Presentations are over! I talked about library resources that can be used in the classroom last week at EOSET 2007. It was at RMC which was cool. Never been over there before. Nice old buildings. Probably older than some of the older buildings on the Queen's campus. Very impressive talk by Major Workman on teaching, technology, policy, and the future. Very inspiring and refreshing, and of course, candid. It is the military you know!

Also a great description of a new automated assignment/testing system for some professor of math... can't remember his name right now. (Check on the EOSET program, you'll find it.) Anyway, it was about this system that randomizes rather complex math problems so that students can take "quizzes" with as many questions as they'd like, as many times as they'd like. It actually turned out that students were doing like ten times as much work and loving it! Pretty cool.

And in other news, my coworker is having twins. Don't know whether they are boys or girls or what, or identical or not, but that's pretty cool. Actually, it's really old news but I haven't mentioned on here yet so it's news to you! And my sister-in-law is apparently pregnant. Babies everywhere!

Still looking for another job for when this temporary contract runs out. I spent a lot of time today working on my resume and cover letter for the one I'd like the most (gotta apply soon) and I've got to work on applying to a bunch of others as well. Wish me luck. Again. Oh boy.

Labels: family, librarianship, work

Watched The Agenda again tonight. It was one of those episodes that had me almost yelling at the TV! LOL It was about the fairness of publicly funding, in full, the Catholic schools in Ontario. Two Catholic representatives and the CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress "argued" for inclusion of others faiths in this funding, and two other panelists on the side of having only one school system. I have to agree with having only one school system, for several reasons:

1. As the show asked and everyone there answered, there is an unfairness to having one belief system's education funded by our tax dollars, and all others given little or nothing. There are only two ways of resolving this: fund all equally (and I wrote about this at length on The Agenda's blog entry for this part of the show) or fund nothing but the non-religious public system.
2. As was also mentioned on the show, have separate schools, can only result in segregation and increased cultural mistrust and misunderstanding. Prejudice exists, in my mind, mainly due to lack of understanding and therefore wild assumptions and therefore fear and hatred. Although the gentleman from the London District Catholic School Board pointed out that religious schools regularly teach about other cultures and about tolerance and understanding, the only real way to see the similarities between us and respect the differences is to experience them. All the reading and teaching in the world can't make up for two culturally different children giggling behind the teacher's back together, sharing their lunches together, or eating paste together! LOL
3. And finally, my reason for many important things: why is it necessary at all? I don't see why Catholicism would need to teach their children math in the "Catholic way". Is Jewish science better than Buddhist science? Do Hindus believe history is fundamentally different than Muslims? Perhaps in interpretation yes, but in terms of facts, no. Yes, these different interpretations and viewpoints ought to be taught, but not to the exclusion of all other interpretations and viewpoints. In fact, that's probably the most important reason to teach about interpretations and viewpoints of certain facts, so that children learn that different ones exist.

Labels: thoughts

Today, I attended the second and last day of the Cross-Faculty Teaching Forum conference that I presented at yesterday. (Check out my abstract in the list: A3 on this list) Informative, inspiring and interesting. And it brought me into Goodes Hall, a very nicely reworked building that I've never been in on campus. (I'll put my materials up here somewhere when I get a chance...)

And I may have helped save 400 lives yesterday... Just a regular day in the life of a reference librarian. But seriously, it's possible. When I came to relieve my colleague at the desk, she had just received a request to look up a non-profit foundation based in Ontario, working in Columbia, by the name of "Child & Youth of the Future". I took over and scoured all the foundation-related directories that we have, plus called over to Stauffer (the humanities library) to get them to do the same. Nothing. I also checked the Canada Revenue Agency website which has a searchable database of charities registered with them, which this foundation would probably have to be. Not the easiest search function I've ever used, but nothing there either. Calling back, I told the info-requester that I had found nothing in the main resources that such an institution should be in if it existed, so, it's unlikely that it did. He told me about the offer a group going by this name and description gave to 400 students in Columbia: free university education. Very elaborately set up: recruiting local trusted figures to help pass on the message, tours, t-shirts, some free cellphones, etc. Before they were taken away to a university where they were to stay the night, something interfered, and some sort of police involvement developed. Nothing very clear, I don't know how the person contacting us was involved, or whether any of this ever really happened, but scary nonetheless. But apparently a tragic ending avoided. And I helped. Whew.

Labels: librarianship, work

Here's some sites that I found out about through Marylaine Block's "Neat New Stuff I Found This Week":

• LibSite: A Recommendation Service for Library-related Websites
  http://libsite.org/
  Reviews of interesting and important web resources for librarians; feel free to add your own recommendations.
• NPR Podcasts Directory
  http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php
  This 2007 Webby and People's Voice award-winner includes over 450 podcasts from member radio stations on a wide range of topics - Car Talk, Speaking of Pets, The 90-Second Naturalist, Sports with Frank DeFord, GeekSpeak, and more. Browse by topic, title, or provider.
• Reading Stack at Flickr
  http://www.flickr.com/groups/readingstack/
  Here's a fun meme to spread: take a photo of the pile of books you're hoping to get around to reading. Then, once you've finished one from the stack, post a comment on it.
  

Labels: internet, librarianship, reading

OMG. I am a mass of aching flesh and fatigue. Not only have I been riding my bike back and forth to work everyday, but today I also rode over to RMC today to check out their library and test my proxy access for the conference I'm presenting at soon: EOSET 2007. Woot!

And to top it all off, I insanely cut the lawn yesterday after work (it needed it... neighbourhood children were missing) and I transplanted, about a billion day lilies. Ok, it wasn't a billion and it was only a few feet away but they grow in one solid mass of bulbs (I first spelled it "blubs" and really considered leaving it that way) and go pretty deep, though not as deep as I feared, so thank you Day Lily God (or Goddess, probably). I put them all under this evergreen we have in the back yard, as they're the only things insane enough to grow under there. And it gives me more room to plant some REAL plants: tomatoes, carrots, onions maybe... Which will be even more work outside... What do I have, a death wish?!? LOL I don't even like the outdoors all that much. Gawd.

Hey, I can't remember whether I mentioned that I submitted an article to the Queen's Gazette a while ago. I'm trying to publish as much as I can, and it also fulfilled my final requirement for my Focus on Foundations teaching certificate. Sweet. Two-fer.

Labels: health, work

Tonight's "The Agenda" was about what we're going to argue about if/once the concepts of left and right are no longer on the table. Pretty interesting. But most of the discussion, rightly so, was actually based on what each panelist thought of the concepts of left and right. I don't really think any of them really got it. I think left v right is a little more basic and fundamental than government involvement v hands-off/minimal government. It's more like this, I think: The "right" sees the best outcomes coming naturally (or at least potentially naturally) out of much of what we do when left to our own devices. That human activities generally even themselves out to take care of the problems of the world. The "left" on the other hand feel that there is too much that falls through the cracks when humans act naturally, and that we have to act specifically to correct these problems, to help those who need it, and that aren't being helped by the others acting naturally. I think both of these extremes are true at times, depending on the situation: human processes do tend to be generally good and effective and self-regulating, that sometimes careless meddling can do more harm than good, but that it's too easy to be caught up in the momentum and miss the flaws in our systems, that we have to tweak the machinery and prod certain people to make it all work a little better.

What do you think?

Labels: thoughts

Rode my bike to work yesterday AND today. Whew! It's been a while, obviously, since I've done that and although yesterday wasn't too bad, it was pretty gruesome today. The second day was much worse than the first. But everyone's telling me, "Oh, it's so good for you, " "Oh, you'll be in such good shape," and "Oh, you'll have muscles comin' out your eyeballs!"... Ok, maybe not the last one... LOL And that's all true, it is good for me and cheaper and better for the environment. But it'll all be for nothing if it kills me!

I like riding to work from where we are. I don't really ride on the main/busy streets very much, and I even get to ride by the river that runs through the middle of Kingston which is very calming and beautiful. I wish I could find our digital camera... I want to be taking more pictures of these kinds of things!

Labels: health