drawing from texts such as Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation and Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital, this paper examines both the criticism of and the praise for the Digital Generation. For better or for worse, this generation that has grown up immersed in digital technology has a remarkably different perspective on the world.
Critics complain that they’re wasting the opportunities they’ve been given, using digital technology to keep up on gossip and pop culture rather than to learn about history, culture, and literature. Others champion their ability to multi-task, their problem-solving skills, and their techno-savvy. The Digital Generation learns differently than previous generations. They’re collaborative and creative. They’re quick to adapt to changing technology, because constant change it all they’ve ever known. They read fewer books than previous generations, but thanks to the participatory Web they’re reading and writing in record numbers.
As this generation matures, they are faced with a number of challenges. They’ve been given an amazing set of tools, but they still need the wisdom and guidance of previous generations as they learn to use these tools wisely. Information literacy skills are as essential today as reading and math. Schools and libraries need to adapt their pedagogy to work with the Digital Generation, and to guide them as they set off into the world.
Some argue that they’re the dumbest generation, while others argue that they’re the smartest. Really, they’re just different. They’re growing up in a time of great change, and it has had a profound effect on the way they think and learn.
I work for a book vendor that serves libraries. As a private corporation, they tend not to be quite as open as a public library might be. I wrote this Social Media Policy with this type of organization in mind.
We recognize that social media sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs are very popular among our employees. We have provided the following guidelines so that our employees may have a better idea of the company’s policies regarding personal use of social media. If you have any questions about these guidelines, or about your use of social media, please feel free to talk to your supervisor or contact HR.
Remember that company Internet access is not for personal use, except for brief use during break periods. Thus, blogging and social media use is to take place only on employees’ personal time.
Accountability
Know and abide by company policy and the corporate code of conduct.
Include a disclaimer stating that what you have written is your own opinion and does not reflect the opinions of the company.
Remember that anything you write reflects not only on you, but also on the company, and do not include anything that would reflect poorly on either.
Assume that anything you write or post may be viewed publicly for many years to come, and act accordingly. Some social media sites, such as Facebook, do have privacy settings, but it is important to keep in mind that they are not foolproof, and that anybody who can see your post can also copy it and make it publically available.
Do not violate, or encourage others to violate, any law, including copyright law.
Confidentiality
Respect the confidentiality of our customers and our corporation. Do not reveal any information that is deemed confidential or sensitive in nature. If in doubt, leave it out.
Respect the privacy of your coworkers. Do not post pictures of, or information about, anybody you work with without their permission.
Respect
Respect the company, your coworkers, your readers, and yourself.
Do not engage in “flame wars,” or negative commentary. If you disagree with somebody, please do so in a polite and respectful manner.
Avoid using derogatory and discriminatory comments or inappropriate language.
Bottom Line
Use common sense, be courteous, and don’t do anything you may regret later. Before posting anything, ask yourself if you’d still post it if you knew that your boss would be reading it.
As I suspected, my focus for this paper has shifted somewhat. Rather than focusing on how Millennials and digital natives are defined, I’ve begun looking at how this generation learns and interacts with the world around them, and the stereotypes that go along with that. There are a number of talking heads out there complaining that this generation is dumber than any others, that they spend all their time in front of a screen, and wouldn’t know a book if it slapped them in the face. There are also a lot of defenders, who argue that this generation is actually smarter than previous generations, and that digital immersion has changed the way their brains work. I plan on looking at both sides of this issue. Here are some of the sources I’ll be using:
Bauerlein, Mark. The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. New York: Penguin 2008.
Casey, Michael E., and Laura C. Savastinuk. Library 2.0: A Guide to Participatory Library Services. Medford: Information Today, Inc., 2009.
Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead Trade, 2006.
For my brand monitoring assignment I decided to focus on the Ann Arbor District Library. Since starting library school, I’ve heard a great deal about this library, particularly their catalog, which is built on Drupal and allows users to rate books, create reading lists, tag books, and much more. I also grew up in Michigan, and lived about an hour from Ann Arbor, though I never went to their library.
AADL is extremely active in social media. Their website, aadl.org, includes several blogs that are all updated regularly. There is an events blog, a community blog, readers advisory blogs, blogs for children, blogs for teens, and of course the director’s blog.
They have active accounts with Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Their Facebook page includes information about upcoming events, and their annual reports for the past two years are available as videos. They tweet regularly, and seem to be pretty good about responding to users’ tweets. They also periodically retweet tweets that mention them.
To find out what people are saying about AADL I first turned to Twitter. I searched for AADL, Ann Arbor District Library, and Ann Arbor Library. Many of the tweets I found were about events and services offered by the library, but I also found a number of tweets from people who were using the library and had good things to say about it.
I also searched Yelp for reviews of the library. The reviews were overwhelming positive, including one reviewer who asked if it was possible to be in love with a library.
I was not able to retrieve any results using Technorati, but Google blogs did turn up some results. Most of the results were for blog posts by the AADL itself, though there were some others discussing the services offered. Many of the bloggers commented on their social OPAC, which is considered by many to be one of the best out there.
I even ran across some really old Tame The Web posts!
A basic Google search again yielded a lot of information about events and programming, but there were also some articles about how modern and progressive the library is.
The library is not terribly active on flickr, but they do have an account where they post pictures, primarily of library events. There are also a few hundred photos from various users showing the various branches, the stacks, and some of the technology being used in the district.
I also checked Google Buzz and FourSquare. The AADL does not appear to be using these tools yet, but it appears that at least some of their patrons are.
Based on what I found, the Ann Arbor District Library appears to be very active in social networking. They do a fantastic job of distributing information about the library, their services, and their events through their blog, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Their social OPAC is one of the first of its kind, and is a shining example of what other libraries should strive for. Patrons of the library seem to be extremely happy with its services. The staff appears to actively monitor the social media conversation. Though a great deal of their conversation still appears to be one-sided, they do respond to patrons’ comments from time-to-time. I also would have liked to have seen links to their social media sites somewhere on their homepage. Not including them may have been a style choice, but I would think that they would want to direct their users to at least their Twitter and Facebook pages. Overall, however, the Ann Arbor District Library is very involved in social media and seems to be a great library system.
For my research paper I’m going to focus on the Millennial generation and digital natives vs. digital immigrants.
Ideally, I’d like to focus on the relatively small group of people in the age group that can remember a time before the Internet, CDs, cell phones, etc., but who were young enough when the Internet began that these digital technologies come very naturally. We weren’t born digital, and we’re not technically digital natives, but neither are we really digital immigrants.
I am concerned, however, that there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of information available about this in-between generation, so it is entirely possible that once I start doing the research the paper will go in another direction.
I’m also interested in exploring some of the labels that have been applied to my generation. Am I a Millennial? Generation Y? Generation next? Born Digital? Digital Native? I’ve seen a number of different age ranges defining Millennials. The one I’ve seen most often is those born 1980-2000, but I’ve also seen 1986-2000 and 1977-1994.
Are Millennials considered digital natives by default? I know plenty of people my age who still aren’t particularly tech-savvy. I also know many people over 30 who know more about technology than I do.
To answer these questions I’ll be looking to books like Born Digital, Generation We, Plugged In, Millennials Rising, and Grown Up Digital.
I think that yesterday’s experience with waiting for the tsunami was an interesting look at social networking and the way communications have evolved over time. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, people tuned into the radio for information. When Kennedy was shot, people watched the news come in on TV. I was too young to remember the Challenger explosion, but I do remember watching on cable as the Berlin Wall came down.
The Internet began to change things. When the World Trade Center was attacked in 2001 I remember following the news through a combination of the web and TV. I was sitting in my dorm room watching the news on television while refreshing CNN.com on my computer. People in New York were trying to contact each other using their cell phones, but they were having trouble getting through.
By the time of Hurricane Katrina, blogs and cell phones were becoming more prolific. There was no Twitter, but the news was coming in pretty quickly through other social media. I remember that there was a group of people who stayed in the city despite the evacuation, and they were providing regular updates via LiveJournal. There was little-to-no electricity, and they were sending out pleas for fuel for their generators. Craigslist was just beginning, but people were using it to locate missing family members.
Yesterday’s earthquake and tsunami really illustrated how powerful social media can be in times of disaster. Like a lot of Millennials, I get my news primarily online. I hadn’t heard anything about the earthquake until I got on Twitter and noticed that Chile was the top trending topic. For the rest of the day, all the news I got about what was going on came from the Internet.
I find in really fascinating that, sitting in class with no exposure to “traditional” media, we were all very connected to what was going on. Not only was there a live stream on the projector, but several of us were also watching live streams on our own computers. At one point I had three different streams going simultaneously. I was also following Twitter, and was amazed at how fast and furious the tweets were coming in. I know that Twitter is a very immediate medium, and it recently hit over 50 million tweets per day, but the fact that there were several hundred tweets coming in every minute – just on that one topic – was incredible. Through the massive amount of information coming in I was able to find the occasional user tweeting directly from Hawaii. Then I discovered that the New York Times had aggregated a list of people tweeting from Hawaii. You could see what people who were actually there were saying, while reconciling that with the live streams and what the major media outlets were reporting. It was a really interesting look at how connected we’ve become, and the power of social media.
This kind of goes back to what Michael was saying in class about the kind of message libraries are sending with their signage and the way they communicate with their users.
My local public library (McHenry) is in the process of doing a major renovation. As part of their communication, they started a building blog. There’s just one tiny problem…
I really like the idea of libraries creating a hyperlocal online environment for their users. Actually, I like the idea of anybody creating hyperlocal web sites. I think this is one area of the web that could use significant improvement, and libraries could really take the lead on this.
Perhaps it’s because I live in the far suburbs, but I always have a difficult time finding relevant local data. Google is great for a lot of things, but even with its (sometimes disturbingly) long reach, it tends to be inaccurate, outdated, or delayed when it comes to hyperlocal results.
I’ll give you a couple of examples: I’m fairly new to the area, and when I first moved here I did a Google search to look for some good local restaurants. I found two restaurants on the same street that both sounded excellent. When I went to check them out I couldn’t find either one of them. I have no idea what happened, or how long they’ve been gone, but they are definitely not there anymore. I addition to restaurants, I was also hoping to find a good independent coffee shop nearby. Again, I got results for some places that sounded great, but no longer exist. Then one day, late last summer, I was driving home from work and I saw a sign going up for a new coffee place. Finally! I was very excited, especially since it would be within walking distance from my apartment. I made a note of the name, and went home and tried to find out what I could about it – when it was opening, what types of services they’d have, etc. No luck. It wasn’t until about a week before they opened – when the store finally put up a website – that I was able to find out anything at all.
Now, I don’t necessarily expect libraries to keep people up to date on the local restaurants and coffee shops, but I think these examples do underscore the need for more local information to be made accessible on the web. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the places that could use this kind of site the most – rural areas and small suburban towns that Google ignore – are the same places that will take the longest to adapt any sort of hyperlocal site.
Admittedly, this assumption is based solely on my personal experiences in the suburbs. But I think a lot of towns like this lack the critical mass of plugged-in and connected users that is needed to provide accurate and up-to-date local information. I really hope that libraries can begin to fill this void and start providing smaller communities with more relevant hyperlocal information.
Stacy Taylor