Franklin Sayre

I’m the Makerspace Librarian at Thompson Rivers University and also Co-Chair the Librarians’ Department. These days I am particularly interested in creating active learning spaces that foster belonging and encouraging sustainability and critical thinking about technology and information.

1 minute read 

Weeknotes are a habit I'm cultivating where I share what I'm working on or thinking about, primarily in my professional life, without worrying too much about the ideas being full-formed.

I’m doing a Monday weeknote this week since I haven’t done one in a couple months and I need to get back into the habit. This summer has been chaotic with lots of unexpected personal and professional challenges. The fall semester is in sight though and it feels good to be getting back into habits. No links or anything else this week.

Working on:

  • Makerspace Sandbox Sessions: These are going to be weekly or bi-weekly co-learning and working sessions where students, staff, and faculty can come work on their projects together. The idea is to kickstart more community engagement and collaboration and create a space for people to make progress towards their goals in a co-play situation. I have a pretty good idea of what this is going to look like now and so this week I need to figure out a schedule that is regular enough that it doesn’t feel random and flexible enough that people with a lot of different schedules can attend.
  • Collaborating with AI workshop: Part of our new Skill Share Series of short, active-learning focused workshops in the Makerspace where people can come explore tools and methods in a slightly more guided way. I did this last week for our staff PD day and parts of it went well (the local AI models are good enough and fast enough to be usable on our computers) and parts need to be reworked (more examples to get people started).,
  • Setting myself up for being successful as the only Department Chair this fall: My co-chair is on a 6-month sabbatical, so until December, I am both the full chair of our department and doing my normal Makerspace work. Chair work is a mix of ongoing responsibilities which can be planned for and dealing with the unexpected. If nothing else I need to make sure my systems are set up to deal with both.

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