"Knowing the Millenials" webinar

October 27th, 2005 Stewart

Today was fun. The folks at the SUNY Training Center had me conduct my Millennials workshop as a web-based seminar. The audio would cut out from time to time, but overall, it was a positive experience for me, and I hope it was for the other participants. (And, if it wasn’t, at least it was short!)

I posted several links to the webinar discussion board, but I thought I would duplicate them here if anyone was interested in them:

Educause — Educating the Net Generation

Probably the single-best book on college-age Mils, and it’s completely *free!*

http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen

Mils Discussion Board — From Howe & Strauss’s “Fourth Turning” site, some advanced (if a little too cheery) discussion of the Mils:

http://fourthturning.com/forums/viewforum.php?forum=5

Managing Millennials — Mils as employees, Boomers as employers — a volatile mix. There are also some interesting books out there on the phenomenon, but this is a good start:

http://www.generationsatwork.com/articles/millenials.htm

I’ll post more in the coming days. Interested visitors might also want to look through my blog archives for a number of Mils-related posts, including:

Teachers Want to Remove “Failed” from the Classroom — about coddling students

Entitled to their Frustration — about job realities for Mils

OMG did ur dad frk out? — about texting and cell phones

And, welcome!

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Millennials not tech-savvy?

October 12th, 2005 Stewart

Some of these results might be due to significant differences between US and England, including computer availability and curriculum management.

Also, reports like these use “tech-savvy” and “information-savvy” as if they were the same thing; they aren’t. Many Mils are in fact tech-savvy, with almost inate abilities to use cell phones, microwave ovens, and cable TV. They can also surf the web and multitask like crazy. What they don’t understand are computers, beyond operating system basics, anyways. They have no concept of how computers function, how networks are built, how databases are structured, or how the web actually works. “Instant on” technology for the average Mil means that when something doesn’t work for them, it must be an error or flaw with the device or the system, not with themselves. They have convinced themselves that they have information skills, but when asked specific questions, like “Have you built a web page” or “Do you know how to blog,” that tech superiority is shown to be pretty superficial on the whole.

In some recent classes of mine, I thought I would compare the scientific literature to blogging, just to give the students a point of reference. When I asked who was familiar with blogs, I’d usually get only five hands raised out of twenty. When I asked how many students had blogs, typically no more than one hand in twenty would go up. As a result, I’ve abandoned using that analogy in class. Mils still have a lot of catching up to do, on the whole.

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Wrapping up with Woods Hole

October 4th, 2005 Stewart

I fell way behind in my postings from Woods Hole, mostly because the days there are so activity-enriched that there is little time for much of anything else. If I wasn’t in a class or evening workshop, I was working on the group project or networking with other attendees.

The entire experience is hard to describe. Gary Byrd, my director, asked me if I learned much new material beyond the coursework I’ve completed toward my advanced certification in medical and health informatics. While there was some new material, in fairness, much of the coursework was review for me, not too surprising when you consider that Woods Hole is meant to be a survey course.

The idea of “change agency” has really stuck with me, though, and in many ways the course is designed perfectly to engage those kinds of thought processes. While I sat through the PubMed session, which was mostly review, I cobbled together an idea for an RSS newsfeed of recent UB-published articles to be posted to our homepage. While learning the specifics of database-to-Web projects, I mapped out a plan for creating a CiteULike-style product for our library. The course helped me immensely with ideas and tools to help me craft better support products for my library. A newly-discovered colleague and I are planning on writing up the experience for one of our library association journals; I wonder if we could survey the rest of the participants for ideas that came to them as change agents for their own institutions.

Of course, that kind of social networking was just as important. I met library peers from several institutions, but I also made friends with genetic researchers, physicians, pharmacists, and other practitioners, and these are friendships I hope to continue for years to come. Another course participant commented on how our outings to Captain Kidd reminded him of his freshman year in college; there might be even more to it than that. I remember what it felt like when I was a college freshman, how there were no real limits on what I could do and how it felt like the whole world was there just for me to explore. That feeling resurfaced at Woods Hole and I brought it home with me.

This week, I’m wrapping up some minor projects at UB HSL that have been hanging over my head so that I can begin working on all the other ideas that came to me during the NLM course. But for now, the most important thing I can do is to encourage others, in the strongest possible terms, to apply for next year’s course.

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