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iSquares: A New Approach to Information Research and Education

Join us for a Webinar on Friday, February 7, 2014 (Sponsored by SIG-HFIS & SIG-USE)

Instructor: Dr. Jenna Hartel, University of Toronto
Date: Friday, February 7, 2014
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST
Cost: FREE for ASIS&T members, $10 for non-members
Reservation:  Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now

System RequirementsThis webinar introduces an arts-informed, visual approach to engage the concept of information afresh: the draw-and-write technique. Human subjects are asked to answer the question “What is information?” in the form of a drawing, generating a compact piece of visual data coined an “iSquare” (http://www.jennahartel.com/isquares.html). The webinar instructor, Dr. Jenna Hartel of the University of Toronto, has used the method to explore how people envision information (Hartel, in press, 2013a, 2013b). She also applies the approach in classrooms to help students, especially newcomers, theorize information (Hartel, 2014). Whether employed as a research method or pedagogical strategy, iSquares bring information science into the visual Information Age and create a richer multimedia genealogy for our central concept. The goal of the webinar is to help other information scholars and professionals experiment with arts-informed, visual methods and iSquares, specifically. First, the webcast outlines the theoretical framework, research design, and data-gathering specifications to produce iSquares for the purposes of information research. Then the session provides classroom activities and assignments to utilize iSquares for information education. The webinar also marks the launch of a website that displays the corpus of images gathered thus far (n=400 and growing).

  • PC-based attendees: Required: Windows® 8, 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
  • Mac®-based attendees: Required: Mac OS® X 10.6 or newer
  • Mobile attendees: Required: iPhone®, iPad®, Android™ phone or Android tablet