Category Archives: Tech

School Media Specialist, Tech, Training

Applications now open! 2017-18 MN Coding in the Classroom Leadership Cohort

Coding da Vinci - Der Kultur-Hackathon (14120891062)

Dear Educator, We are in the middle of a coding revolution! Computer science in the classroom plays an important role in preparing students of all ages for success in a wide variety of areas. In an effort to contribute to this movement, the MN Coding in the Classroom Leadership Cohort, an initiative of Code Savvy, is starting its third year and is seeking elementary, middle and high school school educators from across the state to participate.

The purpose of this Cohort is to develop knowledgeable, visionary educators who will help to make Minnesota a world leader in computer science education, and to help all students become creators, not merely users, of new technologies. Cohort participants will explore a variety of coding platforms and resources, gain insights into the IT industry through site visits and guest speakers, and investigate national and international standards for computer science education.

They will then develop, evaluate and share coding activities that integrate with school curricula and meet Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards and National Computer Science Teachers Association K-12 Standards. Additionally, participants will share their knowledge and resources with at least 10 other educators by creating and delivering professional development.
Continue reading Applications now open! 2017-18 MN Coding in the Classroom Leadership Cohort →

Programs, Services, Tech

Top Library Tech Trends

Peacekeeper-missile-testing
This is  an excerpt from an ALA article By

“From virtual reality to gamification to security techniques, libraries are using the latest technology to engage patrons, increase privacy, and help staffers do their jobs.

American Libraries spoke to library tech leaders—members of the Library and Information Technology Association’s popular Top Tech Trends panel from the 2017 Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits—to get the apps, devices, software, and best practices that you can adopt for your library right now and in the near future.

1. Take patrons on a virtual tour

Create a virtual tour of your library using a 360-degree camera and post it to your website or social media, says Cynthia Hart, emerging technologies librarian at Virginia Beach (Va.) Public Library (VBPL). Virtual tours can be helpful for both information and accessibility.

“One of our branches is 125,000 square feet. The A’s for adult fiction are all the way at the end of the building. Can you imagine if you were a person with disabilities or if you were an older person or had low mobility?” Hart says. “If you didn’t know that when you went into a library, wouldn’t it be helpful to have that virtual tour of the building? Then you could call and say, ‘Hey, can you pull that book from the shelf?’” Virtual visit statistics can also be used as a gate count metric. Continue reading Top Library Tech Trends →

Programs, Resources, Services, Tech

Six Ways to Feed Innovation in Your Library

Idea concept with row of light bulbs and glowing bulb

By Dian Schaffhauser

“Once the initial dazzle of your new (or remade) library has worn off, just how do you keep up the pace and flavor of innovation? An expert from North Carolina State University offers her take.

When the James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina State University opened in 2013, it seemed nary an innovation was left out. The 225,000‐square‐foot building includes multiple display walls running at a resolution six times better than high-def; a whacked out game lab; a wide visualization space; creativity studios; nearly a hundred group study rooms and learning spaces; glass walls and writable surfaces anywhere you might lay an erasable marker; bookBot, a robotic book storage center with capacity for 2 million volumes; reconfigurable seating and tables everywhere (including a reported 60 different types of designer furniture); plus high-performance computing (HPC) and high-speed storage.

It took 98 pages for the university to describe the entirety of the wonders of the Hunt Library in its application for the 2014 Stanford Prize for Innovation in Research Libraries (which it handily won).

And yet that was four years ago. Just how long does the shelf life on innovation last? Continue reading Six Ways to Feed Innovation in Your Library →

Tech, Writing

Call for Chapter Proposals: Social Media: An Academic Library Perspective

Socialmedia-pm

“Call for Chapter Proposals

Social Media: An Academic Library Perspective (working title)

Editor – Nina Verishagen; Publisher – Elsevier

Proposal submission deadline: June 1, 2017

Please submit proposals by filling out this form: https://goo.gl/forms/k7y1TqEz94uZHDji2

Are you a library professional immersed in social media management? Have you experienced great successes and/or failures with a social media campaign? If you have, please consider submitting a chapter proposal!

Social Media: An Academic Library Perspective will be a practical, concise anthology dedicated to guiding academic libraries in their use of social media. Various authors from different academic institutions will provide their perspectives, experiences and tips on using social media platforms. The book will highlight successes and failures and will provide recommendations and tips that anyone in the academic environment can interpret and adapt. Each chapter will focus on a specific social media platform.

Editor is particularly interested in chapters covering:

–          Twitter
–          Instagram
–          Snapchat
–          YouTube

Editor is looking for chapters that cover the use of a specific social media platform by an Academic Library. Each chapter should include:

A description of the social media platform and academic library being presented;
Suggested tools (working groups, online software, spreadsheets, etc.) to use the platform effective
A case study covering the library’s use of the platform – for example a promotion campaign, or ongoing programming on the platform;
A list of successes and failures;
Recommendations for other academic libraries.
Full chapters:

Are tentatively due November 1, 2017;
Will be written from a practical perspective, in first person-narrative;
Will adhere to APA format;
Will be approximately 4,000-4,500 words in length
Authors interested in submitting chapters should fill out this form: https://goo.gl/forms/k7y1TqEz94uZHDji2

Please send questions to: nina.verishagen@outlook.com“

Resources, Tech

Ideas on cloning disc images

Compact Disc

A question from a library person on a listserve:

“Is anyone experienced with cloning disc images and deploying them from a server? I’m looking at a few options:  Clonezilla, Fog, MDT, WDS.  I’m looking for a deployment option that is fairly easy to use, works well with Server R2, and can easily deploy to 30+ Windows 7/10 machines. ”

A few people answered; so we are passing it on to you here in case you have similar questions. If you have some other suggestions, post them below!

  • We use FOG and are very happy with it.  The program is easy to use and works with few problems.  However, it only runs on Linux.   I don’t have any experience with Clonezilla server, but we used to use Clonezilla Live.  It got the job done, but required us to go from computer to computer with a flash drive.  FOG is much less time consuming. If you want to use a Windows Server as an imaging server, you might have to use the Microsoft approved way of deploying Windows via MDT and WDS.
  • You might want to take a look at clone deploy as well.
    http://clonedeploy.org/ I have used it and it works very well.
  • I use Symantec Ghost Solution Suite and am very with how it works for cloning and deployment. It runs on Windows Server and has an easy to use GUI. It can also be configured to do all sorts of patch management also.
  • We have used Clonezilla before.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and you have to do a regular re-image.
  • We’re using SCCM for image creation and deployment.  That might be too big a tool for your needs but it’s certainly useful for us (240 public computers running Windows 10 in 4 buildings).