SOPA on a ropa

I initially wrote this blog post on 1/21/12 during #alamw12 but didn't get a chance to post it. With the boycotting of Elsevier, I thought it would be a good time to pull this back out:

There has been a lot of talk about SOPA and PIPA leading up to the conference, and now during. One of my conference roommates, Lauren Bradley, pointed out this Tweet that is pretty hilarious:

http://twitter.com/#!/danwho/status/160800863298916353

Clearly, there is some inner turmoil in dealing with these vendors professionally, and having good relationships with them for our libraries and in general, yet if they are supporting something you (or I, I do) oppose such as SOPA, then what is our professional obligation versus personal ethics? This last Wednesday was a blackout day in solidarity of protest for SOPA. ALA made commentary via the website, and librarian projects such as Radical Reference and In the Library with the Lead Pipe went black for the day. I even blacked out Librarian Wardrobe.

Now that we’re physically at the conference, though (or, those of us who are here), what can we do to not have the cognitive dissonance of being so vocal on the internet battleground, but feeling politely silent at the conference? For starters, Andy Woodworth at Agnostic Maybe made an *amazing* color-coded guide to the exhibit hall. Amazing, really! So you know which vendors to complain to and/or avoid. I’d say this extends to the parties, too. I had RSVP’d to the Elsevier Dessert Reception but now decided I’m not going to go. Some of the ALA Think Tankers are going to go and protest while there. I guess it goes either way it’s kind of like if you don’t go and they see there are significantly fewer people there then maybe they’ll realize our collective voice is pretty strong. At the same time, if we don’t go to these things and actually verbalize our opposition, what will actually come of it? They could just think we aren’t showing up because of unrelated reasons. 

So what vendors have you spoken to, who support SOPA? What are you doing to fight against this crap? Do you think going to the party and protesting or not going by silent protest is more effective?

Reflections on Code Academy and Code Year so far

I've started Code Academy and as of last night, completed Week 1. This is a free program with weekly, online lessons to learn how to code (Javascript). Librarians have started using the hashtag, #codeyear to communicate with each other on their progress (and you can sign up for the lessons at the Code Year site). There has been a push in Libraryland for librarians to learn coding so we can be more self-sufficient in developing digital services and products, as well as just communicating better with IT professionals. There is even a newly-established ALA Connect group for librarians to discuss and help each other with the weekly lessons.

My impressions so far of Code Academy are mixed. Of course, no doubt, this is a great thing. It's free, it's accessible, and it's an intro-level program that is incredibly interactive. It can be hard to teach yourself these types of skills, so opening up the playing field is huge.

It's also nice that the lessons are given in increments, so you get Week 1 for a week, and then are sent Week 2 the next week. You can do more if there is more content up on the site, but it at least makes it more digestible. The leveling up and getting badges is another thing I like. It could be a little bit of gamification, but since these lessons have been made more social through Code Academy and also through the library community, it adds a little more fun to it. I've taken a particular interest as well as to how the Mozilla Open Badges project will relate to library instruction (or could relate), so experiencing a badge-generating program is useful to me and I'm seeing how it could potentially work with students. Although the Mozilla Open Badges project is for open access education, I still think it could be a beneficial concept to try in university and other formal academic settings as well.

Back to Code Academy, there are also some things that I am finding problematic. When considering good pedagogy, detailed feedback contributes to effective learning. Code Academy does not really give any feedback. You put your code in and run it, and then you are right or wrong. There is a little bit of info that pops up when you do enter wrong code, but it's not often enough to help you figure out where you went wrong. The hints are great at the beginning of the lessons, but get more obtuse and mysterious as you progress. I think it can be a good method that they are giving sort of a sandbox atmosphere to try out coding without being bogged down with theory and memorizing definitions (and where you don't have to be afraid of failure, which is a quality of a good game BTW) but at the same time, not really understanding the logic behind how some of the code works makes it very hard to understand why your answer does not work. I was glad to have other librarians who understand coding logic explain why my answer for Week 1, Lesson 8.2 was incorrect, so I was able to progress and finish the week.

Overall, I really do think Code Academy is great, and I'm going to continue on with the lessons. It can be difficult to weave detailed feedback in to an automatic, teach yourself-type program, but at the same time, it is essential for people who are just starting out. I think this article by Tech Crunch, "Will we need teachers or algorithms" (interesting read also for emerging trends in education) rings true here to a degree. Human or AI-driven though, if you can't figure out what you did wrong in a meaningful way, you can't learn from your mistakes and progress.