My turn taking a coffee morning this morning. On the subject of mindmapping. So I recycled much of what the students got on Monday.

With a couple of tweaks. Firstly I had to work harder on presenting the positive uses for all the linear nay sayers I had (two vocal ones), and second I tried to give a practical demo of why they work by in effect running two PowerPoints simultaneously. Boring bullet point types slides interleaved with much more graphical image based ones. I warned them at the start there would be something to look out for with the slides and then quizzed them at the end. No one had particularly noticed but the point became apparent when I asked them to think about which ones they remembered. Even the 'linear' folk who weren't into the connectivity, colours and sketches of a mindmap got the message. I think.

It was a fun session anyway and everyone joined in with having a go at a map or two.

Two straight hours on our busy, at the moment, enquiry desk due to staff leave, absence, sickness etc. That and a couple of hours over in the 'drop-in' in the afternoon meant it's been hard to get much done. More enquiry work tomorrow as I do my normal shifts from 10-11 and 12-1, so I don't think it's going to improve. Not with a course committee in the afternoon as well.

My once a year mindmapping lecture this morning. To 130 computing students.

Seemed to go down about as well as it did last year (i.e. some not overly thrilled) but the vast lecture theater meant interaction was tougher. Probably the nicest, and I think the biggest, place we have for sense of 'lecturing' and 'power' but quite intimidating. First time I've been in that space at the front. I rather liked it.

I got some nice mindmaps from those who were engaging and the lecturer who invites me was as enthusiastic as ever.

Be interesting to see how much the same content goes down with my colleagues in the coffee morning on Thursday.

They've been resurfacing a quarter mile of street just out side the Library the last few days. What's been impressive - aside from some of the machinery they've deployed - is just how fast they've been. The mess the place was in yesterday and the day before you'd think they'd be several more days.

No, today, they were rolling out the last of the asphalt just with a line painting gang right on their heels and just moments before the road was open to traffic once again. For once there seemed some sense of urgency and getting on with the job rather than men standing around smoking and chatting. As I say, impressive.

I'm having a hard enough time managing my own diary let alone room changes I'm not informed about.

Turned up at one lecture today to find I was in the wrong place. No sign of the students I was supposed to be seeing in any nearby classes. Panic phone call back to the office to see if they can track down any other info. Eventually found a reception desk lady (who happened to know my sister) who was from a completely different department but was able to get in touch with the right place and find out where the class had been moved to.

Went very well when I got there (15 minutes late) but they are distance learners who are only on campus for two days when they get a huge amount of info dumped on them. I don't think I helped - but they seemed glad of the extra quarter hour break!

"Having a mind like a Jedi may not help a body that fails to deliver" writes a newsletter from sport and recreation across the street.

Do they have to address articles to me so personally?

Busy sort of day with teaching occupying the first couple of hours, a lunch date with someone I met at the retreat of a week or three back, and a bitty afternoon trying to pick up the pieces of a complicated relationship I've inherited from the semi-closure of the last remaining 'library outpost' 18 months ago. (Long standing member of staff updating leaflets we now write, but incorrectly). I think it's time to go home but there's more to do before I can feel 'done' for the day.

Lunch today in a new eatery on the ground floor of a new building the University has just erected.

Mixed experience - the real downside is that it replaces a cafeteria where you could get a proper meal (cheap and cheerful - but at least a proper main meal of the day). Now you can get sandwiches, baguettes, jacket potatoes and even a pie - but nothing in the way of cooked vegetables or carbohydrates (i.e. chips or rice) to go with them. Rather a shame for the nights I'm at work till 9 or so. There are other places to eat, but cheap and cheerful was sometimes the order of the day and no longer available.

In its defence I suppose you could say it was nice enough venue. Staff separated from students, comfy sofas and newspapers provided, pleasant touches such as the sciencey quotes on the flags for food orders (to go with the cosmologists who have moved onto the second floor (teaching space on the floor in between).

I feel bad enough about my occasionally erratic posting, and then I read this:

http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/how-to-kill-a-blog-in-ten-days.php

Lunchtime workshop today on concept mapping. Not mindmapping. Definitely two different things.

The visiting academic had previously sent us one of his papers to read on the subject and to be honest it was as dull as ditchwater and quite dense. So we feared the worst.

But in person, he was much more engaging and had a really interesting session for us.

It was my mindmapping interests that drew me (and others) but we learned that one of the primary differences was that a concept map labels the links as well as the concepts to show the relationships between concepts. An example is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map

His thesis was that too often our teaching concentrates on one particular part of a map (say a lecture on one concept of an overall structure), but that we never make explicit to students what the overall plan is. We assume they know or can work out and his contention was that this is rarely the case.

Better yet, by getting the students themselves to consider what they think they know on a subject; to generate concept maps for themselves; to swap notes with each other on what they've produced; and to revisit it after a course of study, can pay off tremendously in terms of their learning.

One success of the year - call it a resolution if you will - has been what I call my mason jar meetings with my Assistant.

You must have come across the illustration - certainly if you've been on any time management courses. This is typical: http://256.com/gray/quotes/time.html

My idea was to formalize this with myself and with my colleague (who'd expressed concerns in her appraisal along the lines of distributing her time between myself and the other librarian she works for).

So now, come Monday morning, I try to assign slots to the big rocks of work in my diary and then D joins me and I let her know what the plan is. Then we do the same for the work I'm giving her, and the work we share. GroupWise allows us to mark such events in our diary so that we know they can be moved if need by (by sudden teaching commitments or the like). But that doesn't happen too often and in general it works in letting us get to some of the 'big rocks' rather than drowning in the tyrannical water of the urgent but not necessarily important (like email!).

This is probably really obvious to everyone but the formality and discipline of doing it regularly and being accountable on the subject is something I'm finding helpful.

Today a class of direct entry computing students. All Nigerians as it happens.

What was different for me was that a junior colleague came along to 'peer review' the session. She was very impressed that I could pick up on a couple of clues to greet them in a local language and introduce the sesssion with an encomium on the year I spent in their country.

I'm hoping though that I can winkle out of her though any formal comments she makes in the process but I understand how hard it can be to allow such things to be seen by their subject. The one commiseration I did receive as we walked back to the Library was the oft noted observation that we get very little time to convey an awful lot of information.

Which I could take as a criticism of how much I cover, or just as sympathy that there's little way round it. (If we assume that persuading academics to give us more time is a non-starter). I'm more and more inclined to think that perhaps such sessions shouldn't be an attempt to tell them anything at all except here's the Library homepage, here's all the help we offer to navigate this stuff whether electronic or print.

Here, now, on one of my odd late Friday nights. (Till 8.45pm)

And just to add that the haiku buzz at book group continued. With, amongst others, some that could only be described as 'heavy metal haiku' I think.

Better yet, we (8 from the Library which is a little too large a team when you realize that we're penalized for every player we have) stayed on for the quiz after we'd finished with _The Place of Fallen Leaves_ and just managed to win! Mainly I think due to two of our number being the world's experts on children's cartoon characters which populated the picture round.

Wow! Great morning. Busy but seems to have gone well.

Started with the bad news that my Assistant was sick. Oh dear... she was booked to do a 10 minute presentation on the Library in general to the International students which I've blogged about enjoying doing before. Sent out an urgent email for help but didn't get a single response even to say sorry but no...

Meanwhile, the events I'd been responsible for arranging for the morning were fast arriving. Plus the external visitors.

Two former colleagues from TheOldPlace - thank you S and Z - had come down. S was running our coffee morning on haiku first thing and then both of them were telling us about Second Life and the presence that TheOldPlace has in there.

The coffee morning went well. More than a dozen of us there in the end and S did a great session that was streets better than what they'd have got from me. I'd have probably covered structure and maybe some history or something and been quite dull. S got us sitting in silence, walking in the rain and actually writing. Which is the key thing. Much buzz around the Library for the rest of the day.

The session on Second Life also went well with not only a fair crowd turning out for it, but also enough engagement to keep us there well after the advertised finish time. S and Z had to work hard for their lunch! We were shown what TheOldPlace has had built for them - very impressive, how it's being extended and what they plan to do with it. Marked difference with the approach taken here which is much more cautious.

In the middle of all that I'd switched to Plan B for the international students and was dragged out to do the presentation myself as no one else was willing to help. Stood listening to the previous speaker and then was the last of 6, I think it was, telling 70 odd students with varying levels of ability in English about various University services.

While I waited for previous speaker to finish I met a very late student at the door who just happened to be Czech so I could greet him with a 'Good day. How are you?' much to his astonishment. And I did my usual routine (if somewhat more briefly) of welcoming/greeting various languages in my talk which seemed to wake up a rather overwhelmed crowd and get them smiling. Hopefully it was more engaging than what they'd just had an hour of...

I was done in time to get back to Second Life for the last few questions...

Then lunch with S & Z over at the rather nice nearby cafe.

It'd be nice to be thinking about going home now... but book group this evening...

Hey! It's not just me:

Florida State (great Superbowl BTW - nailbiting down to the last seconds!) has a useful article I'm reading now at:http://lis5313.ci.fsu.edu/wiki/index.php/Twittering_Libraries

And this is a quote:

"Yet Another Thing to Update. Remembering to do updates is a difficulty noted by some, especially when the librarian has many other duties to tend to while at work. Many of the libraries using Twitter also have blogs, Facebook/MySpace pages, and the website to continually update, thus making Twitter yet an additional responsibility to an already full workday."

I can't work out whether I've been slacking on my blog writing because I'm just a slacker, or because the creative urge - such as it is - is getting its outlet in Twitter which I've been trying out since the start of the year. (As have quite a sizeable number of other people apparently).

It was weird at first getting over the 'pointlessness' of it and the way it made you feel as if you were a voyeur into the lives of others (particularly if you don't know them very well), but it soon passed and appears to be fast becoming (another) part of life. It's fitting it all in with everything else...

... which is where, of course, I'd receive advice from the likes of S at TheOldPlace to weed my lifegarden and NOT do something else. "Yes, but..." comes my reply. Maybe it's my personality type not wanting to 'let go' or 'miss out' or something. But I do aim to keep this blog going. At least as long as anyone wants to read it - so do feel free to comment or email!

The lull before the storm.

Three empty (well, empty of anything unusual) days in my diary before 3 or 4 weeks of teaching and busy-ness. I'd better enjoy them while I can.