NC LITe at Duke University

I attended the NC Library Instructional Technology meeting at Duke University's The Edge on June 9. You can read more about the event on my blog.

Library's Instructional Tech Team: annual summary of activities

The library's instructional tech team was created in summer 2008. The initial meeting involved a number of library staff working in areas of technology and instruction, in which we defined instructional technology, generated goals for the team, listed current projects, brainstormed various ideas, and created high/low matrix to prioritize all these possibilities. After this meeting the team consisting of Beth Filar Williams, Lynda Kellam, Amy Harris and Hannah Winkler, began meeting every other month and have accomplished a number of items - with help of others - over the past year:

• Created and maintaining a weekly podcast blog of events, news, interviews - and now including videos created by BFW's LIS practicum student over the summer - relating to UNCG library called Irma Minerva's Audio Magazine. So far we have created 31 podcasts (or blog posts).
  
• Shift Jackson Leaks from PDF newsletter format to blog format with 51 posts as of today.
  
• Started the UNCG library's Professional Dev blog with 50 posts as of today.
  
• Training and assisting librarians w/ Blackboard portal push of resources.
• Netopschool software now installed in citi lab (thanks ERIT!) and has been used by several librarians for workshop/classes.
• Clickers have been borrowed from TLC and used now in several classes and presentations
• Worked with Terry & BethB to make sure the AskUs! icon, link and/or widget is embedded/available from a failed search in our catalog and in some of the major databases.
• Created a blog for the instructional tech team to post links, ideas and cool tools.
• Pre and post tests in Blackboard have been tested and now promoted with other librarians.
• Tutorials: tested numerous tutorial software packages, and finally due to budget cuts, decided on using the free Jing software. Created over 20 new tutorials - mainly Flash screencast type with audio. Created a best practices guide for using Jing to create library tutorials. Also created a tutorial web page to better organize and make accessible these library tutorials. Tutorials are being disseminated through course guides and blogs as well.
• Created a library Slideshare account to post presentation slides in blogs. (see Lynda for more info)
• Facebook and twitter are now being used actively by the team to promote and inform others about library resources, services, and events.
• Before budget freeze in spring, the team researched and purchased a video camera, tripod and wireless mic, for video tutorials & video podcasts.
• Creating video introductions for librarian liaisons to use throughout the website/Blackboard. (Example on Steve's Econ Page)
• Met with WFU and NCSU libraries for a multi-library instructional technology sharing day, which will be repeated each semester.
• Assisted (Danny & Richard) with content for the creation of an assignment calculator which will assist students in planning their research papers, which is now available (eventually will also be available in blackboard)
• Taught a few library instructional tech workshops such as on Zotero (w/ Lea!) and Intro to Creative Commons.
• Created form & guide for planning an online class using Elluminate software. Taught one online class (BFW & MaryK), and are now promoting this service with all disciplines. The library now has its own "room" w/ Elluminate to teaching online workshops not connected to a specific course. (see BFW for details)

TRI-IT Spring 2009 @ Elon -- PART 2

Campus updates:

• Elon: Meeting w/ faculty to find out how they integrate with technology and how to better support them on their own ground. Created Gallery Builder using PHP as a collection of faculty's research that can be produced in poster form. Syllabus Collection online (voluntary) . Using blogs, wikis, podcasting for faculty. Wordpress software on their server. Wetpaint wikis. Video - such as clips of chemistry faculty showing howto use various tools and techniques. Flip cameras can be borrowed by faculty to use in their classes.
• UNC: Voice Thread new Web 2.0 tool to create discussion and annotation around multi media objects. E-textbooks project. Lost Second Life and some IT training staff due to budget cuts. Distance learning is increasing tremendously.
• Wake Forest: Using Sakai and Moodle. Studio for recording lectures in the library. Been supporting blogs, wikis and podcasts for a while including running their own server of these applications.
• Duke: Duke Digital Initiative for next year; planning for instructional tech showcase April 24, 2009

Peda-Blogy Session
Rick Palmer/Matt Lewis (Elon)
Professor wanted to make her classes' group project/powerpt presentation more interactive, collaborative, and 21st century. Decided to try a blog: classroom presentation as knowledge sharing collaboration in creation of a resource on a topic. (using Wordpress) Responses --> Students like the idea of doing it on their own time, whenever they wanted, valued final project, thought there were only minor tech glitches. Faculty thought it was easy simple and clean (IT assisted to make this easy for them) and liked the less "present" time in class and more active learning and fun. Check out it out: http://idd.elon.edu/blogs/pedablogy/

Web 2.0 Applications and Usage

• Lauren Pressley (WFU): Do training on how to use the tools and host some as well for librarians and faculty/staff on campus. Role of the library is to archive and preserve things happening on campus thus use Blogs wikis and podcasting. Will sit down with anyone to figure out the best tool for them. Use facebook, flickr, etc as a course management tool. Multimedia projects supported by library. Will teach a class to train the students for a prof on a tool. Google calendaring to embed. Google Voice starting to use. Twitter and 12seconds (like twitter but with video) TED talks invite others to join in. Nings!
• Randy Piland(Lecturer in Communications @ Elon) & Scott Hilldebrand (Dir of Instruc Tech @Elon): Suggested some new tools - VuVOx collage (video) Issuu.com (magazine publishing portal) cooliris.com (photos & videos, search by theme, w/ captions, through all news archives) Thumbstrip - firefox plug in, add various sites and they appear as thumbnails in bottom of screen (preloaded and ready to gofor a class)Photosynth (MS, people submit photos and it pulls similar ones together). Kalabo (online music collaboration) Glypho (create a story collaboratively)

Cool Tools Sharing Session

• grooveshark (search for a song)
• dimdim (cheap teleconferencing)
• prezi (artist, zooming presentation tool)
• mixedink (collaborative writing tool)
• tineye (reverse image look up)
• timzon (asynchronous discussion)
• etherpad (simultaneous collaboration of up to 8 people)
• live question tool (for large group presentation, audience can submit questions, others can add or vote)
• ultralearn (bring in multiple functions for one lesson)

TRI-IT Spring 2009 @ Elon

BFW and I attended a one-day (free!) informal information sharing opportunity for Triangle and Triad instructional technology people - instructors, programmers, web designers, librarians all under one roof. It was good opportunity to meet with a mix of people with varied backgrounds and skills; in fact I was surprised to learn that many of the non-librarians had MLIS/MSIS degrees!
I attended sessions on blogging, podcasting, interactive instructional multimedia and freeware and open source. A couple of highlights:

• Learned how Elon Law School is incorporating podcasting for law professors (Christie Dickerman). They use a service that allows professors to record podcasts over the phone. Dickerman then edits the "voice recordings" as 18-20 minute long podcasts. (Longer podcasts are too big for BB to handle.) Students can listen to the podcasts - mini snippets of their class lecture on Blackboard or download them in itunes and listen to them on the go. Dickerman said that at first the students said it was "a little weird" but then it felt as though they were getting a one-on-one lessons with thier professor -- then, three years later they have to reapply the information on the bar exam, and can listen to it again for a refresher.
• The interactive instructional multimedia presentation made me realize just how far instructional technology has come in such a short amount of time and also just how behind the library is. UNC teaching and learning center showed us some of the dynamic online courses they have prepared for some schools on campus. These were large-scale collaborative projects that demanded the skills of many different people on many different projects -- programmers, web design, graphic design, writers, producers, etc -- to have an end product. For example -- some online videos class modules for the nursing school took two days for video production but 5-6 weeks to edit with the team. (That was a short range project!) On the other hand it took two years to create 9 web-based class module courses. (A free demo is available to view here.) The shortest was 1 hour of narrated animation but that is without the quizzes; In total there was 800 hours of narration, (831 files) completed. All of the modules were interactive -- drag 'n drop, fill in blank, multiple choice.

Sidenote: Wake Forest ZSR has a reward scheme built into their Professional Development blog. People who attend conferences (etc.) and post on their PD blog get more funding; those that don't post on their blog get less funding. hmmm.