Playing around with Bubbl.us' free account for concept mapping. This is for my LTEC 676 course on Social and Ethical Issues in Educational Technology. I started in the Online LTEC (OTEC) program with the fabulous Fall '19 cohort. I wish I'd remembered to blog here about it. It was brutal, and more rigorous than many of my Library Science classes, truth be told. Partly because we were doing so many group projects in the first year.
Today, I am here to share this new site that Dr. Hoffman is having us use to create concept maps for our learning. I'm embedding it here. As of today, it is version 01, but I imagine it may change as I update it. It was fun mapping out all that we've learned so far, and I might consider using concept maps as a form of note-taking moving forward. It is a neat way to visualize my notes. Interestingly, most of my classmates have a more starburst format, less linear, and more like an expanding cloud from the center outwards. I am the only person in my class to have a concept map that looks like this so far, and am the only person to have embedded video and article links directly into my concept map, but I have a poor memory, so I need a lot of detail in my notes. Wondering if that will hurt my grade though since it is so different:
I am thrilled to be in LTEC because of all the different software tools we're utilizing, and because my brain loves the adrenaline rush of learning something new & useful. I hope to apply all that I'm learning towards helping others to learn in the future.
Being in 2 grad school classes while working full time (and during a pandemic) has been intense, to say the least, but I am truly enjoying the program. I'm blessed to have the employee tuition waiver that is making this possible. I'm blessed to be able to work during the pandemic. Mahalo, universe! I need to post a pandemic post, soon.
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I've been honored to have the opportunity to participate in Honolulu Community College's 4th cohort, Ka Papa Keoneʻula, of the Hoʻāla Hou program. Hoʻāla Hou, is a culture and place-based experience program. Throughout this experience, I will be learning methods and best practices which will help me infuse Hawaiian culture and place-based values into my work while also learning more about place, Hawaiian history, language, and traditions. Day 1Orientation started on Thursday, ʻAukake (August) 8th, 2019 in the new hale on campus. There were many protocols, including an ʻoli and hula to introduce our group. We sat in a circle and went around the circle sharing our name, where we are from, and who we would be bringing with us on this journey. After each person spoke, they were then offered a cup of ʻava, which we were told is a narcotic and had to be fully consumed (I didn't feel anything, but wished I would!), and some mea ʻono of sweet potato and maiʻa (banana). I felt nervous. Sometimes anxiety speaking in front of groups hits me. Especially when sharing anything difficult. The person I brought along with me was my mother. I mentioned she'd passed away and was always with me. I couldn't say more without bawling, so stopped there. What I wish I'd been able to say, is that my mom was the toughest and most self-sacrificing woman I knew, and she was Native Hawaiian. So, I felt she would like being there. After everyone shared, we went up to the classroom. We discussed the importance of pilina (relationships). An interesting thing was hearing how Hawaiians view the past (and present) as being in front of them -- within eyesight, and how the future is actually behind them ... because you can look over your shoulder and kind of get a glimpse of the future, but you canʻt fully see it. I really liked thinking of it that way. The opposite of what western thinking describes, but in my head, the past always informs the present and the future... so it mades perfect sense to me. We were told to write down what our expectations of the program were, and report to the Marine Education Technical Center the next day. Day 2I arrived at the METC, not quite sure what to expect. Then, was super stoked to find out we would be going out on a canoe! Also, we were going on a huakaʻi of Nuʻuanu. At the METC, we learned about Keʻehi and the islands and fish ponds that were abundant in the area before the reef runway was built and land owners filled in fish ponds to give themselves more land. I had no idea. It was eye-opening.
Being on the canoe, I couldn't help but be sad I'd made the unfortunate decision to leave my cell phone in the classroom. It was so beautiful and special to be out in the ocean in a canoe so close to the water. The view of the mountains along Nuʻuanu, and of Diamond Head were truly unique. I also thought about the fact that my ancestors were descendant of people, brave and smart enough to make incredible voyages across the Pacific, and felt really proud. On our tour in the afternoon, we visited Queen Emma Summer Palace. My first time. And we also visited the Royal Mausoleum where King Kalākaua and the Kamehameha line are buried (except for Kamehameha I, whose remains are sacred and their location, a secret to this day). Before descending down to the crypt of Kalākaua, a hula was performed, and we walked down and up the stairs, always facing the King, so we walked up backwards to show respect by never turning our back on the King. It was my first time visiting this site, which is neither City & County, or State property, but Royal lands. While we did not see the Hawaiian flag flying, we learned this is one (of only 2 places) where the American flag does not fly alongside or above the Hawaiian flag. I've been working towards making the library's online presence accessible to all audiences in accordance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. 794d). Section 508 is a federal law that requires agencies to provide individuals with disabilities equal access to electronic information and data. More information on Section 508 and its technical standards can be found at Section508.gov. Today, I paid particular attention to contrast. Colors add design elements to your site but make sure it's compliant to accommodate those with difficulty seeing contrast between colors. The excellent video below came recommended by my coworker who recently ran a workshop for NOAA authors to help them understand the importance of contrast in their publications. Our web pages were fabulously redesigned last year by my predecessor, and she did a fantastic job! Today I just had to tweak some of the colors to be compliant. I used the WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool plug-in for Chrome which I got from WebAim. It was recommended by our web master and is an easy add-on to use. Simply go to the page you want to evaluate, and then click the "W" button in your toolbar and select "Contrast" from the panel to see any discrepancies. In order to calculate some good replacement colors between backgrounds and text, I utilized the Color Contrast Checker at WebAim.org. I had to ensure the new colors would be compliant with WCAG 2.0 required contrast ratios and I also wanted to stay loyal to the design. See the before and after results below. You can click each image to see it larger. I've made some other updates, but today's update was fun and allowed me to use some handy tools so I wanted to post about it in case it helps anyone out there.
If you haven't seen it, you should check out the NOAA Institutional Repository (NOAA IR)! It hosts free scientific publications from all the different line offices across NOAA. The Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), falls under the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). As a federally-funded agency, we have an obligation to make our research results publicly accessible, so one way of doing that is depositing our publications in the NOAA IR.
Our authors/scientists work with the editorial staff to ensure quality work, and any peer-review/technical review necessary is performed; then final approval is given by the Director's Office. That final approval triggers my duties as librarian to assign PIFSC publications a publication number (accessioning by Doc Type- YY-XXX), assign and embed a doi on the front page of the publication, update the publication number in the footer of the title page, and then send it to be ingested at the NOAA IR by catalogers. Having the document in the NOAA IR means the publication will be preserved and accessible for (in theory) forever.. or until a new technology/standard replaces it. The point of a doi is to be a permanent link to metadata which includes the location of the desired file, which makes it easier when files need to be moved since the publisher simply updates the doi's metadata that handles the URL it points to – making it more reliable than a simple URL. The full-text search capability of the IR is wonderful for helping the public find research relevant to their needs, and having a doi ensures the public can find citations without broken links. NOAA entered an agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to host and run an instance of their CDC Stacks Repository System for its institutional repository. The system runs on Fedora Commons, with an Islandora front end. The NOAA IR catalogers are wonderful, and our documents get ingested along with proper metadata in the NOAA IR. They also register all dois with Crossref, which makes it an active link, and they submit all necessary metadata while also cataloging the publication. When the IR is finished, they notify us of the registered link and doi so the PIFSC library can update the staff publications database, which automatically updates on the library's website. Finally, I post an announcement on our intranet and notify the author their paper has been submitted to the NOAA IR, and they can access it via the doi, and the public now has access to their work. I really enjoy being a part of this process to make information accessible online, so it's fun to be working with dois again. I worked with them a little at UH Press, and the Smithsonian internship where we actually worked on creating a process to batch-register dois with Crossref for Smithsonian publications. Good times! I have to give a shout out to Caroline at the IR, who, since I've been working here, handles almost all our requests for our publications. She is kind, quick, and awesome. Mahalo! So much more goes into these publications. The work by researchers/scientists, support staff, the editors, division directors, technical and peer reviewers, the PIFSC director who gives final approval. And there's also the publicity done by local and national outreach staff that work with authors to help promote their work .... As a librarian, I really enjoy doing my part by helping to make their research accessible to the public. Being a contractor means you are part of a package. Contracting firms bid on positions and present candidates as part of the bid. In my case, I started as a contractor/librarian at the end of June, serving the NOAA PIFSC as an employee of Lynker Technologies, LLC. I filled the position of the outgoing librarian and served the contract to the end – which was today. It was a part-time position. I have no complaints about working with Lynker, but they didn't win the contract for the new full-time librarian/archivist position that begins tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I will begin my first day as an employee for an entirely new company: SMRC. I can't really write too much else about it. The one thing I can say is I certainly learned a lot and think I will be better-prepared for future negotiations. The entire process was a good learning experience. My foray into grant writing has yielded one bona fide submission of a completed grant proposal. I learned a lot. I sincerely hope the grant gets awarded because it would be a great contribution to scholarship by creating open access editions of some out of print backlist items that are no longer available – but win or lose – it was a valuable (albeit stressful) experience. I hope to write more grants in my future career as a librarian/archivist. Mahalo to UH Press for giving me a chance to do this for them!
Yesterday, I created my first-ever original bibliographic catalog record! I've been fortunate to volunteer in the past with the HoMA Archives and Collections Department, and am currently spending Saturdays in the museum's beautiful Robert Allerton Art Library. I'm lucky I can volunteer on Saturdays with Ellie Kim, who has been a great teacher and colleague. I'm discovering that I enjoy cataloging! I wasn't sure whether or not I would, and I do! This has been an invaluable experience since the recent NOAA position I got requires me to catalog. It took me almost 3 hours to create my first original record, but time flew as I analyzed this work by Japanese artist Ryojun Shirasaki!
It's extremely surreal to me ... but I've had the sudden great fortune of becoming a bona fide Librarian. I'm officially an employee of Lynker Technologies LLC, working at NOAA PIFSC in the IRC on Ford Island. I have to thank Thumy Webb, a fellow LIS alum I've always admired (and the outgoing NOAA Librarian) for all her help in this amazing opportunity.
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