I’ve been to many conferences – mostly technology and/or library related. I have also been to many retreats and led mindfulness activities – mostly Buddhist in nature. This conference was unique for me because it dealt with mindfulness from a purely secular perspective and aligns itself very easily with the applied ethics theme/effort that Thich Nhat Hanh has been exploring the past couple of years. Though I arrived a little uncertain, because of my experience as a practitioner and educator, I was not disappointed with the presentations and panels. I now have a better understanding of what has occurred in bringing mindfulness into schools and what challenges these leaders experienced.

What follows are my notes and thoughts from a handful of the presentations.

PRESENTERS AND PANELS 

The Data: How Kids are Actually Interacting with Technology (Joya Roy, CEO Sequence)

Joya’s task was to provide some data. How is behavior and society changing and then how do you create a brand, etc. is what his company focuses on with clients. How kids are interacting mobile and social environments. This is what’s happening. No judgement. Consumer environment has changed radically in the last century. Average kid spends 7 hrs. 48 minutes interacting with some type of device (Kaiser Famiy Foundation, 2010). If you consider “media multitasking” it’s 10-hrs. 45-min. As the devices increase in number, and as the smart phone is ubiquitous, our access to information increases and this time will increase in the future. Keep in mind that iPhone didn’t even launch until 2007 (and Android in 2009!). 80% of youth own a mobile phone (Pew, 2011). Text messaging is primary form of digital communication. Smart phone sales will surpass PC sales in 2012 – outside the US, thus means billions will have phones rather than a computer. 7.5 million Facebook users are under 13 (5m of this under 11). Touch and voice are the expectation, especially for those very young. Texts and Facebook – not email. Shorter interactions.

The Brain, Mindfulness, and Youth with Dan Siegel (nterviewed by Soren)

Impact of texting wit friends versus talking in person. But we shouldn’t despair too much. Interpersonal Neurobiology is his field. Take all branches of science then we can have a fuller view. We see wisdom derived from integration. Texting seems to be only drawing from one side of the brain, and this may be to the detriment of the youth because the right hemisphere develops before the other – see The Master and his Emissary. The left loves syllogistic reasoning. The left is very literal. Some like to say it’s the “digital” hemisphere. The right is more about the body. Body signals come to the right hemisphere. Of course, the two hemispheres work together. The digital age is shaping the mind. But he’s not despairing; he repeated this multiple times. Integration made visible is kindness. The two hemispheres integrated. Integration is a scientific concept. Know your own nervous system. Knowing when you are in one hemisphere versus the other. To be present is being your whole self for their whole self. Can we know our authentic self in a digital age. Attention shapes the structure of the brain. Integration is the key. Integrative networks are regulatory. The Healthy Mind Platter – guide for mind development – it’s on his web site – sleep time, physical time, focus time, connecting time, down time, play time, time in (looking inward – Mindfulness practice). This needs to be a bottom-up effort. The Schools of Education aren’t gonna do it. No Pre-Frontal Cortex Left Behind - haha.

Mindful Parenting in the Technology Age (Soren, Eric Schiermeyer, Michelle Gale, Pat Christen from Hope Lab, Chade-Meng Tan)

Nice panel of parents who shared their experiences and tips for supporting their families with mindfulness.

Teens and Technology (Gopi Kallayil from Google + four teens)

All seniors in high school. Born in 1993. The year Mosiac and Newton were released.

Cultivating Joy in Kids: the Dragonfly Effect (Jennifer Aaker, Marketing Professor at Stanford)

Her kids sat on the stage while she made her presentation Happiness, joy, and meaning. They have a lab at Stanford. They also work in the area of social media. Her household is (he) loves technology and (she) isn’t too keen on it. She’s a marketing professor. So, they collected data. What is the role of technology in the family. What stories I. Social media stick? Deep meaning. Focus on single goal. Grab attention. Tells a story. Enables others to act. The dragonfly is a symbol of happiness. Small acts can create change. Wrote a book. Rethink happiness. Nice slides.

Re-Imagining Schools: Mindfulness and Education (Susan Kaisar Greenland – Mindfulness Together, Megan Cowan – Mindful Schools, Victor Diaz – REALM Charter School)

Susan adapted Buddhist practices to be age appropriate and secular. Put the practice first. Name it later. Experiential. Apply to a real life situation and regular routine. Integrated. Not “let’s do Mindfulness”

Victor’s charter school is founded on mindful practices. All students are in a wellness class – Mindfulness fitness. In Berkeley. Sounds like they use yoga. Moving from individual practice into their “outer” space and actually integrate is more challenging. Relationship building is key – knowing the kids can help you tap into the kid and connect the practice. You ask kids to jump, but you don’t always tell them where they’re going to land.

Megan is based in Oakland and been operating for about 5-years. Two programs. Go into the schools and teach Mindfulness is one. The first way to describe Mindfulness is your own presence. What do you bring. We must have a thorough understanding (this is Thay’s Applied Ethics effort – learn the practice).

The Opportunity Ahead (Dan Siegel, Susan Kaiser Greenland, Meng Tan, Soren)

Great final panel. Nice balance of practice, science, and innovation. I think Meng said tech can be developed to accelerate mindfulness by factor of 10. Instead of 40-yrs, do in 4-yrs. Then the device self-destructs.

In the end, I’m still sitting with what I heard on Saturday. I’m inspired, curious, and hopeful for what this means for me personally as well as the continued efforts to bring mindfulness into work and schools. 

In the very first talk given by the Buddha, he outlines this foundational concept. The First Noble Truth says there is suffering, ill-being. The Second is about the cause of our suffering, and the Third Noble Truth talks of the cessation of suffering. This is the presence of happiness. We can learn how to produce happiness. We have many practices for this transformation, but I especially am drawn to the two foundational practices of meditation of “stopping” and “looking deeply.”

We can do this. Just a few short hours of practice and we can begin to train our mind. It’s quite simple to discover happiness in the present moment and to transform our relationships.

We have been offered mindful breathing exercises. The first is following our breath – mere recognition. This can be done anytime, anywhere. We can use sounds and images from the world around to remind us to return to our breathing. For example, I have a computer application that invites me to stop every 70-minutes. But it could be the telephone, a red light, a child’s laughter. We stop and come back to our breathing. This is stopping. It can be practiced anytime, anywhere. I love this practice. I begin my training with sitting meditation, but it doesn’t have to stop on the cushion. Learn to discover methods to following our breath. When we feel anger, frustration, or despair, returning to our breath can immediately bring us relief. Try it – it’s true!

The next steps outlined for mindful breathing is awareness of our body and releasing tension. Learning to calm our body. Where is our body? We can do this when we are standing, walking, sitting, and lying down – and know that we are doing each. My emotions often come through strongly in my body. How does my body feel? How does my body behaves? In touching this we can bring relieve. In recognizing the body, we see the connection between body and mind. This is especially true when we practice sitting meditation – we should see the unity of body and mind. For some, walking meditation works much better than just sitting.

If we can practice these first few exercises, then we can also nourish joy, happiness and learn to explore our feelings. Maybe we try something like this:

Breathing in, I feel joyful. Breathing out, I feel joyful.
Breathing in, I feel happy. Breathing out, I feel happy.

It is a simple practice, silly even, but it can bring a lot of transformation. There are people who have no peace and joy because they cannot stop their thinking. We can also practice joy by bringing awareness to those parts of our body we may not always remember – our eyes, our heart, our liver. Breathing in, I know know I have two good eyes. Breathing out, I feel joy.

Happiness goes a little further. The story often given is that of a person in the desert who sees an oasis. She is joyful upon discovering the oasis and she is happy when she takes a drink from the water.

Here I have outlined just the first six exercises of mindful breathing. These exercises of mindful breathing can bring about personal transformation, but it can provide the foundation to bring transformation to our relationships – relationships with our parents, our children, our consumption.

Consider the possibility of framing critical thinking and 21st century literacy within the framework of blogging. It’s not really a new idea, nor a very innovative idea, but today I was afforded the opportunity to see what it might be like. I was invited to an English class, one level below college English, that has been using blogging this semester to share their writing. The professor asked me to come to the class and use blogs to open a discussion on critical thinking. There wasn’t really a “research” component to the visit, just more of a discussion. I was invited because we were recently talking about blogging and I had shared some recent research on the topic (see Beyond Peer Reviewed Articles)

The class was fun. It was interactive. It was informative. It was relaxed. It was engaging. And I’d love to do it again.

I’ve taught social media independently of my librarian role, and have definitely included elements from the social media landscape within the framework of my traditional library instruction sessions. This English class felt different. This felt richer. This felt more appropriate to student learning. We can all see the content landscape shifting and students need these skills to understand, think, and navigate effectively. Faculty need to embrace it.

This was my first time with this format, and I only prepared a most basic framework (links) for the discussion. I’d like to do this again with other classes. So much valuable content is provided using blogging foundations – even from traditional media sources. How can students capitalize on this content? How can faculty learn to embrace this content as appropriate for learning?

Further, this week I’ve been setting up a WordPressMU and BuddyPress installation at classes | kenleyneufeld to be used for online instruction and my new course on Social Networking and Social Software.

First the “ouch” from the library gang. The realization that not enough assessment of our social services has taken place in the library environment. There has been anecdotal success but nothing concrete has been reported. In the past several years I’ve simply thrown stuff up to see what stuck and seemed a functional service. It’s worked reasonably well but as a Library Director I see a greater need for assessment. Assessment is Goal #1 in the coming year.

I was also inspired by the conversation to add a bit more personality to our social toolset in the library. We do this a bit, but we could do more. I’ve been hesitant to engage in true conversation with the @lurialibrary account, preferring to focus on information dissemination. Thank you Meredith Farkas for suggesting to add more conversation and personality. Conversation is Goal #2 in the coming year.

Since 2006, we’ve had our Moveable Type (MT) blog operational as the primary web site at Luria Library. This past year, I’ve been reflecting on our next shift for the web site. As a small operation without significant resources (both fiscally and technically), the task of making these changes typically fall up me and therefore change can be slow.

Given the work I’ve begun with WordPressMU/BuddyPress, and given the inspiration from the Library 2.0 Gang conversation, I’m thinking about a migration away from MT to WPMU/BP.

It is a powerful tool that could allow for connections and conversations to take place within the library domain. Discussion areas, Twitteresque tools, Facebook-style friending, and blogging all exist with the toolset. Further, blog creation with WPMU/BP is so simple and integrated, the library could end up being a host to campus related learning blogs for students and faculty. I’m already asked to help with this and the connections to learning and knowledge creation is a natural place for the library to participate.

I’m excited by the possibility, though a bit nervous about implementation. Further exploration and possible implementation of WPMU/BP is Goal #3 for the coming year.

Where are you going with social software in the coming year?

After you watch the video, head over to the Library 101 site and read the essays and other ideas.

Strange but GREAT and CREATIVE.

Though I created a Keynote Presentation (below) and demonstrated how one could use drop.io with groups, the majority of the presentation just came from the 75-minute conversation. All the relevant links are at the bottom of the post.

Building a Social Library

The benefit to a social library is we have an opportunity to reach our community with a variety of tools, most of which are free and easy to use. With a minimal amount of labor we can have a presence in many places where our community members exist already. It also sets the library how to be a leader, particularly in educational environments, and demonstrates value and expertise.

Typically in these types of presentations, the audience is overwhelmed with the options. This is especially the case when the focus is not on 1-2 tools. Therefore, I don’t worry too much about overwhelming the audience. In fact, I show a lot of options and then try to show how you can pull it all together with 1-2 tools. For example, if you use Posterous you can push content to just about any social networking site.

For the benefit of the audience, here are some the tools mentioned (bolded items had additional discussion) during the presentation:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Posterous
• drop.io
• Get Satisfaction
• uStream
• Friendfeed
• Librarything
• LinkedIn
• Flickr
• Seesmic
• YouTube
• Disqus
• Brightkite
• Yelp!
• Delicious
• Twine
• Socialmedian
• WordPress
• Google Reader
• Google Voice
• Meebo
• Slideshare
• LibraryH3lp

Great questions arose from the audience and I truly enjoyed myself. We attempted to use DimDim to audio/video/screenshare the presentation but that piece would have worked significantly better if someone had been assigned to monitor and support the offsite participants.

Over the past week, I’ve been reading the latest issue of Adbusters (#85); the entire issue is a “book” on economics. The economics of moving beyond our current established paradigm of economic thinking and theory. The premise is to kick over the neoclassical economics bucket because it is not sustainable in our global system.
Peter Victor wrote in that issue,

A mature economic system – just like a mature ecosystem – would be characterized by maintenance and renewal instead of rapid growth. Humans living within this system would be educated to repair rather than replace, and would continue to learn throughout their lives: schools, colleges and universities would be springboards for well-rounded lives rather than just for employment. The point of all this is not to replace the pursuit of economic growth with a target of zero growth.

I started to write and then picked up the September issue of Fast Company. An article, “Who needs Harvard?” (not online yet) immediately caught my eye because the of another theme I’ve been exploring over the past few years on the obsolescence of higher education. The concept of an edupunk, a growing movement toward high-tech do-it-yourself education, was pulled from this article.

The architects of education 2.0 predict that traditional universities cling to the string quartet model (where you can’t remove any of the players) will find themselves on the wrong side of history, alongside newspaper chains and records stores.

As I consider the current economic crisis in California, especially as it relates to the educational system, I clearly see our inability to sustain the unsustainable system of economics in this state. There is waste, yes. There are significant expenditures, yes. Programs and services are being cut, yes. For example, in my recent report for ACRLog,  California’s Community Colleges Crisis, I highlight the 100% loss of funds for electronic databases. The state determined that continued funding for this program was not sustainable.

The question on my mind today is about the sustainability of academic libraries, and perhaps the academy itself. The Academy have been protected for so long, a highly subsidized industry, and we are again being faced with significant cuts that will force us to ask how we are to continue? Are we a bloated industry? Are we ripe for innovation? For revolution?

Some will say that education is not an industry and that people have the right to be educated. We are not in the business of making money so we don’t follow the same rules as business. And yet, in the scope of history, public education is a fairly young enterprise and some have predicted its end in the coming century. At the very least, we may need to evolve in order to stay relevant and needed. My argument is not that education is unimportant, because it is critical, but more about how education can disseminated.

In the August 9, 2009 article In a Digital Future, Textbooks are History, the New York Times explores the end of the textbook.

The move to open-source materials is well under way in higher education — and may be accelerated by President Obama’s proposal to invest in creating free online courses as part of his push to improve community colleges.

How far off is the academy itself? No less than five businesses are discussed in the Fast Company article (2Tor Inc., Edufire, Grockit, Inigral, and Knewton) who are taking the lead in the future of education.

Now I need to take this out of the clouds (though I am very intrigued by these new companies) and bring it down to the reality of my day-to-day life.

My job is a Library Director at Santa Barbara City College in California. I work for an administration that has been very supportive of our library and our library services. Though our budget is small, compared to a university, we still provide a few dozen electronic databases ($75k/annually) and new books/periodicals ($125k/annually). Programatically, we do a lot serving 20,000 full & part time students with our 4 librarians and 5 classified employees. However, in the coming year we could potentially be cut up to 30% depending on my administration’s ability to find other funding sources.

What I want to hear from you, my dear reader, is what to do with the situation. A failing economic model, dwindling resources, and our relevance as educators and as libraries.

Here is my litany of questions for your consideration:

Can you have a library without money, without new books, without print periodicals, without subscription databases? What if the institution continues to fund positions (librarians) but not resources (books, databases, etc.)? Can we still provide a service that will benefit students? Do we benefit students? Faculty? How do we maximize our role given limited fiscal tools? How do we move the “library” forward in a potentially shifting educational environment? Do we have a place in startup companies? What should receive attention first (books v. periodicals v. databases)? How can we capitalize on the free resources and make them usable for our students? Are books, periodicals, and databases truly important for scholarship today?

I want my library to be a leader in providing top quality services in spite of dwindling resources, even if that means no books, no periodicals, and no databases. Let’s think outside the box, like an edupunk librarian. The knowledge and skills contained in the mind of each librarian is our greatest asset. This is what we can market. Help me make it happen.

Reference Desk Toolkit from Kenley Neufeld on Vimeo.

If I remember to video or audio my talk, it will be posted after Friday. In the meantime, here are the slides for my presentation:

One of the toughest decisions of my life happened in the past two weeks when I decided to end my love affair with motorcycle riding. I’m almost crying as I write this and look at the included picture. I’ve been riding since age 14 when our family had a little Honda 50 for dirt riding (or in the back alley’s of Fresno). From there I moved to a Honda Passport, Kawasaki KZ750, and finally to a series of BMW motorcycles. In all it is about 25 years of riding and a quarter million miles on a bike.

Why is this ending? I have been a very lucky rider. In the five accidents, I have never broken a bone or been seriously injured. This includes almost 10 years of riding in San Francisco. In the last decade I have considered selling the bike a couple of times but have never gone through with it. This time my gut tells me it is time. Earlier this fall another rider with my age and experience spent a month in the hospital after being hit at an intersection I cross daily. We get a lot of bikes in Ojai due to our fantastic curves, so accidents and deaths are not uncommon. On January 10, 2009 a fellow rider, sangha connection, and friend was killed near his home in Malibu. Peter Kollock is only a little older than I and rides the same BMW model. That same weekend, there was a death in Ventura and another on Highway 33 above Ojai.

All this has shaken me. I have two young children, and perhaps my decision would be different without them, but I want them to have a healthy and living dad as they grow up. I am saying goodbye to a dear friend and love but am embracing my responsibilities as a parent. It could be I’ll ride again when older, but for now it is goodbye.

What I have are my memories. Taking my young love, Leslie, on a motorcycle ride through La Jolla Shores on my KZ750 only to slip on gravel and spill the bike. We’re still together 18-years later! The ride from San Francisco to Saskatoon with Leslie on the back of my 1983 BMW R100RT. When we got there and looked at the map, Leslie couldn’t imagine driving all the way back to California, but we did. The ride to Fairbanks, Alaska along the Alcan Highway on my 1991 BMW R100RT by myself. What a trip! Riding to Durango, Mexico with my dad. The last big trip was with my dad and my dear friend Dana on my latest ride, the 2001 R1150GS. We rode through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. It included a significant blizzard on the pass through the Rocky Mountain National Park; visability was less than 10-feet and the wind was howling. No choice but to move forward. The picture  above – a self-photo at Mt. Shasta – is a madman ride from Fresno to British Columbia, and back, in three days for a family reunion. Surprise. There were so many more trips and adventures to remember, but these are a few of the highlights.

Will I have regrets? Maybe. Is it the right decision? Yes. I thank my family and friends who have supported me in this decision and in my riding all these years. I will miss riding deeply. Adieu mon amour.