Students, We Want Your Voices!

WIC is turning 11 years old this month, and we’re planning to give the space a refresh! If you are an undergraduate who studies at WIC, we’d like to hear your voice. We are holding student focus groups throughout April to get feedback on how we might improve our spaces and services to better accommodate student needs.

We will have Insomnia Cookies and giveaways for all who attend! Please register for a session below. All focus groups will be held in the WIC Seminar Room (Rm 124).

• Monday, April 10, 4-5pm
  Register: http://libcal.library.upenn.edu/event/3237868

• Friday, April 14, 1-2pm
  Register: http://libcal.library.upenn.edu/event/3237876

• Wednesday, April 19, 11am-noon
  Register: http://libcal.library.upenn.edu/event/3237883

Hoesley and Seltzer Program Applications Due April 7

**Deadline extended to April 7!**

We are currently accepting applications for two undergraduate programs for the 2017-2018 academic year:  the Hoesley Digital Literacy Fellows and the Seltzer Family Digital Media Awards.

The Hoesley Program is open to current sophomores and juniors who are interested in broadening their digital literacy and technology skills and fostering career connections at Penn and beyond. This year, we are accepting a cohort of around 5-10 students. Read more about our Hoesley students in related blog posts and apply online.

The Seltzer Family Digital Media Awards provide five to six students with up to $1,000 each to purchase equipment (hardware or software) to support a new media project for one year. The equipment then gets returned to our equipment lending program for general use. Students in any year of study can apply, and special consideration is given to those in the Huntsman Program. Read more about the Seltzer Program in related blog posts and apply online.

Applications are due by Friday, March 31, so please consider applying and spread the word!

A Chilly Winter Break at WIC

With finals upon us and winter break quickly approaching, we wanted to inform our patrons that we’ll be having some work done at WIC over winter break. From December 27th through 30th, the library duct systems will be cleaned, which means that WIC will be chilly, noisy, and possibly overtaken by workers in certain booths and rooms. Even though WIC will be open (but not staffed) those days from 8:30am to 5pm, we’ve taken all of the bookings for the booths, group study rooms, and the WIC Seminar Room offline in case our workers need them. Anyone using WIC is more that welcome to sit in a booth or room, but please know that if the workers need access to any areas, they may ask you to move.

Please feel free to get in touch with us at wic1@pobox.upenn.edu with any questions. We wish everyone a happy holiday and restful winter break!

Hoesley and Seltzer Programs – Apply Now!

We are currently accepting applications for two undergraduate programs for the 2016-2017 academic year:  the Hoesley Digital Literacy Fellows and the Seltzer Family Digital Media Awards.

The Hoesley Program is open to current sophomores and juniors who are interested in broadening their digital literacy and technology skills and fostering career connections at Penn and beyond. We generally accept a cohort of 15 students. Read more about our Hoesley students in related blog posts and apply online.

The Seltzer Family Digital Media Awards provide five to six students with up to $1,000 each to purchase equipment (hardware or software) to support a new media project for one year. The equipment then gets returned to our equipment lending program for general use. Students in any year of study can apply, and special consideration is given to those in the Huntsman Program. Read more about the Seltzer Program in related blog posts and apply online.

Applications are due by Friday, April 1, so please spread the word!

 

Research Teas at Van Pelt Library

This fall, we are organizing a series called Research Teas that are meant to be open forums for students, both undergraduate and graduate, to discuss their research. Each of the six sessions this semester will have a topic to ground our discussions (see below), but participants are welcome to discuss their own research regardless of that month’s topic. Tea and cookies will be served!

We hope that this forum provides an opportunity for students to share ideas about research across disciplines and interests. Sessions will be held from 4 to 5:30pm in the Collaborative Classroom, and you can register by clicking the links below. We hope to see you on Wednesdays this fall!

September 23 – Personal Voice: Letters and Diaries

October 7 – The Week that Was: Historical Newspapers and Magazines

October 21 – Historical Geography: Discovering, Using, and Making Maps

November 4 – From Millions of Books: Making and Manipulating a Corpus

November 18 – Worth a Thousand Words: Working with Photographs and Images

December 2 – Picturing the Past and Present: Political cartoons, comics, and graphic novels

What We Can Learn from K-12 Educators

When a colleague suggested that I attend the ISTE Conference for K-12 educators, I was a bit skeptical. I thought, “What can I learn from K-12 educators that would be applicable to the undergraduates – and often graduate students and faculty members – I work with as a librarian?” However, as I browsed through the workshop and session descriptions, I realized that we in higher education can take a few pages from the books of K-12 educators to enhance teaching and learning at the college level. Here are some highlights I took away from the conference:

1. 

   Image by Greg Kulowiec, retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/pcrxrqy

   1. iPad Apps. There are so many. Whenever someone asks me for app recommendations, I often turn to my “go-to’s” without doing much more hunting. In a workshop about using tablets in the classroom, I learned so much about app integration for both content (student learning) and creation (student making). For example, AppFusion or App Smashing is the process of using several apps to create different parts of a project, and then using one app to pull all the parts together. One such “fusion” app is ThinkLink, which can incorporate sound, video, images and text to create a short presentation, much like a PowerPoint or Prezi. Learning about all of these different apps stressed our responsibility in higher education to be knowledgeable about a variety of apps for different functions, such as video creation, white board drawing, or photo editing. A grid with apps, their functions, preferred platforms, etc. is a simple tool that we can develop to help students and faculty choose the right apps to use in the classroom, especially as we prepare new iPads for our lending program this fall.

2. 

   Image retrieved from https://conversationprism.com/

   “Deeper learning.” Learning in the classroom is great, but if it can’t be applied to real-life situations, it may not stick for all students. Presenters Chris Dede of Harvard and Julie Evans of Project Tomorrow explained that “deeper learning” involves this connection between learning and life, and also spoke about essential strategies for mobile learning, stemming from their 2014 Qualcomm report, The 8 Essentials for Mobile Learning Success in Education. One of the highlights included a video of an augmented reality project where students interacted with hotspots on their mobile devices when out studying a pond in order to reinforce ecological concepts. The presenters also stressed the importance of how students use social media platforms to think together and share information, and offered a great resource called the Conversation Prism. One point that stuck with me in terms of working with students and faculty at Penn involved developing fluency in interactive media. Chris Dede made the point that often, we have to create communities of “unlearning” the more traditional methods we’re used to, in order to become fluent in various media and collaborative, inquiry-based learning strategies. This is a tall measure for folks in higher-ed, but nevertheless something I believe we should all be striving toward.

3. Backchannels. A backchannel is a second form of communication that takes place at the same time as a face-to-face session, whether it’s a lecture, conference session, or other learning activity. In a great session on backchannels, where we modeled this behavior during the presentation, a high school teacher and college professor explained how they use backchannels, why they’re useful in the classroom, and shared a variety of different channels to consider. In one class, students used a backchannel while watching a video in order to answer certain questions about content and also ask questions of the teacher and other students. Backchannels, which include popular options like Twitter (using a class hashtag, for example), Today’s Meet, and Backchannelchat.com, can be a great way of getting students who usually don’t participate to join the conversation. In a “fishbowl” scenario, students on the outer edge of the class can be using the backchannel, while those on the inner circle can be paying attention real-time, and then roles reverse halfway through class. On certain platforms, students can remain anonymous to each other on a backchannel, but the instructor knows who’s chatting and can do some formative assessment. Some other backchannel platforms include Piazza, Tozzl, and Socrative. We often get questions from faculty about backchannels here at WIC, and this presentation made me feel more prepared to recommend different tools and discuss the pros and cons of using backchannels in teaching and learning.

Other great resources I learned about at ISTE included those about digital and media literacy, such as Common Sense Media’s digital citizenship curriculum, and how to teach and implement digital literacy using strategies from the Center for Media Literacy. I learned so much from K-12 educators at the ISTE conference. I now have some new goals and much personal learning to do as we prepare for the fall semester!

CALICO Monograph Launch Event

Over the past several years, WIC staff have worked closely with the Penn Language Center to assist language educators with using technology for teaching and learning. Each year, we conduct custom workshops based on topics that PLC folks have requested. We also assist educators in creating assignments and teaching students technology tools in order to complete successful digitally-mediated projects.  Language classes have used screen videos, PowerPoint, iMovie, Prezi, audience response tools, Skype, Canvas, and various other tools to create digital projects. In the video below, Mélanie Péron of the French and Francophone Studies Department discusses her use of technology in the classroom, how it has developed over the past several years, and her use of the Commons in the process.

This year, we interviewed several language faculty members to write a chapter for the 2015 volume of the CALICO Monograph Book Series, Researching Language Learner Interaction Online: From Social Media to MOOCs. Our chapter, “Video Creation Tools for Language Learning: Lessons Learned,” examines – through course observations, faculty interviews, and student surveys – student and faculty perceptions of the usefulness of video tools and the role of the library in technology support. The volume as a whole, edited by Ed Dixon of the Penn Language Center and Michael Thomas of the University of Central Lancashire, focuses on language learning in the digitally-mediated environment.  Technology tools mentioned in the monograph complement the PLC-sponsored May workshops at WIC.  We plan to Skype with several authors and have a lively conversation about language learning in the digital environment. Many articles were reviewed by experts and faculty at Penn: Jacqueline Dougherty, David James, Helen McFie Simone, Maria Paredes Fernández, Jay Treat, and Lillyrose Veneziano Broccia.

We hope you’ll join us on May 21 from noon to 1:30pm in the Collaborative Classroom for the celebration! Lunch will be provided! Please click here to register.

Senior Research Spotlight

The gong will strictly enforce the two-minute time limit!

Event canceled – please check back for similar events in the future

Are you a graduating senior? Have you been working hard on a senior thesis or project lately? Does your project involve new media? Can you talk fast?

If all of the above apply to you, we welcome you to submit a proposal for our Senior Research Spotlight. Together with co-sponsors CURF, CWiC, and Weingarten Learning Resources Center (VPUL), we invite twenty graduating seniors in any of the four undergraduate schools at Penn to share their work that involves new media (audio, video, image collections, software, 3D printing…) in a collegial atmosphere in front of peers, faculty, librarians, and administrators from around campus.

Presentations will consist of two-minute lightning talks, with time strictly enforced by the gong pictured above! The event will take place on Thursday, April 29, 2015, at 3pm in the Class of 1978 Pavilion, Kislak Center, 6th Floor of Van Pelt Library. The room will be set up theater-style, and students will stand at the front podium to deliver their talks.

For more details, please see the event website. If you are interested in participating, submit a registration form by Friday, April 24, 2015, by 5 pm. To consider your submission, all we need by April 24 is the registration form. If you’d like to attend the event, please register here.  We hope you’ll join us on April 29th!

Italian Madrigals on WIC iPads

Image from event website

When Professor Mauro Calcagno submitted a request to borrow 5 WIC iPads, I figured it was for his students to use for coursework, which is typically the case with our iPads in the Classroom Program. However, I was intrigued to find out that the iPads would be used by the Penn Madrigal Singers to perform digital editions of 16th-century composer Luca Marenzio’s work. I was lucky enough to attend the event last week, which was organized by the Penn Music Department, the Center for Italian Studies, and the Penn Libraries’ Kislak Center, and co-sponsored by the Digital Humanities Forum. It was so fascinating to see both the digital humanities project that Mauro and his colleagues are working on and the fantastic performance by the Penn Madrigal Singers!

Voice-over PowerPoint for Beginning Japanese

Back in November, some of us WIC staff members found ourselves listening intently to a room full of Japanese speakers in Goldstein Electronic Classroom for an entire day. No, we weren’t there to learn beginning Japanese. Rather, we were teaching students in JPAN 011 how to use voice-over PowerPoint to present themselves and their interests in a new final video project for the class. Although we’ve assisted many other classes with video projects, this was the first large-scale language class we’ve supported working solely with voice-over in PowerPoint. It was a great success for all involved!