Information Literacy

Several weeks ago, a Christian college in New York called asking me if I'd be willing to teach Information Literacy at their DC campus. I agreed.

On Saturday, their librarian from New York traveled down to teach the Information Literacy class while I observed, so I could teach it the next time. It was a fun, tiring, and long day. (The class was from 9:00AM - 5:00PM) I got to assist with the class by helping students during the lab time--when they were trying the searches and resources that had been taught. It was a joy to see a student make a connection or gain new understanding about what was available to them! These were all adult students who were working on a degree completion program.

One student had been trying to research through a database available to him at work. The problem was, the database was maintained by/for a specific company and only had articles about their services and products. So while the database was on-topic for the research, it was too narrow to be useful. When he started doing research in a broader database and turning up articles on his subject, he was so happy to see that what he was needing really was available!

Another fun connection that was made was when I happened across a student who was doing her research on homeschooling! She is working with a homeschooling cohort to teach some African-American history. She was interested to learn that I was homeschooled for three years and work at a college that has a lot of homeschooled students.

There were other rewarding moments. Midway through the afternoon, I developed a headache, but an asprin covered most of that. At the end of the day, I was very tired. I fell asleep in the car on the way home as JM was driving. We arrived home around 7:30PM. I went and laid down on the bed and until JM came in after 9:00, after having put Jer to bed. At that point, I got up, took a shower, and went back to bed. Getting up around 8:30 the next morning for church wasn't too hard, but I did have a good night's sleep.

Next time, sometime between April and June, I'll get to teach the class myself.

While I was working with the class, JM, Jer, and SC were having a big day themselves in DC. Maybe JM will get around to writing about that (since SC hasn't updated his blog for most of two years).