Professional Development

Using Technology to Enhance Instruction
College and University Section - Bibliographic Instruction Group
Angela Whitehurst (ECU), Lisa Williams (UNC-W), and Angela Bardeen (UNC-Ch)

Angela Bardeen on Facebook

• Discussed “Friends Wheel” where you can see the physical network of your friends
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• Letting students advertise for you
• Shows you who is in what group, can contact president of subject-area clubs through facebook (since they use it more than email)
• Join groups and get notices of when meetings are, etc.
• Can solicit feedback through facebook
• Facebook is number one place to share photos online, by adding library photos you share pictures and fit in with Facebook culture
• Using Facebook to create events and advertise that way
• Using Facebook paid advertising
• Discussed new Facebook application
  • Librarians are trying to create search applications, but they tend to not fit into the culture of facebook. You might be the only one using them.
  • Some are promoting directly on the library home page
  • Might want to consider which fit in to the culture of Facebook
  • One person is developing an application that has a map of the library and students can say “when I’m in the library you can find me in…” and pick a spot on the map. This fits the culture and advertises the library.
• DO: try to think like Facebook, try new things, weigh pros and cons
• DON’T: waste a lot of time, take offense, or “poke” the kids

Angela Whitehurst on Creating Online Tutorials with Camtasia

• Introduced screencasting
• Software: Camtasia, Captivate, Qarbon Viewlet Builder, Robodemo, BB Flashback, Wink
• Started with the questions they got most often at the reference desk
• Stored on “How Do I?” page, but will have an online tutorials page
• Reasons: multimedia appeal for undergrads, 24 hour instruction for distance ed students, method to answer reference questions
• This is similar to the project we’re working on for the toolkit
• Planning: plan first, create in scenes/segments, narration, proofreading and editing, production
• They’re keeping their tutorials on YouTube. I would add that it’s important to think of online video culture when creating video… how do you make the tutorial look and sound like what students are used to seeing?
• Issues to consider: formats, file size (for distance students who might not have broadband), where to upload, adding toc affects screen size

Lisa Williams on Hot Potatoes

• Software to create exercises
• Multiple-choice, short answer, jumble sentence, fill in blank, etc
• Free for not for profits, but have to make pages available to everyone
• Demo-ed crossword puzzle software
• The Masher allows integration of other files