by Information Commons can vary dramatically but Joan Lippincott highlighted the trends she’s seen in information commons around the country. These included:
- technology for users
- services bridging physical and virtual spaces
- special spaces
- design and aesthetics
This was the first time I heard mention of teamspot – a software that allows students to hook their individual laptops into a common (usually larger) monitor and all contribute to a project – great for collaborative group work. Joan also stressed that signage was essential when sharing services – make it clear what is available (ie. laptop loans, multimedia equipment available, etc). Some of the special spaces were quite interesting – one commons offered binoculars and a bird book for bird watching!
Unfortunately we ran out of time for discussion of assessment of info commons.
The session was a great way to see the variety of interpretations for information commons and also reinforced that our Learning Commons is moving in the right direction.
i’d never heard of TeamSpot either – but there’s a simple tour (in the form of a flash demo) available on their website that does a pretty good job of explaining how it can be used:
http://tidebreak.com/home.shtml (follow the ‘take a tour’ link)