David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Are We There Yet? Conversation with Paul Signorelli

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I had a fun conversation recently with Paul Signorelli as part of Arizona State University’s ASU ShapingEDU | Are We There Yet? Capturing the Evolving New Now in Learning discussions.

We touched on a lote of topics, mostly around Covid and post-covid best practices – topics like what my library did during the pandemic, broadband in our county and the library’s response to that, what new services appeared, and my library’s digital branch.

Anyway – fun conversation with a good friend and colleague. Watch it and share!

Hung out with T is for Training

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Last week, I was on the T is for Training Podcast (Maurice Coleman’s way-cool podcast).

It was fun! We talked about my library’s experience during Covid, broadband initiatives, digital multimedia spaces in libraries, and training and learning around each of those topics.

To say the least, we covered a LOT of ground.

So – have a listen, subscribe, etc! Also, make sure to go to the podcast episode page – the page has a bunch of links to things we discussed during the show.

Observations on Teaching a Tech Trends Class

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Teach

I’ve been teaching a 4-week online class hosted by ALA Learning with Paul Signorelli that’s in it’s final week. It’s been a fun class to lead!

Paul and I agree – when we teach these types of classes, we are facilitators … and we end up learning things, too. Find out more of Paul’s observations on teaching and creating the class in his blog post about the class.

Here are three things that I learned a little more about during the class:

Voice assistant proof-of-concept. One library worked on a proof-of-concept project in the area of voice assistance technology. The idea was to allow a virtual voice assistant to take customer queries. They started with an idea and ended up with a proof-of-concept that’s ready for the next steps.

Mechatronics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechatronics). This library purchased some EZrobots with the goal of teaching customers about mechatronics. They figure that having skills in and around robotics will be in high demand in the future, so why not introduce it to their customers.

Assistive technology. Another library is working on assistive technology for their customers. They want to set up Google Translate, microphones, and headsets at some public PCs for customers to use. Not something that’s trendy, but is definitely much-needed. And something that a LOT of libraries could do better at.

Again – fun class to create, and definitely fun to work with Paul and the amazing people who took the time to take the class!

N.B.: Paul’s set of reflections on the course are available on his own blog. Paul and David are available to work with anyone interested in onsite and/or online highly-interactive explorations of how to research and incorporate tech trends into training-teaching-learning. For more information, contact Paul at [email protected] or David at [email protected].

Convincing Staff to Learn a New Thing

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Last year, I attended a presentation focused on convincing staff to use a new tool the library had purchased. The presentation offered up different ideas on how to do that.

The presenter (and, I assume, the library) didn’t seem to want to make learning the new tool mandatory, and were concerned that they might have to do that at some point.

Anyone else hear a problem with that concept? I sure did. I think there’s a better way to function.

Now … volunteering to do something can be perfectly fine, in the right context. For example, maybe the task isn’t in your job description but it needs to get done while someone else is out on extended leave, or maybe you do it in an interim capacity until someone else is hired.

Also, volunteering is fine during a pilot project phase. You know, that “we’re just testing this out and need feedback” phase.

But once the job or function or service is more formally offered by the library? Don’t take volunteers. No “convincing” needed.

Instead, assign the new service or tool or project to someone (a person, a department, everyone, etc), and expect that they will do that thing (whatever it is) or learn it in order to help customers. Also think about making sure someone is in charge of getting everyone trained, if you don’t already have a training program in place for it.

After that? No convincing needed. It’s now part of someone’s job – just like working the reference desk, building a website, or cataloging a book.

image by Marc Falardeau

Practice your Presentations!

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After attending a recent conference, I realized something – not everyone practices their presentations beforehand!

There are definitely some benefits to practicing giving your presentation, especially if you are a new speaker and are going out in front of people for the first time.

Here are some things you might want to practice and/or finesse before the actual presentation:

  • Hook up a laptop to a projector and actually go through your slides. Figure out the simple stuff – things like how to open up the presentation, how to advance the slides, etc. I know – this seems pretty basic. But I’ve seen really smart people sorta freeze when they suddenly have to stand in front of a lot of people and fumble around with files and folders, or an unfamiliar laptop. Sometimes even just advancing slides can be weird if you’ve never really done it before. So practicing those simple things beforehand is a good thing to do.
  • Presenter Notes. If you use presenter notes, know where those are, how to scroll through them if you have a lot of notes, etc. Again, pretty basic stuff … until you are standing in front of 100 people, can’t see that last point you wanted to make, and your mind suddenly goes blank about how to scroll down to that last point. Yikers!
  • Time your talk. Actually practice your presentation out loud. Make sure you don’t go over time. Especially if you are on a panel, or in a session with multiple speakers. Also work on pacing the other way – if you have 45 minutes for your talk, you don’t want to finish in 20 minutes. I set an alarm on my iPhone that goes off about 10 minutes before the end of my time. That way, I know I need to wrap up, and give a couple of minutes for questions at the end of my talk.
  • Practice that tech stuff. Showing a video? Make sure you know how to play it, how the audio will work, etc. Showing off a website or a database? Know how to bounce out of your presentation to show the site, and then be able to bounce back into your presentation to continue.
  • Check the tech before you start. Test the microphone. If it has an on/off switch, test it out. Is there a clicker to advance slides? Test it out.

Ever had a problem when you gave a presentation? What was it? I’d love to know!