Colleen
read and liked
Orion's
review of God in my Throat:
"God In My Throat is subtitled The Lilith Poems and is a book of poetry in the voice of Lilith, the first wife of the Judaeo-Christian biblical Adam. Lilith, like the legendary Wandering Jew forced by God to never die because he refuses to help Jesus ...more "
"God In My Throat is subtitled The Lilith Poems and is a book of poetry in the voice of Lilith, the first wife of the Judaeo-Christian biblical Adam. Lilith, like the legendary Wandering Jew forced by God to never die because he refuses to help Jesus ...more "
Wrote this one, so I'm sort of biased, but I recommend it to all :) ]]>
by Michael Pollan
Hey - very glad to see you're in workshop! Am looking forward to it. "Lunar Eclipse" is my favorite, but your whole submission is really strong. (I've completely revamped "Letter to Jezebel" since I submitted the worksheet, and the one there makes me cringe a bit.) How has your semester gone? You can catch me at warmaiden@gmail.com - I'll admit I'm bad at updating here, since I use librarything.com to keep track of my library.
See you soon!
Colleen ]]>
James Patrick, founder and Chancellor of The College of Saint Thomas More in Forth Worth, Texas, provides a thorough exploration of Charles Coffin’s career at Greeneville College and later at East Tennessee College, and his attempts to institutionalize Harvard’s vaulted curriculum at the frontier. Patrick explores Coffin’s surviving papers in depth, detailing his move from New England to Tennessee, and highlighting the deep connections between his religious calling and his educational mission. Patrick’s research effectively highlights the tensions between the religious pluralism of the times and Coffin’s classical curriculum heavily inspired by the historical alliance between Christianity and education. The book provides an insightful academic history of east Tennessee as well as a useful and detailed glimpse into the founding of higher education in the area. Journals, letters and manuscripts form the bulk of the references for Patrick’s work, and provide an intimate look at Coffin’s mission to bring both education and Christianity into the wilderness that characterized the area. The information distilled from Coffin’s letters makes the efforts of this nearly forgotten preacher, teacher, and college president all the more accessible for the personal nature of the record Patrick explores, and as a contribution to the field, Patrick’s work is a wonderfully detailed exploration of the intellectual and political issues of the frontier as experienced by one of the founders of higher education in the area. As a work on the patterns of collegiate learning and the history of education, this book stands as an excellent precursor to E.E. Slosson’s 1910 work, Great American Universities, and the personal insight from journals and letters of the challenges Coffin faced to promote Christian classicism and its academic rigor before education became secularized give the researcher a solid grounding in the challenges educators faced in the early 19th century. The chronological organization of the book makes it easy to follow, Patrick’s endnotes are extensive, and his lengthy bibliography is organized by topic, which the researcher will find extremely useful. An excellent chronicle of the early intellectual history of Tennessee, this book would be a welcome addition to university, historical society, and state libraries alike. ]]>
This guide by Steven Bell (Associate University Librarian for research & instructional services at Temple University) and John Shank (instructional design librarian and Director of the Center for Learning Technologies at Penn State's Berk College) encourages academic librarians to become 'blended librarians:' librarians blending the skills of librarianship, information technology, and instructional design.
The authors advocate conscious design of services to de-duplicate effort, enhance integration of the library throughout the academic setting, and connect with learners in new and varied ways. The authors present the BLAAM model – adopted from the instructional systems design ADDIE model – as a design philosophy to guide development of instructional products and library services to decide which technologies and services are worthwhile, geared toward creating an environment for project success. Rich with case studies and direction to additional resources, the authors address the design process, collaboration with faculty, integration of the library into the course management system, and low-threshold applications to encourage faculty to utilize library technologies.
This volume reconnects academic librarianship with teaching, learning, and improved planning at the practitioner's level. Highly recommended for academic librarians and any librarian interested in better decision-making and implementation processes for educational programming.
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Technological know-how is essential for academic librarians, particularly those who want to be involved in successful instruction programs and establish an effective library presence among students and faculty. To accomplish those goals, the use of emerging technologies is increasingly a factor in developing, growing, improving, and expanding library programs. Teaching with Technology: An Academic Librarian’s Guide presents the most up-to-date possibilities for technology use in libraries in easily digestible chapters. Blogs, wikis, podcasting, screencasting, virtual reference, mobile computing, learning spaces, and course management systems among the topics addressed, the slim, easy to read volume provides clear and concise explanations of each.
Teaching with Technology and its usefulness as an on-hand reference for professionals would benefit from some standardization of presentation – while the chapter addressing tutorials provides a wealth of information on the programs available and the functionalities of each, subsequent chapters spend less time on specific programs available and more time on the general gist of each technology and how it might be utilized in the instruction environment. Taken as a whole, however, the publisher meets its goal of providing practical and easy-to-read coverage on a variety of technologies for the busy academic librarian.
The handbook’s more notable successes include non-frightening how-to descriptions for developing RSS feeds, the description of various video tutorial programs and their functionalities, and a wonderful go-to chart correlating net-gen traits, learning theory principles, learning space and IT applications in the chapter on optimizing spaces that every librarian – and most teaching faculty – should study.
Though Teaching with Technology doesn’t break much new ground in the era of ‘technology in libraries’ books, it provides sound and concise explanations of the various technologies, examples of applications of each tool in a library instructional setting, and suggestions for how to utilize the technologies in innovative ways to capture the attention of active learners, impart essential information and enhance or develop library programs. The charm of this particular handbook is its size – small and intended as a brief reference tool as opposed to the authority on every technology, each technology gets a chapter, easily thumbed through at the time a librarian decides to incorporate it, to familiarize themselves with the basics before embarking on the actual project. Intended for practitioners who may have heard of wikis and podcasting but haven’t actually constructed one of their own (or are not sure how to start), this volume is user-friendly for the busy information professional interested in implementing these technologies without having to read a textbook-sized tome.
While brief, examples of how to use the technologies for library assignments, to increase the library’s presence on campus, supplement student coursework and faculty efforts provide good starting points for new librarians, or those embarking on these technologies as new additions to their instruction arsenal. The editors have done a fine job of parsing technologies into separate chapters, while recognizing that the dividing line is rarely so neat and concise in practice. Reference and instruction department heads should keep this volume around to familiarize the less technologically-adept with the increasingly important technologies available to librarians, as well to provide a quick brush-up on what tools are available to develop their library presence.
In addition to being a useful addition to a reference and instruction staff’s collection, Teaching with Technology would be a useful supplement to a more substantial text, such as Susan Sharpless Smith’s Web-Based Instruction: A Guide for Libraries, as well as a useful companion to graduate student texts in courses focused on library services and instruction.
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