Sunday, June 15, 2008

Two random ideas: virtual info lit and Wikipedia

Wanted to put down a couple of ideas floating about in the mostly vacuum of space between my ears...
  1. My guess is that this may never be politically viable, but...a SUNY-wide implementation of Elluminate virtual classroom. This could be used for many things: by language faculty for distance or blended courses to hold speaking practice sessions/lessons, librarians could offer info lit workshops as supplement to one-shot in-class sessions, librarians and beyond could use it for committee work, collaborative meetings, etc. I especially would be interested, of course, in the info lit part. Wouldn't it be wonderful to create a collaborative set of virtual information literacy workshops? With all the talented and creative teacher-librarians across SUNY participating, the content could be great and the number of offerings could go way up, giving students the most choices for convenience within their schedule, with some sessions, for example, focusing on basic research skills using SUNYConnect resources, being offered across campuses.
  2. Display RSS feed of Wikipedia's "On this Day" entry on the website or library blog. Would this have negative consequences, given that many faculty and librarians still view this resource as off-limits in an academic environment? I think if the presentation is framed right, with an eye to evaluation skills, it could be a great way to bring some constantly changing general interest history content onto the library site. Is anyone doing this already?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Dana!
Not sure if the part of This Day in History that interests you is the event, or the wikipedia part? If it's the event, The History Channel has been doing this since way back, and I just checked -- they do have an RSS feed for it http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do

As for the other, what a great idea! And maybe not impossible. SUNY Learning Network has adopted Angle, and it seems to me it might be possible to either leverage it to do what you're thinking about (I don't know anything about Ellumminate). If not, we could work with OLIS or other SUNYwides to make something happen? Not tomorrow, but groundwork can be laid.

By the way, once things get worked out, expect to hear from me. I think you'll be perfect for a new LIC subcommittee being born this summer...

Unknown said...

Hi Rudy,

D'oh! You know I have that HC site bookmarked somewhere but never thought to use that instead! Much better resource anyways!

As far as the Angel CMS (not sure if that was what you were referring to tho) - it has a virtual classroom (asynch) plug-in component, but it is not nearly as usable or full-featured as Elluminate. Elluminate is similar to WebEx but designed specifically for learning. If you've ever sat in on a Blended Librarian (http://blendedlibrarian.org/) webcast - they use Elluminate for that, and it integrates with Angel well.

As far as the subcommittee - count me in!

Anonymous said...

I am CEO of FindingDulcinea; we're thrilled to see the site on your list of worthwhile education/library tools. As you may know, we create a daily On This Day in History entry (click on my name for examples), which is a fair bit more in-depth than the HC's entry, and we'd be pleased to make it available on library Web sites. Feel free to contact me at

mark.moran[at]dulcineamedia.com