Zoë WS in SI 643

Class Reflections  “I think a big part of the Flint water crisis was more about emotion than about data” (something Kristin said) In class, we listened along to a This American Life piece about a citizen striving to research and investigate issues to become better educated, but that process of “research” in fact leading further down a road of misinformation. We also tried out a number of engagement activities that put us in intellectual roleplaying situations of being intuitors, lawyers, game developers, and so on. Some of my big takeaways from the class: Being immersed in an activity that feels like information gathering and assessing may still fail to achieve critical thinking goals. There’s no objective flashing light that indicates, yes, research-feeling activity is indeed research! And furthermore, the frameworks of news and criticism and skepticism and investigation have all been extremely muddled in our current media and political climate. It’s disturbing to realiz...

From Class  I loved enjoyed hearing everyone’s screencasts in class! As we discussed, there is such a diversity of ways that people signal “this is a safe space to learn,” or “this is something I’m excited about and I’m excited to share it with you!” It was helpful to hear that, despite the diversity of particulars of delivery or inflection, that our participants/viewers in the classroom all reacted positively to that sentiment and intentionality. It’s a great lesson to take with us going forward – that taking the time to make others feel comfortable and included, and to communicate we are excited and to remember to root for our learners, are all things that folks respond to deeply. It was a little nerve-wracking to be on display myself, but I found it to be another good reminder that it’s not really about me when it comes to learning, so much as creating opportunities for others to learn and trying to do my absolute best to improve and develop as an instructor. I was talking t...

Last week we continued exploring some of the foundational questions in learning. Some of the ideas that stuck with me: Nicco talked about the importance of staying a novice and approaching problems with a beginner mindset each time. I really really appreciate this perspective -- I've been thinking lately about how easy it is to become comfortable with my current knowledge about things, and to give up the habit of interrogating assumptions and seeking out new perspectives. Maybe this is part of getting older, but I think to be an effective educator and librarian and person in the future, I want to continue contesting this trend and staying open and receptive to new knowledge that might contrast with what I think I know about things! Along those lines, we had a lovely conversation about how to think about the structure and sequencing of knowledge from the perspective of learners. There is both a prescriptive application of this in the designing of curricula and conceptualizing of ...

AntConc is an open-source corpus analysis toolkit. It’s main function is to identify patterns in large collections of texts, such as novels, blog posts, e-mails, or essays. These patterns might provide you with valuable clues for your research. Today, we’re going to show you how to get started with AntConc and quickly demo some of its powerful features. You can download the version for your operating system directly from the author’s website - we’ll include a link in the description too. Next, let’s load in some texts. Project Gutenberg hosts one of the largest collection of public domain e-books in the world. Let’s look at the Sherlock Holmes detective books written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Note that you must use files in a plain text format like .txt with AntConc - you can use a program like Microsoft Word to convert a document to .txt format if you need to. Now that we’ve loaded our texts into AntConc, we’re ready to analyze. The Collocate feature works like a search ...

As SI 643 get settled into its wintry night class routine, we started getting to know one another and framing some of the big questions of the course together. I loved hearing the many ways that my peers found “teaching”, “learning”, “libraries”, “data”, and “students/learners/patrons” meaningful. Some of these definitions certainly swirl around academic and public libraries, but not all! We all want to help folks learn and grow and connect with resources, but the spirit of librarianship doesn’t need to map literally onto a library, and I think that’s a big strength in a class like this one. I’m interested in what it will look like to become skillful in the craft of instruction. What moves a workshop or webinar from being merely informative to being transformative? As we discussed in class, to what extent can we approach our diverse work tasks with the spirit of an educator, or maybe an educator-librarian, and how does that change how we design, implement, and evaluate learning inter...

Hi! My name is Zoë WS and I'm a second-year MSI student (graduating in April 2018!) I've spent my time at UMSI mixing elements of data studies (my specialization is Information Analysis & Retrieval) and library studies. I currently work with Justin Joque in the Clark Library as part of the Digital Project Studio, which supports students and researchers in a variety of data-focused projects. You can view an example of a recent NASA Space Shuttle visualization project here . I studied anthropology in my undergrad studies (focusing on violence, mental illness, and Japan) and ended up serving with AmeriCorps for a year teaching basic computer classes at a library in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I loved the challenge of breaking digital literacies down to the basic elements of clicking and searching, and learned so much from the curiosity and insight and silliness of my adult learners. AmeriCorps set the trajectory for the rest of my studies and goals as a librarian and educator, ...