Using Infographic Design to Make Common Core Connections

In a recent article in Phi Delta Kappan, Moeller discusses the use of visual thinking strategies to “strengthen students’ communication and critical thinking skills and creativity” (2013). Visual literacy, data visualization, and design thinking are buzzwords in the education rhetoric and are becoming more popular in the classroom partly because of the accessibility of visual …

Creating a Flipped Video for Your IL Class? Make it Like a Vsauce Video

This semester I proposed to several professors in the English department an embedded librarian program. I was super stoked when they accepted my proposal. It basically just consists of two required information literacy (IL) sessions focused on specific search strategies and topic creation. To prepare for these sessions I combed listservs, websites, journal articles, and …

Best Contests for Pinterest

Looking for a way to engage your patrons/customers/students? How about a Pinterest contest?! Pinterest contests can be a great way to engage your audience as well as sneak in digital literacy skill development that is fun and exciting to learn! I have been scouring the interweb to curate a list of past and present Pinterest …

Use TED-Ed to Flip Your IL Sessions

Last week I attended the Texas Library Association's 2013 annual library conference. My head was spinning with all the innovative fresh ideas that were shared! One awesome session I attended was Flipped Classroom: Supporting New Educational Models. The session consisted of a panel of 6 educators who shared their experience flipping their classroom. While it was primarily aimed …

Using Hashtags to Teach Subject Headings

One of the hardest concepts, that I have found, for students to grasp and actually utilize are subject headings. Because students don't regularly employ them in their day to day life they tend to be cast aside for a comfortable natural language search technique. I show students how useful subject headings can be when searching …

Resources for Teaching Critical Thinking to Teens in a Juvenile Detention Center

I have recently agreed to teach information literacy and writing skills to teens at a local juvenile detention center. As a librarian at an academic university, teaching teens is a totally new prospect to me. So to help tackle this challenging prospect I reached out to the education faculty at my university as well as …