Instructional project reflection

We were able to quickly decide on a topic suggested by Latrece, teaching seniors how to sign up for and use Facebook. Her and I both had personal experience assisting older member of our family with signing up recently and felt this would be useful for seniors while being focused on using social media. I think the most difficult part for us in constructing this lesson was trying to find a way to have our pretend seniors follow along on a computer. Given almost everyone in the class already had a Facebook, no one would be able to start a new one because it is linked to phone numbers and email addresses. We didn't want this to be a lecture for our classmates. We felt that keeping people engaged would happen by having them participate in the signup process.

The easiest part of the design process was actually coming up with what we wanted to go over. We wanted our learners to have a Facebook with a profile picture, be able to find friends, and be able to post messages by the end of our lesson. We just came up with the exact steps to do this. I feel that the class was engaged in the lesson even though it was material they did not need. Everyone played their roles very well and brought up legitimate issues seniors would encounter during our lesson; such as profile picture problems, not knowing which keys are which, and concerns about privacy and information. I was surprised at how fast the time went and how easy it felt to actually go through the lesson plan. It did not feel like a presentation which was nice, I tend to be very nervous when presenting something. Teaching feels much more calm to me. 

To check out our lesson plan click here.

Database tutorial reflection

For my database tutorial I decided to use Choice Reviews Online as the database I would go over. During my reference and user services course as a new library student I had a great deal of trouble with a collection development assignment because I was unaware of collection development tools available at the time. During my employment as a reference assistant at the Crown Library I have used this database on multiple collection development projects my supervisors have given me. I showed the viewer how to get to the database and how to do a search on the database for material.

When we were told about this project I immediately decided to use a screen capture software I have called Snagit. I had used the screencasting part of it once and to me it seemed like it would make this very simple. It was easy enough to record the video and after a few hiccups I got the audio to record as I made the video so that I didn't need to use an external program like audacity. However, after the video had been captured  I discovered that Snagit does not allow users to impose shapes or texts on top of the video despite allowing this on images you edit. It also has no video editing components to it. This was highly disappointing given how simple it would be to enable it. From here I tried out a video editing software called VideoPad that was available for free. While I was able to add text on top of my video it did not allow shapes of any kind and quickly became of no use to me. I wanted to be able to circle what I wanted the user to click but this was not an option. While Snagit will remain in my professional toolbox it was disappointing to discover its limitations.

Snagit would be simple to teach to others. You just select the frame size of the screen (you can exclude the url box and other parts of the desktop), click on the microphone to enable audio, and click record to make your video. Given the lack of video editing capabilities the user will need to record over again if they want to eliminate mistakes.

Pathfinder reflection

For my pathfinder I chose to focus on Latin American and Latino studies. Being Puerto Rican, I have a personal interest in this subject and a few months ago I created a LibGuide for the Rebecca Crown Library covering some resources for this subject. Given I had a list of all the resources and summaries of what was available in them already written down it seemed like it would be easier to create a pathfinder out of that material. When creating the pathfinder I tried looking at some of the other curation links like blendspace, educlipper, and feedly briefly but those seemed either to focused on creating actual lesson plans instead of research resources or to brief, not allowing for a proper description of a resource.

I ended up using Livebinders.com which was suggested in class last week. At first it seemed like is was too messy visually for me when we were given it as an example. It felt cluttered and a little hectic in my mind. After using it however, I feel like it was a great way to organize information. I didn't plan on having sub-tabs but after adding in some of the websites resources to the binder it seemed like the most logical thing to do. The fact that users can actually use the website within the Livebinder page was a nice feature that I think adds to how valuable this is as a tool. It was easy to change the layout of a tab, its color, and its place among the other tabs. Deleting an unnecessary tab was also simple and I didn't need to look up any instructional videos on how to use Livebinder despite this being my first experience with it. The only issue I had with it was that even after selecting an option or changing a setting the pop up window for that particular feature stays open till you close it. To me it would make sense for it to return you to the main page automatically after you click on an option. Livebinders will be added to my professional toolkit in the future. It will be great when creating pathfinders for patrons and fellow staff members alike.

Click here to open this binder in a new window.

Digital Storytelling Reflection

The most enjoyable part of this process was the interaction with my group members while creating it. We had a lot of fun locating images to put into the movie, deciding on a script, and convincing each other to try and perform the role. We laughed a great deal and it did not feel like we were doing actual work. The most difficult parts were technical issues (not being able to find the record button or separating audio) and we usually had to seek out help to resolve these issues. Even though the three of us had a little experience with iMovie, we still had to learn new things to be able to create our project. We even learned how to record audio in garage band and import it into iMovie prior to learning the shortcut to make the audio record button visible. 

This project would be great when trying to promote library evens or services to the community. We could make the video and have it published to the library page, email the link out to subscribing members of our newsletter, and try to have teachers play the videos for students/parents during orientations or weekly announcements. This project provides a great opportunity to teach kids not only how to produce media content but also what they are allowed to put within their content and how copyright laws work. They can have fun making the videos but also learn how to locate images, music, and other material that are licensed under creative commons. Within the library this medium can also be used to create book reviews that might help promote reading among other students.


 

Creating a Book Trailer

The book I chose to use for the book trailer was Born on a Rotten Day by Hazel Dixon-Cooper. The book itself details all the terrible traits a person may have based upon their zodiac sign. The goal of my trailer was to shock and amuse the audience by using positive and negative comparisons for a sign while also having a cool picture representing the sign. Doing this in Animoto was both simple and fun. The music available seemed like a good fit for a zodiac book; the spiderweb theme added a bit of the dark feel I wanted for the audience. They get to discover their dark side if they read the book so a dark theme and music go great. While at first it was difficult to get the text character limit down, after the first couple pictures were added in this became easy. The preview option for the video was much appreciated as well. I will be adding Animoto to my professional toolkit for later use.

The other site I decided to try was Masher.com because I enjoyed the title to be honest. While it was easy enough to add content the options for themes were very limiting and even though there was a link to check for masher music to use in the video for free I could not actually get any music to come up. I found free music through the creative commons website and deliberately picked a 30 second clip to hopefully keep the video short but the video was 2 minutes instead. There was no way I could locate to limit the time an image was on screen or the length of the entire video. Also you are not able to add captions to the pictures which I disliked. There was no option for previewing the video before it was created either; another negative in my view. It also turned the image of the book cover from its original vertical position and wouldn't let me change it back. This was just frustrating. I don't think I will ever use this to make a book trailer again because it feels like a less functional PowerPoint slide show. This tool will not be going in my professional toolkit either.

 

Making a Promotional Poster

While developing the flyers I was focused on creating something that would be eye catching for college students. For the Smore flyer, it only took me about 30 minutes to create a product that I felt would catch someone's eye and also communicate all the necessary information readers needed to understand what events there would be and when they would happen. The ability to add in a video was another plus since I feel people would be attracted to it. Were I doing this for an actual event I would make a video about banned book week and keep it short, about 30 seconds to a minute instead of the library tour video. The layout creates a good contrast between the text and background. The divided parts come together nicely as a whole piece. In the future I think I will be using Smore when trying to create nice flyers. 

I decided to use Microsoft Publisher for the PDF flyer I needed to make and still feel frustrated with the design. I changed the color scheme between the text and background multiple times to try and have a good contrast. I didn't want an image hard to see from far away or that would clutter the poster so I used a transparent simple one and then added some shapes on it to create a banned book image. Prior to settling on this I did go through multiple images and all just seemed to clutter the poster instead of adding to the design. The text was something else I had an issue with; there is less on the PDF poster but it still feels like to much to me. I tried to use horizontal and vertical lines to draw the eye of the viewer. I also tried to use alignments to make it look a bit more interesting. In the end I feel what I came up with would be acceptable at least. 

The two flyers: 

Subscription Database Brochure Reflection

When deciding what database to use when making this brochure I tried to pick the one most used at my current place of work and it overwhelmingly seemed like Academic Search Complete (ASC) was used the most. Dominican University offers a large number of databases for patrons but when a student comes to me seeking assistance with research I usually find myself teaching him/her how to perform a database search through ASC since it is listed on the library home page. Also when considering my audience I felt the brochure would be focused on freshman or beginning University students that may not be aware of how to find helpful research. It is these students that I usually walk through accessing the database. Then I teach them how to use Boolean statements to find the results they need without having one long statement that is to specific for tangible results. 

I chose to use a trifold pamphlet with the idea that it can be given out during freshman orientation to students. This way when they need to start researching for classes they have an idea of how to use the database, that it has articles, some of the broad subject areas it has information for, and that they can come to the library for more help. I also tried to include information about our web reference and online tutorials for students that may be unable to come to the library or uncomfortable with coming to us for help. I do realize that my brochure is somewhat text heavy and this was deliberate. When putting in screen shots for the databases I found that the image was getting to distorted because it needed to be re-sized to fit the thin column width. A bad image seemed less useful then some text about what to do.This pamphlet can serve as another outreach tool for the library to get information about our available resources out there to our students. It also serves our patrons as a beginner guide to our most popular database. 

Equipment investigation reflection

This was my first time actually using Prezi in a project; prior to this I have seen other's use it but my expertise in Microsoft PowerPoint has always led me to use that instead. I felt that the Prezi was less of a collaborative experience than the Google Doc we used for the makerspace inventory. Since Latrece and myself were unfamiliar with Prezi but Sean had experience we had Sean create and setup the Prezi we had. From there we were able to put in information from our makerspace inventory and then expand upon it in the Prezi. We talked about the content to add to the Prezi and then Sean carried out the major changes we wanted to see. 

Prezi seemed easy to use; I did not need to look up any kind of tutorials on how to make changes or add new slides to it. Latrece had some issues when trying to make small changes to some of the text on the slides and because of this her and I looked for edits that needed to be made together. After locating them I would then make the changes since I was able to just double click on the text and edit it. After everything we put into the makerspace inventory it only took a few hours to get everything into the Prezi and have the final version done. It seemed fairly easy to me. Sean and Latrece are easily the best people I've ever worked on a project with; their enthusiasm, easy manner, expertise, and interest in new things made this project fun while removing all the stress I normally feel going into group projects. They are great people to explore something new with. 

The design options in Prezi are much more attractive than those available in PowerPoint. It also moves more smoothly visually resulting in a more engaging presentation I think than PowerPoint. In the future I believe I will use Prezi when creating presentations that are meant to be engaging to the audience. This could be in a class intended to teach patrons something or when presenting something to young people that will be bored by a PowerPoint. However, if I am giving presentations to a board of directors or similar group I believe I will use a PowerPoint because its simplicity gives it a professional feel. Prezi seems just as useful as other presentation mediums like Google Presentation and PowerPoint; to me it is just a slightly different tool for different audiences.  

Makerspace Inventory Reflection

When constructing the Makerspace inventory we started out by discussing what could potentially go into the makerspace we would create and who the space would be for. Since Sean and Latrece both work in public libraries we decided to focus on a public library environment and devoted the new makerspace to children ranging from toddlers to older school children. From here Sean brought up interest in having the capability to build robots with the children and I brought up having a Lego wall so that toddlers would have somewhere to build and show off their creations. After we had a general idea we started building an actual inventory of what to include and I created a Google Document for all of our information and plans. 

Having worked with Google Docs before it was easy for me to set up the document, share it with my group members, and then add in a table to organize our inventory. I explored a new feature of Google Docs by using the drawing function to create a diagram of what the makerspace would look like in our new library. We based it off of the way the children's section and preexisting makerspace is organized in the library Latrece works at. I was somewhat disappointed that I could not use formulas in the table in Google Docs to add the cost of all our items together automatically. Everything had to be added together in a separate excel sheet and then one of us would just change the total cost in the Google Doc as we added more items to our inventory. I was able to add in new rows to our table as Latrece and Sean found more items we could include; Latrece was having some difficulty in adding a row and I am unsure how to do this on a Mac computer. This removed some of the technical difficulty that would have come up if she had to do this alone or if we simply divided the project into parts and worked separately. 

Google Docs and the other office like functions they have like slide show and spreadsheets is already a part of my professional tool kit and will continue to be a part of it. All of us being able to work on the document together and separately was immensely useful. It saved us a number of emails and revisions were we to have used a word document or just a long email. Another thing we did that I will need to start using in future group work was use a conference call to be able to work on the project together without actually being together. I'm not a big fan of talking on the phone and am usually quick to pick a video chat over a call. This worked out perfectly for our group; we worked on the project together online and spoke on the phone without anyone losing contact because of a bad internet connection or misunderstandings in what was said due to choppy quality. 

VLC Google Template Reflection

The most useful thing to me about the VLC template was the detail in each section on what could be put there. It gives you an idea of where to begin which was useful given it was the first virtual learning commons I had ever made. The site comes with a number of pages already created and labeled that allow the site developer to easily organize different events, projects, archives, news, books, and other items so that users of the site will know which page has what they are looking for. The preloaded videos seemed very helpful in site development to me as well and I kept them to review at a later date. Having worked with Google Sites before on other pages I found it helpful that they already had the side bar created with suggestions of content to add as well. From looking at the Rebecca Crown University website I was easily able to determine what would be useful across different pages of the website for quick reference by users.

There were a few things about the template that were somewhat frustrating. Even being familiar with Google Sites I was not able to determine how to edit the custom footer and chose to remove it instead. The three columns seemed to ask for similar information across the different pages. I would have omitted some of the repeated suggestions for content in some areas just to make it a little less redundant. From my own understanding of a virtual learning commons I felt there was more physical information described than there needed to be. This template has veered from my understanding of what a virtual learning commons can and should encompass but given it was a somewhat new concept to begin with that was not surprising.

In my mind a virtual learning commons would be a completely virtual space that people interact with and learn new things. I can understand having some physical information just for location or instructional purposes but feel that describing all physical club events would not be as useful as webinars. Based on this I think if I am ever able to construct a virtual learning commons I will make sure to include detailed information about the physical commons on one page for users that prefer to have that information or see past projects done in the library. Something that I felt should have been included were discussion boards or chat windows. It would be useful to have them integrated already into the template instead of trying to figure out the coding needed for it. Allowing comments on a page seems messy to me given the page itself is supposed to be a fixed item on the website and the comments would need to be deleted when new content is published. Also I wish there was an option to allow users to upload files with suggestions for content instead of having them contact me to see if they can contribute to the commons.

Thoughts on Blogger

The blogging assignment was one I was looking forward to because I have had multiple blogs in the past. My greatest familiarity has been with Blogger because I began using it as a teenager when I wanted to post my drawings and poetry for other people to see. Before deciding to use Blogger however I tested out some of the other options listed in the course wiki. I started with edublogs and while it seemed helpful and capable of doing what I needed for the blog; it had a number of features that were not necessary for me. The ability to set content controls was one of these things. In the future if I ever am working with young children I believe I would use it but it is currently not what I need. Medium was the next blog platform I tried and though I enjoy the suggestions for blogs and people to follow the actual features available during creation were a letdown. It was difficult for me to determine how to insert images into my blog and the layout restrictions bothered me. Medium will not be incorporated into my PLN. 

When it comes to my PLN I will be using Blogger for my own blog posts and occasionally for connecting with others. The available options for changing the look of text and ability to add in videos/images seemed to be the greatest benefits to me of the site. Also when making my new blog I was allowed to enter a custom domain for the page if I wanted too. Knowing this I feel I could easily integrate the blog into a professional website. Edublogs will be something I bookmark for later use. I think it would be great for any kind of work based interaction with children. Kids could publish book reviews, content they create, links to content, and comment on new things they have learned easily on this site. It also seems like a good way to keep parents in the loop. Edublogs seems like a good place to go for ideas when creating lessons for children as well. 

When working with patrons in the future I feel that blogger will be a great way to teach people how to create their own blogs. It seems like a simple way to teach patrons how to change layout and design to suit their personal/professional goals. The options are not difficult to understand and the html use options will be useful in any advanced lessons given to patrons. Blogger has a number of blogs for patrons to search through to find ones that will provide information about their hobbies and interests for those interested in connecting with other people on the web. For children I would start them off with edublogs since it has controls around content to ensure children are not exposed to images or information that would be age inappropriate.

Thoughts on "School Libraries Cultivate Digital Literacy"

For my Media Services and Production class at Dominican University I recently read an article by Tanya Roscorla titled School Libraries Cultivate Digital Literacy. In the article five issues around cultivating digital literacy among young people are discussed. They are:

1. Access to technology
2. Filtering (school's restricting access to websites like YouTube and Facebook)
3. Sharing the importance of digital literacy (learning it isn't optional anymore)
4. Instructional time (digital literacy is not incorporated into set instructional time)
5. Teaching young children (kids believe what they see and the internet is full of opinions)

Although all the issues above are important I believe 1,2,3, and 5 are not the biggest challenges when it comes to cultivating digital literacy. A large number of students have access to technology either at home, school, or at the library; many schools have taken to trying 1 to 1 initiatives and it has become easier to convince administrators of the fact that technology is a necessary part of the budget. In the article there is mention that requests can be put in to have websites evaluated that are blocked when cases are made for the potential of the site as a tool for student learning. Librarians are aware of the importance of digital literacy and teachers are aware as well how necessary these skills are. Teaching young children how to understand when something is legitimate is an ongoing issue that educators and parents have faced for a long time. Kids are more willing to accept what they see and well assessed lessons will help with finding the best way to teach them.

From my own personal experience as a student I would consider instructional time to be the most challenging obstacle to overcome. Instructional time to teach digital literacy is something librarians have to do outreach for from everything I have studied and seen. As a student my teachers did not begin to bring up digital literacy until I was almost in college and even then they did not teach me how to be digitally literate; they simply told me what sites I could not use for research. In college my writing instructors actually set aside class time to visit the library and learn how to properly search for and evaluate information. This was taught by the University librarian. While digital literacy is a part of the common core and librarians learn it is their responsibility to help the children they work with become digitally literate they are not given set time with all students in every school. Librarians have to reach out to instructors to have digital literacy sessions occur in a class. Given librarians are not required in all schools in Illinois; that leaves some schools without any push for having digital literacy lessons being built into instructional time during the year. Due to all this to me just getting the instructional time for every student to learn these skills is the most challenging obstacle out of the five listed.

An Australian survey of a sample of children who have access to computers and the internet.

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features60Jun+2011

Still want some more information on how the digital age has changed things. Check out this video Did you know?