Community College Librarian

This is one of the (in)famous Book Cart Drill Teams at the ALA Annual conference this year. Why, oh why doesn’t this band (Haunted Love) have their tracks on Itunes? I want this song! Oh, and this is a pretty brill demonstration of just how hysterical librarians can be. At least to other librarians. Who cares about any one else though?

The GMAC people won their law suit against ScoreTop. They won 2.something million dollars, the list of all the poor schmucks that used the ScoreTop service as a study tool for the GMAT, plus rights to the ScoreTop domain name. Now GMAC is going to cancel the GMAT scores of some of the people who used ScoreTop because they supposedly cheated on the test. Business schools are saying they will expel current students and not admit applicants who used ScoreTop. Why?? Because ScoreTop used “live” questions–questions that are currently being used in the GMAT as opposed to other study guides that use retired GMAT questions. How did ScoreTop acquire these questions? No one is really sure!

Simple: GMAC should be out of business…how can a company who delivers an exam relied upon by so many graduate schools have such lousy security? Why are they still in business? Secondly, its not like the students wrote down these “live” questions on their hands or made a crib sheet out of them when they sat for the GMAT. Hello, GMAC and all the schools who are considering expelling students who purchased a study guide on the internet: welcome to the last two decades, for God’s sake. These students purchased and used an Internet study guide! This is not plagiarism. At least they cared enough about getting into grad school that they bothered to study! How about getting rid of these ridiculous graduate tests altogether and just relying on a student’s academic background and their application materials instead? How about interviewing students for admission? How about stopping the kickback scam that is the GRE, LSAT, GMAT, etc.? I’ve been told by more than one PhD program that they only use the GRE scores as “tie breakers” when they have more applications than available slots. One told me that they don’t even look at the scores, wink wink. Some programs have stopped requiring these exams and I congratulate them. Every person who loses an opportunity in life like grad school because of GMAC’s incompetence should file their own lawsuit.

wordle, originally uploaded by notmarian.

This is one of my most beloved poems in cloud form.  Can you guess what it is?

Wordle is my new favorite toy and has my seal of “cool tool” approval! http://wordle.net/

COD on Edu3, originally uploaded by notmarian.

Here’s the new parcels we’ve just acquired! We’ll still have Tintern and the Clouds Classroom, the Community Colleges space plus a garden of scientists, a copyright and intellectual property in VW’s experience and, tentatively, a William Blake immersion. Oh, and lots and lots of room for COD faculty and staff to learn/play! Stoked!

2nd Anniversary, originally uploaded by HVX Silverstar.

Alright, so, I pole danced for charity…I am proud of it! (well, not really, but it was for the Libraries in Second Life–an excellent cause). Its amazing just how far librarians will go to support their own!  Dancing with me is Rocky Vallejo, who runs “Imagination Island” a wonderful resource for children’s lit librarians.

I’ve never presented to such a large group in SL (35!) and am still clueless as to why so many would want to hear about my work. I am heartened that there is so much interest in the work of the community college in virtual worlds. I am totally motivated to write that next paper now. The first one is out to the publishers (“An Avatar for One Year: A Librarian’s Experience in Second Life”); we’ll have to wait and see if it gets picked up. If not, I’ll just vanity publish it right here!

Here’s the Kevin Jarrett/KJ Hax’s ISTE posting about my dog and pony show. He was wonderfully supportive and on my case everyday to get it together. Love that! http://www.storyofmysecondlife.com/?p=652

This machinima was created in Second Life by an undergrad class in the Communications and Media department at one of the NYU’s. This incredible piece of work speaks for itself.

I’ve been asked to give a talk in the ISTE Speaker Series about community colleges and Second Life. Now that the date approaches (June 10) I’m giving in to panic and just a little smidge of excitement. What can I tell this enormous group of K-12 educators about the benefits of virtual worlds to community college students? Well, I guess, a lot. I can tell them what we’re already doing: bringing literature to life, emergency room nursing simulations, electronics and engineering “labs,” introducing students to other cultures and immersive language learning, letting them experience art in a new and very personal way; not to mention bringing the students together in a learning environment that they can create themselves. I can tell them about introducing our students to the future workplace/workspace and teach them new forms of collaboration that go far beyond the dreaded online group project and into the realm of distributed teams. Second Life and virtual worlds in our sector of education is so exciting. So, why am I intimidated about giving a presentation to this group? Because my name is in the same lineup of speakers as Howard Rheingold’s. In the immortal words of Wayne and Garth: I am not worthy.

Sometimes the You Tube comments are just so spot-on that they are better than the videos. Vollee just released a Second Life client for mobile devices with the iPhone version coming soon. I love my iPhone and would not do that to the poor sweet thing. BUT these sorts of developments in virtual world access do give me hope that people will have come to major grips that virtual worlds are here to stay and we educators just need to suck it up and deal with it. Just relax and let it happen. It will be ok, I promise.

(NOTE: 6-5-07 This video is not Vollee’s version of SL for the iPhone. When it is really ready for public consumption…I will review it. I’m hoping that it will be wonderful. Pip)

Here’s Second Life running on an iPhone. It really is, as Alex3330 says:

Believe it or no, I was bored this weekend so I watched television for like 4 whole hours. One of the things I sat through while trying to read was The Andromeda Strain on A&E. The movie was just so-so. I was more taken by the commercials for programs on other channels. I was most particularly annoyed by We’s “Bridezillas,” a show with Twisted Sister’s “We’re not gonna take it” as its theme song. So, this is one of many shows that commercialize the nuptial event. These programs are intended, I’m quite sure, to send every potential bride and groom to a nice normal Vegas elopement. Oh, and to make young women and their families look like complete and utter morons. The feministing bloggers were reading my mind with their special radar because they posted this awesome video today. We’ve come a long way, baby. (sigh).