Random Ideas

I was in downtown Lock Haven, PA last weekened while they were setting up for their Memorial Day celebrations. They had an interesting and moving display - there were banners on all of the streetlights and each banner had a different veteran's photo. The theme was "Hometown Heroes" and people or organizations sponsored each one. They just had a photo, the name, and which war they served in. Their newspaper had a series of stories about individuals shown in those photos.



Since Computers in Libraries, I have been keeping my eyes open for ways we can get students involved in our marketing, esp. things we could put up on our blog. This has me thinking about something like Hometown Heroes, like having students submit photos of vets who are special to them for Veteran's Day with a paragraph about what the person means to them. The problem is we can't say "hometown" since most won't be from Williamsport, and many won't have photos with them at school, and it will be just for Veteran's Day. Anyway, it doesn't really have anything to do with the library.



We're going to interview faculty about books that changed their lives. I'm hoping to record the interviews and post them as podcasts throughout the year. But I also want some good ideas for students. I'd like to think of something they can submit to me that I can post on the blog. Or any other online format, for that matter.



I'm also thinking about instruction ideas for next year. I'd like to introduce excercises on paraphrasing and note taking, and get them to review each others' work. I really need to improve the amount of active learning exercises I do, and these things go beyond just using the databases.