After the IL Summit

As the readers likely know, Friday was the Information Literacy Summit. I was rather nervous about presenting there but over all it went well. It was interesting to listen in on the conversations about who is responsible for teaching IL in the classrooms. Many people seem to be fine with the job being seated in composition classrooms while others seem to take it as a slight. I think that overall there is a sense that Information Literacy is everyone's business. There are different levels of specificity in IL just like in everything else and those levels can't all be covered in one or two comp. classes. 

I really enjoyed teaching Information Literacy in a more detailed way. If ever I was given the opportunity to co-teach an info lit class I would jump at the chance. Before going to OSU I had seriously considered an MLIS degree. I loved working in libraries and the idea of being a University Librarian is still very appealing, but I love teaching in the classroom so perhaps the Ph.D. seems the most obvious choice.

Who knows...all I know is that I need to focus on the immediate future and this imminent Cather paper... meh

Summit Dealy-O

Sitting at the IL Summit, feeling much less distressed than I did yesterday.... haven't spoken yet, but still. The PPT is done and that's all I need to prompt myself to speak.

Primal Scream

The past few days I have felt like I am just squeaking by. It's conference week so almost every minute of my day has been tightly packed with scheduled events. On top of this the term is winding down so there are many projects with fast approaching due dates.

I managed to get all of my reading done on Death Comes for the Arch-Bishop, which is great, because I actually enjoy this novel, (which means I got to do something I enjoy for a little bit) and I always feel miserable when I fail to complete the reading for Betj's class.  I also tapped into the Cather Studies website and found a bunch of info for my upcoming seminar paper. 

I have a presentation of sorts at the upcoming Information Literacy Summit which I haven't worked on much and will likely spend my weekend trying to tackle. There's also a draft due on Tuesday for my final paper in SJ's class, but I feel pretty much prepared for this.

It's nice out today, lightly overcast, warmish...

Fifteen conferences, two large assignments, and several chapters to go until the week-end

Arggg!

Library Day Part 1

Today I held my 121 classes in the Willamette Room of the Valley Library. Today's class was designed to familiarize students with the Library of Congress system, help them figure out where a good book for their paper might be, and determine (at least superficially) if a specific book will be useful for them.

I started the lecture with a brief intro to shelf reading. I drew some "books" on the board and had the students figure out how to order them properly on the shelf. This went reasonably well. I'm sure that not everyone was completely following, but enough of the students seemed to get it, and I am certain that none of them had been exposed to this information before. In fact none of them had ever taken a book out of the Valley Library before.

I followed this lesson with a brief overview of where books are located in Valley. They each brought three call numbers they'd looked up the night before, and wrote down the floor where each book would be located next to their call numbers. I then showed them some floor maps and gave them navigation advice. After this, they were turned loose to hunt up some books for 20-25 minutes.

When they returned with their quarry we went over how to use the table of contents and index to get an idea of how useful a book might be. I assured them that a book can be counted as a source even if only a few pages relate to their paper. This seemed to make them feel some relief. Most of them checked out a book or two.

We will be using those books that they checked out in class on Wednesday. During that class we'll get into MLA for books, and I'll set aside some time to address some more specific questions about Summit and ILL which we touched upon only briefly today.

Lesson of the day...Make it UBER EXPLICIT that the ILP/Paper topic cannot be changed after ILP 2. Some student today was trying to make a case for changing his topic because "there isn't enough information". Frankly I know this is a lie. He doesn't know it's a lie, but it is. Almost any topic imaginable has been considered by enough people to make a suitable 121 Paper 2 topic.

Gearing Up to Teach: An Ode to Indices

As the time to teach approaches I've been thinking more and more about how to best get my students involved mentally and perhaps even, dare I say, emotionally in their largest project. Last term I had some success with this by prompting them to write a 10 minute rant about something that as always interested or fascinated them. This could be something they really love, such as the word fork, or something that has bewildered them, such as: why isn't there a licence to reproduce? Or why do some dorm students find being rude to housekeepers acceptable? These topics produced amazing papers which shows me that this quick write was useful and worth repeating.

Now I am trying to think of ways to address other issues I see in my student's work. One issue that seems perennial is the fear of the book. This paper has a number of source requirements which the students must meet in order to succeed. One of these requirements is a book source. All this means is that all WR 121 students must find a book which they can use information from in order to produce their paper. Simple right? No. 

When I started teaching this class roughly one year ago I was certain that this requirement would be the easiest. Surely all my students know what a book is and how to find one. Wrong.  They understand the difference between credible and non-credible web sources with ease. They even have a reasonably firm understanding of peer-review journals and how they differ from magazines by the time the paper is due. What they often don't get is how to find a book that is suitable for their paper.

Fading print literacy? I can't say, but what I can say is that I am hoping to teach at least one full class in the library this coming term. My plan right now is to have each of my classes meet me in the library as soon as topic selection is done. There we will have a quick refresher on how to get around the building, how to shelf read library of congress, and how to look things up effectively in the catalog. After this there will be 10-15 minutes of time for them to gather up at least two possible book sources. We will then reconvene at an appointed location for a talk about indices and why they are your friend. 

As I was saying to Bird the other day I sometimes think the index is the most important part of a book. When I take out a book from the library and it is brimming with pages but no index I just want to scream. I'm thinking "Who are you to offer me so much information and no way to find it without reading this whole damn thing!?!"

So yes, I love indices and I want to share this love with my students. Hopefully the combination of being physically in the library with them and guiding them through the process of determining how useful or not useful a particular book is will help them to find new ways to approach the "problem" of a book source.

On the topic of books, I stumbled upon a blog today where the following video clip was posted. I was deeply amused by it.