Did I Mention GIFs?

Buffer kindly shared a useful article yesterday, which might answer the question I wrestled with in my recent PGCert project:-

The Ultimate Guide to GIFs: How to Create Them, When to Use Them and Why They’re Essential for Every Marketer

So, if students request animation and video in our instructional materials, then I could make GIFs from Screencast-o-Matic videos.  This does need a little thought, however, since I’d be producing them as part of my employed work, rather than as a student in my own time at home.  Nonetheless, I feel a little more optimistic having read this article, so I’ll do a bit of exploration back at work!

There’s also a quick videoclip outlining one approach.  I need to investigate three websites!

  • Canva
  • EZGif
  • Giphy.com

Now, don’t laugh, please! I made my first GIF.  It took literally hours, and has no artistic merit.  However, it IS a giphy gif – my firstborn.  I made a gif describing the legal deposit “lifecyle”of early 19th century music.  How arcane is that?!  And I can get it into Twitter as well!

source

Creativity

One of the most constructive articles about creativity in the educational context that I’ve seen in a long time, this came to my attention in a recent email.  First published in 2011, the edited article article appeared online three years ago.  Into my bibliography it goes, whether or not the PGCert portfolio is complete – professional development is continual, after all!

Veronica Harris, ‘So you want to be creative‘, in the Australian online magazine, Teacher. (14 June 2014)

Three roles – or is it four?

Four days a week, I’m an academic librarian.  One day, I’m a postdoctoral researcher.  In August, the emphasis will shift slightly to three and a half days and one and a half, for the duration of my AHRC network funding grant.

A couple of days ago I realised my SCONUL Focus article was now in print, describing how my three roles in librarianship, research and pedagogy serve one another.  I find it quite easy writing about process, and I’ve often been asked to write or speak about this kind of thing.   In fact, my PGCert project also had a focus on process: I was contemplating the best ways to support distance learners in their information needs and skills development, and although the project gave me insight into how social scientists conduct educational research, and conducting the survey and interviews was an unexpected eye-opener, at the end of the day I was writing not only about my research findings, but about process, ie, the best ways to support learners.

However, it’s more challenging and perhaps more satisfying to write engagingly and accessibly about my musicological research, because it goes deeper into my specialism.  I have several pieces of writing submitted and awaiting publication at the moment, but what’s missing is something actually on the drawing-board, being written right now.  That’s largely because I was completing the PGCert portfolio.  Librarianship happens four days a week, research a fifth, and the PGCert had to fit around family life and my spare time.   Which didn’t, to be truthful, leave any spare time for writing!

However, I remembered the other day that I gave a paper earlier this year for which I have not yet sought a published home.   Maybe, just maybe I ought to dig it out and see what needs to be done to turn it into a proper paper for submission.

Librarianship, research, pedagogy … and author.  Well, after my annual leave, anyway!

 

Blending Librarianship With Research and Pedagogy (SCONUL Focus 69, 56-59)

SCONUL is the Standing Conference of National and University Librarians.  SCONUL Focus online is an open access publication.  Vol.69 is dedicated to articles by librarians engaged in various aspects of research.  My line-manager suggested I should contribute something – this is it.
Karen McAulay, ‘Blending Librarianship with Research and Pedagogy‘, SCONUL 69, 56-59 (July 2017)
ABSTRACT: I contend that the combination of librarianship with research is beneficial both on a personal level and to the library and institution, but that the addition of a third element – pedagogy – brings even stronger benefits.
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