Using Libguides for Interactive Instruction

This is a great 10 minute presentation about how you can embed free online tools into a libguide to create an interactive guide that can be used during a class session.

http://buzz.springshare.com/videohighlights/acrl-emilie

She describes using Wordle (not as impressive), Google Forms, and Padlet for student interaction. I'm particularly interested in how she used a Google Form that generates an automatic email so that students could basically create their research guide and email it to themselves. For example, if our English Comp I handout were recreated as a Google Form, it could be embedded in a libguide, the students could fill it out throughout the session, and then it could be emailed to them at the end.

I'm definitely going to play around with this. If you try it and are successful, let us all know! Or if you can think of other tools that can be embedded in a libguide to make a class session more interactive for students, please share!

Dropbox.com

I don't know why I've never thought of this before, so I thought I'd share! A student just asked if she could save her work to a folder that she would then be able to access from anywhere on campus, and I instinctively told her no. Then I realized that I use dropbox.com for just that thing all the time, so I asked if she would be interested in that. The student must be willing to set up a username and password, but it's a free service. The website makes it appear that you need to download the program onto the computer, but that is not necessary. Here's a video for setting up dropbox.com without the download.



Once they've set up a dropbox, they can go to dropbox.com from any computer, log in, and access whatever documents they've uploaded.

Check out our gadgets!

See our new gadgets on the right side of the screen? There are 2 customized Google searches: The ALA Best of Reference gadget searches only sites that ALA has designated as quality free reference sites, while the Librarian's E-Library searches ALA's selected resources on libraries and librarians. Try them out! We can also create our own customized Google search if we are feeling really ambitious some day...
-Megan