Category Archives: technology

Web Fundamentals

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 29, 2013 - 6:03 pm | , , , ,
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I don’t know if I mentioned, here, that I was signed up to teach “Web Fundamentals” at Anchorage Programming Workshop (“APW,” or “that monthly workshop where women learn to code”), earlier this month. I remember wanting to write a whole post about it, because I was fretting pretty hard about what to include, what to exclude, etc. But then I didn’t, because I got overwhelmed by that and other projects. I always have the most things to write about when I have the least time to actually do the writing. Anyway, it was supposed to be an hour-long (give or … Continue reading →

Keep on MOOCing?

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 25, 2013 - 12:17 am | , , , ,
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My writing is normally neater, but my thumb's out of commission.

I’ve enjoyed the Coursera Python MOOC so far, though I didn’t end up with a local—or even a distance—cohort of people taking it with me. Things have been kind of hectic, both at work and with outside projects and medical stuff, and I ended up doing the homework on Saturday, last week. (Homework is due on Saturday evenings.) I mean, I implemented Pong in three hours or so, and I feel good about that. But last-minute is not how I like to roll. Now we’re fast approaching another Saturday, and I haven’t watched the week’s lectures (again) or thought about … Continue reading →

Usability testing on our OPAC

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 21, 2013 - 3:50 pm | ,
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I have a confession to make: until last week, I hadn’t ever done any formal usability testing.* In many ways, we’re still working our way through the findings of a usability test done several years before I got here.** So when the Joint Library Catalog (JLC) Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) Working Group kept going around and around, between ourselves, about interface decisions, I suggested maybe we should test the interface with some of our users. Happily, they agreed! So last Friday I headed over to one of the public library’s branches. The branch manager is a pretty great guy … Continue reading →

Anchorage Programming Workshop – First Class!

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | April 25, 2013 - 8:54 pm | , , , ,
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Level up! Anchorage Programming Workshop held its first class last night, on GitHub, and I think it went really well. Besides the two teachers, four people showed up—fewer than we want, long term, but a great start, given that we really hoped to ease into this whole thing, anyway. Their backgrounds and learning styles varied a bit, but I think they all got something out of the class. Becky did a great job of teaching, and I was able to contribute what I hope was some helpful input. Everyone left with a working repository—and hopefully the confidence and know-how to … Continue reading →

Intro to Python – Week 1 – Musings

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | April 24, 2013 - 10:44 am | , , ,
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About class (and teaching/learning programming): In Week 1 we covered functions, the modulo operator, comparisons, and if/elif/else. They offer a tool called “Pystep,” where you can see functions being evaluated. I am not sure whether it is actually more helpful or more confusing to someone who is unfamiliar with programming, but it’s a cool idea and another way to try to visualize what’s going on. Similarly, they talked about functions in terms of “black boxes.” As an engineer, that’s super intuitive to me, but I find myself really curious about whether that made sense to anyone who’s new to programming. … Continue reading →

My First Hackathon – #hAKathon

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | April 21, 2013 - 8:06 pm | , , ,
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Compare to Adopt-A-Hydrant for an idea of what I changed.

I did a hackathon this weekend. (It’s funny. I did a whole lot of work to get skills-based volunteering practiced among librarians, and I ended up doing my first successful SVB as part of the software community, instead. Ah well.) I wasn’t initially planning to participate in this one—something about having said “yes” to too many things and needing some down time—but my husband and a couple of friends convinced me, claiming there were no designers signed up but a dire need for logos and other images. (I wasn’t really the only designer, just the only designer on my project. … Continue reading →

Intro to Python – Week 0 – Musings

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | April 15, 2013 - 8:36 pm | , ,
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I’m taking An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python through Coursera, and I’m blogging my thoughts about it, when I have them. If anyone wants to chat about the class online, I’m happy to do so! (I didn’t end up with much of a local cohort—just a couple of people, and they don’t want to meet regularly.) I watched the Week 0 lectures and did the quiz and homework, and I have to say, I had forgotten how “mathy” CS people were. (I’m differentiating “CS people” from “programmers,” because they aren’t necessarily the same thing. There’s a Venn diagram deal … Continue reading →

Learn Python with me!

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | April 5, 2013 - 4:13 pm | , , ,
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computer-notablet

I’m taking An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python through Coursera, and I’m hoping other folks in Anchorage will be interested in taking the course with me! I want to plan a weekly meetup, where people can bring their questions and any problems they’re having. The course requires no previous programming experience. (And that’s precisely why I think I can help; I don’t know Python, but I do have programming experience. And experience teaching programming, too, for that matter.) It starts April 15th and goes for 9 weeks. We’ll probably meet on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, though that isn’t set … Continue reading →

More about be(com)ing a woman in STEM

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | March 19, 2013 - 8:03 am | , , , , , ,
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tech-women

“STEM” is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. We have a shortage of STEM majors of any gender in the US right now, but the shortage of women in STEM is particularly damaging. Although librarianship isn’t really a STEM field (at least the way most people practice it), I come to it via engineering, and I’m on the tech side of the library house; after all, computer programming is a STEM field, and web development stems (heh) from that. I might still be pushing it to claim I’m “a woman in STEM,” now, but let me at least tell you a … Continue reading →

What makes one a librarian?

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | March 13, 2013 - 8:07 am | , , , ,
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Who even knows?

While I’m not the first to tackle librarianship and identity, by a [very very] long shot, it’s on my mind right now. Earlier this week I was told to train a new part-time reference librarian (<grumpy>with not a lot of warning</grumpy>). Training someone to do reference in this library is something that I am unequivocally and without a doubt the wrong person to do. My own desk training was kind of lackadaisical, and I am still learning the basics, two years later. (What? We’re supposed to sign the reference emails, even though there’s an auto-sig? Well, huh.) Case in point: … Continue reading →