On the Road in the Deep South: A Collaborative Experiential Course in Social Stratification
Lynn Sutton and Susan S. Smith
Kaeley and I were able to attend the other WFU presentation, On the Road in the Deep South. Lynn covered the course & service learning and Susan covered the technology and embedded librarians.
- Course
- Summarized the trip through the south, reflection, service, web 2.0
- Not a civil rights bus tour
- Showed map of trip
- Service Learning
- Project was in a library
- ALA conference in NO, rebuild library as way of rebuilding community
- Lynn found a library in Hancock library system in Mississippi at the site where hurricane hit
- They were the community organization that got things back on track (electricity, toilet, housed national guard, fema forms, internet access, distributed food stamps)
- Asked how we could help: expected physical things like bookcases, moving, etc
- Said community memory is so fragile, there’s full coverage on NO, but want to preserve memories before and during the storm
- making scrapbooks
- digitizing some materials
- oral history project of the staff
- project got media coverage (b/c outside group)
- created a wishlist by alibris, children’s books which has all been purchased
- Embedded Librarians
- How to make ourselves more valuable
- Two avenues to describe this concept: physical presence, virtual presence
- Good marketing!!
- How to make ourselves more valuable to university
- involved at a greater depth
- what kind of difference could we make if we were there for 2 weeks?
- High visibility & a much deeper understanding of what prof and students need, what we can provide
- at point of need, colocated
- four things they wanted: service component, help students do research on daily assignments, handle tech/figure out a way to make tech more student centered, help chaperone & photographer/videographer
- Felt like they were full participants in the course
- Encouraged to offer their views and were valued
- Technology
- wanted tool to let family/friends follow along
- library had just begun offering blogs and wikis
- pilot course
- wanted: course content, daily reflections, daily posting of pictures
- wiki, blog, images on flickr
- goals from beginning: easy for students to add content, collaborative venture, sense of ownership, test viability of environment, radical trust
- wiki was a little uncomfortable for students as a little more complicated…great rapid development environment, though
- used google maps to document route, pictures, and where they’d been
- blog for journaling, one blog with many authors
- big question: do you let comments
- chose moderated comments
- profs had final call
- students liked comments
- director of service project read in great detail and would comment on a lot, tool to push learning further
- Flickr for images
- students could all add their pictures
- went up as private & susan released a few times a day
- susan did organizing & made sure tagging was accurate
- seamless environment, so students didn’t have to think about what the technology was
- students came away with appreciation for ease of use (except wiki)
- impacts
- award, article, local news, this conference, wowf (following everyday)
- snowballed into something bigger than they had expected
- students come by and visit, susan hired 3, some doing outreach project in community
- hoping other professors will see how librarians can be helpful
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