Faculty and Staff Get Schooled on Technology

by Sean Carroll
edited by Abbie Tumbleson

Faculty and Staff walked away from the second Tech Talk workshop held on Friday, February 26 by Becca Cahill, Head Reference Librarian with new information to share with students on the new software for search engines.    

The workshop covered three commonly used search engines, Google, Bing and Yahoo.  The ten faculty and staff who attended the workshop were also given a quick lesson about the differences between all three search engines.

Faculty and Staff learned new information about search engines. (photo: Abbie Tumbleson)

“You have to pick and choose what software best fits your needs, where to go and find information, and how to use it,” said Cahill.

The Library staff came up with the idea of having the volunteer workshops by noticing the need for it amongst students and professors.

“I’ve been impressed by the level of interest and there seems to be a real need for this sort of information on campus,” said Cahill.

The first Tech Talk of the year was held at the end of January by Leslie Inglis and featured information on the program Microsoft Outlook.

“There were over 20 participants, which is a great turnout for a voluntary workshop held on a Friday afternoon,” added Cahill.

With the rapid change of technology that professors and college students use on a daily basis, informational workshops such as Tech Talks look to keep campus up to date with the new technology. 

“I think as the pace of technological advancement increases, it can be difficult to keep up; there is too much information, and too many ways of accessing it all,” said Cahill.

While the Tech Talks are only open to the faculty and staff as a professional development opportunity there is some discussion about giving the students on campus the same opportunity.

“I am interested in exploring the idea of similar workshops for students if there is an interest and we can come up with a time that would work,” said Cahill.  

There will be two more Tech Talk workshops held this semester during the months of March and April. The workshop in March will cover information on how to use the Library’s database and the workshop in April will be on how to use RSS feeds. The workshops fall on the last Friday of every month during the afternoons in the Library research room and will run about an hour.

For more information on the Tech Talks contact Becca Cahill via e-mail at cahillr@franklinpierce.edu.