Technology Trainer Boot Camp

The Nicolet Federated Library System in Green Bay hosted a terrific webinar last week by Sarah Houghton, aka The Librarian in Black, called Technology Trainer Boot Camp.  It was an hour of excellent information and ideas about how to manage the onslaught of technology devices, providing training for staff and for library users alike.

You can access the archived version of the recording right here:  http://blip.tv/nfls/tech-trainer-boot-camp-6271571.  In it, you’ll learn:

• Techniques for helping e-reader newbies, including
• A regular drop-in (1 or 2 times a week) program where people can get their tech questions answered by staff and volunteers—this takes pressure off the reference desk!
• Helping pair up new users of the same device so they can help each other
• How to come up with training topics:  Think Big!  What do you want to teach?  What do you get tons of questions about?  Is there any training you can let go of to free up time for new topics?
• Remember that hands-on is the ONLY way to really teach about technology—you must allow for and encourage exploration
• Adaptability to change is a great thing to teach to staff and patrons!
• 10 great tips for tech training:
• Tell stories to really illustrate your points in a meaningful way
• Use humor
• Stop relying on step-by-steps!  Handouts alone don’t do the trick, people need to explore technology more organically.
• Keep it loose—be willing to shift what you are talking about depending on questions or technology problems
• Give people something to take away (handouts, contact information)
• Encourage exploration—give people time to mess around with a knowledgeable person in the background, ready to help
• Show respect—don’t talk down to people!
• Give them what they came for, even if it wasn’t what you planned to cover in a class.  Don’t overwhelm with superfluous information
• Be a real person—don’t put on an authoritative persona, use real examples from your own life, build commaraderie
• Give avenues for follow-up, be approachable afterwards

I recommend hearing these tips—explained with humor and real examples from Sarah’s experience—right from the horse’s mouth—give yourself an hour to watch the archive of this webinar!     -Leah Langby, IFLS Library Development and Youth Services Coordinator

Library-Book-Burning-Party Sparks Public Response!

Troy Public Library Book Burning:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoT13m8-Kxo

Troy, Michigan couldn’t afford to keep its library open, so it scheduled a vote for a 0.07 tax increase.  The Tea Party waged strong anti-tax group waged a “Vote No” campaign against the increase.  The city worked with Leo Burnett Detroit to run a counter campaign in the name of the Book Burning Party.  Signs appeared around Troy with the message, “Vote to close Troy library Aug 2, book burning party Aug 5.”  The campaign’s Facebook page became the hub for the new campaign, with Twitter, Foursquare, want ads, flyers and more to drive engagement.  The campaign became international news as outcry over the idea of burning the library’s books drowned out the opposition and galvanized support for the library--which won by a landslide.  The campaign won a Gold award for Government/Political at the International ANDY Awards 2012, and was recognized with the Facebook Integrated Media Award at the 2012 Clio Awards.

Behind the Google Goggles, Virtual Reality

from:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/technology/google-glasses-will-be-powered-by-android.html?_r=1

It wasn’t so long ago that legions of people began walking the streets, talking to themselves. On closer inspection, many of them turned out to be wearing tiny earpieces that connected wirelessly to their smartphones.
What’s next? Perhaps throngs of people in thick-framed sunglasses lurching down the streets, cocking and twisting their heads like extras in a zombie movie.

That’s because later this year, Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor.

“It will look very strange to onlookers when people are wearing these glasses,” said William Brinkman, graduate director of the computer science and software engineering department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “You obviously won’t see what they can from the behind the glasses. As a result, you will see bizarre body language as people duck or dodge around virtual things.”

Mr. Brinkman, whose work focuses on augmented reality or the projection of a layer of information over physical objects, said his students had experimented on their own with virtual games and obstacle courses. “It looks really weird to outsiders when you watch people navigate these spaces,” he said.

They have not seen the Google glasses. Few people have, because they are being built in the Google X offices, a secretive laboratory near Google’s main Mountain View, Calif., campus where engineers and scientists are also working on robots and space elevators.
The glasses will use the same Android software that powers Android smartphones and tablets. Like smartphones and tablets, the glasses will be equipped with GPS and motion sensors. They will also contain a camera and audio inputs and outputs.

Several people who have seen the glasses, but who are not allowed to speak publicly about them, said that the location information was a major feature of the glasses. Through the built-in camera on the glasses, Google will be able to stream images to its rack computers and return augmented reality information to the person wearing them. For instance, a person looking at a landmark could see detailed historical information and comments about it left by friends. If facial recognition software becomes accurate enough, the glasses could remind a wearer of when and how he met the vaguely familiar person standing in front of him at a party. They might also be used for virtual reality games that use the real world as the playground.

People flailing their arms in midair as they play those games is a potentially humorous outcome of the virtual reality glasses. In a more serious vein is the almost certain possibility of privacy issues and ubiquitous advertisements. When someone is meeting a person for the first time, for example, Google could hypothetically match the person’s face and tell people how many friends they share in common on social networks.

This month, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a research and advocacy group for Internet privacy, asked the Federal Trade Commission to suspend the use of facial recognition software until the government could come up with adequate safeguards and privacy standards to protect citizens.

Mr. Brinkman said he was very excited by the possibilities of the glasses, but acknowledged that the augmented reality glasses could pose some ethical issues.

“In addition to privacy, it’s also going to change real-world advertising, where companies can virtually place ads over other people’s ads,” he said. “I’m really interested in seeing how the government can successfully regulate augmented reality in this sense. They are not really going to know what people are seeing behind those glasses.”

More here: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/google%E2%80%99s-project-glass-lets-technology-slip-into-the-background/

How To Solve the Impossible Search Problems

There are plenty of Google search cheat sheets floating around. But it’s not often you get to hear advice directly from someone at Google who offers you his favorite search tools, methods and perspectives to help you find the impossible. 

 David Russell, a research scientist at Google, shares some tricks that can help you solve problems that look impossible. 

For the full post full of very good searching tips, visit John Tedesco's blog: http://www.johntedesco.net/blog/2012/06/21/how-to-solve-impossible-problems-daniel-russells-awesome-google-search-techniques/