Fun Friday - Games for You!

Happy Friday to you all!

It's nearing the end of week 2, and you all have been hard at work learning about and using your new iPad, promoting our services to faculty, and much more, I'm sure.  So, I thought I'd write something fun today; let's talk about GAMES on iPad, shall we?

I'm not the world's biggest gamer, but there are a few fun ones that I play often when I'm at lunch or unwinding in the evening.  Here are some of my faves:

Scramble with Friends:  I'm really not the best at this game, and my husband takes great pride in beating me daily.  But, it's still fun!  Scramble is like the game Boggle - remember Boggle?  You are given a jumble of letters and one minute to try and make as many words as you can before the time runs out.  It's great fun.

SongPop:  Are you a music lover?  This game is a lot of fun and brings back old memories.  You are given a music clip and you have to select the correct artist or title for each song quickly - more quickly than your opponent.  Each round comprises five music clips, and the winner for each round gets three gold coins.  You can use your saved gold coins to purchase new genre lists to challenge others with - genres include things like 80's hairbands, British Invasion, and One-Hit Wonders, as well as the traditional 70's, 80's, Country, Progressive, and so on. Again, loads of fun, especially if you love music.

Glow Hockey:  It's Air Hockey for iPad!  My kids love this one too.  Play on your own, or challenge your friends.  

Bejeweled Blitz:  Match and detonate three or more jewels in a row to accumulate points.  You will never be satisfied with your current score.  

This is one of those addictive, mindless games that you can't seem to ever stop playing (like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, or Fruit Ninja).

What are your favorite games?  I'd love to hear about them.  

Oh, and by the way... if you are willing to invest five bucks, one of the most entertaining apps I've yet to come across is an interactive children's story called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.  This is a wonderful story that my kids and I absolutely adore. Here is the trailer for the app.  It's money well spent!  Have fun :)

Gale Databases on iPad

Update from yesterday's post:  It turns out that my issues with the Gale app yesterday were due to some connectivity problems I had on my home network.  Now that I'm here in the office, I was able to authenticate it - and it works beautifully!

The app is called Access My Library | College Edition, and it's available from the app store.  There is a clunky authentication process, but once you are authenticated, you see a map (not sure why), and option to choose to browse the databases, or the eBooks:

I like the way the databases show up - you get a selection of all Gale databases, and clicking on each one takes you directly to the website, which displays nicely on the iPad.

You can also show eBooks only, and they display in a similar fashion, with an option to filter by subject.

So, there you have it - an app for EBSCOHost and an app for Gale.  Will you use these in reference?  Will they be convenient - or is it easier to just search through our site on your iPad?  Please share your experiences as you move through the term.

iPad and Reference

Now that everyone has had time to play with your new iPads, it's time to start sharing!  I'm so excited to see how you all end up using this tool, both at work (in the classroom, with projects and professional development) and personally (is anyone else addicted to SongPop?).

I want to create a series of posts that describe MY favorite uses for the iPad, and I thought I'd start with letting you know about some functions that work directly with our resources.  This list is not all-inclusive, and I suspect it will change as mobile technology evolves.  Many of our resources will work best if accessed via the web, for example, as opposed to an app.  Furthermore, you may have discovered something that others haven't - please share it with us if you do.

Here are a few things for you to know:

EBSCOHost (available from the App store):  Once you've signed in and authenticated, this app will remain connected to the proxy for nine months so every time you visit, it remembers you (after nine months, you must re-authenticate).  The Home screen gives you a variety of options:  Your most recent searches, any searches you've saved, any articles you've saved, and a Help option.  Narrow your searches using the Settings button - choose which databases you want to search, turn on Full Text or Peer Reviewed filters, set your publication dates, and more.

Cool features of this app:  You can save PDFs directly to outside apps like Dropbox or iBooks with this app. You can also email articles.  

Challenges of this app:  This app is designed for the iPhone, though it will work on iPad as well.  Also, in order to authenticate, you will need to go to the web version of an EBSCO database through our site, log in, and then scroll to the bottom and click New! EBSCOHost iPhone and Android Applications.  It will prompt you to pop in an email address to which it will email you an authentication key.  It works best if you open this email directly from your iPad.

Films on Demand (Acess from our site):  Although there isn't a mobile version, Films on Demand plays nicely with iPad; the film clips play beautifully, just as they do on computers.

Apps I'm struggling with:  There is a Gale app available from the app store, but I can't get it to work properly.  In addition, there is an ebrary app - another one I'm struggling with.  Still, there will be some functions that for our purposes are best done in a browser.  If you discover something different, let the rest of us know.  Noah and James are exploring mobile applications for iPad as well as other devices for a poster session at the upcoming Learning Conference - so stay tuned for great things to come!

Check out these great apps that are useful for reference work:

WolframAlpha
Grammar Girl
EasyBib Free (For APA citations - books only)
Wikipedia Free
And check out some great suggested apps by subject (created by Goshen College).

 What apps have you discovered?  Share them with us in the comments below, or send them out via email.  Sean is also working on a platform for assessment.  Happy searching :)

Trends in the Profession - iPad as a Professional Development Tool

I’m super excited for everyone to get their iPads.  I have one, and now I’m ready to learn fromall of you as well!  It’s such a greattool for personal productivity, service to our students and faculty, and generally beingcreative. I'm sure I haven't discovered all of iPad's secrets, so it will be great to learn from you all.

It’s going to be important to really USE this tool ininnovative and creative ways, which is why I want to make sure we are sharingwhat we discover.  We can discuss aplatform for sharing at our upcoming teambuilding event.  I’m planning a series of blog posts thatdescribe fabulous apps that help me daily.

One of my favorite ways to use mine is to keep up onprofessional reading.  I currently useGoogle Reader as my feed, and I subscribe to 60+ blogs and newsletters relatedto librarianship, technology, and instruction. When viewing it in Google itself, it’s sort-of a nightmare; up in therighthand corner is the number of articles sitting there waiting for me:  1000+.  Yeah, it decided to stop counting afterone thousand.

This laundry list of articles to sift through is daunting to me, and makes me want to avoid my feed reader altogether!  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could flip through your articles magazine-style at your leisure?  Turns out that you can with Flipboard.

Flipboard is my favorite thing in life right now.  It pulls in your feeds from all your sources including Twitter and Facebook, as well as lets you choose Flipboard “picks” by topic, and presents them to you in a magazine layout style.  It’s much more enjoyable to read this way!  You can click on headlines to show the full article, and then save as a favorite, or share it via Twitter, Facebook, or email.   Check out this video for a visual:

Meet Flipboard. http://youtu.be/v2vpvEDS00o

Flipboard will keep you in touch with the professionalworld, in style.  (There’s my cheesytagline for ya.)

So now you are thinking, “Awesome!  Flipboard will change my life. Jen, what canI do RIGHT NOW to prepare for Flipboard?” So glad you asked!

Do you have a feed reader? If not, I recommend Google Reader – it’s easy to use.  Look for feeds that support your interests,and you may find some that are specific to your subject (Business folks:  Check out Bizologie).  Some of my favorite newsletters and blogsinclude the following:

EducationalTechnology and Mobile Learning

Stephen’s Lighthouse

Free Technology forTeachers

SearchReSearch

The ‘M’ Word –Marketing Libraries

iPad Insight

Leadership Freak

On My Mind (Thisblog J)

Once you have your reader populated with a few of your favorite things, you're ready to integrate it with Flipboard when you get your iPad.  What are some of your favorites?  Comment below. 

And by the way... if you want to learn more about how RSS works, as well as other great productivity apps like Evernote and social bookmarking with Diigo, check out the Fall rollout of the 23 Things for Faculty Development program - details will be coming out in the next couple of weeks.

Dreaming Big

Yesterday at the admin offices, things were really bustling - it was one of those days where I met a ton of people, all of whom were very interested in the direction we are headed with our LRCs.  It was very positive and inspiring.

I had the opportunity to reflect on this issue of traffic in the LRCs with a few folks whose mission is to facilitate engagement and foster a culture of completion among students and faculty.  I talked about how the block scheduling seems to be interfering with our opportunity to build relationships with the students at our campuses, because when students are done with classes, they are ready to leave - there is no reason or desire for them to hang around.  The LRCs are getting much fewer visitors as a result. At my former campus, I was increasingly concerned about this, as were many of my fellow librarians in the north.  The conversations I had yesterday really got me thinking, and dreaming, about a space in each LRC that students would want to come to in order to study, work in groups - a place to immerse in learning and contemplation.

This isn't a new conversation, as we've been talking and dreaming about this among ourselves for years, haven't we?  But yesterday, I saw some light bulbs going on in the eyes of some folks who could become vested in such a space themselves - which makes them powerful advocates for us.

One of the most important things to do now is to start collecting data to support this - and I would love to get direct feedback from students.  So, I have a mission for each of you!

Typically in the past, we would collect feedback statements from those we work with that showed the value of our services.  I'd like to continue to do that, but focus on more specific themes each month.  This month, for example, in your conversations with students (and maybe even faculty and staff), I'd like you to start asking, "What type of space do you envision as the perfect study space? What things would you like the LRC to have that might draw you there to study or work in groups? What is your vision for a perfect LRC?" I imagine you will get responses that range from furniture and equipment, to rules (like the antiquated food/drink policy we currently have in place), and maybe a few things we haven't thought of.  What sort of space would our students like to have for their campus LRC?  We've all dreamed about what we would love to have, but what would they love to have?

As you get comments, please compile them and put them in your monthly report.  This feedback may just help us get closer to that dream space we'd all like to have for our users.

Infographics Made Easy - With Piktochart

I have been wanting to create infographics for a very long time, and have been waiting for the inevitable tool to be introduced that would enable a user to create them easily.  It's here! I can hardly contain my excitement.

Piktochart is a great tool that gives you templates to choose from, and a side panel of text tools, graphics, chart generators, and more with which to customize your infographic.  It's extremely flexible, allowing you to change fonts, colors, and more!  I've often thought that teaching students to create infographics as an alternative to a research paper, presentation, or annotated bibliography would be tons of fun - it's a very creative way to share data.

The danger?  Spending way too much time playing with the tool. I've spent more time on this than I should have today, and my to-do list is suffering as a result!  Still, I think sometimes creativity is worth putting in a couple extra hours over the weekend.


I wish it displayed a bit larger; you'll be forced to hold down your control key and scroll in to enlarge it.  This is something I'll have to work on.  But not today - MUST move on!

Happy Friday.

The War against Plagiarism

One of the things I’m tasked with right off the bat is to evaluate the success of Turnitin at our college.  I’m looking at several things to get a broad picture of the success of this tool – how many submissions have we had? What story does that data tell?  Which instructors are our most active users, and what do they have to say about it? How is it being used? How can we kick up usage – or do we want to?

Our dean was able to save this resource from the chopping block by negotiating a better cost for us, so this will be a pivotal year that determines whether we continue on with it, or abandon it.

My analysis of the data told me several things.

• ·         We had 2492 submissions collegewide.  That’s about one submission for every two students. 
• ·         The campuses that use the service the most are Online (by a landslide), followed by Anderson, Fort Wayne, and Northwest.
• ·         77 percent of all final submissions had zero to 24 percent unoriginal content (the “green” zone).  14 percent came in at 25 to 49 percent unoriginal content, and less than 10 percent showed 50 to 100 percent unoriginal content.

So here’s my reflection of this data.

77 percent of students’ submissions were in the green zone.  This group either doesn’t have a problem with plagiarism, OR it means that the final submission, which overwrites the original submission, was successful – that the students learned from the first originality report and improved their paper.  This latter scenario means that Turnitin succeeded in its intended purpose.  However, there's no way for me to know how many submissions were, in fact, resubmissions. 

23 percent of student submissions were in the range of unacceptable.  This could mean that Turnitin wasn't used as recommended to improve student writing, or students simply chose not to resubmit after revising.

I don't think we are getting an accurate portrait of the problem of plagiarism in our realm with these statistics; I'm not even sure I can gauge the success of Turnitin based on these numbers alone.  I'm in the process of gathering faculty feedback. 

I’m hoping for an opportunity to spread the word that plagiarism needs an updated approach at the curriculum level.  We live in a different world, and the concept of intellectual property is nearly lost on students, not just at our school but everywhere.   I’m a big believer in the use of Turnitin in the classroom, if it is used properly – and my goal is to blast faculty with the benefits and ways to utilize it successfully with students.  What are your ideas?

If we are unsuccessful and we lose Turnitin – what then?  There are several free tools out there, but there are limitations: 1) most of the free tools check only against web content, not against databases or student paper repositories.  2) They are designed to flag unoriginal content, but lack the tools that provide those teachable moments students need to improve their writing.  3) They’re clunky to use, and one of the advantages to a tool like this would be to empower students to check their own papers and have discussions in the classroom about their findings. 

What are your experiences with plagiarism at your campus? And are you an advocate of Turnitin?  Why or why not?  I’d love to hear your thoughts as I prepare my battle plan.

Greetings!

I must admit, I’ve tried blogging many, many times before – and failed. Not because I didn’t have enough to say, but more because I wasn’t disciplined enough to make time for it in the midst of a busy work life and an utterly chaotic home life.  In order for me to fully commit to something, I need a purpose.  And I think I have finally found one.

As one-half of the newly formed associate dean team, I am super excited to come to work every day. Client services are definitely my favorite part of being a librarian – engaging students and faculty, being creative and innovative in the classroom, and learning from colleagues.  But there are some fears there too.  What if I don't get in the classroom? What if I lose touch with students?  What if librarians see me differently?  How will I stay connected with librarians? With faculty? What if that collaborative “spark” dissipates?  These were the thoughts running through my mind as I made my way downtown on Monday morning to start my new position.

It’s Friday now, and after completion of a nearly full week on the job, I have to say that most of my fears have been put to rest.  I realize that it’s up to me to create new ways to keep the momentum going – to keep my finger on the pulse of the daily grind in the LRCs.  I can totally do that.

Those of you who have worked closely with me know that I don’t come up with ideas and other geniusness all by myself – it’s always a spark that is generated or fueled by the creative brains on our team. I’ve worked most closely with the North group, of course, and now I’m really excited to broaden my network and work with more of you – find out what your passions are, and in what areas you want to help lead us.  I want to keep open lines of communication, and let you all in on what I’m working on and thinking about daily, so that you can weigh in and share your own ideas.  This, my friends, is a defined purpose to blog.

This blog will be a way that I can share thoughts, questions, ideas, resources, and other informal things with the librarian team at our college, and you are free to comment publicly or privately on whatever I may be rambling about – in fact, I welcome it!  And now that I’ve committed to it, promised you posts (whether you want them or not), I shall not abandon this, my 16th, blogging attempt.

Hopefully.

No, really.