Librarian qualities/traits/skills

Librarian Wanted - these are a number of 'drawings'/'icons'/ill conceived and poorly rendered daubs I made when trying to list the qualities, traits and skills  librarians should possess. Perhaps it should be the person spec or job advert for the next librarian vacancy?  - though I'd probably be inundated with applicants as librarians demonstrate these qualities daily throughout the globe. Something I was reminded of when attending LILAC 13  in Manchester earlier this week 300+ delegates from 20+ countries demonstrating vital, imaginative, passionate solutions - congratulations profession I am in awe.


 

 

Print your Library?

An audacious inspired plan to print an endless Möbius house - is reported in inhabitat.com. Dutch Architects group Universe Architecture plan to build/print an 'Endless' Möbius-Inspired House Using Giant 3D Printer. http://inhabitat.com/dutch-architects-to-build-endless-mobius-inspired-house-using-giant-3d-printer/ …

 "One surface folded in an endless möbius band. Floors transform into ceilings, inside into outside." I am not certain if it even needs a door.

Using the printers of Italian inventor Enrico Dini - an incredible inventor who is also working on constructing the tallest printed sculpture in existence, working with Foster + Partners and the European Space Agency on a programme to colonise the moon, solidifying a sand dune in the desert, and printing the closest thing to an actual house: a small Italian dwelling known as a trullo.

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20120216-the-man-who-prints-houses-documentary-about-enrico-dini-and-his-heart-and-soul-in-3d-printing-buildings.html

So will we be printing libraries in the future? I love the idea of an endless library - like Borges' infinite library and just like its content it is itself printed - so meta...

Open University Innovation Report no.1

The Open University have just published Innovation Report no.1 from the Institute of Educational Technology. Its purpose  ‘to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation ‘ ‘to provoke major shifts in educational practice in post school education’ http://www.open.ac.uk/personalpages/mike.sharples/Reports/Innovating_Pedagogy_report_July_2012.pdf

CITATION 

Sharples, M., McAndrew, P., Weller, M., Ferguson, R., FitzGerald, E., Hirst, T., Mor,

Y., Gaved, M. and Whitelock, D. (2012). Innovating Pedagogy 2012: Open University

Innovation Report 1. Milton Keynes: The Open University

Providing a top ten in order of immediacy and timescale it’s a useful summary of near future educational pedagogies/technologies. It has similarities with the NMC Horizon Report (I sit on the advisory board for this) http://www.nmc.org/publications/horizon-report-2012-higher-ed-edition.

The Top Ten are:

1. New pedagogy for e-books:   massively shared, adaptive and dynamic books – with the growth of tablets this could and should become mainstream – ebooks don’t need to be like books.
2. Publisher-led short courses:  offered by publishers either in affiliation or independently – new publisher role in education, could educational publishers even compete with Universities or collaborate to deliver accredited courses – a proprietorial MOOC?
3. Assessment for learning:  Assessment supporting the process of learning, not just measuring its outcomes. Instant feedback on learning followed by supporting and facilitated learning – in conjunction with no.2 above potentially a powerful model.
4. Badges to accredit learning: a way of accrediting non-formal learning.  I would have liked a badge for my Introduction to AI from Stanford MOOC.
5. MOOCs:  Massive open online courses – Already gaining credence – see @ekcragg http://bundlr.com/b/moocs and https://www.coursera.org/
6. Rebirth of academic publishing:  open review, low threshold for acceptance, replacing peer review selection with post-publishing commentary. Publishers 2.0 - publishers appear to be doing well out of this report!
7. Seamless learning: when a person experiences a continuity of learning across a combination of locations, times, technologies or social settings. This could be transitional from school to college to University  or across libraries, across Universities, private providers and active learning groups –part of the 85% of learning which doesn’t take place in the classroom?
8. Learning analytics:  the collection, analysis and reporting of large datasets about learners and their contexts in order to improve learning and the environments in which learning takes place –this also made the Horizon Report 2012
9. Personal inquiry learning:  The active exploration of an open question, with the student taking ownership of the inquiry process. Been around for a while see Edelson et al. (1999) but you can see how technology can industrialise this approach
10. Rhizomatic learning:  This invokes the metaphor of a rhizome, a plant stem which sends out roots and shoots that allow the plant to propagate itself through organic growth into the surrounding habitat. Seen as a model for the construction of knowledge, suggests the interconnectedness of ideas as well as boundless exploration across many fronts from different starting points.  Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. It seems to me that this is part of the Connectivism/Networks debate and the work of Steven Downes (see OLDaily or on Half an Hour)  and the last word from Howard Rheingold on Rhizomes http://www.connectivism.ca/

‘Rhizomes then, are effective for describing the structure and form of knowledge and learning – bumpy, lumpy, organic, and adaptive. But they fail to describe how learning occurs, how novelty happens, and how a rhizome becomes more than a replication of itself’ 

Leadership, traits, knowledge, behaviours

Reflecting recently on a coaching course I've just completed - I started to make a list of the leadership, traits, knowledge and behaviours I need to hone or at least be cognisant of - I've counted 28, its a neat number 4x7 - possible to memorize?
Here's my 28....

1. Discipline Knowledge - librarianship, ICT - to  have authority on your profession and continue to develop and pursue this  
2. Institutional Knowledge - know the culture, the traits, the norms of your organisation, the influencers and activists
3. Planning and decision making - you'll always need to do this
4. Financial - essential in order to understand what you and your team provide, cost, ROI -getting more
5. Team Mgt - always working on this
6. Emotional intelligence - a skill all should develop
7. Diversity - the world isnt in your shape
8. Strategy- you don't have to be Machiavelli but you need to strategise
9. Developing people - really rewarding to see people succeed
10. Talent Mgt - there are always people with talents which should be encouraged
11. Customer Focus - its why we are here
12. Negotiation and influence - all action is negotiation and compromise
13. creativity and innovation - always question - how do artists do it?
14. work life balance
15. leadership theories - so many - its an art though not a science
16. Corporate social responsibility 
17. recruitment and induction - getting the right people is critical
18. Communication in the organisation
19. Strategic HR - need to know the what, why and how
20. Interpersonal Communication
21. project Mgt
22. Coaching and Mentoring - powerful 
23. personal performance - know thyself
24. Change Mgt - 
25. performance mgt
26. Career mgt
27. Knowledge Mgt
28. Internal Consultancy - use others' skills and knowledge

I spoke at a speakers4schools http://www.speakers4schools.org/ session 18/7/12 - my subject - the next web - the year 10 pupils really engaged with the session - fascinated by the web of things, the volume of traffic out there on the web -ably demonstrated with the mesmerising Gary's Social Media Count http://www.personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-count/, following tracking data, and looking further into the future - towards the technological singularity. This most connected generation were information and digitally literate, asking incisive questions - it was a great thing to witness. I asked them to remember to programme Asimov's 3 laws into their future work.... http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/robotics.html

The State of Digital Education - infographic

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

The New Next: 2011 Tech Influencers Predictions by TrendsSpotting

Tech Influencers predictions in 140 characters exploring emerging themes and patterns in technology, social media and mobile communications. The slides include ideas such as the 'the internet of cars'- we spend a long time in them - perhaps they should be connected, smart homes and screens everywhere - The internet of the bed - we spend a long time in bed - if we are lucky and maybe these should be connected, other areas covered - real time geo updates which are accurate and credible, the growth of app stores for our software, tablets replacing laptops, gamification -pervasive gaming - not just for games, price war on ebooks, adoption of social and context aware analyst tools, video ubiquity - 'every company is a media company', cloudy later - more clouds -outstripping institutional delivery, alternatively cloud bursts - the cloud slowing down -

The New Next: 2011 Tech Influencers Predictions by TrendsSpotting

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