library+instruction+technology

Every librarian and faculty member should read the CIBER briefing paper Information behaviour of the researcher of the future (2 MB PDF). CIBER conducted this research for the British Library and JISC . The report focuses on information seeking behavior of students born after 1993 (the Google Generation). The paper also ties in research from OCLC's Perceptions studies. You may also want to listen to presentation given and Q&A's when the paper was released on January 16, 2008.

Found via Stephen's Lighthouse. 

The Ohio State University Libraries hosted a Library 2.0 Seminar back in June. Two emails showed up in my inbox this morning indicating that videos of the presentation and handouts have been posted to the site.

If you are curious about some of the uses of 2.0 apps in libraries and have a broadband connection, then here is yet another free way to get yourself up-to-speed.The videos require RealPlayer. It appear that the videos will not play on some older versions. 

Presenters included:

• Stephen Bell – "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Web 2.0 World" Watch presentation | Handouts
• Chad Boeninger – "Wikis in Libraries" Watch presentation
• Brian Matthews – "Social Context" Watch presentation
• Ken Varnum – "RSS Basics and Beyond" Watch presentation | Handouts
• Eric Schnell – "Mashups" Watch presentation | Handouts
• Ellyssa Kroski – "Folksonomies and Social Tagging" Watch presentation | Handouts
• Stephen Abram – "Our User Experience: Puzzle Pieces Falling in Place" Watch presentation
• Lorcan Dempsey – "The network reconfigures discovery: the importance of disclosure"
  Watch presentation

The latest edition of the Horizon Report is now available for your browsing/reading pleasure. This is a joint publication from The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. The technologies forecasted along with their time to adoption include:

• user created content (1 year or less),
• social networking (1 year or less),
• mobile phones (2 to 3 years),
• virtual worlds (2 to 3 years),
• new scholarship and emerging forms of publication (4 to 5 years), and
• massively multiplayer educational gaming (4 to 5 years)

The executive summary identifies several trends and challenges impacting higher education. "Information literacy increasingly should not be considered a given." [page 4] I agree with this statement, but would like to know who really considers information literacy a given in the first place? We try our best to teach students how to use our resources, but we know we don't reach everyone and even the ones we do reach are not always receptive to learning because it's all free on the web anyway.

The authors continue, "Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the information literacy skills of new students are not improving as the post-1993 Internet boomlet enters college." [page 4] Yep. The continual challenge we face is helping our students straddle the digital and analog worlds during information research. We are also challenged to help faculty understand that their students do not approach research the same way that they did 10-20 years ago when they were in college.

I enjoy reading/browsing this report. However, I am always concerned about how I can really apply any of these technologies locally.

I just saw read about the new EDUCAUSE ebook, Learning Space , over on the EDUCAUSE Connect blog. 

Learning Spaces focuses on how learner expectations influence such spaces, the principles and activities that facilitate learning, and the role of technology from the perspective of those who create learning environments: faculty, learning technologists, librarians, and administrators. Information technology has brought unique capabilities to learning spaces, whether stimulating greater interaction through the use of collaborative tools, videoconferencing with international experts, or opening virtual worlds for exploration.

I know we don't have the money to configure and equip the instruction room right now. I'm hoping to get some ideas out of this book that we can use when we can find the funding.

Another item from Stephen’s Lighthouse is a new book written by a college professor who went back to school. Rebekah Nathan wrote My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, which was just published in August 2005 by Cornell University Press. Twelve OhioLINK schools either have it or have it on order. Of course they are all checked out right now.

I finished the problem based learning book I had posted early. It was very academic. If you are looking for a detailed background on the development of problem based learning and the various components, you would find it very interesting.

I know, you barely have enough time to read/browse/scan library literature and here I am suggesting another journal to add to your reading list…

I have been sifting around on Google looking for good resources for problem based learning and informatoin literacy or library instruction. I stumbled on to the referral to the journal New Directions for Teaching and Learning (ISSN: 0271-0633) on the Samford University’s problem based learning web site.

I haven’t had much time to do more than skim through the table of contents on-line, but some of the articles look very interesting. For those of you at OhioLINK institutions, we get this journal in the EJC from 1997 to the present.

In addition to my interest in using technology in library instruction, I am also interested in problem based learning. I am currently reading Foundations of problem-based learning by Maggi-Savin Baden and Claire Howell Major. I would like to figure out how to integrate PBL into our existing 2 credit hour Library Research Methods course as well as some of our other library instruction programs.