Location-based mobile apps are a hot trend these days. These services allow people to use a smartphone to interact somehow with their surrounding environment, such as earning rewards and discounts for “checking-in” somewhere using the popular platform Foursquare. Other big-name apps that incorporate some location-aware features include OpenTable, Fandango and Yelp. And still others allow […]
New Post Up on Ohio Library Association Blog
In my current position at Sinclair Community College, I’m the librarian in charge of instruction and assessment. That basically means that I coordinate our teaching efforts for all different academic departments. But perhaps the biggest part of what I do is the assessment part of the equation: attempting to track what our students are actually learning […]
Are Digital Gifts Less Special Than Physical Ones?
Today it’s easy to exchange gifts completely digitally, and there are certainly some advantages to going this route. You can shop from the comfort of your own home. You don’t have to pay for shipping. You even help the environment by not driving to the store or generating waste in the form of envelopes, boxes […]
Website “Hits”: a Useless Way to Measure Traffic
When you’re working to promote a website, you might hear about how many “hits” the big name bloggers get. And you’ll no doubt be trying to come up with ways to increase your own number of “hits.” But in reality, hits isn’t a metric you should ever give serious thought to. It’s a holdover from […]
Is Social Media Preventing Students from Being “Good Digital Citizens”?
The digital age demands new competencies in order for us to be fully literate citizens. With information now being created by everyone on various web platforms, we need to critically think about what and how we consume. Today we are also all content curators whether we like it or not, as we decide what we […]
Monotasking: How to Focus and Avoid the Pull of Multitasking
Multitasking has become a way of life and is often believed to be a great strategy to get more done in less time, especially when aided by new technological tools. But a growing body of research is showing that multitasking is in most cases a myth or a delusion that we harbor. The vast majority […]