Project Laos Library!

Well, I have a lot to share since my 'seemingly' last post in August. I started my new position as a Public Services & Instruction Librarian, which is better than I ever could have imagined. My colleagues, students and campus peers are amazing, supportive and inspiring. I am getting to do a lot of projects I have wanted to do for years, and feel tremendously lucky to be in my dream job.

For my first year of tenure I wanted to do something BIG for my community service project. So, I decided to create a fundraiser to build a school reading room in Laos. I am giving artwork (created by me) as an incentive for the donations. Here is a little more about the project. The organization Room to Read (my favorite non-profit) will establish the Library and create a space with books, puzzles, games, furniture and trained library staff for hundreds of children in a community in Laos. 100% of the proceeds of artwork sales goes towards the project and over 20 pieces have already sold and funds have been donated to the project.

The tremendous amount of support from friends and family has been overwhelming. We have already reached $2,800 of our project goal of $5,000!

Work available for the project:

 

 

 

 

A Summer in Photos: July

My summer in July!!!

A little trip to Sea Ranch with the fam to kick off the 4th of July. It was windy but wonderful. Thanks to my aunt Nancy for delicious home cooked food every single night...

My glorious, completely fantastic, unbelievably nice going away party from my SSU colleagues. (I am not just saying this- but it really was the best party we have ever had there.) Talk about the nicest send off possible from a really great group of people. The food, company, gifts and time where all marvelous.

The fortune cookie that was part of my send off (it was also very tasty). Everyone wrote me an anonymous fortune. It was such a great idea. I will have to remember it. (Go Jen!)

Shortly after my party my work at SSU came to an end. The four and a half years went so fast. I look back and am just shocked I was there that long. It was a job I will never forget and will always be a better person and Librarian for it. What an experience!

One more vacation to celebrate everything:

The sunken garden in the Butchart Gardens. This was one of my favorite scenes of the garden. There was barely anyone in the park as you can see from my photo. It was so breathtaking and amazing. It was inspiring to see what can be done with such a formerly ugly space (it was the site of a limestone quarry built by the spouse of the Butchart creator).

A little coffee at the Pike Place Market for our last night. We also got some delicious rainier cherries (which are my favorite).

A view from our train. My mom and I took the train from the Eastbay to Seattle and back again. At first it was a little difficult to adjust to the teeny tiny space but we adapted. We also got all our food included which made it and the dining car very easy. July was wonderful. I had a great group of students in my classes, got to see my family and saw the lovely Victoria. What could be better!

A Summer in Photos: June

What have I been up to this summer? Here is my summer in photos, like the old fashioned summer book reports...so nostalgic. I broke the summer in to June, July and August.

Here is my month of June 2012, full as you will see of work and play (as all summer months should be):

Zach and I kicked off the summer with a trip to AZ as we do every year to visit the gramps and gram. We had fun on our guided AZ hike with my Gram and her friend. We joked that if I was a plant I would be this one. I like to think or myself as hardy, proportionate and independent... or wait does this mean I am prickly?

Zach and I at our favorite Italian restaurant in AZ. We were celebrating my new position at the SRJC (soooo excited to start next week!!)

The four of us getting ready to go to the Cirque Du Soleil show in Kazoo in Phoenix. I love the Cirque Du Soleil. I always buy Zach tickets as 'gifts.' Oops, I guess my secret is out, they are really for me.

This month was also filled with my teaching two 1 unit info lit courses at the JC and wrapping up my work at Cal State East Bay. I will miss my students there who were always a great group of freshmen (and especially my cluster faculty) but am extremely pumped to be going where I am!

Whiteboard Champ

I don't know what my deal is with whiteboards lately. I think it is because everything is so project based in the summer time and it is such an easy brainstorming tool. I wish I was this organized on my white board brain storming....a potential regional file organization white board (color coded to boot)! My boss Julie is my whiteboard icon!

The beauty of the whiteboard

I have been working on a Moodle project at one of my jobs. We are building small 'chunkable' information literacy units in Moodle and loading campus faculty in to the course (or rather will be in the Fall). How the class is set up, it allows the faculty (who have student access) to be able to download Moodle 'books' we create which include content, a discussion prompt and an activity they can assign students. We have been working through many different formats/structures/ideas which has prompted us to do a lot of different brainstorming. Never one to really get the full use out of white boards (sort of the 'I wish I were a whiteboard user' syndrome) I have had a turn for the better. I now understand my whiteboard using strength. They just don't make good lists for me. However, I can now use them for brainstorming (and beautiful calligraphy practice).

Old Maps Galore

For all you map lovers out there, here is an incredible new free online resource: Old Maps Online

You can search for historical digital maps and pull up and zoom in original maps from libraries worldwide. It is one of my favorite mash-ups of 2012 and is only about a week old. There are also a ton of maps of Sonoma County and you can search by zip code, city or by zooming in from a Google Maps world view. You can order prints (so I am not sure what commercial partner was involved) but also zoom, crop and print the maps and share them through social media.

Here is an image of Sonoma County (from here):

Happy 76th!

Happy Birthday Pops! To my number ONE Blog follower and all around favorite Grandpa. Hope you sleep in, get a Philly Cheesesteak and do whatever you want on your b-day! Say hi to Gram.

What's on your Bookshelf?

I have been reading like crazy on info lit instruction. Why? One because it is fun and stimulating, Two because I want to refresh my online courses to add a few new things, and Three because I am working on a new project at one of my jobs to help create small chunkable Moodle info lit modules for campus faculty. So here is what is on my bookshelf in light of these three reasons:

1) Teaching Information Literacy: This is perhaps one of my favorite practical information literacy books to date. It has such clean exercises, that are so easily adaptable to your specific population and format. Some of the in-person exercises I tweak heavily and am using this quarter teaching my Eastbay students. One is coming due this week, so we will see how the lesson worked out....
I personally think there are three main areas where in-person teaching sessions can fail:
- You built an inappropriate unit (either it was for the wrong audience or the directions were just unclear)
- A random technology fail (the server is down, the database subscriptions stopped working, the keyboard froze....)
- A classroom management issue (a student that won't stop talking- to you or their friend, a lack of energy in the class, or no participation at all)

2) A guide to teaching information literacy: 101 practical tips
This next book gives major tips on three core areas of instruction: planning, delivery and activities. What I was most focused on in this book was the #3 above. Lots of practical advice in the categories of interruptions, managing groups, room layout, timing, and managing sessions. The entries are short and sweet for quick perusal.

3) The Extreme Searchers Internet Handbook
This book includes a lot of lists of resources (different government sites, directories, etc.). If you have a really well done academic library site, I think a lot of these would (should) be included already within the web links page (example of a well done version at the SRJC Library HERE). The one very useful tool in this book is the reminder of very specific web search tools for specific search engines, such as wildcards, url searching, title searching and related pages. I include boolean searching within the web finding exercise, but I think my students would really appreciate an expanded set of tools (it is always one of the favorite units).

4) I found it on the Internet: coming of age online
This book talks a lot about the perspective of the the developing teen, and trying to show how their reality of growing up with such an infusion of technology with blurred lines on sharing/privacy/and an availability of information effects them as users (and us as educators). Some of this book (which I did not fully read) was fascinating and a good reminder of where our students at the junior college/4 year level are coming from. I did think some of the text was much more geared towards a younger group of students then college level, but it does give an overall perspective on the upcoming generations we serve.


(shall I dare say that some of these books are overdue. I mean, you just can't rush info lit curriculum design...yikes...I am returning them this week....)

I pulled these book images from publishers websites here: Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 4

Hello Media Literacy!

I am working up a new media literacy unit for next semester. A colleague at SSU showed me a really fantastic Introduction to Media Literacy resource from the Media Literacy Project. What I like about the article is the clear delineation between beginning, intermediate and advanced literacy techniques. The 16 page document covers media literacy (in general terms) and then gives examples of different persuasion techniques media uses to influence viewers. There are concrete questions at the end of the document students can use to evaluate images and videos.

Once I develop a lesson plan, I will decide if I want students to evaluate a particular image, or if part of the unit will be them finding AND evaluating their own image from a normal daily activity (bus add, tv commercial, etc.). I highly recommend the resource.

It's all about displays!

Here are the latest displays for the Spring semester at SSU. The themes I worked on this round included:

Honoring Black History Month:

Science Curriculum resources as part of our Women in Science case (Women's History Month in March):

Roses are Red:

Multiple Course Sections

I read an interesting article yesterday in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Teaching Multiple Sections of the Same Course by Billie Hara

It got me to thinking about how I manage workflow and deadlines teaching multiple (up to 4) sections of the same class during one semester in an online format. My teaching also tends to follow the pattern of: different course management systems, different schedules (quarter versus semester, 6 or 10 or 12 week formats) and different unit value (1 versus 2 units).

1) I load the entire set of course units before each class starts. That way even if the quizzes aren't done or the discussion boards not yet attached to the grades at least the full outline is there. And, I can just look at the weekly units if I ever wonder "Did I cover that?”

2) I make a paper roster of all my students in every class once the initial drop period is over. That way when I get a cryptic e-mail about the "unit" and the "discussion board" assignment, I can easily look and see which section the student is in and base it on the current unit for their section.

3) I no longer worry about each section being completely the same. If I have two sections on one calendar schedule and want to try something but am not sure it will work, I just try it with one section. If the exercise works well, I add it to more sections the following semester.

What I do love about teaching "multiples" is the variety you can get within the classes! What do you do? Any additional tips?

Happy Valentine's Day!

I have a secret marketing crush on the Metropolitan Library System in Oklahoma. They do the most fantastic Valentine's Day images each year. Last year it was a baby sitting around a bunch of chocolate cake, cookies and ice cream with a hilarious look yelling "Valentine's Schmalentine's." I will let the material for this year speak for itself:


Image pulled from Metropolitan Library System February events guide:
http://www.mls.lib.ok.us/mls/mls_news/2012/info/february.2012.pdf

Teaching Journal

I have been taking notes throughout each of the last few quarters/semesters because I always seem to forget the minor (sometimes major) changes I want to make to quiz questions or explanations, or to the overall structure, anything really... Because I am a very strong believer that to be a good teacher you need to be refreshing and current, both with how you demo things and the examples you use, I have decided to formalize the process this semester. Not that you shouldn't keep what works, but in the info lit world, there are so many perfect new examples of current events that can be evaluated. In light of this, instead of simply piling up the notes at the end of each unit or month, I am developing an informational teaching journal form to be filled out by me for each unit, which addresses specific areas of change for this quarter at Eastbay and this semester at SRJC. I believe this will make it easier to record the information, recognize overall similarities, trends, etc. and go ahead with any changes.

Here is my rough draft that I will fill out each week:

Unit 1: Introductions & Moodle
General Questions on the Unit:
Quiz questions that garnered confusion:

Trends in grading/assignments that need to be addressed:
Changes to the point values for the week:
Changes to the course layout:
Changes to the syllabus or class expectations:

Unit 2: YOUR Information Needs (and it continues...)

This way, I can input all my notes about two core categories, minor details related to a unit, book, text, etc. and larger impact items such as major changes to the order of the course and the syllabus. Feel free to try this out, or please share how you keep track of changes you want to make!

Read my e-mails!

As an online instructor, sometimes I can't tell if students are reading my e-mails or lecture notes fully (unless of course they ask questions that I clearly answered in one or the other). To help students understand the importance of reading my emails, I use a handy tool each semester. On the first weekly e-mail of the semester, I add in a little extra credit assignment. I title the e-mail "LIR 10 (or LIBY1210) Unit 1 Grades and Wrap-Up." Then, in the last line of the e-mail, which is generally a bit longer than the rest and includes answers to some general house cleaning types of questions, I write something like this: "Please hit reply and let me know you have read this e-mail in full for 3 points extra credit." The students who read and respond to the e-mail get a simple 3 points extra credit. The next weekly e-mail is titled "LIR 10 Unit 2 Grades and Extra Credit." Once I get the responses I send the students a quick note letting them know they got extra credit (and following up again on any looming questions). Only about half the class responds to the first e-mail, but after missing out on the extra credit, a lot more continue to read the weekly updates for the rest of the semester.

I see this as a positive exercise rewarding those students doing a good job, and encouraging everyone to stay up to date on e-mails and communications.

What does a Link+ Coordinator do?

I was reading one of my regular blogs (Information Wants to Be Free) and decided I should also do a “Day in the Life” of my two core jobs, one as a Link+ Coordinator in a small California State University and the second as an Online Instructor/Librarian at a large California Junior College and a large California State University. So, this first entry is about my Link+ Coordination. The break-down tomorrow will be what a typical day looks like for me by the hour….

It has been about 8 months since I stepped into my new role at SSU as the Link+ Coordinator. And while I am working in the same library and still providing reference services as before, most days I feel as if I began an entirely new job last May.

What does a Link+ Coordinator actually do? Well, in one word: troubleshoot.

The entire day is full of solving various book and lending mysteries, figuring out what is going on with someone’s account and running reports, not to mention the borrowing for our Interlibrary Loan program. I am responsible for borrowing books, articles and media for our Library and have to say it is a very FUN process. I know it might be unusual to say that a potentially (and sometimes) rote, mundane process is fun, but I haven't found it to be very rote or mundane. To me, it is a very challenging exercise in finding resources (that are poorly cited, freely available or in our very own collection). It is like doing a full day of reference desk time without the student in front of me – as if I am giving a reference interview by just looking at clues on my screen. (just a few examples: This isn't showing up in OCLC anywhere; okay, what is it actually? Did this person request a piece of art? What's this student’s major? Is this person a distance education student and it didn't show up correctly? Did that Library actually ship that item? Is this patron sure they don't have the book at home? Is this our student? Hmm, I wonder if the Library of Congress will really send that? Is sending this item to 50 libraries too many? Does this patron still need this; book rate is going to take a long time from that Library...). Expiration dates, student majors, editor last names, format types, imported database names and e-mail address fields all become your best friend in Interlibrary loan. I like to think of my motto as "I can solve anything and borrow anything." So, that's just a typical day as a Link+ Coordinator.