Louisiana Resource Center for Educators (LRCE) Internship: Summer 2019

    Gamification is exactly what its name implies:  the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service. While it can be applied to just about anything, we will be focusing on its potential to improve education by fostering such values as problem-solving, decision making, critical thinking, and storytelling. Proponents for gamification argue that games better engages students' attention and encourages them to use all of their mental faculties. Students who are normally bored and made lethargic by lectures and note-taking, become energetic and engaged through games, being able able to absorb more information and get more out of their time in the classroom. Their is real life evidence to support this. According to  an ancillary language teacher on Jeju Island in South Korea, gamificati...

    Last week and this week, my confidence as an intern has risen exponentially. Under my supervisor's direction, but acting on my own, I've created patron accounts and renewed their checked out items all by myself. I'm very proud of myself, by learning about Destiny, it will be easier for me to learn how to use other pieces of library management software. Also, I've been having plenty of opportunity to exercise my digital image editing skills. Recently, last week, I've received instructions to create three images advertising the Sip and Browse event hosted at the LRCE. Sip and Browse is held on a monthly basis, every Friday,   from   5:00pm-7:30pm CST. During this time, LRCE members are invited to the resource library where they can browse and check out materials while enjoying provided beverages, such as cocktails, coffee, and tea. Although the directions specified three images, I found that I needed to create four images in order to fit all the important text. Up...

    Although it is not yet over, I have found this week (6/17-6/21) to be very productive. I've conducted many new activities and learned how to do many more. Most of this involved Destiny; through Microsoft Teams and screen-sharing with my internship supervisor, Mrs. Cassidy Lee, I learned how to add new patrons, run weekly reminders, add copies of books to the catalog, managing call numbers, applying fines to patrons, checking library items in and out, and running circulation reports. We've met twice during the week - 12PM EST on Tuesday and Thursday - and will meet again next Thursday in order to continue my instruction in Destiny. Also, yesterday, I put my newfound skills to use by adding a patron to LRCE's online system.     While I am very grateful for this instruction, and have taken handwritten notes, I am still finding all this information to be a little overwhelming. I find it do be a lot to take in at once. However, through practice and much trial and er...

            Librarians are tasked with managing large amounts of information on a routine basis, and   connecting that information with interested patrons. These are no small tasks, but with the help of new technologies, librarians are improving services and ease of access for their patrons, and the same is being done in the classroom too. This is accomplished through technological integration. According to John Garland, digital librarian and independent consultant, libraries use new digital technologies to make services easier to use and access, inspire and inform, and help customers learn new skills. In many ways, school librarians are doing the same thing in the classroom by providing K-12 students with workshops that teach them new skills and by providing them with digital devices like mobile apps or smart devices that link them to online services provided by their school’s library. To better understand this process, it’s...

    We are all living in what I call the Information Age. Our lives, and the lives of everyone around the globe for that matter, are reigned by information and their ability to access it online. This is due in no small part to the dominance of social media and its ability to influence peoples' ways of thinking. Easing this share of information is the fact that most people have social media accounts, such as Twitter or Facebook, and rely on those accounts to keep in contact with friends of receive news. Major institutions specializing in all areas often use social media to gather an audience and promote in-person support for their physical locations. For instance, a major metropolitan library may make a Facebook page and use it to encourage patrons to visit the library in-person. Regardless of how one feels about social media, any information institution seeking a sizable patron and donor base must establish an online presence using social media. Gone are the days when newspape...

    Recently, I was asked to find a book that would make an appropriate and useful inclusion to the LRCE catalog. A book that, while entertaining, instructive and timeless, doesn't contain any controversial subject matter that might be inappropriate in a classroom full of young students. I decided that the catalog would most benefit from a work of literature that hasn't already been incorporated into it; that way, through my suggestion, I can introduce the LRCE, and by extension, its patrons and students K-12 to new material and ways of thinking. Being an avid reader and owning a sizable collection of books myself, I decided to pick one out that I enjoyed myself as a younger man. Unlike many of the books on the LRCE catalog, it is written by a Japanese author, which I believe will add an element of diversity to the catalog, and introduce patrons and students to new points of view and lead them to asking critical questions. The book I have chosen is the Harp of Burma , also kno...

    Yesterday, I collaborated with my internship supervisor, Cassidy Lee, and together I was introduced to the LRCE cataloging system and, more importantly, learned the rudimentary basics of Destiny. Destiny, otherwise known as the Follett Destiny Library Manager, is an online library manager often used by educational institutes focusing on grades K-12. I found the Destiny interface to be very intuitive, and I was able to conduct such activities as searching for items on the catalog and looking up patron requests very easily. Of course, there are still many more advanced tasks I need to learn, and this will be done next week on Tuesday. This was a very momentous occasion for me; as someone pursuing a career in a library, it is vital that I learn how to use Destiny since I will most likely be using it in an official capacity in the future. That is why, while simple, these initial lessons are very critical for my professional development.     There are many more prog...

    My name is Bryan McDonough, a graduate student at Florida State University's School of Information.  I am fascinated with the role information institutions such as libraries and museums play in educating the public, and it is my goal to work for one of these institutions as a highly educated professional. My higher education began at  Saint Petersburg College where I earned my Associate’s Degree. Subsequently, I attended the University of Central Florida where I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in History and a Minor in Digital Humanities.  I am volunteering as a circulation control intern for the Louisiana Resource Center for Educators so I can better appreciate the important relationship between librarian and patron. I seek to gain valuable experience in cataloging, circulation management, and digital outreach in order to better prepare myself for a fulfilling career as an Information professional.      In this blog, I will be exploring ...