Catching up…

October 30th, 2006 Stewart

Millennials: The ICCD Successful Teaching Conference in Corning went very well, aside from getting locked out of my hotel room one hour before my keynote. Still, the staff at the Radisson got me back into the room quickly and both my keynote and the subsequent breakout session went very well. My thanks to Patrick for inviting me down to the talk. I’d invite the attendees to please use the Comments link below to continue our talk, if they would like.

Communications in Information Literacy:The CFP is out, and starting to generate a little buzz. We’ve also added some information for authors regarding copyright (they keep it) and fees (they don’t pay them). Chris and Molly and I are working out the “new look” and the mock-ups look amazing. More to come.

Book chapter: I’ll be catching up on my own writing over the next two or three weeks, including tightening up one journal article for submission and writing the full first draft of my book chapter on information literacy. Fortunately, my teaching and presenting workload have slowed a bit for November, so I should be able to get all caught up on these projects. And, with a little luck, I’ll be able to post here once in a while as well.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Communications in Information Literacy

October 27th, 2006 Stewart

It’s official. For the last several months, I have been working behind the scenes with my colleague and good friend Chris Hollister to develop a refereed e-journal for information literacy. Today, we put out our first call for papers for Communications in Information Literacy (CIL).

I’ll have much more to say about this project in the coming weeks, but for now, please take a look at our web site and the CFP we just posted. If you’re working on an IL-related paper, please consider submitting it for our inaugural issue coming out this Spring.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids by Alexandra Robbins, reviewed by The Atlantic Monthly

October 25th, 2006 Stewart

Powell’s Books - Review-a-Day - The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids by Alexandra Robbins, reviewed by The Atlantic Monthly

My wife forwarded this to me. I’m going about ordering a copy through interlibrary loan, but the review ends up being more of a sharp, funny look at the parents of the Millennials than an actual book review.

Personal favorite quote:

On the one hand, I worry that unless they join some sort of MTV-sponsored witness-protection program, such children have no hope of ever getting laid.

Hilarious stuff!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Less free money for college students

October 25th, 2006 Stewart

Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Pell Grants Down, Tuition Up

The biggest surprise here is the dip that Pell is taking. With tuition and related college expenses going up across the board, all this can do is increase reliance on student loans to fill the gap.

More of the Big Black Wall of Reality that I refer to in my Millennials talks: less money for college increases the expectations of Mils to find top-dollar jobs when they enter the workforce, all while the U.S. ships more jobs overseas (including an expected 500,000 IT jobs) and Boomers continue to push retirement back. Something has to give…

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Literacy & Learning Conference at Jamestown Community College

October 23rd, 2006 Stewart

Just returned from a really remarkable conference in Jamestown, NY, focusing on literacy and learning issues in secondary and higher education. Gael Grossman invited me down to give my Millennials keynote, but also offered to let me conduct a second session for the pre-conference dinner. I have a hard time turning down any opportunity to hear myself talk, so I said yes and put together a new talk on multigenerational issues in the workplace.

This is still very raw and needs refinement and expansion, but I think it turned out well enough for a first outing. Slides are below; would love to hear other thoughts and opinions on them. I’m thinking of expanding this and registering it for MLA continuing education credit, so comments and criticisms would be most welcome.

And my thanks to Gael and her colleagues, Laura and Theresa, for all the hospitality they showed me during my visit. Best regards to you all! If you have an interest in literacy/learning issues, you should be certain to look into traveling to Jamestown next year for this conference; I know I will.

Multigenerational workplace slides

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Web 2.0 slides

October 5th, 2006 Stewart

Web 2.0 for Research.ppt

Just in case anyone wants to take a look. There’s really only a little bit here that isn’t in the wiki. I’m thinking of not even using the slides for the next workshop — They get a little cumbersome to use after a while, and it makes more sense to only keep the wiki up to date and not have to update the slides as well.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Web 2.0 for Research workshop tomorrow morning

October 5th, 2006 Stewart

I mentioned in my last post that I was working on a handout for a new workshop, Web 2.0 for Research. I was in the midst of writing it up as a standard in-class photocopied handout, when I had a little hit of inspiration:

Hslworkshop - BluWiki

The entire workshop and it’s content are now wikified for all to see. This will make the workshop much easier to update — I’m teaching another section of it in two weeks. More importantly, though, it will enable the participants to freely play around with the technology and make future contributions to the workshop as they build on their Web 2.0 knowledge.

I’m taking a bit of a risk with this, hoping that the whole thing doesn’t get vandalized between now and tomorrow morning, but I think it should be safe. It also is missing a few last minute elements that I’ll be adding bright and early tomorrow. If anyone has any comments, I’d be grateful to hear them.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Extending Firefox workshop

September 27th, 2006 Stewart

One of several new workshops we added to the HSL roster this semester, Extending Firefox for Research has been getting lots of attention. Unfortunately, due to some inclement weather (In Buffalo? Can you believe it?), the first workshop, which was to be taught by my colleague Michelle, ended up as a wash.

That brings us to next week where she and I will do the first session for UB’s School of Dentistry, which apparently is making Firefox the default browser on all the student laptops and lab machines. In preparation, I’m going over the handout we developed with a close eye. If anyone feels like taking a look themselves, just click below:

Extending Firefox handout.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Now I just need to get started putting together that Web 2.0 for Research workshop. The one I’m supposed to teach next week. The one that has a full registration sheet and a sizable wait list.

You know, I might just get started on that first thing tomorrow.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Zotero - Are EndNote’s days numbered?

September 24th, 2006 Stewart

Zotero - The Next-Generation Research Tool

I’m remaining neutral on this until the beta is released and we can all start to play with it. I really like the idea of a browser-based citation management tool — It’s the most intuitive location for such a tool, if you think about it, and it potentially can take advantage of the “native web” in ways that software like EndNote seems unable to.

That said, some immediate thoughts:

• How many styles will be supported? EndNote’s exhaustive list of over 2000 styles makes it a natural choice for multidisciplinary researchers, as well as those in more rarified fields.
• Will there be support for open sharing of bibliographic data, akin to CiteULike?
• For that matter, will Zotero be compatible with existing libraries of references, such as those in CiteULike, EndNote, Reference Manager, or RefWorks?

I hope to play with the beta version of Zotero soon and have more to report. I’m cautiously optimistic — I know the people behind this have their heads and hearts in the right places, but I’m concerned about compatibility and longevity of the software, and it’s ability to grow with the user’s needs.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Parents using Facebook to weed out bad roomies?

September 15th, 2006 Stewart

Roommates, the Online Version - New York Times

New Freshmen and their parents are using Facebook to scope out their assigned roommates. For students, this is a potential boon, to forge new friendships early or at least learn something useful about the person they’ll be sharing space with. For parents, though, Facebook entries often paint a picture they don’t care for, and that’s prompting calls to colleges demanding new roomies. Thanks to KUAL for the link.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »