ACRL-Virtual Worlds Interest Group Program, November 17, 2013

 

 

"European Conference on Information Literacy, Oct 22-25, 2013"

Conference Report

 

presented by:

Esther Grassian, Adjunct Lecturer, UCLA Information Studies Department

&

Sheila Webber, Senior Lecturer, School of Information, Sheffield University, UK.

 For this program, Esther and Sheila presented their reports on the ECIL conference which they attended in Istanbul, Turkey at the end of October.

 

 Esther began began by providing information on the conference. There were over 350 participants from 59 countries.  Keynotes were given by Paul Zurkowski (the man who coined the phrase "information literacy") and Christine Bruce from Queensland University of Technology.

 

  

 

 Shiela provided details of the programs she attended.  She pointed out that participation from so many parts of th world, the variety of perspectives and the participation of people key to the development of IL showed the fields energy, maturity and relevance.

 

 

Esther finished by presenting more indepth info about several of the programs she had attended. These included the Keynote by Paul Zurkowski on Universal Information Literacy.

  

 

Andrew Walsh's presentation on "Game-Based learning for information literacy offered some suggestions and examples of how instructors can utilize games and play in IL instruction.

 

 

 

Esther also provided an overview of the workshop she did at the conference.  We hope to get her to provide more detailed information about this at a future ACRL-VWIG program.

 

 

Thanks to everyone who attended.  Both Esther and Sheila made their information available either via notecard or online.  Here's the link for Esther's slides: 

https://sites.google.com/site/esthergrassian/home/ecil-2013

 

 

 

ACRL-Virtual Worlds Interest Group Program, October 27, 2013

 

"MOOCS and Constructivist Information Literacy"

Valerie Hill, Texas Womens University; Michelle Keba, Nova Southeastern University;

Ilene Frank, University of the People

Val, Michelle, and Ilene gave a fantastic presentation on MOOCS and Information Literacy and librarianship.

Michelle Keba (left),  Ilene Pratt (center), Valerie Hill (right)

Michelle provided a brief definition of MOOCS and outlined their development and history.  She went over the different types of MOOCs and talked about a couple of the providers such as Coursera, and edX.

Ilene went over the in's and out's of Copyright and MOOCS. Included was information on who has access to the materials and the course as well as what kinds of resources and uses are permitted.

Valerie explored what MOOCS have to offer and why libraries should be interested in them.  She presented examples of MOOCs that had virtual world components, such as the Anne Frank MOOC from Fall 2012.  In this MOOC, educators meetings were held, and assignments for participants, were presented inside Second Life.  Participants felt that this virtual worlds component made the MOOC experience a more powerful, immersive experience and a better tool for learning.

Finally, she provided examples and details of how librarians are exploring and participating in MOOCs.  These include bringing their expertise on doing content curation and selecting appropriate, scholarly resources for use in MOOCs.   The program was very well attended and a lively discussion followed.  

ACRL-Virtual Worlds Interest Group Program on September 22, 2013

"Blended Information Behavior in Second Life"

Sheila Webber

Sheffield University Information School

Sheila Webber aka as Sheila Yoshikawa in Second Life presented the results of her research on Blended Information Behavior of  users of Second Life.

Using an interview format, Sheila conducted 91 one-on-one interviews of 49 educators, 21 librarians and 21 other professionals and students who were using Second Life.

Research questions focused on the information seeking behavior of people who were using Second Life and seeking information about a Second Life Activity and whether models of information behavior which have studied the real world are applicable in a virtual world.

Found that 45% of the information incidents in the study involved "information encountering", a concept identified by Erdelez in 1999.  So real life models of Information Behavior seeking, do seem to be applicable to Second Life and other virtual worlds.

This study suggested that users were exhibiting Information Literacy behaviors at a complex level to be able to find, evaluate and use information via a variety of channels.  She called this behavior "blended information behaviour" to indicate that participants were able to blend online, offline real world information in an effective manner.

Pinterest Basics for Librarians

On Sunday, August 18 2013 the ACRL VWIG presented another ACRL and Community Virtual Library's program.

This program, presented by Alexandria Knight (Esther Grassian), retired librarian from the UCLA Library provided a great introduction to Pinterest, what it is and how libraries/libraians can use it in their day-to-day work.

 

 Alexandria covered the basics, what is Pinterest, how to use it.

 

She also made comparisons to other photo sharing platforms such as Flickr.

 

 

The program was was well attended.  Over 25 librarians/educators from across the country were there to learn and share ideas. 

 

 

 

  The discussion was lively and there were many good suggestions for how libraries can and are using Pinterest to do everything from promoting library services and events, to uses for classroom instruction.

 

For the full transcript of the meeting click this link:

 

VWIG Pinterest Meeting Transcript August 18, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm Joe Cupola, librarian denizen of the virtual world, Second Life.  I've started this blog to post about activities and events of interest to librarians and educators who are interested in the educational uses of virtual worlds.  I will detail the activities of several groups I'm involved with including the ACRL-Virtual Worlds Interest Group.

This weekend was the first program of the ACRL Virtual Worlds Interest Group.  On the program:

 

 

 

 

The ALA-ACRL Virtual World Interest Group Program: Sunday, July 28th noon-2pm SLT

Minecraft & Digital Citizenship
An after school club built a game to promote digital citizenship in Minecraft. The project will be discussed along with the topic of gamification in education.

Presenter- Dr. Valerie Hill, PhD

 

 

It was a great turnout, 24 people dropped by to hear Dr. Hill's program on the use of Minecraft to build digital citizenship, and cyber safety. Using a gamification project with her 5th grader class, she helped her students develop and execute a project which used project based learing to build real world learning skills. Here are some photos of the meeting.  (Click the image for a larger view.)

 

 Attendee's gather

 

 There was a lot of interest in this topic

  

Dr. Hill introduces the topic

Project Goals

 

What is Minecraft?

 

Alexandra provided connections to academic libraries.

 

 

Step by Step

 

 

Sucess!

 

 All in all it was a fascinating presentation.  For more information about the project, see Dr. Hills' blog at:

 

5th Grade Game Designers in the Library