C.O.D. Library ESL/ABE/GED Faculty Newsletter February 2011
Resource of the Month
http://www.openculture.com The homepage of Open Culture features a regularly updated blog of newly discovered cultural and educational media-- the first photograph of snowflakes from 1885, a video of John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech, Orson Welle's film "The Stranger" in its entirety. All of these items, like everything presented in Open Culture, is freely available online via digital collections from around the world, YouTube and other sites. Don't have the time to keep up with a blog? No worries-Open Culture pulls together lists of the best freely available media and makes those lists easy to find. Across the top of the website, you'll see a menu of links to Audio Books, Online Courses, Movies, Language Lessons, eBooks and Textbooks-- all freely available online. Additional resources can be found in the Menu titled
Scavenger Hunts and Silver Platters The scavenger hunt is a mainstay of orientation sessions in a wide variety of settings. New kids away at camp, students on a college campus, new employees in a large company - many of us have been handed a list of questions, items, challenges or dares and been asked to do what we can to fulfill the required goals. Whether we're tracking down a clue, collecting items or finding answers to a question, the scavenger hunt is designed to be an entertaining way to get us out of our comfort zones and into exploring new territory. If all goes well, we have fun, we learn something new, we forge relationships. Many ESL and ABE/GED instructors use scavenger hunts as a way to introduce their students to the Library. I've seen call number scavenger hunts which encourage students to navigate our confusing (and sometimes alien) book organization system; research scavenger hunts which encourage students to find print sources; and general "get to know the library" scavenger hunts which can combine the above with prompts to interact with staff at various service points. Unfortunately, many students experience library scavenger hunts outside of class-related orientations and they can be anything but fun and the only thing these students learn is that they're not in a hurry to go back to the Library any time soon. Because many of our library services are not intuitive, especially for students who have been out of the education system for awhile or are accustomed to the closedstack library systems of other countries, first encounters with the COD Library can quickly become final encounters. We're working to make changes to our Library to make it easier to navigate. Among those changes are creating signs that make sense-changing the signs for service areas like "Circulation", "Reference" and "Computer Support and Printing Services" to terms that are less jargon-y. Another barrier to finding what you're looking for in the Library is the Library of Congress classification system we use to organize our collections. The long, unfamiliar call numbers combined with our
"Essentials". Here you'll find a link to a great page called "Intelligent Video" which features descriptions of the best sites on the Web for educational videos. Here you can find documentaries, news and other videos from all around the world. Take a moment to browse around Open Culture and you're sure to find something that will spark discussion in your class, entertain your students and inspire you.
Your Librarian Jenn Kelley Reference Librarian Office: SRC 3043A Phone: (630) 942-2383 E-mail: kelleyj@cod.edu Library Website: www.cod.edu/library Find me on Facebook
serpentine shelf arrangement upstairs can send even a seasoned library user around in circles. A long term goal that will benefit ABE/GED and ESL students is the creation of a distinct area for books which are currently classified as Readers for New Literates, English Language-Textbooks for Foreign Speakers and High Interest Low Vocabulary Books. These books would be pulled out of the normal classification, organized by meaningful subjects and given more straightforward (and, I hope, shorter) call numbers. In the meantime, one way you can make library materials easier to find and prevent unintentional scavenger hunts is to take advantage of our Course Reserves service. Is there a video you would like all of your students to see? A particularly helpful book or study guide? Place that item on reserve and your students won't need to search high and low-- they can just step up to the Circulation Desk and request it by title, your name or the name of the course. Course Reserves is an easy way to serve library items up to your students on a silver platter!