Project Four: What Can We Do for You?

Unit Six: The Flipped Classroom

This week our class discussions centered around an instructional design method entitled "The Flipped Classroom." The Flipped Classroom is a new spin on classroom learning: essentially, instead of teachers lecturing in the traditional way (at a desk, in front of the classroom, etc.), they can post their lectures online for students to view and post to discussion boards.  The classroom time is spent engaging on the material and putting into practice the actual application of the learning.  A short video of The Flipped Classroom can be viewed here:

The Flipped Classroom is assuredly a hands-on approach with a focus on technology.  It recognizes that the future is unknown and continuously changing.  It is a passion based model which asserts that if students can Google the answer, why bother testing them with such questions? Instead question the student's ability to take the knowledge and apply it!  As librarians and instructors, we have a responsibility to adhere to the strengths involved in The Flipped Classroom: it causes the teacher to be active all day and everyday—working with the students and as part of the students in order to ultimately increase student learning.  Each teacher/librarian creates his or her own authentic flavor and style of teaching; we are creating quality activities and lesson plans to constantly engage students.  Students (or patrons) will use the educational videos WHEN and WHERE appropriate for them, and instead use the classroom (or library) environment to apply those learnings.

Because I am more focused on academic librarianship versus actual instruction, I am very curious about how a librarian might implement these tactics! Would we have the responsibility to perhaps teach our audience from afar the resources available to them--so that when they come into the library they are aware of the resources already available to them?  Make it well known to the campus community what resources we provide and perhaps instruction on how to use them?  Create videos on effectively understanding the Library of Congress so students coming into the library can hone in on their research rather than worry about how to access the materials?

Technology in my Library Experiences

Undoubtedly, the academic library is becoming a less vital part of the university because students rely on fast and easy to use search engines (like Google) to yield fast results. I know that even during my undergraduate career I was guilty of this: I would Google something, and then attempt to find published articles/documents to help augment what I discovered in the quick search. We live in a time where people are less inclined to sort through stacks of books and volumes of periodicals to achieve answers and information. Currently college students have grown up with computers and Google and fast results.

 

As such, it is increasingly important to meet the needs (and technological based demands!) of such students. I had the absolutely pleasure of recently interning at a small academic college, where my two major responsibilities included the creation of LibGuides and the development of a YouTube catalog. A very popular asset to the students, library guides are basically a highly advantageous starting point for research. For example, a lib guide in art may suggest books in the collection pertaining to art, useful databases for art appreciation, reliable websites for browsing--and perhaps even online digital repositories for art from museums like MoMA and the Louvre. Resources like this will be helpful to ensuring students not only have quick access to information, but will also guide them toward efficient and appropriate resources. This is vital to our duties as librarians! Furthermore, essential technological skills are necessary for the creation of LibGuides: most of the formatting is similar to that of Dreamweaver, so some knowledge of html is needed. I found myself going through many other LibGuides while I was interning just because of awkward spacing, mismatched colors and links that did not work. These are mistakes we should not be making as pioneers of technology!

Secondly I created a YouTube catalog for the college. I assessed (informally) areas of the collection that would most benefit from the development of a YouTube catalog, and determined it to be the areas of Theater and History. Upon retrieving syllabi for many of the classes, and evaluating the course catalog, I then selected myriad videos for each, created the YouTube channel, watched the videos at length to determine their appropriateness and then added a variety for both the areas of History and of Theater. This project was entirely "free" to the college (I say this of course because I was an unpaid intern and therefore not staff), and I am still curious to hear how the YouTube collection affects the catalog. Because I just finished the project in June it has yet to be "officially" added to the catalog, but I remain curious nevertheless!

Project Two: Creating a Prezi

My completed project for Project Two is two-fold: it consists of a Prezi presentation regarding the NETS standards, made available below:



The second part of my project involves a Word document--explaining how each NETS Standard example adheres to the six steps involved in the ASSURE model. This document can be found by clicking here.

What I adored most about this project was that it involved my own critical thinking to encourage the critical thinking of future students. As someone who hopes to eventually pursue academic librarianship with professor status, I fully understand the importance of involving young students in myriad technological tools. In this semester alone, I have experienced sites such as Lino, Voki, Blogger and Prezi; in my LIS program I have been introduced to tools like Google Hangout, Camtasia, WikiSpaces and many social media sites. These sites and tools all come prepped with their strength and weaknesses--each with the potential to highlight various student works and help in the research and/or teaching processes. I cannot begin to say how grateful I am to be equipped with the necessary skill-set to someday teach these tools to others!

Unit Four: My Voki

Unit Three: My Experiences with a Wiki

A wiki is defined as a collective intelligence tool that enables collaborative editing of documents on the web. While a wiki is believed to be a useful tool for the classroom and student collaboration, I imagine it serves equally as useful in the business environment.  According to an article in InformationWeek Software, a wiki has four main features:

• A simple (and free) way to build and manage content
• Support hyperlinks and has simple text syntax for creating new pages and cross links between internal pages on the fly
• Accessibility from everywhere without any software installation (just a browser)
• Easy to track and constantly up-to-date

During my undergraduate career I had the pleasure of participating in many classes pertaining to digital rhetoric--involving the combination of classwork,  language and technology.  Because of these courses, I also was able to participate in many collaborative wikis, which mostly involved classmate introductions and group collaborations.  Not only does a wiki allow for collaboration among group members, it can also act as a drop box or repository type thing for different resources--i.e. pertinent articles, coursework, or anything else that relates to the course content.  All of the course information can be put on a wiki as well, including documents such as: syllabus, points of note, and announcements.  A sample of a wiki page I created utilizing WikiSpaces as a college sophomore is pictured below:

The layout of a wiki is usually clean and crisp and easy to use.  A student is also able to utilize basic html (such as linking to outer websites and uploading images), which is essential in the day of online resumes and digital portfolios. 

While increasing the student understanding of wiki operations is essential, I also recognize the importance of a wiki in a potential business or corporate environment.  Using a wiki in the business sector would enable users to gather and share information, foster information flow within the organization and allow equal collaboration and access to resources and ideas.  I know first-hand what a problem communication can become among various departments; having a general wiki for the entire corporation would help eliminate those holes in the miscommunication.

Works Cited

Foux, G. (2005, December 17). Wikis: Enabling Effective Knowledge Sharing Across the Organization - . InformationWeek | Business Technology News, Reviews and Blogs. Retrieved July 21, 2013, from http://www.informationweek.com/software/information-management/wikis-enabling-effective-knowledge-shari/175003662

Unit Two: NETS-S and Lino

This week our class explored the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S), and held our discussion through utilizing this very innovative web application tool, titled Lino.  While the discussion itself was incredible, I am instead choosing to dedicate my blog posting for this week toward Lino—which is an online web sticky note service that can be used to post memos, to-do lists, ideas and photos anywhere on an online web canvas.  It helps people connect and communicate in a really rather adorable and efficient format; this is exactly how I like my web application tools!

In a way, the tool itself sort of reminds me of some kind of hybrid among Blackboard discussion, Prezi and Pinterest.  Lino is basically a giant cork board that anyone with a link can provide “sticky note” commentaries onto.  Beyond the unique (and colorful!) discussion we had as a class, I also learned that Lino can be utilized for myriad other tasks, including:

• ·         Free layout of your pictures and movies
• ·         Send emails and notes online
• ·         Remembering special dates and deadlines
• ·         Use “stickies” to share files among friends and colleagues
• ·         Use as a hand tool for meetings
• ·         Share ideas with texts and pictures
• ·         Use from your smartphone!

I could see a library benefiting from this site—or any educational environment.  I know that at the library where I work (Novi Public Library), following children book discussions the librarians often put together Prezi presentation webs for the children to have access to the information discussed.  I feel like venturing out to other sites such as Lino—a site providing similar aesthetics and provisions—a librarian can expose more instructional technological applications onto people. J  As librarians, we have a responsibility to be pioneers of technology; what better way than to expose new technological tools frequently and to diverse audiences!  With that said though, I do recognize that the aesthetics could potentially become visually confusing with a lot of people posting.  Surely if we can figure out Pinterest though, we can figure out just about anything.