Tuesday 17 January 2012

Going it alone: innovations in information literacy - Conference

The University of East London (UEL) Library 'Info skills' package is freely available via google and can be repackaged under the Creative commons license.

I'd heard about it on the twitter grapevine and from colleagues who had been along to a TeachMeet and seen a presentation about it. It's impressive and has had good reviews so a chance to go along and find out more wasn't to be passed by!

Points to explore further:
Use of short video clips 'talking heads' (some featuring library staff, some academic staff AND other students) on bite-sized topics are embedded in the website - in short term can use these in our Subject Librarian Moodle pages and in teaching, in longer term, can make our own?
Quick bite-sized approach - 'just in time' resources - exactly what the students need when they just want to find out how to reference an eBook...
Accessibility - video clips sub-titled AND transcripts provided -
Using resources produced elsewhere - no point in re-inventing the wheel, especially if these are readily available and exactly what you need
Collaboration - this word kept recurring - liaison with IT and academic staff, cross-curricular approach - sometimes duplicating resources found in study support 'skill zone' website, but that benefits the learner
However - most importantly - collaboration of ideas with others in your field - this can only benefit the learner as the best results are produced
Quizzes - part of the multimedia approach - interactive quizzes for learners - again, harvested from other institutions
Demonstration videos - just in time - e.g. how to log in to Athens

Friday 6 January 2012

Tackling a project

I read an interesting blog recently about tackling a big research project, which I identified with!

The author looked at the beginning of the writing process and how ideas seem to go chasing off in different directions. The process of trying to make sense of it all, tie things together and give your project an overall sense of direction, results in a lot of scampering around as you try and round all the ideas up. They seem to diverge and are most unwilling to be contained and made sense of.

This bit is HARD WORK!

This is what I am doing at the moment with my application for QTLS (Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills) There are plenty of ideas, resources (or 'assets') uploaded to the IfL (Institute for Learning) Reflect database to add to my webfolio, but pulling the whole lot together into a coherent whole is proving most elusive!

I know, of course, because it has happened in the past, that the magic moment will arrive when ideas start to converge, order is made out of chaos, and light can be seen at the end of the tunnel. In the mean time...hard work!