Incorporating Google Ads into Information Literacy Instruction

According to an article by The Verge's James Vincent, many teens can't tell the difference between ads and search results in Google. He reports that researchers at UK's telecoms watchdog Ofcom discovered that approximately only 33% of 12-15 year olds and 20% of children between the ages of 8-11 were able to tell the difference between …

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 …

Is a User Experience Librarian in Your Future?

In the library world information literacy (IL) is a major buzz word. It involves finding, gathering, and synthesizing information. Now, while IL instruction is definitely an important component to any library, it might be beneficial to use those same concepts within our own workflow as well. We talk about teaching others to organize and synthesize but often times we don't organize …