Circulation » education

Staying Current

lindybr1 — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:53:20 +0000

Lately, a few folks have asked me how I manage to keep up/stay fresh with the latest information for professional development. Thanks to the beauty of RSS, I can follow many blogs, podcasts and free webinars, and I can access the information when I have free time in the evenings.

A few of my (highly recommended) favorites are listed below…

Podcasts
Podcasts are a great way to pass the time while driving to work.

Blogs
I follow many, but here are a few of my favorites:

Library Blogs

Education Blogs

Tech Blogs

Webinars
Webinars (especially free ones, of course) are a great way to actively participate and learn from other professionals.

WebJunction (archived webinars are free)
Marianne Lenox’s Google Reader Bundle
Library Webinars Blog

A few other favorite websites:

In addition to the above, I follow a few Listservs and many Twitter feeds and lists. Subscription-based periodicals are great, as well as open access library and information journals, but the above links provide information daily.

Technology in the Classroom – Office Parody (Video)

lindybr1 — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:04:49 +0000

Earlier today I was thinking about how professors can integrate technology into classrooms — how they, instead of fighting it, could use it to promote learning and collaboration.

Then this evening, I read a timely post from Kansas State University Professor Mike Wesch’s blog Digital Ethnography. The post was about a video created by Lynn Schofield Clark’s Innovation in Mass Communications class at the University of Denver. This video is a mini-mockumentary of a professor trying to teach his digital native students about technology. If you are a fan of The Office, then you’ll enjoy this take on a professor trying to teach a class of young students about technology.

Here’s the actual video, “The Class” (which would be an example of how not to integrate technology in class):

By the way – if you don’t follow Dr. Wesch’s blog, I highly recommend you do. And, if you haven’t seen other videos made by him and his students, check out his youtube channel. One of my favorite educational videos from Dr. Wesh (in collaboration with 200 of his students!) is about students today, aptly titled “A Vision of Students Today.”

I also recommend The Machine is Us/ing Us because it provided a timely look into Web 2.0. (Note that this video was created in 2007, so it was right on time/at the cusp of the proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies).

Open Access: Boston University joins in!

lindybr1 — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 23:32:31 +0000

I read from the Library Journal today that Boston University has approved moving to an institution-wide open access system. This decision comes one year after Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences provided open access to their curriculum. The difference between the two is that Boston University’s open access initiative includes ALL 17 schools. (Harvard University’s policy is a little more selective at the moment – it does not include its professional schools, with the exception of its Law School).

Perusing through these sites made me curious for more information…

… What other schools are sharing content?

Many schools have sought financial assistance via the William & Flora Hewitt Foundation’s Open Educational Resources (OER) program. The foundation is working to make high quality and educational content freely available on the web. From the link above, one can see their grantees’ proposals, which include various educational institutions seeking to increase open access opportunities for many exciting programs, for example:

Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative
Yale University’s Open Courses
Utah State University’s OpenCourseWare
University of California-Berkeley’s webcast.berkeley
Tufts University’s OpenCourseWare
Massachusettes Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare

From the Do-it-Yourself-Scholar blog, Dara has compiled a great listing of open-access courses, lectures and postcasts. The Do-It-Yourself-Scholar has scoured the internet for open access courses and lectures offered by universities. What a wonderful resource!

From OpenCulture: a link to Free Online Courses from Great Universities. This post is over a year old, but the podcasts recommended within it are plentiful and still applicable. (On a side note, they have a link to great cultural educational resources on twitter such as the Internet Archive, Librivox, TEDtalks, and so on).

AcademicEarth.org – an organization dedicated to sharing education throughout the world. They offer links to “thousands of video lectures from the world’s top scholars. ”

How freakin’ awesome is it to have free access to worldly knowledge from scholars at the greatest universities?! I can’t contain myself.

Wait, there’s more!

Want to know more about Open Educational Resources? I strongly suggest checking this out:

Baker, J. (2007, May 5). Introduction to Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from the Connexions Web site: http://cnx.org/content/col10413/1.2/

And I strongly suggest trying this out:

OCW Finder from the Open Courseware Consortium – it searches for courses by tag (e.g., subject!)

Photo credit: Ask Me About Open Access from flikr member molliali has a creative commons license Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 Generic.

Education & Technology

lindybr1 — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:48:20 +0000

A friend of mine posted this great video about education and technology on her Facebook page. I wanted to pass it along because I think you’ll enjoy it. It will open your mind about how fast our world is changing. It reminds me a little of the “College Mindset List” that Beloit College puts together every year. As an educator, I love reading this list every year because it gives me perspective regarding the college students I work with. This video does the same thing for me.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY]

In honor of LIS5661: Goverment Info

lindybr1 — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:40:13 +0000

I recently started another class toward my Reference & Instruction specialization: LIS 5661 – Government Information. To start it off appropriately, I would like to educate you with Schoolhouse Rock’s – How a Bill Becomes a Law.