Loex of the West Pre-Conference Workshop II
Wednesday, June 8, 2006
8:00AM-noon
Fairmont Orchid, Hawaii
During this half-day workshop, participants will learn a new way to teach an old concept. At the American University in Cairo, faculty librarians teach a semester long information literacy course, LALT 101, for first year students. In the first week of the course, Flickr, an emerging technology freely available on the web, is used to teach the concepts of databases and controlled vocabulary. The recent rise of social software
(e.g., Friendster, MySpace, Multiply, and blogging) as a trend alongside the increasing personalization of technology, enables today's students to stay connected with their peers and record their personal histories in a way that is interactive and visual. Students are naturally drawn to these types of technologies and librarians can easily incorporate them into their information literacy curricula. Making IL concepts relevant to the everyday lives of students increases fun in the classroom and contributes to lifelong learning as skills taught in this context have relevance beyond the classroom. Presenters will give a brief presentation of their experiences using image databases to teach core IL concepts. However, the majority of the workshop will be an active-learning experience. Participants will work in groups to create an image database using Flickr. Each group will: take digital photographs; upload them to the web; and provide titles, tags, and descriptions for them. The database created during the workshop will be freely available to participants after the workshop. Participants will receive a sample lesson plan, complete with objectives, requirements, and discussion points.
Presenters: Nicole E. Brown, Kaila Bussert, & Alison Armstrong, American University in Cairo
Cost: $75
No minimum number of registrants is necessary. Maximum number is 40.