I’m all Westchestered out, but in a good way

May 17th, 2006 Stewart Posted in Uncategorized |

This past weekend, I gave three invited talks on the Millennials to librarians and faculty in Westchester, New York.

On Friday, I gave a brief workshop at the Westchester Library Association Annual Meeting. This is a great group of librarians from all walks of life — public, academic, school media, and special — and the session I gave was brief, focusing mainly on the generational cues that brought us to the Millennials, and a little on Library 2.0 principles and Connectivism.

This talk was expanded somewhat when I met with the librarians at Westchester Community College on Monday, along with their guests from SUNY Purchase. This was a lively discussion, with many good ideas for classroom techniques and an all-too-brief look at assessment. I have to admit, this is an area that I need to look at more closely, as many library instructors are finding themselves needing to report assessment activities as part of their jobs.

Then yesterday, the big show, I addressed about 100 Westchester Community College faculty on the Millennials and finding ways to teach them better. I think the talk went well, considering that it was relatively short, and the WCC faculty were engaged and had some excellent Mils stories of their own to share.

I want to thank Laurie Corey and Karen Vanterpool for making all my arrangements and for being such gracious hosts. I also want to thank all the attendees who came to my talks. And special thanks go out to my aunt and uncle for putting me up for the weekend — It was fun to spend time with family that I see all too rarely.

I promised everyone that I would link my bibliography and PowerPoint slides (WLA, WCC) for them to use. Also, if anyone from my Westchester sessions would like to start a discussion thread on anything from my talks, please use this post and add a comment. I have more meetings in my near future, but I will try to respond to postings here as quickly as I can.