It's Academic

The summit is taking place on Monday, July 15 at the Conference Center at Central Penn.

Please see full details, including session descriptions and location details, by clicking here.

The 2019 Pennsylvania Library Association’s PA Forward Information Literacy Summit is focused on connecting people with resources and opportunities. This year’s summit is looking at information literacy and how it intersects with basic, civic and social, health and financial literacy, helping individuals navigate various information channels and understanding the role all libraries have in the discovery and application of credible information.

When: Monday, July 15, 2019, 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM

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!

This month our library collaborated with a student organization, the Penn State Altoona Environmentalist Coalition, to curate a “Take a Hike” display as a celebration of Earth Day and National Parks Week. Here I share why and how we did it for librarians eager to try a similar project.

Part of my mission in my role as Student Engagement & Outreach Librarian is making more room for students to be active partners in the library. I aim to show students how our library is not just a space to study or a room full of books, but also a place for them to share their research with a broader audience, express their creativity, and build their resumes outside the classroom setting.

I’m inspired by the book, Students Lead the Library: The Importance of Student Contributions to the Academic Library, edited by Sara Arnold-Garza and Carissa Tomlinson. This book has so many great ideas for librarians seeking to incorporate opportunities for student leadership development, student engagement, experiential learning, and more. In particular, the sections “Students as Curators” and “Student Groups as Library Leaders” offered some helpful models for our student-organization-curated exhibit.

Working with a student organization has some built-in advantages. Members are already super interested in a specific topic and motivated to advocate for it outside the classroom. Plus, they can share the work as a group rather than one individual doing all the work.

So, how did we collaborate?

1. Reach out. I went to the Student Involvement Fair at the beginning of the semester, asked about each club and what they do, introduced myself and my role, handed out business cards, and brainstormed on the fly about ways our library could support their specific needs, address their challenges, and work together on projects. For groups that expressed interest (including the Environmentalist Coalition), I followed up with emails about a week later.
2. Be flexible. I had already started planning an April display when the Environmentalist Coalition approached me in mid-March. So, I happily threw out my plans and worked with them instead! Also, when the students later asked if they could bring in original artwork for the display, I enthusiastically went with their suggestion instead of sticking with our first idea for a green paper backdrop.
3. Be clear. The students had never made a display before, so I gave them a quick tour of the space and then gave them a clear checklist of things they could supply: a bibliography of 20 suggested books, a list of 5 suggested websites for the iPad kiosk, all delivered by a deadline. Plus, I gave them a clear break down of what my responsibilities would be (e. g. get approval from library director, resource acquisition, coordinate with office of strategic communications, installation).
4. Be a fan! I promoted their hard work with posters, social media posts, a news release, and announcements in the Student Newsletter and the Faculty/Staff Newsletter. I also emailed the group about 2 weeks after installation with positive feedback their display had gotten, and at the end of the month, I recapped their success, suggested how they might describe their work on professional documents, and offered to be a reference if needed.
5. Plan ahead. To wrap up, I made contact with their incoming officers to let them know that I’d be happy to work with them next year if they were interested.

   

   A collage of photos of the library display.

Jessica Showalter is the Student Engagement & Outreach Librarian at Penn State Altoona’s Eiche Library. Say hello on Twitter @libraryjms