April 19, 2015 (Sunday)

Time: 4pm-9pm  (5)
Hours completed (IST): 135.5/135
Hours completed (Kara Robinson): 15/15
Accumulated on-site hours: 150.5/150

The goal for today is to finalize the LibGuide so that Tammy can approve it and it can go live. Most everything from my original plan came together except the video. With everything else going on at the moment it just was not going to work out; however, I felt it was necessary to have some kind of visual or interactive element in the guide. After thinking about it for some time I chose to paste the text of an article from a news site into the guide. Then, underneath, I used the Libguides survey tool to create a test element where students could read the article and the choose whether they think that the article was a legitimate or satirical news story. So that they could get an immediate response to their guess, I had the survey call out to a Google Doc file that explained which it was and why, and it also gave the link for the original story. I feel this activity is a good alternative for an instructional video and, with it creating a more active environment, may actually prove better than the passive nature of watching. I had some concerns about copyright issue, however, but left it in place until I could consult with Tammy. I did change the guide's status to private.

[Update]

Tammy was really concerned about copy/pasting material into the guide. She asked if I could just provide a link to the site or use some other solution that would not err the library on the wrong side of copyright law. I had been playing around with iframes quite a bit in constructing this blog and my ePortfolio, so I decided to give that a shot. I discovered that LibGuides allowed the use of the iframe HTML code and use that to embed the news story from the external web site into the guide.

I then rechecked the library's policy for LibGuide construction and found that I could modify the page from three columns to two as long as I maintained the guide's presets. I removed the right column which made reading the story in the iframe much easier. Afterwords, I added a link underneath the iframe in case a student was using a browser that does not support iframes. I also modified the instruction for the exercise and the  Google Doc that appears after they answer the question so it better explains how to assess the story as a web page.

Finally, a colleague in the library expressed an interest in using the LibGuide for his journalism students so I asked if he would like to be added as a co-owner so that he could edit and update the guide after I graduated.

I will have Tammy review the changes that I made before changing the status.

Here is a link to the LibGuide.

*This is the last daily log entry for my practicum.