Interesting Second Life educational activity

Time to play catch up. :) The semester started with a bang! and in the slight break in the business that I have had, I'd like to share an interesting experience I had in Second Life, a month or so ago. In addition to my librarian/IL duties, I am also part of the group developing and steering our Second Life campus. I participated in a test learning activity, designed by one of the other members of our group, Robyn Herry. I have to admit at first I was slightly skeptical, when presented with a scenario that involved the kidnapping of an Avatar character, and then the need to solve several puzzles to get clues to be able to find out where to locate and rescue the kidnapped character.

We were assembled in world, on our Second Life campus, and given the first "clue" which linked us to the evil genius' MySpace page. I was lucky to have the game designer there helping and giving clues, because otherwise it might have been a little too hard for me. But what was fascinating was the use of outside webpages along with the in-world element. This lesson appeared to be about codes and code breaking--I had to figure out to highlight the myspace page to get the code sequence to find out the name of a clue (using the letters of the people on the friends list) , go to another website, and use the decoded phase as a password to get the next set of directions. and then from there I flew in world to a statue to figure out the next sequence. I had to google the name of the code, and then use the chart to try to begin to decode for the next set of clues. Unfortunately this is as far as I got after an hour, but I can begin to see the potential for educational activities using Second Life without having to build major structures. I admit it was quite fun too, because after the first 15 minutes or so I felt very involved and motivated to solve the puzzle.

On the whole it was a really cool experience and I think I would like to try to do something similar for our classes eventually.

ACRL Assessment Immersion notes part one

I had the very good fortune to have attended the ACRL Assessment Immersion in Nashville, TN the past 4 days, and I must say it has really been exceedingly helpful. I had attended an Immersion for Teaching a few years back, and found it was a very important experience in terms of my development as a teacher.

And my expectations were pretty much exceeded in regards to the amount of useable information that I will be taking back with me. Our Teachers/Leaders are Anne Zald, Deb Gilchrist, Megan Oakleaf, and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe.

The only hard part of immersion is the gruelling schedule, which goes from 8.30 in the morning to 9pm at night (with meals and breaks of course). But as an experience for someone who will be doing assessments, in terms of what you learn, and how you learn it, it is literally the best thing you can do to get a thorough balanced overview and also practical tools.

I am snatching a few moments in our final day to note a few things that pop up in my head, but probably when i have more time to reflect and collect my thoughts, I should have a little more.

One of the main revelations for me was learning of the existence of database/assessment collection/data management systems like Zoho, which appears to be a Google docs like version of Access. This is definitely something I'd like to look at for our library.

So, we are about to do an activity, so I will wrap this up for now. :)

Target Marketing Library Instruction

This is a flyer that I made for the Art & Design department here at Texas State. I am the Art & Design subject librarian and wanted a way to let the students know that I am available for personal art & design research help. I also wanted to use a format and images that would catch their eye. After finding the type of images/emotions I wanted in my art books and then finding them on ARTstor to download, I put them in the comic template. I made it using a program called Comic Life which you can try with a free trial and then if you like it you can buy it pretty cheap, like twenty bucks. I will be hanging the flyers around the art building and a few here in the library. We will see how it goes. Next semester I may tweek it a bit depending on the kind of feedback I get from this one. And I think we will try this approach for different subject areas to make students and faculty more aware of our services.

Information Literacy Across the Curriculum Workshop part 2

I attended the second part of the "Information Literacy Across the Curriculum", workshop which is given jointly by the TLT group and ACRL this last Tuesday. Michelle Millet was the presenter for this installment of the series. I had attended a previous presentation she did in person, which was very informative. This presentation was also very helpful because it had a slightly different focus and I picked up several good ideas.

Michelle's institution has chosen Information Literacy as their "Quality Enhancement Plan" which is required for their reaccreditation. Her perspective is very interesting because this level of support and widespread integration is not always so easy to achieve and I personally think it is a wonderful example of how to do things, and I find her recommendations to be very enlightening and practical as well.

Some of the major ideas/points/interesting bits that I came away with:

• Her description of the marketing and publicity. She mentioned t-shirts and also a Youtube video
• She continued to stress assessment as a very important step
• It interested me very much to hear that they had an annotated bibliography assignment as part the First Year Experience program. It sounded like they had the students prepare it over the summer.
• She mentioned Graduate students which interested me as well, I believe she also mentioned workshops for those students.
• It sounded like they had quite alot of ways of reaching faculty--such as annual workshops, course stipends, travel grants, and a standing Information Literacy committee.

And of course her final recommendations, which were again to stress assessment, to find and learn from other programs, to host discussion, and to be persistent.

A Sad Day

If you are reading this, wherever you are in libraryland, I would ask you to pause for a moment in remembrance of Devin Zimmerman. If you have been a regular reader of this blog, you might have remembered that Devin was the Information Literacy Coordinator here at Alkek from January to August 2007. Tragically he was shot and killed while on duty yesterday at his workplace in San Antonio. Although I only worked with him for a relatively short time, he made a lasting impression on me and the people here at Alkek.

I think Devin was one of those special people who bring a light with them in the darkness and illuminate everyone around them, a catalyst that causes those around to grow and change. I have seen the tributes on his facebook page, and I know that he made a difference to many people. For me myself he was a mentor, and in a friendly competitive way spurred me onto new things. As I sit here in the office that he once occupied I remember and am grateful for his encouragement and advice even after he left to work at Alamo Community College.

By way of a memorial I'd like to link to his youtube videos and his very first blog post. He had also posted some podcasts but sadly the files did not survive. It may seem an odd memorial but I think although it may only reveal some of Devin's unforgettable character in a small way, at least they are his own words.

Interesting Online workshop

I just attended the first part of a really interesting online workshop called "Information Literacy Across the Curriculum", which was given jointly by the TLT group and ACRL. There will be two other meetings, on the 14th and the 21st of this month. There will be three other presenters, each to present a case study of their experiences in their institutions. Today's session was given by Lisa Hinchliffe, who is the Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

One of the first things I noticed as she was speaking was the size and diversity of their program, or rather as she described it as " multiple IL programs." I may have heard this incorrectly but I thought she said that they had from 20-50 staff teaching classes.* If it got that right, it sounds quite vast.

* Note: Special thanks to Lisa H. who graciously sent me the correct numbers via her comment below:
70-100 librarians
20-30 graduate assistants (library school students)
35-45 library units in 27 different campus buildings. (Wow. That *is* vast.)

It was very interesting though to me because although our university is not as large as UIUC, we still are pretty decently sized (29,125 students according to our website) and I could see how some of the things she spoke about could be adapted in our situation.
My ears perked up at several outreach/marketing activities that she mentioned; the idea of having a person dressed as a book and roaming around campus so students could take pictures with him is very endearing. And apparently they have iconic frisbees they give away as well. That is one area that I would like to learn more about--ways to advertise and get the world out in very creative approaches.

I found the interrelated relationship between their IL program and Reference to be also very intriguing, mostly because what she described corresponded to some observations that I had made about our own situation. She described consultations (I thought she meant individual type research consultations) , workshops (in particular for graduate students), tours in several different languages (Chinese, French, etc), and also very heavy IM use. For us IM usage has been steadily increasing although it isn't exactly "heavy." I have noticed though that our individual consultations are increasing and I wonder if this is something that other folks are seeing.

Some other things that stuck out in my mind (and notes):

• A graduate level IL credit course--I'd always heard of IL credit courses for undergraduates.
• She mentioned getting assessment plans for programs on campus--sounds interesting

I may be adding more as time permits, but for the most part felt that this was a very useful presentation.

An Interesting Find (Unity, a game development tool)

One of my colleagues who is the main architect/builder of our Second life campus passed me this link to Unity, a game development tool. Of course I am probably the last person in the world to learn about this program. I haven't had a chance to really look into it, but it seems really cool. It's web-based, and the website says you can make MMOs and Virtual Worlds with it. It appears that you have to download their player first to actually use it. I had fun playing with their little demo.

I like the fact that they have lots of tutorials and documentation. I am mostly a user of Second Life, but one of the things that is so hard at first for people new to Second life, and a potential headache, is the fact that you must create an account and download the software, etc. If this game maker is easy to use, well, oh the fun we could have!

I am deeply curious if anybody else has tried this game maker for their Information Literacy games. This is something that has interested me for a very long time, but I have only recently had time to really begin to research. The 2008 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Librarians Symposium is coming up in November, and I'd dearly like to go.