It was fun and rewarding to present Cool Productivity Tools with Bonnie at CIL. A few of our attendees

emailed us to say they really enjoyed our workshop and asked for more of our handouts!

CHECK YOUR EMAILS LATER THIS WEEK FOR YOUR OWN COPY!

Here I’ve summarized four sessions that I thought most applied to us as Academic Librarians or were the most

interesting. Enjoy!

Katie’s Point of View

LITERACY LAB: BRINGING ED TECH TOOLS INTO YOUR CLASS

* This one was the most interesting, and potentially most helpful for my position of Instruction Librarian.

• Presenters called for a shift to make students the content creators.

• TPACK- an overlap of technical knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and content knowledge.

• 4 C’s- Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, Creativity.

Note: Presenters taught semester-long information literacy classes at their schools. Some of their ideas were great, but would need to be tweaked for use at Berkeley College.

LITERACY LAB: BRINGING ED TECH TOOLS INTO YOUR CLASS

10 Ideas

1. Class Site: Wiki- PB Works. Learning Management Systems. Works with Blackboard, but the students can access course content after graduating. Layers tech info lit, plus content skills.

2. Flow Charts: Creately, Gliffy, Prezi. Students use these to organize research.

3. Book Reviews: Students journal with Blogger.

PB Works

Gliffy

LITERACY LAB: BRINGING ED TECH TOOLS INTO YOUR CLASS

10 Ideas

4. Mobile Scavenger Hunt: Goal is to identify library materials and services. Work with 1 mobile device per team. Students use critical thinking to find and take pics of materials like a specific book, copy machine, study rooms, etc.

5. Bookmarking: Diigo. Students can bookmark and tag things.

6. Team-Based Problem: Students learn how to use Google Hangouts, Google Maps and Google Drive in order to collaborate to survive the Zombie Apocalypse.

LITERACY LAB: BRINGING ED TECH TOOLS INTO YOUR CLASS

10 Ideas

7. Organizing Research: Edmodo. Google Sites. Wix (Flash-based: consider compatibility this when asking students to use this for their project).

8. Mix Tape: Students use Youtube, Grooveshark, 8Tracks to make a playlist. They’re curating a collection and must use descriptions to show why songs were included.

LITERACY LAB: BRINGING ED TECH TOOLS INTO YOUR CLASS

10 Ideas

9. Fair Use: PicMonkey, Gimp. Take meme and evaluate it for it’s fair use. Students should say something like, “They didn’t use the heart of the work; the meme was only meant to be shown in class, etc.”

10. Final Project: Jing. Students create a video on their topic, citing sources in the video. Allows 5 min video or less.

CHANGE WITHOUT PAIN

Get feedback. Make sure changes are welcomed/wanted by users.

Focus groups, etc.

Plan. Think of potential problems.

Watch tutorials to learn about new products.

Find mentors in the building, county, regional system, online or wherever you can. Become part of library groups online. Read and participate in social media and blogs.

Horsesmouth.co.uk – “Someone knows what you need. Someone needs what you know.”

CHANGE WITHOUT PAIN

Use the “Lazy Consensus” for collaborative change.

Avoid unnecessary discussion.

Silence is approval.

Whole group gets the chance to say what they don’t like about something. If you like it you stay quiet. Default to yes.

People with good ideas aren’t held back anymore.

ENCOURAGING READING IN NEW WAYS

Allows regular people to catalog their books. Add books, create a catalog. Add tags.

Use LibraryThing to enhance library catalog.

Users can see other users’ ratings and tags.

SCALE IS EVERYTHING! LibraryThing’s massive amounts of tags and reviews will add value and justification.

Nothing is ever shown in the library catalog that your library does not have.

ENCOURAGING READING IN NEW WAYS

A product by LibraryThing. Makes book recommendations based on ratings you give other books.

User-based recommendations are now ubiquitous.

Designed to be attractive and simple.

Tips for giving book recommendations:

• Avoid giving recommendations for books of same authors/series.

• Avoid just popular books

ENCOURAGING READING IN NEW WAYS

- One librarian discussed the “Game of Books,” a reading program at his library. Participants get stickers/badges on a bookmark for each book you read. (I.E. Twilight would get a Nerdy Vampire Badge).

THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT!

Let’s you manage Twitter, FB and social

media accounts.

- It would have been interesting if the presenters talked about how they developed

the app. They did not and they left early, leaving no opportunity for questions.

Create surveys to let users request an instruction session, recommend new acquisitions, etc.

Count Things

Great for on-the-fly data collection. Attendance

at a session, program or event

Prese

nters

mentioned a fe

w free apps…

but not

many.

Librarian-Created App!- Librarians developed an app

which patrons can use to contact a librarian for assistance.

- The app, displayed on a tablet on a kiosk, sends a message to a librarian in

his/her office, signaling that a patron needs help.

- The app tells the patron that a librarian is on the way to help.

STAYED TUNED..

Next Library Buzz issue to include

Bonnie’s Point of View