The origin story of Mousercise

It started simply enough. I gave a talk in Missouri and went out for pizza with library school students afterwards and one of them came up to me and said “Hey you mentioned Mousercise in your talk… I know the guy who made that!” He put me in touch and I got to email a bit with Chris Rippel who now works for the Central Kansas Library System and talk a little bit about Mousercise (originally called Mouserobics until Disney found out) , what I think is one of the best sites on the internet. He agreed to answer a few questions for me.

1. Did you make your original Mouserobics/Mousercise as a thing for work? Is it something you used at your job at the library?

When I taught my first basic computer class in Prairie View, Kansas, I lectured on how a computer worked and how to use a mouse. Eyes glazed over. Soon after I made Mousercise.

2. Do you still work at the library?

I still work for the Central Kansas Library System. CKLS has member libraries, not patrons. I was teaching classes in member libraries, not at CKLS.

3. Did you make any other similar tutorials?

Sort of. Here is one about keyboarding. And I played with Word, etc., but none are as successful as Mousercise.

4. What are your go-to sites for people who are looking to teach people computer basics?

I have no one place. Over the years I have made a number of Web sites with links to online tutorials. My first and biggest was a delicious page called Computer Training Tutorials, or something like that. Now I use blogger Web sites to provide links to more training after specific classes, but they don’t get used. Here is one example. I intended to do a Web page for each software, but I didn’t.

I recently gave one of our computer people, Maribeth Turner, my list of Blogger Web sites and she has incorporated the links into a Web site she is creating.

5. What do you think the biggest challenges are in this day and age for teaching technology skills to novice users?

Patience

Lecturing too much to novices. Novices understand little of what you say and, therefore, remember less. So, for me, the main lesson of mousercise is more work, less talk, and be there to show students how to correct their mistakes. Teaching people how to correct mistakes is as important, sometimes more important, than teaching how to do something correctly. So, in my classes, I generally hand out exercises and tell them to type this. When needed, I give them one- to three-minute explanations of what to do, then let them do it. When that part is done, we go to the next part, i.e., short explanations followed by lots of work.

Covering too much in each class. We often pack in so many topics that novice students can’t remember and learn them. Covering less and giving students time to absorb a few basic things works better for me. This has an additional advantage for teaching librarians. Having to cover less allows librarians who may not be experts to also teach classes. Librarians knowing how to type a letter in Word know enough to teach a novice class on it even when they don’t know all the ins and outs of this program. When people ask about something you don’t know how to do. Then you have a topic for the next class.

6. Anything else you’d like to add?

I was going by myself with a mobile computer lab out to teach patron classes in libraries. I had no teaching assistant. I am not a good multi-tasker. I can’t run the teaching computer and effectively watch and help students at the same time. So I have one of the students run the teaching computer. I tell the student what to do. This requires me to clearly explain each step and ensures that at least one student is understanding what is being said and can do it. In hundreds of classes, I have only swapped students twice. They were glad to switch.

I suppose most computer teachers would be uneasy having students with unknown skill levels running the teaching computer. So I am not recommending it. However, I would recommend letting the assistant run the teaching computer to free the more knowledgeable teacher to spend more time helping students.

By the way, I am now exploring the idea of building little Web sites around a Webinar by another speaker. Here is my first.

Florida Library History, circa 1998

I am going to Florida on Sunday, so I have Florida on my mind. I found out about the Florida Library History Project and was pleased to know the entire thing is available online as a big PDF. Some enterprising student could, with the permission of Kathleen de la Pena McCook get it online crosslinked and searchable.

The Florida Library History Project (FLHP) began in January 1998. Letters requesting histories were sent to all public libraries in Florida with follow-up letters sent after an initial response was received from the libraries. E-mail messages were sent out to FL-LIB listservs encouraging participation in the project. A poster session was presented by USF research assistant Catherine Jasper at the 1998 Florida Library Association (FLA) Annual Conference, an event that marked FLA’s 75th anniversary. At the end of this funding period, 89 library systems and organizations had provided histories. These have been compiled and are reproduced in this volume as submitted by participating libraries. Highlights include library founding, collections, services, budgets and expenditures, personnel, funding, survey results, technology, and developments.

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HOWTO give a good presentation

Aaron has a good post about giving good presentations. As always, stick around for the comments. I offered my advice. Even in the short thread, it’s interesting that people have such different ideas about what makes a good presentation. Should it be something that can be repackaged and replayed without the presenter at a later date? Should there be handouts? What’s the balance between charisma and raw data?

Library Juice interview with LoC’s Barbara Tillett

I get mail from Sandy Berman almost once a week. In envelopes with interesting stamps and adorned with rubber stamped images, he sends a pile of photocopied news articles, printed out web pages and cc’ed letters that he’s sent to the Library of Congress, to Barbara Tillett specifically. In his ongoing quest for LCSH reform — continuing even after his forced retirement from Hennepin County Library system — Sandy keeps up a regular correspondence with Tillett, the chief of the LoC’s Cataloging Policy and Support Office. Some of these letters are amusing, all of them are good reading. Tillett writes back.

Rory Litwin of Library Juice has interviewed her for the Library Juice blog, where they discuss cataloging reform, God, Zionism and, of course, Sandy Berman.

Most of our correspondence contains helpful and constructive suggestions – what criticism we receive is simply not as he characterizes it. There is no onslaught of letters and emails and faxes from outraged librarians or researchers. For the most part, public criticism comes from Mr. Berman or other individuals he has urged to write to us. We’re more inclined to react favorably to constructive suggestions than to coercive techniques such as petitions, hostile articles in the library literature, emotional attacks, or letters of complaint to members of Congress. Methods such as these are almost always counterproductive, whereas more cooperative and positive approaches usually produce good results.