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I was able to attend a program on Monday! I went to “Once upon a Furl in a Podcast Long Ago: Using New Technologies to Support Library Instruction.” Not only was this program all about some of my favorite topics (technology in education), but it was sponsored by the Women’s Studies Section (my home within ACRL).

The program started with awards. This year’s WSS award for significant achievement in Women’s Studies Librarianship went to Jennifer Gilley, Kayo Denda, Jenna Freedman, and Sharon Ladenson for their 2006 NWSA Conference presentation. This was a presentation at an academic conference for Women and Gender Studies scholars focusing on library research. The WSS award for career achievement in Women’s Studies Librarianship went to Sandy River, long time, active member. In her speech she talked about how WSS gave her a home in ALA and how she has received at least as much from WSS as she has given. Her speech really resonated with me because the WSS committee was the one that really brought me into the fold right away. It’s a great group of people, and they’re doing really great things at their institutions and in ACRL.

After the awards section, the program began. This was an overwhelmingly popular program! The crowd overflowed and the hotel staff had to take down one of the walls to make more room. I took a lot of notes, so I’ll try to keep it to the point (with links for more information) here:

From Joan K. Lippincott:

  • We’re at a critical point where we need to fundamentally rethink our services & information literacy
  • Emphasize information and content, technology as vehicle
  • What about non-traditional students who aren’t connected? They will need to be to function in today’s business world, so we should work to teach them to use these technologies.
    Convergence of literacies: Written Literacy, Information Literacy, Technology Literacy, Visual Literacy
  • Pointed towards MacArthur Foundation Project (Digital Media and Learning)
    Areas to consider (New T&L Partnerships): Center for Teaching and Learning, New Media Center, Instructional Technology Group, FIlm or Multimedia Studies Department (on our own campuses)
  • Columbia’s Shakespeare & the Book: Study Environment
  • Georgetown U, CNDLS
  • New Resources like PennTags, TeamSpot (at Stanford), Student Multi-media Design Center (U. Delaware), Practice Presentation Room (Georgia Tech)
  • We’re changing focus: from teaching about access to library resources to teaching about access to information and tools (Amen!)
  • Data for visualization is going to become more important in all fields
  • Webcasts, podcasts, blogs, images, etc. are rich resources for students, do we connect them to this type of resource, or limit our reference to library-purchased information?
  • Research Channel videos (high level academic content)
  • D-Lib article on Wikipedia to extend access to digital collections
  • Georgetown portal for community based research (about Washington DC)
  • George Mason History Tools
  • Showing information
  • Digital collections as screensavers on library computers
  • NCSU Learning Commons eBoards images
  • Changing focus: from teaching policies as rules, to focusing on policy awareness and discussion
  • Media Education Foundation’s fair(y) use tale
  • UPenn Library mashup Contest in conjunction with LL’s Free Culture
  • Creative Commons Licensing (are we teaching our students? grad students?)
  • Cornell’s Thoughts on Facebook (are we sharing our thoughts on these issues with our students?)
  • Methods: online tutorials, online games, contest, social networking sites, students collect resource before class & jointly critique, simulation, instruction in virtual worlds
    supporting materials: social sites like blogs developed by students, wikis, etc
  • Challenges for faculty: interest in inserting skills in faculty curriculum, willingness to collaborate, acceptance of new forms of projects, developing of grading for new forms of expressions
  • Challenges for librarians: broaden conception of information literacy, convergence, overall service program, not just classes, engagement in collaborative learning with students, development of new skills, promoting services to faculty
  • We must transform information literacy!
  • We will have to let go of some things (We can’t keep doing all we’ve done & add new, have to decide what to stop doing)
  • Assist in student transition from recreational use of technology to academic use
  • Provide with environment with engage students (both physically and virtually)
  • Promote creativity

From Dr. Kathleen Burnett:

  • 10 years from now the field of librarianship will mostly be digital natives
  • “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach .” Mark Prensky
  • Digital Natives assume connectivity & see the world through he lens of games and play.
  • “Over the past 20 years, young adults have declined from being the most likely to read literature to those least likely. The rate of decline for the youngest adults, aged 18 to 24 was 55% greater than the total adult population. ” Kelly Hill
  • “Even if the lecturer is charismatic, holding the attention of students for an entire lecture of fifty minutes or longer is impossible.” Joel Foreman
  • “It is clear from talking with them that they already know they don’t want to live and work the way we do. ” Brian O’Reilly (However LIS enrollment is increasing and age of first enrollment is lower than it has ever been.)
  • Cited D. Oblinger’s research of learning preferences
  • Ideal learning situation: customizable, immediate feedback, constructive to explore learning environments, motivates students to persist in excess of any externally imposed requirements, builds enduring conceptual structures. (Joel Forman)
  • Strategies: interaction & feedback, engage, accelerate, experiential learning, increase options, peer-to-peer, more “pull” web based options, more interactive multimedia.
  • Suggestions for implementation:
  • Podcasts & vodcasts: bring other voices and faces into discussion, or students can create presentations
  • Blogs & social networks: support class and discussion, or extend bounds of classroom (invite other participants), or to encourage individual responsibility for information
  • Wikis: support collaborative development of info resources and dissemination of information, or to teach consensus building and teamwork
  • Games and simulations: explore relationship between physical and virtual, or to teach the concepts of programming or to engage kinetic and spatial learners
  • Pew Internet & American Life Project: Web 2.0 Users
  • Men and women balanced in Omnivore, Females tend to be Connectors
  • This indicates we’re equalizing in terms of computer use skills in some ways

From Kathryn Shaughnessy:

This presentation was based on a specific distance program at St. John’s University. I’m only noting things that would be useful to us, too:

  • Used technology to improve library instruct: creation, distribution, and impact
  • Used open source alternatives that could be continue to be used after graduation
  • Again, brought up the synthesis of literacies
  • Technologies of choice: Captivate for tutorials, Audacity for podcasts, WordPress for blogging, PBwiki or Wikipm for wikis, also RSS, RefWorks, Skype, del.icio.us tagging, and courseware.
  • Said that if you only had time to learn one technology in the coming year, she would say “RSS, all the way.” This resonates with my “RSS will change your life!”
  • Updated Information Literacy (Modular) Tutorial in Captivate (with images, text, and demonstration)
  • Academic Podcasting Initiative
  • Uses RefWorks to generate RSS for courses. I wonder if there would be a way to do this for our podcasting pilot using EndNote Web?
  • del.icio.us for course bookmarks
  • Skype was the second most important technology according to Shaughnessy, certainly could be useful for distance education with our abroad houses (particularly with camera)
  • St. John’s uses podlinez to do an audio tour of library that you can dial into on your cell phone

From Heather Tompkins:

  • WGS as interdisciplinary: cutting edge, CV not yet developed, falls outside traditional resources, breaks down expert/novice barriers, emphasizes connections and process, considers materials informally published
  • She explained social bookmarking as a way to share bookmarks across the library professionally. Do you use del.icio.us or furl? Let me know, i’ll add you to my network! (My del.icio.us account username is laurenpressley)
  • Pulls social bookmarks to library page
  • Used Flickr to annotate floor maps of the library for her specific disciplines
  • Pointed to Google customized search engine
  • Pointed to meebo widget and Google Calendar
  • There is a potential information literacy tie in: looking at friends’ friends is like citation research, a blogroll is like bibliography, tagging is like controlled vocab, etc.

So, to be honest, I assumed I would know everything that this session would about, and I attended mostly just to be supportive. However, it was a really really good session! The speakers articulated ideas well and shared several new ones!