Sarah Houghton-Jan: Tech Training That Works for Anyone

Sarah Houghton-Jan, whose work as Digital Futures Manager for the San José Public Library and as author of the Librarian in Black blog has earned her justifiably large amounts of attention and praise, has produced a dream book that is well suited for audiences far beyond its stated target.

Technology Training in Libraries sparkles with Houghton-Jan’s well deserved reputation for jargon-free, plain-talking, and humorously honest help for readers: “…having staff members who are not adequately trained in technology trying to support library users is like having a cardboard egg carton holding up an SUV,” she suggests (p. 5) in a statement that could easily be applied to workers in many other organizations. She also provides at least a partial answer to a question I heard a few years ago: what can corporate knowledge management and training professionals learn from library and information science professionals, and vice versa? Plenty, if we read Technology Training in Libraries and don’t limit ourselves by applying the information solely to those who work in libraries.

Early on, for example, Houghton-Jan provides a list of “essential technology training topics in libraries” and other potential training topics—nearly all of which could just as easily be adapted within a nonprofit or commercial organization looking to develop a cutting-edge workforce (pp. 6-7). Employees in libraries are clearly not the only ones who need to master technology terminology; understand how to effectively use email, web browsers, and online search skills to the benefit of the customers they serve; and be able to avoid ergonomic problems caused by improper set-up of employees’ (and customers’) work stations. And the writer’s list of areas of future growth—cloud computing, surface computing, open source software development among them—are equally applicable and important to workplace learning and performance programs and knowledge managers in nearly any professional setting today.

She also focuses on and acknowledges common-sense elements that are often overlooked, including the importance of providing learner-centric training: “Ask yourself—how would attendees have a better learning experience?” (p. 9).

The remainder of the book is equally useful and well organized as she devotes pithy chapters to planning, implementing, marketing, establishing best practices for, and evaluating the delivery of effective technology training. She doesn’t skimp on the basics: she includes plenty of tips for how to develop a list of skills to be addressed through training (pp. 13-20); a suggested list of “five key elements to keep in mind” when deciding what to include in training (customer demand, organizational goals, immediate return on investment, training effectiveness, and consequences of not providing training—pp. 34-35); and suggestions on how to establish peer training and train the trainer programs (pp. 65-70).

Online training resources receive generous attention throughout the book, particularly on pages 80–86, and there’s even a brief description (p. 83) of an innovation in online delivery that I still remember fondly—the use of Skype as a delivery tool for a segment of the 2007 offering of the annual Future of Libraries conference sponsored by a local San Francisco Bay Area training consortium now known as the Pacific Library Partnership Staff Development Committee. That Skype session was described online at the time both by Houghton-Jan and her Skype co-presenter, Char Booth.

The extensive recommended resources listings and bibliography at the end of the book, furthermore, are icing on a well baked cake, leaving readers with plenty of useful resources—including several used as links in this summary of her work. Those in search of dessert as well as a substantial main course will find both in Technology Training in Libraries, and we all owe Houghton-Jan and her publisher a round of applause for making the information available in such a concise fashion (103 pages of text, followed by the additional resources already mentioned).

Technology, Trouble-shooting, and Seeking Creative Solutions: Wherefore Art Thou, Google Chat?

Having just finished reading Jaron Lanier’s good-natured rant against those who fall into the trap of mistakenly believing and acting as if technology is human (You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto), I caught myself falling into the trap.

Because I have been successfully using Google Chat as a tool for conducting interviews for writing projects as well as for delivering just-in-time learning, I’ve come to rely on it—which in and of itself is not a bad practice. The ability to type questions and receive written responses in a way that immediately produces a complete and printable transcript of interviews is a great way to assure accuracy and avoid misunderstandings.

It’s when it first began to let me down—note the insidious way the words “let me down” so easily sneak into this discourse, as if Google Chat were a friend instead of a sophisticated gadget—that I first felt the sense of betrayal usually reserved for sentient beings: “Oh, Google Chat, how could you let me down?” (Actually, the question was much more expletive-laden when it popped into my head, but there’s no need to be overly graphic here and offend both of you who are reading this.)

The problem began in the middle of an interview for the book Lori Reed and I are co-writing for ALA Editions. The colleague who was sitting across the country from me and responding to my typed questions seemed to be taking longer than usual to respond. After several moments of silence, I shifted my attention to an incoming call—which was, of course, from the interviewee to determine whether I had seen a response he had sent moments earlier. Realizing that our online conversation in the live chat box was showing up less than complete, we stayed on the phone as we attempted to continue, and soon realized that the onscreen version wasn’t conveying everything that was being stored in the transcript in our Gmail accounts. Relieved that we weren’t losing anything, but puzzled by the anomaly, we finished as quickly as we could, assumed that we had somehow angered the tech gods (clearly lower case deities), and soon went our separate ways. (An aside, out of fairness to Google Chat—see, there I go again, anthropomorphizing the tech tool; Lanier would be laughing at my plight if he could see me now—I should admit that the technology of fountain pens has failed me in the writing of the first draft of this piece; my pen just ran out of ink, forcing me to resort to the back-up technology of having a second fountain pen in hand. Let’s chalk it up to user error since I’m the one who forgot to refill the ink cartridge this morning, and return to the point of my own Lanierian rant.)

Returning to Google Chat a few days later for an interview with a different colleague, I warned the interviewee that we might need to use our (old technology) phones as a back-up if the earlier problem repeated itself. Which, of course, it did. With a vengeance.  About 30 minutes after we began, some of our transmissions stopped appearing in the live chat box, but continued to appear in the chat history. Then delays started occurring in the postings to the chat history—just a moment or two, but enough to be annoyingly disruptive. Then the chat history stopped picking up lines in no discernable pattern, but the live chat box retrieved some of what was missing from the transcript. If we hadn’t been laughing so much at our own plight, we probably would have wept. But we persevered by seeking the creative solution of combining the live chat, the incomplete transcript, and the phone conversation, and were lucky to eventually end up with the complete transcript we both needed.

This is where Lanier’s could have served as a voice of reason and good counsel if I had already been reading his book. I began turning to what he variously refers to as “the hive”—that faceless group of online collaborators whom we sometimes mistake for a single online intelligent entity rather than a loosely knit group of individuals contributing to an ongoing conversation—or  “cybernetic totalists,” or, more humanely, “the tribe.” I posted a brief description of the glitch and sought advice from others in a couple of very active discussion groups, but received no response. The hive, apparently, was asleep. I then tried to reach Google representatives online, and still had no success.

Turning to Yahoo! Messenger as an alternative, I at least was able to determine that my (non-sentient) computer was not preventing me from using any form of online chat as a way to continue my interviews. But I still haven’t completely resolved the problems Google Chat is causing. And I know Google Chat is not an enemy. Nor is it a friend. It just is. And I, apparently, am not a gadget. But I am a writer in search of solutions for the problems that the gadgets in my life present.

Now, back to the draft of that book in progress. With our without the gadgets.

Rework: Collaboration, Creativity, and the Spirit of Wikinomics

The commitment to improvisation, collaboration, and sharing that runs through all successful workplace learning and performance efforts is at the heart of Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s recently released book, Rework, a wonderful collection of very short essays about how we need to rework much of what we currently do.

It’s a book very much of its moment as those preferring Web 2.0-style collaborations and those who feel territorial about everything they produce attempt to find common ground. The writers suggest that we avoid the complexities and turf wars which so often hold many of us back from achievements we might otherwise produce if we weren’t trying to do too much, trying to recreate what others are doing rather than pursuing our own vision on behalf of those we serve, and allowing ourselves to “obsess over tools instead of what [we]’re going to do with those tools” (p. 87).

Readers familiar with Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams’ Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, will find themselves on familiar ground here as they encounter Fried and Hansson’s suggestion to “sell your by-products” (pp. 90-91)—a suggestion rooted in the idea that if we find applications for everything we work on rather than focusing only on what we set out to do and leaving untapped resources as waste material, we become more effective at what we do. Trainers, for example, might take parts of something already finished and find a new use for it, as Gwinnett County Public Library Training Manager Jay Turner did by using video clips from a live staff recognition event to create a new half-hour virtual staff day video which more than 90 percent of staff voluntarily watched after he posted it online for them; Turner found another way to rework the material by writing, for other trainers, about the tools he used to produce the piece.

Another familiar aspect of the book is the light and playful approach the writers take—which also carries over to the promotional videos posted on their website for Rework. The simple graphics which are interspersed with the text throughout the book seem to take a page—or many pages—from Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin and Unfolding the Napkin, which help trainers and other presenters see that we don’t have to display the artistic skills of Michelangelo or Rafael to be able to reach others. The use of the graphics and the stylistic device of providing short sections on dozens of interrelated themes—most pieces are no longer than a tightly written blog posting and have the same sense of informality—make the book a pleasure to peruse and easy to absorb. Which means it again offers a great model for trainers who are tackling complex topics and trying to find ways to break the complexity into small, digestible chunks.

It is not the content that is revolutionary here. Reminders to improvise (pp. 18-20), produce something tangible rather than engaging in endless discussions about producing something tangible (pp. 33-45), undertake a few achievable projects rather than trying to pursue every possibility and ending up completing none (p. 83), ask what problems we are solving through our undertakings (p. 100), and learn by doing rather than always trying to duplicate what others have accomplished (pp. 134-136) simply take us back to basics we should already know but all too often set aside in a frenzy of trying to respond to all constituents without serving any of them effectively. And if we can relearn and rework some of these lessons, just imagine what the learners we assist will gain.

Building Buzz: Microblogging, Learning, and Atlantic Monthly (Part 2 of 2)

“Many…won’t be able to simply pick up where they left off when growth returns—they’ll need to retrain and find new careers,” Deputy Managing Editor Don Peck tells us in his thought-provoking, in-depth, and beautifully written article “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America” which appears in the March 2010 issue of The Atlantic and on the magazine’s online site.

There will be new jobs, he predicts—“But many will have different skill requirements than the old ones.”

Which is awful news for those who thought they were finished learning after they graduated from high school. Or college. Or finished earning a Master’s degree. Or a second or third Master’s degree. But for trainer-teacher-learners, this is nothing if not an absolute calling to rise to the challenges of our profession.

It’s been clear to a lot of us that learning has been a life-long necessity for many years now. That’s why we spend so much time continuing to hone our own skills, attend workshops, and occasionally return to more formal academic programs at times when our predecessors were reaching the peaks of their careers or even winding down in anticipation of retirement.

What Peck does masterfully is take a relatively long view of jobs and joblessness stretching from the Great Depression to the current devastating recession, catching us up on sources ranging from Mirra Komarovsky—a sociologist whose work on the Depression included The Unemployed Man and His Family—to Gary Burtless from the Brookings Institution, who is quoted as saying that “every time someone’s laid off now, they need to start over. They don’t even know what industry they’ll be in next.” And in the course of his explorations, Peck indirectly reminds us that the need for first-rate trainer-teacher-learners is far from limited to times of economic distress: “the recession has merely intensified a long-standing trend,” he writes. “Broadly speaking, the service sector, which employs relatively more women, is growing, while manufacturing, which employs relatively more men, is shrinking.” If we’re not there to provide training and support for those in what we all-too-dispassionately call “transition,” we’re missing a life-changing opportunity to make significant contributions to the communities we serve.

Peck seems to be thinking globally when he concludes that we “are living through a slow-motion social catastrophe, one which could stain our culture and weaken our nation for many, many years to come. We have a civic—and indeed a moral—responsibility to do everything in our power to stop it now, before it gets worse.” And if those of us with training-teaching-learning skills take that message to heart, we can be part of a much needed solution.

Which brings us back to the experience that inspired this two-part article: by continually educating ourselves, exploring new tools which become available to us, and sharing what we learn through online social networking tools including Google Buzz, we contribute to and help develop the communities of learning we so desperately need.

Building Buzz: Microblogging, Learning, and Atlantic Monthly (Part 1 of 2)

Being the pseudo-troglodyte that I am, I have not joined Facebook, Twitter, or any number of social networking services that friends and colleagues enjoy on a daily basis. On the other hand, I’ve found LinkedIn, Ning, and a few other tools to be tremendously effective for what I value: using online tools as tools rather than letting them demand minutes and hours I simply cannot spare.

Google, this week, shifted my thinking a bit by pushing a new free and easy-to-use add-on into my Gmail account: Google Buzz. It turns out to be an interesting variation on the theme of microblogging a la Twitter and LinkedIn updates by allowing participants to connect to each other very easily through the posting of short messages back and forth over a shared network.

What really drew me to experiment with Buzz over the first few days of its existence was the realization that I could view—or not view—Buzz entries as time and desire allowed. Friends who use Twitter tell me that if I don’t want to check for updates frequently and respond rapidly, there’s really no point in using Twitter; Buzz, on the other hand, approaches me as I love being approached: it’s available, but not demanding.

Twitter, on its own website, bills itself as “a real-time information network powered by people all over the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now…[w]hether it’s breaking news, a local traffic jam, a deal at your favorite shop or a funny pick-me-up from a friend.” The result is that users post an overwhelming amount of personal information which can quickly drown readers in minutiae.

Facebook clearly provides a playfully social gathering place for people looking for the online equivalent of the “third place” away from home and work that Ray Oldenburg described so well in The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community more than 20 years ago. With the online Facebook community comes an expectation that responses from community members will be swift and plentiful.

LinkedIn offers a relatively unobtrusive business- and career-oriented variation on the theme, serving as a way to “find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals.” Controlling the flow of incoming information is easy to manage, which is one of its most attractive features for me.

And now we reach Buzz, which attempts to provide a way to “start conversations about the things you find interesting,” according to the introductory video posted by Google. It’s already clear that much of the information overload seen through other microblogging tools is possible, and it’s equally clear that its success as a valuable information source depends on how we all use it.

While it’s far too soon to know how it will play out, I have to admit that I’ve already been delighted with a few of the results. While several people are posting exactly the sort of personal ephemeral updates which keep me away from Twitter and Facebook, a few are exploring the possibilities of sharing useful resources along the lines of meeting notices and professional print and online resources we might otherwise overlook.

UC Berkeley E-Learning Librarian Char Booth, for example, posted a link providing information on her forthcoming book, Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning: Instructional Literacy for Library Educators right at a time when I had been exploring and writing about the need for more reflection in learning. Writer-instructor-librarian Meredith Farkas initiated an exchange soliciting recommendations for “a really good book (or books) with concrete suggestions for engaging library instruction activities.” And ALA Learning colleague and co-writer Lori Reed posted a link to “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America” in the March 2010 issue of The Atlantic, a fascinating article with interesting repercussions for all of us involved in training-teaching-learning.

So I’ve been Buzzed. And I’ve already absorbed that wonderful article from The Atlantic. And am now ready to Buzz others with thoughts about what that article suggests to the trainer-teacher-learners among us.

Next: What the Atlantic Article Suggests for Trainer-Teacher-Learners

Viral Learning (Just in Time)

Forget about viral marketing, the contemporary version of word-of-mouth promotion combined with Web 2.0 social networking tools.

Let’s popularize a relatively new, rarely encountered phrase—“viral learning”—and acknowledge San Francisco Public Library Access Services Manager Marti Goddard for unintentionally providing an example of how easily we can use this to the benefit of those working in libraries.

The story begins with a lunch Marti and I had. We were talking about articles on the topic of “Training, Story, and PowerPoint”; Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points; and how to make training and learning sticky. I had read both editions of Atkinson’s book, was using the ideas with Infopeople webcast and webinar presenters, and was about to do my first bullet-less PowerPoint presentation. Marti had not read a word of Atkinson’s book, but was intrigued by what she was hearing.

When we met again a week later for lunch, she proudly told me she had tried a bullet-less PowerPoint presentation and was delighted to receive enthusiastic, unsolicited comments about her slides from those who were present—which leads us to the idea of viral learning and how easy it is for anyone working in a library to put it to use. As Marti demonstrated, it is not difficult to informally exchange word-of-mouth descriptions of lessons we have learned so that they are immediately adapted, applied, and shared at the moment of need with others who might repeat the process in a quickly expanding group of learner-trainer-teachers.

This really is no different than the experience I had as a result of taking Michele Mizejewski’s “Web 2.0: A Hands-On Introduction for Library Staff” Infopeople workshop. I knew very little, at that point, about wikis, blogs, or RSS feeds. It wasn’t long before I was using Netvibes and iGoogle to read RSS feeds; writing articles on training and Web. 2.0 for two different blogs; experimenting with a rudimentary form of wikis with colleagues in Canada by using Google Docs; and, most importantly, engaging in viral learning by describing my successes (and failures) to others who might pass this learning-training on to others in our libraries and beyond.

Let the viral learning spread!

N.B.: An earlier version of this article was originally posted on Infoblog.

E-learning, Google Chat, and Innovation

E-learning, as I wrote in an article for the eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions Magazine, is growing rapidly both in innovativeness and through its unique contributions to the entire field of training-teaching-learning. And it is becoming easy to try even for those with the fewest possible resources and only the most limited knowledge of how Web 2.0 (online social networking) tools work.

An experiment with University of Nevada, Las Vegas Learning Technologies Specialist Michael Wilder and his “Interactive Media Design” course for aspiring journalists in October 2009 offers just one example of how we can more effectively use Web 2.0 tools which are right in front of us. I had, throughout the year, been experimenting with colleagues and interviewees to use Google Chat as a way of conducting interviews for articles and academic research papers I was writing. What was most appealing to me was that the typed chat format produced usable transcripts of the interviews—a tremendous time-saver and a wonderful way to assure that quotes were accurate. Wilder, who had been impressed by the results after completing one of those interviews with me, later contacted me about the possibility of interviewing me via Google Chat for his onsite students so they could see and incorporate the technique into their journalism toolkits.

A brief chat about the project led us to carry it one huge step forward: we decided to treat the session as a formal e-learning lesson for the university students while demonstrating the ease and efficacy of online chat in reporting and other forms of writing. With a copy of the course syllabus in hand and with access to online postings made by students and some of the other guest lecturers Wilder had attracted, I worked with him to create a brief, prepared written introduction to the topic.

On the day of the class, I sat at my desk in San Francisco and arrived, via chat, in the Las Vegas campus classroom a few minutes before the session began. Wilder let me know when he had finished his face-to-face introduction, and that’s when I began transferring the prepared text, paragraph by paragraph, into the live chat window and sending it in a way that gave students a chance to read the words, piece by piece, on a screen in their classroom. That part of the process took less than five minutes, and we then opened it up to a live question-and-answer session during which Wilder typed in the students’ questions and they saw my responses as quickly as I could type and send them back. What was meant to be a 20-minute experiment lasted nearly an hour.

What followed was even better: Wilder posted the transcript of the chat and encouraged the students to post reactions on the class blog. Our online synchronous learning session continued asynchronously for several days, and one of the most encouraging responses came from a student who said she had already used what she had learned to complete an online interview via Skype.

It’s clear that we are moving far beyond the days when e-learning was comprised of little more than the posting of face-to-face lessons and learning resources onto a static website. With a little creativity and a lot of planning, we can easily use resources including online typed chat, Skype’s conferencing (and typed chat) capabilities, and even a LinkedIn discussion group created especially as an asynchronous online meeting place for learners in a particular course or workshop—an idea explored by my colleague Pat Wagner—to deliver learning that is creative, engaging, effective, and memorable.

Training to Blog Effectively

Because we can often learn by reaching outside of our usual professional and social circles for ideas, those of us interested in more effectively using blogging in our work have a lot to gain by skimming David Risley’s 49-page “Six Figure Blogger Blueprint” (available as a free download on the upper right-hand corner of his blog site).

While Risley writes much of his publication for those interested in making money from blogging, he offers a first-rate blogger’s primer that hits its stride with a “deciding what to blog about (market selection)” section starting on page 13 of the document. His initial question takes us back to basic principles: “Can you help your reader solve real problems that exist in the real world?” We’ve seen this principle at work recently on ALA Learning through postings by Peter Bromberg, Stephanie Zimmerman, Jay Turner, Marianne Lenox, and others; faithful readers of others blogs written by and for staff of libraries and nonprofit organizations can confirm that they are drawn to those that help them solve problems they are facing or are about to face.

“Focus on how your information is going to benefit the lives of your readers,” Risley continues, and his admonition serves as a great reminder to all writers that the difference between a well read, helpful blog and one that collects virtual dust for lack of readers is that critically important attention given to readers rather than to the writer’s ego. If we remember that it’s not all about us—although, in the best of worlds, our own writer’s voice becomes part of the value we provide—we take our blogging to a level which attracts and serves readers well and builds connections between them and the organizations we serve.

Risley does a great job of addressing the mechanics of effective blogging, and he includes suggestions to help inexperienced writers overcome writer’s block. Reminding his audience members that they attract and serve readers by posting on a consistent and predictable basis, he suggests writing in batches—preparing several postings in one sitting so that we are writing ahead of deadline rather than on deadline; maintaining an idea file which keeps the flow of articles going; and avoiding the trap of overthinking—“this is a blog post we’re talking about here, not a novel!”

His “step-by-step blog launch plan and roadmap” (beginning on p. 41) reminds all of us to stay focused on our blog’s target audience; set a cohesive blog theme; create a few very valuable articles at the beginning to lay the foundations for a successful blog; and use social networking tools to effectively extend the reach of all you do. And above all, keep writing.

For those attracted to his voice and helpful hints, he has also posted “50 Rapid Fire Tips for PowerBlogging,” a fine supplement to “Six Figure Blogger Blueprint.”

“The idea is that you use a blog to build up an audience and build relationships with your readers,” he reminds us (p. 33), and that’s a theme that resonates loudly and clearly with all workplace learning and performance professionals as we strive to create effective communities of learning and provide measurable results for the organizations with which we work.

Web 2.0 Best Practices: When Author Events Lead to Library Collections

SOPACs—Social Online Public Access Catalogs—are expanding so quickly that yesterday’s dream (or nightmare, depending on your point of view) is on the verge of becoming today’s routine.

Take, for instance, the interactions between library staff, library users, library catalogs, and libraries themselves in one small way: through a library-sponsored author event. One year ago, before John Blyberg unveiled what he dubbed a SOPAC at Ann Arbor District Library and then moved over to Darien (Connecticut) Library, the library user might have learned of the event through a flyer, a library newsletter, a listing in a local newspaper, word of mouth, or by searching an online calendar of events provided by a library. The interactivity of SOPACs like the one currently in use at Nashville Public Library is inspiring additional connections between library users, OPACs, and websites.

Visitors to the Library’s website are able to see a brief and visually attractive listing of a few featured events. If they choose the link for a specific author event, they jump to a description of the event, can click on a link to have an email reminder sent to them shortly before the event takes place, and can use additional links to find other “Books & Writers” events which include access to the Library’s collections (note added 11/30/07: library catalog link is to the left of the events column). Trying the initial “Books and Writers” link myself, I discovered that a documentary film about Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam and the writing of his final book will be held at the Library on December 11—news compelling enough to make me wish I could be in Nashville that evening.

The same Library home page can help readers make even more direct connections to the online catalog: following a link from a brief news item about novelist Ann Patchett receiving the 2007 Nashville Public Library Literary Award leads to a detailed press release which allows readers to check on the availability, through Nashville’s online catalog, of any of her works which are owned by the Library.

Nashville Public Library Public Relations staff was the driving force behind this innovation, according to Library Automation Specialist Jamen McGranahan. Library staff worked together to develop the links between the pages and Nashville’s WebPAC. The winners, of course, are the Library’s users—and any others who decide to implement their own versions of what Nashville has accomplished.

This item was originally posted on November 20,  2007 on Infoblog at http://infoblog.infopeople.org.

Michael Wesch, YouTube, and a Vision of Students Today

Less than a year ago, most of us would have asked “Michael who?” if someone mentioned Michael Wesch. That was before the Kansas State University Anthropology professor posted a short video, “The Machine Is Us/ing Us,” on YouTube in January 2007 and became one of 22 winners of the 2007 Wired magazine Rave Award a few months later for his exploration of how Web 2.0 is changing the way we see the world of information and ourselves.

The number of people who have watched the video has increased exponentially. It has now been viewed 3,610,519 times, so Wesch’s posting of two new pieces within the last week—including one on how students view the learning process, “A Vision of Students Today”—has already attracted over 140,000 viewers. More importantly, Wesch and his students in his Digital Ethnography project, are making us sit up and pay attention not only to what is happening in contemporary classrooms, but how students are discussing it: with an enchanting and poignant burst of creativity.

His work is a great example of everything that is right about Web 2.0: the use of shareware to quickly produce thought-provoking pieces which challenge us to reconsider much of what we know; the open sharing of what he and his students are producing; and an invitation to join them as they build a new community through the Digital Ethnography Working Group and its blog.

An interview with blogger John Battelle offers insight into how Wesch works and reveals that, for “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” it took “about 3 days to put the video together, but of course it took months of thinking and research.” The Digital Ethnography site at Kansas State University includes items such as his posting on October 18, 2007—a discussion of the immediate reaction to “A Vision of Students Today” and an accompanying piece on how we obtain and process information, “Information R/evolution.”

Then there is the work itself. It’s edgy. Emotional. Controversial. Captivating. And it inspires reactions, as evidenced by the more than 200 responses on the YouTube site and the growing number of posts on Digital Ethnography. Wesch, on that site, claims it “is currently the most blogged about video in the blogosphere,” and it’s not hard to see why. The students featured in the video tell us what—and how much—they read (books vs. websites), write (term papers vs. emails), and listen to; how much time they study every day; and how many hours they need per day to accomplish all they set out to do.

“Vision” is about far more than one group’s experiences in school: it makes all of us who are involved in training think about what we accomplish, how we accomplish it, and what we might be doing differently in a world where the time it takes for lessons learned to become obsolete diminishes year by year. (One student suggests that by the time she graduates, she will be accepting a job which doesn’t even exist at the time she is earning her degree.)

The good news for trainers and other educators is that there isn’t going to be a lack of work for us anytime soon. The even better news for those of who like to learn is that there’s no end in sight for that part of the process, either—particularly when we have people like Michael Wesch and his students around to teach us.

This item was originally posted on October 22, 2007 on Infoblog at http://infoblog.infopeople.org.