Thank You #ACRLNE for The Knowledge Bank

Collaboration was the theme for the 2011 #ACRLNE held on College of Holy Cross campus.

It was an impressive atmosphere, not just because of the talented pool of librarian attendees but their genuine passion to make the institutions they serve more effective through innovative programs and resource utilization. As a full-time business faculty member, I continue to learn about the potential for collaboration with all of my faculty and teaching colleagues to deliver great content with proper context and high quality learning opportunities for students.

This is an ongoing adventure fueled by my passion for technology and curiosity to figure out how I an utilize all of these amazing tools at my disposal to deliver the ultimate learning experience for students (face-to-face,hybrid or online).

As I prepared for my presentation at ACRLNE I had the good fortune to have time to attend an earlier session simply titled KnowledgeBank - there was a longer title but for the point of this post, you can check out the related twitter feed from this presentation - #KnowledgeBank

The basic concept is to develop a source of information that multiple people interested in that content can access, evaluate, utilize, edit etc. In theory, this is not a new concept, but something clicked with me as I left the presentation.

Librarians,faculty and students all share similar challenges. We have intelligence but sometimes our efficiency in this area is compromised by the resources we expend on trying to come up with new ideas, updated sources to include in lectures and content to support our creative and critical thinking required in a variety of courses.

I have a Knowledge Bank of sorts that I began accidentally for the embedded ebook project, I am currently working on with Brooke Ratto (Information Literacy Librarian for Shapiro Library).

However, this is an adhoc artifact of my random research in the area of marketing.

It's time we (Library and Teaching Faculty) make a focused effort to promote all of the valuable resources (library resources, quality open resources, ideas from faculty and students) and set programs in place that allow discussions in any discipline to grow and flourish vs. Being limited or squelched due to time constraints and the limitations of traditional semester time periods.

Librarians can lead the way in marketing these programs, students will inherently see the value in the resources provided and the experiences they have as a result of using knowledge banks to earn interest and not just house content.

Would love to hear about ideas and current "living and breathing" knowledge banks that benefit faculty, students, librarians, entire school systems, etc.

Enjoy figuring it all out!

Andy Lynch - a.lynch@SNHU.edu

Use Google Reader to Interact with Students with Relevant Web Content in 10 Easy Steps

Technology affords faculty to access countless sources of content on a second-by-second bases. Sometimes, it takes a few tips to move faculty from the theoretical aspect of this statement to the application of this fact in their classrooms.

In this post, I want to introduce you to Google Reader and the potential for it being a useful tool to interact with your students AND leverage as a tool to provide relevant content in a timely manner that requires nothing but a few minutes to set-up.

Enjoy experimenting with the potential of Google Reader.

10 STEPS to GETTING STARTED and USING GOOGLE READER as a LEARNING TOOL

1. Start a Google account.
2. Jump on Google Reader.
3. Find an article that interests you and applies to one of your courses.
4. Add a "Tag" - Don't worry, Google Reader will keep it forever if you want, but make it something short and easy to understand (this makes more sense as you experiment with the URL Google assigns to this tag).
5. Select "Share with note" and write a comment.
6. Select "Manage Subscriptions"
7. Select "Folders and Tags"
8. Make the "Folder/Tag" you created "Public"
9. Select "View Public Page" option
10. Congratulations! You have just begun the fun process of integrating Google Reader in your courses and sharing relevant content that DOES NOT come from an expensive textbook.

I've taken some screen captures and added a few notes below, please feel free to comment and most of all experiment with this great tool.

Pick an item of Interest in Google Reader...

Share your selected item with your students via the "Share with note" option

Click "Manage Subscriptions" and select "Folders and Tags"

Take a look at what you just created... and ENJOY the possibilities!