Leveraging #EdTech for Library Instruction

As librarians we all wear many hats, and one of my unofficial hats at our small campus is with instructional design and education technologies due to my experience as an online faculty member, and mentor to new online students and faculty, as well as my reputation for being a “tech nerd” and early adopter.

I had the opportunity today to attend ADVIS’s (Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools) Innovation Workshop today with our Academy Dean (grades 7-12) and Systems Administrator so that we can begin brainstorming about how to better leverage free (and low cost) educational technologies on our campus for the next academic year.

The workshop was set up as “speed sessions” or lightning talks held in two rounds with 10-12 concurrent sessions each repeated 4 times in the round, allowing participants to choose 4 sessions from each round, attending 8 sessions total in under 2 hours! My head is still spinning with ideas that can be borrowed, tweaked, new technologies to try, and some frameworks and guidelines to explore.

My top 3 #EdTech highlights from the day that can be easily used in our college/university classrooms and libraries include:

• PearDeck (The Essential Plan is free, and paid versions are available). Pear Deck is built to work with Google Slides, and helps incorporate assessment into presentations/discussions (and captures data). So, for those of us teaching one-shot information literacy sessions, this could be an easy way to embed assessment with our instruction.
• TedED. Allows users to create or use existing lessons to engage students in TedTalks style lectures! (Still in pilot phase if anyone is interested…)
• Educreations. Designed to engage users with video. Most of the examples mentioned in today’s sessions were for math students demonstrating how they solve a problem. I immediately envisioned that missing link in librarian’s studies of user-experience with web design, LibGuides, and database usage, where we can see how students approach a research task!

Where do you get your Ed Tech ideas? How do you engage faculty to experiment with new technologies in the classroom?

I like to follow:

• Cult of Pedagogy
• EdWeb
• The Tech Advocate
• Tutorful

Let’s get creative and have our students use their beloved technology to learn!