Tag Archives: visitors and residents

social networking

Visitors and Residents: Useful Social Media in Libraries

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Old Book Shop

Ned Potter has published an interesting slidedeck on the relevance of Dave White’s work on Visitors and Residents on social media in libraries.

He describes the many different ways in which libraries can engage with users and visitors using a range of social media tools. One of the challenges when using social media in libraries is to focus on using it as a broadcast mechanism and not thinking about how to engage and interact with users.

There are lots of existing and new tools out there that can be used to promote, engage, collaborate and inform.

He does make the usual assumption of seeing the concept as separating visitors from residents into two distinct groups, when as Dave White makes clear in his video is much more of a continuum. When it comes to social networks people can be both visitors and residents depending on the context and what they need or are doing. You can be a visitor to Facebook, but you can also be a resident in Facebook. Resident in a personal capacity interacting with friends and family, and a visitor in a professional capacity, going to Facebook pages as and when required.

I made the same assumption myself when I blogged about Visitors and Residents back in 2008.

Dave’s recent video on Visitors and Residents and the mapping exercise shows much more clearly how the concept can be used to describe how an individual interacts with social media, and additionally the continuum between professional and personal.

Understanding how both the concept of Visitors and Residents and  social media can be used to increase usage and engagement with users of the library is really useful, and Ned’s slidedeck and accompanying blog post gives you lots to think about.

One suggestion that I found helps, is if the entire team engage in using social media and that the tools are also used for internal purposes. This helps build familiarity with the tools, but also helping to understand what sorts of activities on social media work and what may not. One of the questions you will need to ask is how are you going to increase the social media capability (media literacy) of your team?

Image source: The Shop of Books.

 

altc2009, fote09

Visitors and Residents

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When I was at FOTE 09 a few weeks ago I stayed overnight and went out for a meal at a terrible Italian restaurant; one of the problems I have visiting different parts of London is that I am merely a visitor and unlike the local residents do not know the best places to eat. I remember visiting London a few years ago and my sister-in-law who lived in London at the time (a resident) took me to a wonderful local pub with fantastic food. The more I visit London the more confident I get with getting about (on foot and on the tube) and knowing which places to avoid and when and which places to seek out and try. First time visitors to London know it differently to those that visit more often and likewise people who live in London will know some places better than others. Visitors and residents know London in different ways and the same can be said for those who use digital and online tools and services. I really don’t want to use the term digital world as I don’t think it is a useful term.

Last year we discussed the concept coined by Dave White of Visitors and Residents and how this relates to how people interact and use the online and digital tools and services out there.

Dave has made a video of the presentation he gave at ALT-C 2009 and it makes for interesting viewing.

You can read more on his blog.

Most people should by now realise that the age demarcation of the digital native and digital immigrant is a flawed concept and should not be relied upon. Projects and research have again shown that young learners are not digital natives and often have issues with digital and online technologies.

From the MoLeNET programme for example.

The experiences of several MoLeNET projects suggests that not all young people are the “digital natives”…

“We came to this project with an unspoken belief that young learners would innately understand how these devices worked, we quickly came to understand that, while they can use them well on a superficial level, more demanding tasks stretched their knowledge of the technology”.

The key lessons to remember is that you can’t assume that younger learners will be confident in how to use new technologies, likewise also don’t assume that older learners will not know how to use technologies.

If you are an online resident it can sometimes be difficult to remember that a lot of people are merely visitors and that they may not fully undertstand the local customs, practices or best places to go.

podcast

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #004 – natives, immigrants, residents and visitors

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This is the fourth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, natives, immigrants, residents and visitors.

[audio:http://elearningstuff.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/elearningstuff004.mp3]

Download the podcast in mp3 format: natives, immigrants, residents and visitors

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

In this show, James is joined by Nick Jeans, Dave Foord, David Sugden and Lisa Valentine and they discuss the concept of the digital native, the digital immigrant, resident and visitor. Apologies for the poor audio quality of Nick which we’re blaming on his Skype connection.

Shownotes

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #004 - natives, immigrants, residents and visitors

altc2008, coffee, twitter

Are you a resident or a visitor?

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One of the things we seem to do in the world of e-learning is categorise ourselves and our learners into groups.Are you a resident or a visitor?

One of the key pieces of work on this was from Marc Prensky on Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Now I was never really very happy about this idea that if you were old (like me, well I am not that old, but it’s sometime now since I first sent e-mail, 1987 I think it was) you were only a  digital immigrant and young people were digital natives.

However when I looked at the students at my college, I couldn’t see this age divide at all. Yes it was true many of the students were very happy and capable with handing digital devices and playing games, but not all.

We had some digital natives that fitted the description, but we also had a fair few that didn’t. There were students who didn’t and in some cases couldn’t use the internet and the web, not because they hadn’t been immersed in a digital world since birth, but because they didn’t want to. Also there are issues with many students in relation to the digital divide; they may play video games, but don’t have access to the web.

I also couldn’t see how myself fitted into this, I may not fit the digital native sterotype, but I knew (well others told me) that I was very much immersed into a digtial world and used the internet in ways in which they couldn’t fathom or understand. Was I merely a digital immigrant?

From my experiences on the web I met many digital natives and quite a few of them were over forty!

So it was quite refreshing to read on Dave White’s blog a post about residents or visitors to the online world. Like a few others, notably Andy Powell and Josie Fraser, I quite like this concept.

There are some who live in an online world and see the internet as part of their everyday life. This I can identify with. It was for example very strange at ALT-C 2008 to meet Kev Hickey, someone I knew very well from Jaiku. Over the last year we had discussed many e-learning issues and shared experiences of applications, but also I had seen his photographs from Blackpool, I knew the names of his dogs, I felt he was someone I would call a friend.

Are you a resident or a visitor?

So it was very weird to actually meet him in person at ALT-C. He is just one of many people I know from online in just my e-learning sphere, better wave to Lisa at this point…

I can quite easily see how that I can be a digtial resident, living part of my life in an online world. I do use the internet a lot and do use a range of online services and applications to make my life easier, to communicate, to share, to drink coffee and to have a bit of fun as well.

Working with many staff in the college (and quite a few students as well) I often find that they are merely visitors, using the online world when it suits them and meets their needs.

I’m reminded of a member of staff at a training session who was quite vocal about being a “technophobe” and didn’t want to use technology in her teaching (note the word teaching and not learning). So basically I ignored her, there were staff there who were interested. As we moved around the room, another member of staff started talking about how she used learning technologies, how she used the VLE and then she remarked on how she used MSN chat to converse with her students at a time and place to suit them. At this point the “technophobe” spoke up and said, “oh I use MSN chat all the time to talk to my daughter in Australia”. For me she is the perfect example of a visitor to the online world, using the technologies when  it suits her needs and ignoring the potential that other tools, services and applications could offer her and importantly her learners.

Having said that, on Josie’s Blog there was a comment from Mike Amos-Simpson which I think is worth repeating.

I think that perhaps when its considered as a ‘world’ it maybe makes too many people feel like aliens!

I agree with Mike that calling it a world could alienate people, but then again so does using the terms like digital native and digital immigrant.

So are you a visitor or a resident? Or do you prefer native and immigrant?