Interesting new tool--Glogster

I was churning through the web looking for something new, and I stumbled on something I had never seen before--Glogster. It's a social poster site. Poster, as in graphics, and multimedia. I just signed up, and haven't made anything yet, but I can totally see using these as part of my teaching repetoire. Apparently it is supposed to be very easy to make them, even if one does not know HTML.

Now, I am probably the last person in the universe to have seen this website, but nevertheless I was so interested I just had to blog it.

I can immediately think of a few ways to use this in IL instruction:

• an assignment for students in IL classes (have students make one)
  
• a quick and cool way to make posters to illustrate concepts for each class I teach.
  

I also think it would be great as well for those who are very visual in their learning styles.

I was particularly intrigued by Cybrarian's Glogs. I think i feel inspired to go make one for next week's classes.

"Clickers" in a IL classroom setting; an experience

We recently got new classroom management software (allows for broadcasting screens for students and such) by Synchroneyes, and also we got "clickers," the inelegant term for "interactive response system. "

I have had a chance to recently try these out, and I thought it might be interesting and or illuminating to share my experience. I did a quick google on clickers and IL and some scattered links came up, so obviously it is being done. My particular experience was very interesting because it was for a first-year class, though some of them were upperclassmen and transfer students. Normally my preferred audience participation aid would be candy, but we had run out.

So I started by handing out the clickers and explaining that I would normally have candy. This seemed to amuse them. I noticed they were very pleased about being able to participate in the process. We talked about topics to research, and I opened up the Notebook software that goes with the clickers and entered in the topics they proposed, and had them vote. It seemed to go well, with the quiz question, a pie chart displays with answer percentages and a status count for votes.

I also had converted an activity where I show them magazine and journal covers and identify them as scholarly or not to use with the clickers. That seemed to work very smoothly.

I am now curious how other people are using this in their classrooms, and wanting to expand their use in other situations.

Finding Reserve Materials by Using the "Hard Copy Reserve" Search

Have you ever wanted to know if your professor has your textbook on reserve but wasn't sure how to find out? Did your professor tell you to read an article from a book that's on reserve at the library? Or do you want to know if there are any old tests on reserve to help you study for your next exam? Finding the answers to these questions got a lot easier last year when the new library catalog was released. The catalog now houses all the reserve items in a way that can be searched by everyone.

All you need to do to find reserve items for your class is to click the "hard copy reserve" link on the main library catalog page. Next you will see the option to search by course or professor. The course search uses the same abbreviations the university uses, "bio," "comm," "mc," etc. Enter the last name to search for the professor, lecturer, or instructor.

If you do not find a textbook on reserve by your professor, sometimes you can find it under another professor's name...especially for the larger core classes that use the same textbook. Try searching by course too.

Another thing to remember: this is different from the "electronic reserve." E-Reserve, or ERes for short, is for electronic access to reserve materials. In order to access ERes materials, you will need a password, given to you by your professor. The materials (usually articles or book chapters) can be downloaded and printed. Hardcopy reserve will be on the 4th floor at the Researve desk and most items must be used in the library. Photocopying articles or chapters is allowed.

Interesting Presentation on CMS/Library Integration

Over the holidays I was forwarded this interesting powerpoint presentation, from the 8th Sakai Conference, held at the beginning of December 2007. Entitled " Integrating Library Resources into Sakai," and given by Jezmynne Westcott of The Claremont Colleges, it discusses how she built a library site in SAKAI for their Science Library. (SAKAI is a Course Management System used by our university)

Although a casual perusal of the biblioblogosphere and a cursory google search brought up large amounts of literature on integrating libraries and library services into CMS, I still thought it interesting in light of some of the experiments we have been undertaking in our Information Literacy classes.

We generally make a class outline in our Information Literacy Wiki for each Information Literacy session we teach. Our wiki is outside of our classroom management software, and so a few of us have been asking professors to enable their TRACS wikis and then add librarians in the course, so we can go in and build wiki guides for each class. Hopefully we can do more.

Welcome back!

It's the beginning of the semester!

Our new website is up, and so are our new workshop offerings. Some of the other new features/pages of our website include:

• Downloadable Library Walking tour (download to your iPod)
• Tutorials Page (includes link to Alkek youtube tutorials)
• Library Toolbar (install in your browser so you can search library resources like the catalog wherever you are)
• Research RSS Feeds

And don't forget, if you would like us to make a tutorial or a workshop, you can send in a suggestion.

Happy Belated New Years!

We have been on vacation, but will be back soon! Hope everyone had wonderful holidays. :)

Accreditation as the impetus for IL integration--is that the answer?

What follows is a (extremely) belated account of an interesting presentation I attended in San Antonio, as part of the Council of Research and Academic Libraries (CORAL). One of the member libraries of this consortium is Trinity University, which has made the news lately as they have chosen Information Literacy as their Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) project for their 10 year accreditation renewal.

For those not in the know, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) is the regional body/committee that accredits schools and universities throughout the South. One of their requirements for re-accreditation is for institutions to develop a QEP project which is supposed to be a long term project (like 5 years) and the institution must support the project financially as well.

Michelle Millet is the Information Literacy coordinator at Trinity University, and she did a presentation on Trinity's (and her) experience during this process. There have been some articles written about Trinity University's adoption of Information Literacy (integrating it into the curriculum) as their QEP project, but this presentation was very detailed about the actual process of writing the proposal, etc. It was a very illuminating (and practical) look at how to plan and implement such a large undertaking.

It made me wonder if this perhaps is the best way to get IL integrated into the curriculum. There are other examples of schools that have done similar plans. Michelle Millet herself touched on this briefly in her presentation. She outlined benefits of this process--namely that the university must support the chosen plan, so the necessary institutional support is there, and because of this it speeds up the process of integration.

The other main point I took with me from this presentation is the importance of data and data collection, which Michelle Millet emphasized pretty strongly. She noted that it was good to have assessment data to justify the proposal, as well as assessment of program progress as well.

I admit I am somewhat ignorant of other accreditation bodies and how they work, but I believe that this process is similar at least in other states in the U.S. I am curious about how this would work in other countries.