Your Resource for Information Literacy
EasyBib’s Library Corner: Mobile Learning Resources
Emily Gover is an information literacy specialist and in-house librarian for EasyBib. Her professional interests lie in web services and design, usability, information literacy, instructional services and reference work. She continues to work part-time at the Hendrick Hudson Free Library, and has previous work experience at Berry College, Reader’s Digest and the University at Albany.
Mobile learning seems to be the way many educators are leaning in terms of implementing new approaches and technology in the classroom to engage their students. Tablet computers continue to rise in popularity as an educational tool, and developers are coming out with new web sites and apps to make learning fun–how can one possibly keep up to speed with it all?!
Shelley Terrell, an educator co-founder of the #edchat hashtag on Twitter, compiled a large number of mobile learning tools into an e-book for your reference! It’s called Effective Mobile Learning: 50+ Quick Resources & Tips. It provides a wealth of information and tools related to mobile learning, and even provides and overview for those unfamiliar with the concept.
Some of the topics and questions discussed include:
- Tips on selecting mobile learning devices
- “BYOD” approach (Bring Your Own Device) — useful for those with tight budgets
- QR Codes in the classroom
- Apps for research
- Apps for collaborative learning
If you have a Scribd account, you can download the e-book. Otherwise, you can view it in its entirety here.
Do you use mobile learning in your library? Are you planning on doing so next year? What are some of your favorite apps to use? Tell us in the comments!
Read MoreEasyBib’s Library Corner: Nominate & Get the Vote Out!
Emily Gover is an information literacy specialist and in-house librarian for EasyBib. Her professional interests lie in web services and design, usability, information literacy, instructional services and reference work. She continues to work part-time at the Hendrick Hudson Free Library, and has previous work experience at Berry College, Reader’s Digest and the University at Albany.
After reading the title of this blog post, it wouldn’t surprise me if you were anticipating some sort of political plug (ahem… Bubo for President!). Alas, Election Day is still a few months off, so while exercising your right to vote in government elections is important, you can get the vote out for an equally important cause: the I Love My Librarian Award 2012!
If you know a school, public, or academic librarian who deserves $5,000 and a trip to New York for accomplishing great things at your library, get a nomination in today.
Last year’s winners included librarians who developed local business resources at a public library, an elementary librarian who doubled a collection despite growing budget cuts, and an academic librarian who essentially serves as an entire writing center at a satellite campus.
Librarians are incredibly versatile professionals, who often wear different “hats” each day of the week. If it’s not maintaining the library’s web site, it’s working with instructors to teach research skills. If it’s not cataloging new materials, it’s serving on a committee to restructure the library’s budget. There are so many aspects to librarianship, and more and more librarians have no choice but to take on that one more task to complete. I Love My Librarian, which is sponsored by The Carnegie Corporation and The New York Times, sheds light on just a handful of librarians who tackle these issues every day.
Nominations are open now through September 12!
Read MoreEasyBib’s Library Corner: Meebo’s Closing… Now What?
Emily Gover is an information literacy specialist and in-house librarian for EasyBib. Her professional interests lie in web services and design, usability, information literacy, instructional services and reference work. She continues to work part-time at the Hendrick Hudson Free Library, and has previous work experience at Berry College, Reader’s Digest and the University at Albany.
Hi, all! Sorry for skipping a post last week, things have been quite busy here at The Bib. It is a sweltering 97 degrees right now in New York, so my best tactic at keeping cool is staying in the A/C and blogging to you lovely folks.
If you haven’t heard the news, Google acquired instant messaging platform and popular virtual reference service Meebo last week for a cool $100 million. Unfortunately, along with the acquisition came a shut down of nearly all Meebo services, including the Meebo Me widget, which was a popular (and free) virtual reference option for libraries.
I frequented the virtual reference service while I was in library school. If I was buried in the basement of the library with a disorganized pile of textbooks, journal articles and notepads, the last thing I wanted to do was either 1) pack up all my stuff and scour the upper levels to find a librarian or 2) risk having my stuff stolen if I opted to dart upstairs to ask a quick question. Having the ability to just log on to the library web site, type in my question, and get an answer right away was an amazing and invaluable service for me and my classmates. While I worked at Berry College, one of the top priorities I had for our redesign of the library’s web site was to add a virtual reference widget.
It’s less than a month until Meebo’s services are shut down for good, so what other options are out there for libraries to use?
In no particular order, here are some other free and paid alternatives. As with most library services, your best option will depend on the size of your institution and the volume of virtual reference questions you receive. It’s different for everyone, but hopefully one of these will fit your needs!
| Service | Cost |
| Chatwing | Free |
| Question Point (OCLC) | Paid – Request a price quote |
| Chatango | Free |
| LibraryH3lp | Paid – View pricing |
| Plugoo | Free (still in beta) |
| Olark | Paid – View pricing |
| Zoho Chat | Free |
| LibChat (Springshare) | Will debut at ALA Annual, contact them for more information or watch a video. |
EasyBib’s Library Classroom: New Infographic & SUNYLA 2012
Emily Gover is an information literacy specialist and in-house librarian for EasyBib. Her professional interests lie in web services and design, usability, information literacy, instructional services and reference work. She continues to work part-time at the Hendrick Hudson Free Library, and has previous work experience at Berry College, Reader’s Digest and the University at Albany.
Things have been busy at EasyBib this week; we’ve been prepping for the SUNYLA 2012 conference. As a graduate of two SUNY schools, I was really excited to present at the conference and thank the SUNY librarians for helping so many students. I wouldn’t have made it through college without them!
In other news, we’re excited to share our new infographic with all of you. We’ve come out with other infographics before, but none as pretty as this (in my oh-so humble opinion, of course). After gathering data from studies, news sources and our own surveys, we compiled all the information into one digestible image.
As colorful as it is, and while there are some cute graphics, the data is eye-opening.
- More than half of students wouldn’t bother citing at all if they didn’t have online research management tools (!)
- Library budgets are still facing steep cuts
- Plagiarism is barely on the decline
We’re happy to announce, however–and this is way more exciting than an infographic–we’ll be donating 5% of our institutional sales to the American Library Association, so they can continue assisting libraries and librarians.
If you’ll be at SUNYLA tomorrow at F.I.T. in Manhattan, make sure to swing by the EasyBib booth and say hi!
Emily and Maya with EasyBib’s interns, Nivi and Amanda, at SUNYLA 2012
EasyBib’s Library Corner: Mobile Technology in the Classroom
Emily Gover is an information literacy specialist and in-house librarian for EasyBib. Her professional interests lie in web services and design, usability, information literacy, instructional services and reference work. She continues to work part-time at the Hendrick Hudson Free Library, and has previous work experience at Berry College, Reader’s Digest and the University at Albany.
Project Tomorrow came out with a new study this week about how educators and administrators use technology in their personal and professional lives. Turns out, technology use is on the up and up! Check it out: more than half of educators polled own a smartphone, close to half of principals and administrators have tablet computers–and, surprise!–librarians are most likely to own a digital reader.
When asked, educators and administrators who are more likely to use mobile technology agree that some of the best outcomes of using mobile technology in the classroom are:
- Increasing student engagement
- Providing access to online textbooks
- Providing personalized instruction to students
- Extending learning beyond the school day
Finally, take a look at this chart, it shows important factors to consider when consuming online content compared between librarians who do and do not use digital content. Librarians who do use digital content (such as podcasts, videos, animations and electronic databases) are more likely to recommend consideration of these factors over librarians who do not.
What are some other benefits students can gain from having mobile technology in the classroom?
Sources:
Project Tomorrow report
Personalizing the Classroom Experience summary
EasyBib’s Library Corner: New Plagiarism Report
Emily Gover is an information literacy specialist and in-house librarian for EasyBib. Her professional interests lie in web services and design, usability, information literacy, instructional services and reference work. She continues to work part-time at the Hendrick Hudson Free Library, and has previous work experience at Berry College, Reader’s Digest and the University at Albany.
Plagiarism detection service Turnitin released a new report this week–and, of course, an infographic to go along with it. Rather than determining what users were plagiarizing, they assessed how they were plagiarizing it. Over 850 schools instructors (thank you to Ray from Turnitin on this clarification!) participated in the survey.
The methods of plagiarism were broken into ten different types, and gave each one a nickname. I won’t go into great detail about all ten of them here, but I was intrigued by the three most common results:
- Clone: This type of plagiarism is when a person copies another work verbatim. Not only was it ranked the most problematic in the report, it was also ranked highest in terms of frequency–a dangerous double-whammy!
- CTRL+C: Referring to the keyboard shortcut used to copy text, this is when a bunch of text is copied from one source and is scattered throughout a paragraph or paper. CTRL+C is very similar to the Clone style of plagiarizing, but the plagiarized text is broken up into pieces. This is the second most problematic form of plagiarism found in the study, and the third most frequent.
- Mashup: This form of plagiarism is when information from two or more sources is all mixed up into an assignment. Similar to CTRL+C, but from several sources, not just one. In terms of frequency, Mashup plagiarism is the second most frequent form in the study, and the third most problematic.
The study also reports that over 70% of instructors inform their students of plagiarism or academic integrity policies at their institutions. Let’s hope some students listen a bit closer next year… 
You can find a thorough, visual overview in their infographic, “Tagging 10 Types of Unoriginal Work.” The full report is available by request, just provide some contact information and they’ll e-mail it to you.
On a totally different note, for all you Facebook librarians out there, we have a new page for you! The EasyBib Librarians page is up and running. Though a bit bare at the moment, we’ll continually be adding content and improving its appearance in the coming weeks. Feel free to give us a “Like”!
Sources:
Plagiarism Today
Turnitin infographic
