Episode 7: October 2009 - Britney Spears and Semiconductors

Listen to this episode (mp3, 1 hour, 3 minutes)

Part I: (00:45 - 35:00, ~35 minutes)
In this episode, Jason, Anna and Rachel talk about what they've up to up, instruction-wise, for the past month. Highlights include Anna's social networking class, Jason's online workshop, and Rachel's grassroots information literacy struggles.

Links:
DiRT Wiki: http://digitalresearchtools.pbworks.com
Christian Sager's webcomic, Border Crossings: http://www.thelastisland.com
ALI logo's Skull, courtesy of Custopher: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gus/770596
ALI logo's Book, courtesy of King Unicorn: http://kingunicorn.blogspot.com

Part II: (35:00 - 1:03, ~28 minutes)
Rachel interviews Peter Larsen at the University of Rhode Island regarding their information literacy program and his tips for teachers.

Links:
Britney Spears and Semiconductors: http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.html

Join us for future episodes! If you’re interested, please post a comment on the Adventures in Library Instruction blog or email us! We’ll do it as a Skype discussion or you can record a segment on your own.

ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award

Nominations for the ACRL Instruction Section award are due December 9th. If you know of a project that "demonstrate[s] recognized creativity, quality, and innovation within the context of national trends in information literacy instruction or programming," let ACRL know about it so it can get some national recognition!

ALI Episode 6, September 2009: fall classes and interview with Kim Duckett

Play the episode (mp3, 1 hour 5 minutes)

Part I (00:45-34:00; approx. 34 minutes)

We talk a bit about classes each of us have taught or are preparing to teach. Anna's tackling a class for October, which is set up as a social networking Q&A session for parents and teens. Jason taught a class about games as a guest speaker in a for-credit library course. Rachel's deep in preparation for a class where students may or may not have topics, the professor requested specific tools to be demonstrated, and it's at 8:30 in the morning to boot! We discussed tactics she could use to keep the students engaged.

Links/Resources:

• Serious Game explanation via Wikipedia
• America's Army
• Passage
• ACRL Webcast: Podcasting October 1st at 2pm Eastern
• Internet Librarian 2009: Jason will be conducting a 15-minute Cybertour re: Podcasting
• Conger, J. (2001). Wake up that back row: interactive library instruction without hands-on student computers. In C. Hales Mabry (Ed.), Doing the work of reference: practical tips for excelling as a reference librarian (pp. 309-322). Binghamton, NY: Haworth.
  

Part II (34:00-1:04:00; approx. 30 minutes)

Interview with Kim Duckett, Principal Librarian for Digital Technologies & Learning from North Carolina State University, about her involvement with creating contextual e-learning resources

Links/Resources:

• Wikipedia: Beneath the Surface
• Peer Review in 5 Minutes
• libncsu YouTube Channel
• NCSU library's projects on their library's website with credits pages
• Literature Review: An Overview for Graduate Students
• Article Databases in 5 Minutes
• Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42.

Note: Kim wishes to thank those who have been critical to the creation of these projects: Hyun-Duck Chung, Dre Orphanides, Josh Wilson, Eleanor Smith, Emily Mazure, Sarah Bankston, and Susan Baker.

Join us for future episodes! If you’re interested, please post a comment on the Adventures in Library Instruction blog or email us! We’ll do it as a Skype discussion or you can record a segment on your own.

What do you want us to talk about?

We're crowdsourcing the topics for the September episode of ALI, which we're recording next week. What would you like to hear us talk about?

Leave a comment here, or email us at adlibinstruction@gmail.com.

Pronouncing "pecha kucha"

As a followup to episode 5's discussion:

ALI Episode 5, August 2009: Flying Kangaroo Powerpoint with Maurice Coleman

Play the episode (mp3, 1 hour 10 minutes)

Jason, Rachel, and Anna are joined by the fabulous Maurice Coleman, author of the Chronicles of of the (almost) Bald Technology Trainer and the Technical Trainer at Harford County (MD) Public Library. We discuss effective PowerPoint techniques, PowerPoint best practices, and even some speaker training tips (e.g., pecha kucha, lightning talks, etc.).

Links to some of the things we mentioned during the show (as well as a little of what we forgot to mention):

• Presentation Zen blog by Garr Reynolds
  
• Demitri Martin - fun with flip charts (and yes, there's a pointer!)
• How to Change the World: The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint
• Marianne Lenox's The MLX Experience TED Speaker Commandments
• Parade of Games in PowerPoint (download sample games; download sample templates)
• A PowerPoint Blog posts daily tips and tricks about getting the most out of your PowerPoint presentations
• Pres4Lib presentation camp (information and links on workshops by trainers for trainers done as lightning talks)
• Reynolds, G. (2008). Presentation zen: Simple ideas on presentation design and delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub
• Ryan Dechamps' The Other Librarian Doing a 15 Minute Presentation in 10 Easy Steps
• Slideshare (an online presentation sharing community)
• TED Talks, nonprofit "devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading" (excellent examples of using PowerPoint effectively)

Also: If you can, please contribute to the LSW's fundraising effort for the Louisville Free Public Library's flood recovery. If you can't donate financially, you can help by spreading the word.

Join us for future episodes! If you’re interested, please post a comment on the Adventures in Library Instruction blog or email us! We’ll do it as a Skype discussion or you can record a segment all on your own.

ALI Episode 4, July 2009: Professional development without a budget

We talk about ALA, conferences, current teaching stuff, and professional development with little or no budget. Links to some of the things we mentioned:

• ALI Zotero group
  
• Call for Speakers --> Computers in Libraries 2010. Information Fluency: Literacy for Life. (submissions due september 15th)
• Library Society of the World site, their blog, and on Friendfeed where a lot of the chatter takes place
• ALA electronic conference participation
• Free webinar software-- dimdim, vRoom by Elluminate, yugma
• Some of the local orgs and groups we mentioned: Atl Area BIG, Central Jersey Regional Library Cooperative (CJRLC), WRLC, Atlanta Emerging Librarians
• Online instructional resources like STS' Information Literacy wiki and Libsuccess Wiki

Join us for future episodes! If you’re interested, please post a comment on the Adventures in Library Instruction blog or email us! We’ll do it as a Skype discussion or you can record a segment all on your own.