Lesson 11: Personal Learning Networks

Hmmm, never realized I had a PLN until now. It's what I would call a very loose PLN. I subscribe to a few professional Listservs where I get articles and discussion. Through LinkedIn I am part of an ALA discussion group. Facebook has a few closed groups for librarians and I am part of BossyLibrarians and Programming Interests. These are great places to seek advice and give counsel or just get inspired.

Lesson 10 Challenge

Since the nearest McDonald's is across the street I'm going to use the next nearest McDonald's for this exercise.

My patron has $1.50 in his pocket and needs to get to McDonald's for an interview. The six-minute bus ride on 96 straight up Vance Jackson to the McDonald's on the other side of 410 costs $1.30 for full fare. If my patron qualifies for reduced fare it is only 65 cents. Either way he goes home with change in his pocket.

I've long been a user of Google Maps, Mapquest and a few that no longer exist. However, I did not know until completing this challenge that I could find bus ticket information on Google Maps. A number of patrons here at Westfall rely on the bus so having this information in my arsenal is great.

Exercise 9: Coding

Admittedly I was more than a little wary of this exercise for a number of reasons.

I took a computer science class in college in 1979 and was absymal. We had to put in our programs on keypunch cards, then hand the cards to a grad student working the computer lab. The mainframe was almost as big as a house. The grad student would run your program and you hoped against hope that you didn't hear one of the grad students yell your name. If they did, you knew your program didn't work and had to be manually stopped. My name got called a lot. As a matter of fact I still have the printout of one of my failed programs because I wrote a recipe on the back of it. There it is, in my recipe collection, a folded piece of green bar continuous computer paper with a cookie recipe on the back and on the front, the words

FATAL ERROR
FATAL ERROR
FATAL ERROR
FATAL ERROR

My next door neighbor was a computer science major and he basically did my homework for me. I turned in an assignment and the instructor, a computer programmer for a major industry, looked it over, handed it back and said: "Langston, take this to your friend who usually does your homework for you and get him to fix it."

Yes, I was that bad at programming.

Fast forward several decades. Thanks to LibGuides I've amassed a teeny bit of information about html. I have friends who code and I know what coding is. Frequently I drive by a large billboard announcing coding classes. Being a person who always enjoys learning I wondered if I should take coding classes. So, one night I logged onto a website that teaches basic coding. I had to walk a virtual person along a super short sidewalk, down a staircase and to the second sidewalk. All I could manage to do was get the virtual human to tumble down the stairs, stop at the top of the stairs, roll down the stairs ... you get the idea. Needless to say, I crossed coding classes off my to-do list.

Which brings us to SAPL 2.0 and this session on coding. I went to code.org and signed up as a student because I was afraid I'd have to teach something if I signed up as a teacher. With my one and only foray into coding still fresh in my mind I started with the simplest lessons, which are formulated for ages 4-6.

Whoa. I had a blast! My Angry Bird consistently squashed the pig. My bee gathered nectar and made honey. My virtual person has jumped chasms to draw squares, rectangles and the like. I was so into the lessons that I had to remind myself I didn't have to complete the entire 20-hour course in order to write about it. My staff could hear me muttering two left, up one, right two, gather, gather, down two ... followed by the happy sounds of a ticked off bird and a contented bee. The virtual human artist is pretty quiet.

It's block coding and some major universities do use this format, according to code.org. There is a function that allows you to see the actual code instead of the block. Okay, so I might not suck so bad at coding after all.

As I was rattling on about it today, someone asked me how I was doing.

"It's designed for 4- to 6-year-olds, so I'm acing it," I said, much to the delight of a passing patron who burst out laughing.

We'll see how I do after I advance to the high school level course.

Wish me luck because I don't have a neighbor who can code. :-)

Challenge - Exercise 8

SITUATION 1: Librarian Lil and Librarian Lydia want to use the Mondopad to offer Lil's extraordinary book discussion group to patrons at Lydia's library on the opposite side of the city. 
Depending on which two branches are collaborating, the first, most obvious benefit of meeting online is saving time and gas. Parman at Stone Oak and Cortez branches are 25-plus miles apart. If you factor in possible traffic snarls you have saved a lot of time and effort. It's always nice to sit down at a meeting when you are calm and relaxed and not stressed out because an accident closed the highway and the trip took you 45 minutes longer than usual.

The main challenge I can see is if the two people meeting need to discuss something like room arrangement or space configuration. With a smartphone, tablet or iPad one can wander and focus the video feed on the surroundings. Sadly, the Mondopad is too big to do this.

I can't think of any real inconveniences, other than the inability to view physical plant layout, if I am working with a fellow SAPL staffer. In this scenario, I think the benefits far outweigh the inconveniences, particularly for the initial couple of meetings.
This one is a no-brainer since the project utilizes the Mondopad to offer programming. By meeting via the Mondopad Lil and Lydia are essentially testing the functionality of their idea.

SITUATION 2: Patron videochats a reference question and Librarian Lil needs to conduct a reference interview. The patron wants to know if the library has any books on cattle.
Using a platform that incorporates the ability to communicate in real-time with a patron adds a layer to the virtual reference world. Yes, of course, the library has many books on cattle, but as Lil talks with the patron, she learns he is interested in Longhorn cattle. A few more questions and eventually the patron reveals that he needs a copy of the University of Texas at Austin logo, which is a silhouette of a Longhorn. Lil now can assist the patron in finding what is really needed.

Internet Ninja

NoveList Ninja

  

The Children's Home is a complete departure for me - a "genre defying," creepy, fractured fairy tale. Charles Lambert usually does poems. When I started reading it I immediately thought of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, so I put that one on hold. With this challenge, I wanted to see what NoveList had to say about The Children's Home as well as the Miss Peregrine series.

Under The Children's Home I checked:

Creepy

England

Fast Paced

Recluses

Secrets

Only one book came up: Awakening by S.J. Dalton.

However, general read-alikes produced this list:

Magic Street by Orson Scott Card

Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell

Midsummer Night by Freda Warrington

Apocalypse by Nancy Springer

The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

Gravelight by Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Crory Barker

I then tried Miss Peregrine's Home for Pecuilar Children and got nine read-alike titles.

The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Circa Now by Amber McRee Turner

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

The Shrunken Head by Lauren Oliver

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride

The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld

Asylum by Madeleine Roux

In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters

I don't like fantasy a la Game of Thrones or Once Upon a Time. Maybe it's the dragons and unicorns?!? Although there are dragons and unicorns in Harry Potter, but only in an ancillary capacity. Next time I am stuck for something to read or listen to, I will call up these lists. Sadly, though, I don't think I could hear Elton John singing Tiny Dancer in my head while reading Hold Me Closer, Necromancer.