Colin Powell makes a stop in Tulsa

Yesterday I attended the morning session of a "Get Motivated" seminar in our new 18,000 seat arena downtown, the BOK Center.

The ticket was free, and I would not have gone if Mr. Powell had not been slated to speak. I wanted to hear what he had to say, this man who is a career military leader and is fond of old Volvo's.

He spoke of America's Promise, and how "we have no greater responsibility now in America than to make sure that the next generation of youngsters is ready for positions of leadership." He divulged that he is a bit of a tech geek, and is involved in a few businesses in the area of information and technology.

In his talk he noted that leadership is "all about followers and followership." Leaders need to 1) "clearly set goals" and 2) "take care of the troops." He said that passion is infectious, and a leader's task is to motivate and inspire people. He also pointed out that today's leaders need to display moral and physical courage, as well as character and integrity.

He then went into stories about his experience in the military and as Secretary of State.

Mr. Powell quickly glossed over four e's that we need to be focusing on: economics, energy, environment, and education.

He ended by saying that we need to "get back to simply American values" and "build bonds of trust," but that the US still has a strong role in leading change in the world.

Overall I was impressed with the man. He used humor effectively in his oration, and at times seemed like just another guy. There was a female voice at one point yelling at him, and he turned to that part of the arena and said, "Hello. How are you? Thank you," and moved on. The voice from the stands was not heard again.

Had he taken questions, I would liked to have asked him about sitting in front of the UN during that fateful moment in February 2003, and if he indeed thought it was his lowest point in life, how did it fit into his previous words about leadership?

He spoke for 37 minutes, and after his speech I left, sensing that the rest of the day's "Get Motivated" events would not hold much for me.

Future of Learning Manifesto

I love blogs- someone has an idea, it gets written down and passed around, critiqued and made better.

Such is the case with the following Future of Learning Manifesto (read the original post here):

1. "Playing Small Does Not Serve the World."
2. What Would Socrates Do?
3. Nobody Cares if You Walked Up Hill Both Ways Barefoot in the Snow.
4. Got Passion? If Not, I'll Tell You What To Care About.
5. My Memory Is Only As Big As My Heart. Otherwise, I'll Stick with Google
6. Look it Up or Die.
7. Collaboration Ain't About Holding Hands. It’s about Going Cool Places Fast.
8. This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record.
9. It Ain't About the Technology. It's About Being Inside the Story.
10. Nobody Knows the Answer. Get Comfy with the Questions.

Campus Learning Spaces of the Future

Mike forwarded me a great article on campus learning spaces of the future. It speaks to the generation of students who have grown up with technology and will need new types of learning spaces to be effective in their studies.

Some nice graphs, including the one that shows how most new ideas are generated via "brainstorming, meeting, and prototyping." How can our classrooms be changed to focus on this group dynamic?

Source: Educause

Wikipedia use limited by history department

The history department at Middlebury College is acknowledging the speed and convenience of using sites such as Wikipedia for background information, but are discouraging the use of the site as a primary source.

This move is great- finally some professors saying what we librarians have been saying all along. There is information on the internet and then there is qualitative information on the internet (credible, authoritative, etc). Nice to have some support in our cause.

Library Thing and other related sites

If you have not checked out Library Thing head over to the site and see it for yourself. Go ahead, I'll wait.

There are several other sites that are similar, one of which, Shelfari, offers more graphics and you can show off the books you have. Techcrunch suggest we keep an eye on Shelfari- could it be the next big thing?

The interesting thing about these sites is that they let the user tag their books. It is similar to how librarians use Library of Congress Subject Headings to catalog materials, except that the only authority involved is the user.

A prime example of Internet 2.0, and thus Library 2.0- the users are creating content at a staggering speed. Where does this leave librarians?