Gamify your Semester

One of the skills I've cultivated over the years is converting boring or tedious tasks into relatively entertaining activities. Life is full of junk that has to be done--doing homework, grading papers, washing dishes, doing laundry. Some of it is fun in itself, like reading books for a class that you really love. But it helps to have some outside motivation to do the things that you consider boring.

Enter gamification.

Habitica

I just discovered this one, and I wish it had been around when I was a student.
(Who am I kidding, when I was a student, there were no "apps"--we played RPGs the old fashioned way, with dice and a human DM. And I, of course, was way to cool to be a D&D nerd. Not.)

Back to my point. Habitica is an RPG, with all the hallmarks of that kind of game--you design and upgrade your avatar, earn gold, fight monsters with raiding parties, join guilds.

If that sentence makes no sense to you, then skip down to Mindbloom, below. That game might be more up your alley.

But if you are all about RPGs, what if you could play one and NOT be wasting time? In Habitica, your "ToDo's" give you gold when you complete them. You choose your goals, the type of goals, and whether each one gives you a lot of gold or a little gold based on how hard they are for you. Then you can buy rewards with the gold you earn--weapons, armor, or new looks for your avatar.

Sound like fun? Check it out online first at habitica.com and then download the iOS or Droid app on your phone. (Go online first, because there is a quick tutorial and the interface is much easier to navigate...and you can't play with your avatar on the phone app).

Mindbloom

Mindbloom is a much more sensory experience, with inspirational music and images. There are no monsters to fight here. It is restful and lovely to put on your headphones and grow your tree each day. The "game" is to give your tree sun as you gain inspiration to complete your goals and give it rain as you complete specific actions. Then the tree grows, giving you seeds that allow you to change your Mindbloom experience. Mindbloom is very much a life coaching kind of experience, where you create branches for different parts of your life, including lifestyle, career, health, creativity, finance, relationships, and so on. For students, the career branch can include studying or whatever specific tasks you need to do in school.

Mindbloom's social tools fit the theme. You can see the forest of your friend's trees, and you can share with them or on social media your progress. It is perfectly possible to use Mindbloom effectively without social interaction, if you prefer that.

Mindbloom's mobile website supports use on your phone or other device* and the company has a whole range of related apps that I haven't explored yet.

Feel free to message me about your experience with these apps, or if you know of other gamification tools you'd recommend.

Have a great semester!

Addendum 1/15: I haven't successfully used Mindbloom mobile on my Samsung Note, but it does work on my iPad so there might be some issues with Android devices.

JSTOR books

I am happy to present a new addition to our library collections (drumroll, please):

Thanks to ACA, we have access to over 30,000 titles from leading academic publishers, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT university presses. There are no limits on downloads or printing, and there is no need to use special software or create a login. It's just like using journals on JSTOR.

The ebooks are available in JSTOR, alongside our JSTOR journal collections, so book and chapter results will come up along with journal articles.

If you are a faculty member and would like to use the ebooks in a course, you can add the stable URL for a chapter or a full ebook to a syllabus or inside Sakai. With some of our other ebook collections, there are limits on how many people can access a book at the same time, but that's not true with JSTOR books, so they are excellent for class use. If you need help setting up those links, contact us in the library.

The books will be in our online catalog soon (along with about 300,000 other electronic books and all the print books you know and love in our stacks), and I'll let you know when that happens, but until then, you can only access the JSTOR books through the database. You can find JSTOR on the Research A-Z list on the Jones Library website.

ESL and Non-English Language Learning

Thanks to NCLive, the Jones Library is happy to offer access to the language learning tool Pronunciator for the BC community. I would highly recommend that you try it out!

Pronunciator helps you learn any of 80 languages in 50 other languages. That means ESL learners who speak any one of those 50 languages can use Pronunciator to work on their English. Specific tracks for small children are available, as are advanced courses and health care courses. The program includes audio lessons, interactive textbooks, quizzes, phrasebooks and pronunciation analysis. It even has a great mobile app!

Getting started with Pronunciator takes just a few steps:

• Register with Pronunciator 
• Save your Pronunciator provided login and password
• Log in and choose your native language and the language you want to learn
• Get started!

For more information about Pronunciator's learning options, you can take a tour.

Job hunting? Graduate School? Up-to-date Resources @ the Library!

Today, I just want to highlight an amazing collection of e-resources available to us at BC, the Learning Express Library. LearningExpress, which is made available to us through NCLive, provides help with graduate school and job search skills and tests (as well as a variety of other services for learners and job seekers at all levels.)

In LearningExpress, you'll set up your own personal account so that you can keep track of the tests you've taken, what you've read, and what your scores have been on practice tests.

For those of you aiming for graduate school, there are practice exams and information about the  GRE, LSAT, MAT, MCAT, and PCAT exams. If English is your second (or third, or fourth) language, many of the practice tests are available in Spanish, as well, and practice for the TOEFL test is also available.

For job seekers, there is career information and occupational exam preparation tools. For example, future teachers can prepare for the Praxis or for individual state tests (TExES, for example). Other tests are included for careers in areas like Allied Health, Civil Service, Homeland Security, Law Enforcement, and Postal Work, and the military.

Another section of LearningExpress that I find exciting is the Job Search section. I find it particularly awesome right now because I've been having a conversation on Facebook with friends who hire folks fresh out of college or graduate school. We we find that many people don't write acceptable cover letters and don't tailor the cover letter (or, even better, both cover letter and resume) to the job for which they are applying. As a person making a hire, I find it troubling that many don't make the effort to sell themselves for this job, not for a generic job that doesn't exist anywhere but in the applicant's imagination.

Remember that this is just another resource that you have available--but one of your best tools at BC is Nacole in the Office of Career Exploration & Development. She can give you great assistance as you make your plans for the future.

11 Great Sources of Educational Videos Online

Videos can be a great teaching tool. In a flipped classroom, students can watch a video outside of class to replace or supplement text readings or standard lectures. Within a classroom, a short video can provide fodder for discussion or classroom activities. Thanks to streaming media, video can be watched anywhere, anytime an Internet connection is available. That's a lot easier than those 16mm films we watched years ago. With streaming, you don't even have to check a DVD out of the library to take to class. Not all eleven of these videos may be appropriate for the classroom; some are more for individual edification or edutainment, but there are interesting nonetheless.

I just want to highlight a few places you can find videos for the classroom or just to feed your intellectual curiosity. I haven't included MOOC or whole-course video sites, like Khan Academy, Coursera, or Academic Earth.

1. Films on Demand. (If the link doesn't work for you, check your local library for this one.)

Thanks to NCLive, the Jones Library provides access to this resource for all students, faculty and staff of Brevard College. The collection contains over 21,000 streaming videos from a variety of sources aimed at both academic and public library users. Academic areas covered include business, health, humanities, social sciences, science and mathematics. Also included are travel and fitness programs, home and DIY videos, indie films, and popular music performances. If you are using information from the videos in a paper or media creation of your own, FoD conveniently provides citations in MLA and APA formats--no excuse for plagiarism, folks.

2. NC Live Video Collection (Again, this is a Brevard College link. Check your local library for access)

This collection also comes to BC thanks to NCLive. The collection consists primarily of selected PBS videos, including series like Masterpiece (no, not Downton Abbey), Nova, Eyes on the Prize, and Ken Burns' work. Also included are videos specific to North Carolina history and the arts. Gotta love PBS when you're looking for educational video!

Thus ends our library promo of the week. The rest of these video resources are freely available on the interwebs.

3. iTunes U

From individual lectures to whole courses from colleges and universities schools, iTunes U is an amazing collection of free educational content. Quality of video and audio content does vary greatly, depending on the creator, so you might have to surf a bit to find the gems. If you happen to be a Brevard faculty member reading this blog, you might want to talk to Jodi in IT about posting your own material on Brevard's iTunes U site.

4. Curiosity

If you are an intellectually curious sort, this is a site you must explore. The videos are brief and interesting, and each teaches a concept of some sort. Today, I learned a bit about quantum physics, how to make my own disco ball, and the history of the Ouija board. You can search by keyword, browse subject categories or popular videos, or--my favorite--hit the "surprise me" button to see a random video on any topic. Just now, the surprise was a video titled "Are cockroaches good for your health?" I admit that I didn't watch that one. Just the opening image gave me the heebie-jeebies.

5. Ted

If you want to hear the best researchers and thinkers in the world talk for less than 18 minutes about great ideas, Ted is the place to go. Ted talks are fascinating, thoughtful, timely, and cover a wide range of subjects. These talks are among the best informational videos the internet has to offer.

6. BrightTalk

Focused on business topics, BrightTalk offers webinars and videos organized in the following "communities": accounting, management, facilities, healthcare and life sciences, information technology, investment management, marketing, and sales. These videos aren't the short bites of information you find elsewhere; rather, they tend to be full-length lectures or conversations.

7. Green.TV

It's not easy being Green, but this website of environmental videos provides far more than strategies for creating a greener, more sustainable planet. Science and social science combine to support the mission of the organization through thoughtful videos with strong production values. The group launched in 2005 in a partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and continues to work collaboratively with strong partner organizations.

Educational YouTube Channels

8. True Facts About...

Every week, Ze Frank releases a new video about a random animal. These videos are always hilarious and often NSFW. Ze Frank's formal and excessively plummy voice-over makes the scripting and side comments all the better, but between giggles and snorts, you learn a great deal of trivia about a particular animal in a short time. You will also learn more about the animals' genitals and excretory organs than Wild Kingdom ever shared--and that can be some weird stuff. Ask the ruddy ducks.

9. Crash Course

These videos run from 10-15 minutes and cover academic topics. John and Hank Green, the brothers who create this series, encourage using their videos with students, either as homework or in class, so they are designed to support classroom work as well as independent learning. They are interesting, fast-paced mini-lectures with fun examples, but the videos I sampled were a bit less infotainment than than the vids on the Curiosity site. Their playlists are in the categories of world and U.S. history, literature, biology, ecology, chemistry, and psychology.

10. VSauce

This site asks and answers random questions like "Why are we morbidly curious?" and "Why do we kiss?" Production quality is excellent, and the range of topics interesting. Some are less educational than others, but they are entertaining and informative, nonetheless.. 

11. Nerdwriter

Another YouTube channel, Nerdwriter's stated purpose is to "cultivate worldview." It is very much a video podcast from an individual perspective. The creator wants to cultivate "well-rounded individuals" who "live the intellectual life." I'd say that's the goal of a liberal arts education, too--especially the "well-rounded" part. As you might expect, the vocabulary and topics covered are intellectual and a little pretentious. Nonetheless, Nerdwriter's critical analysis of the world we live in can spark thoughtful reflection and conversations. The videos range from opinionated commentary to introductory discussions of topics.

Learning Bar

I have slacked at writing posts the last few weeks because I have been pushing to get a preliminary grant proposal written. If we are awarded what I hope (and we won't know until next summer), the library is going to become a much more active and comfortable place to be.

I've requested furniture and a number of other things to help make the library a more inviting place, but my favorite element of the project is what I am calling the Learning Bar. It looks a bit like the photo at the right.

The idea is that you can bring in your own devices--or check out an iPad that the library purchased with a grant last year--and connect them to show on the screen. Up to four computers can be connected at one time, so you can work together on a group project, share data from lab work, or meet with a whole class.

I'm really excited about this and the other collaborative elements we're going to add to the library in the coming year.

Now I'm heading out to the bound periodicals to see what titles we can remove from the collection to start to make room for some of the innovations that will  be coming to the first floor. Librarians call this "weeding"--and yeah, it is just about as fun as the garden job. Sigh.