Monthly Archives: January 2015

Libraries reinvented: No.1 of the top 10 list

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Last week a headline in eSchool News caught my eye – Top 10 of 2014, No 1: Libraries reinvented.  I tend to ignore social media notifications citing the Top 5, 10, 20 or 120 of the best tips, tools and everything you can imagine, but this one was a pleasant surprise worth investigating as it said:

Each year, the eSchool News editors compile 10 of the most influential ed-tech developments and examine how those topics dominated K–12 ed-tech conversations.  No. 1 on our list for 2014 is the new role of school libraries.

School libraries have evolved from quiet places to read books into bustling centers [sic] of collaboration, learning, and research. School librarians are emerging as leaders as they help teachers learn valuable technology integration skills. They also teach students how to research and evaluate information.

Many of us associated with school libraries have been focussing on the evolving role of school library personnel, and the function of the library within the school community for some time.  It’s interesting to note that eSchool News has made this selection because the ‘new role of school libraries’ has dominated K–12 ed-tech conversations during 2014.  This is good news. Mentioned in the post are two articles:

Here in Australia, potential and actual change in school libraries has been documented in School Library Assoc of Victoria (SLAV) publications, and those of other relevant organisations. Examples of articles in SLAV’s Synergy journal  (all but most recent edition is open source) which support the new model of school library and have guided the work of many of us in school libraries are:

I have to agree with Doug Johnson in his commentary of the eSchool news article however when he says, ‘Be warned – this phoenix will not be the same-old, same-old bird of the past, but a new creation, technology-infused, best practices-drive, with a new kind of librarian in the lead.’

School libraries are a vital resource in the life of a student – if they’ve moved into the 21st century.  They are exciting places of instruction, support and learning that students can call their own.   They are both physical and digital environments which are part of the life of the school through a range of learning and recreational activities.   Most importantly, they are lead by progressive, open minded individuals with a collaborative attitude and the courage to change.

What’s happening in your school library? Be a library leader today!  It may sound cliche but this truly is a time for school libraries to show a new face on the future but be warned…. it’s not the ‘same-old bird’.

The Future of Privacy: your future

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Living life in public is the new default many of us have been experimenting with in recent years. It’s amazing how readily we have adapted to sharing our daily activities, thoughts and knowledge via social media. The consequences of this voluntary act of sharing and its impact on our privacy, is causing us to adjust our norms and our preparedness to be less private than we may once have been. Yet as danah boyd illustrated through her research of teenagers in – It’s complicated: the social lives of networked teens, young people are surprisingly selective as to what they make public.

We are living in the age of big data where once inconsequential information such as our purchasing habits are now being collected as an invisible, routine process. Where is it all heading? The Pew Research Center has recently released the report – The Future of Privacy: digital life in 2025 in which experts conclude that the struggle with our personal data and public profiles will extend through the next decade as attitudes and legislation adjust to the new landscape.

Some expect that governments and corporations will continue to expand upon the already prevalent tracking of people’s personal lives and the data-basing and magnetisation of personal information. Others expect it may be possible that new approaches will emerge to enable individuals to better control their identities and exercise more choice about who knows what.

There is much food for thought in this report as it looks towards the next 10 years.  Read the report…

Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/epics18/4239334095

Reading and curating – Flipboard, Zite, ScoopIt

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As we relax and catch our breath over the holiday period, it’s an opportunity to explore some tools and see how they can work for us both personally and professionally. Curation tools that can be customised to filter and manage the information have developed to become magazine style products that enable you pull together information on specific interests from a broad range of sources. They’re easy to manage and a pleasure to read. Here are just three:

flipboardFlipboard: Summed up in one word – Flipboard is ‘extensive’ and it would be safe to say, it’s the most popular magazine style curation tool on the web. Flipboard’s strength is that it enables you to bring all your social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc into the one platform and combine it with news and information from your choice of sources. There are thousands to choose from. With Flipboard’s ‘magazine’ feature you can curate your own topics for sharing with others, or read and curate from other people’s magazines. Access Flipboard at www.flipboard.com where you can read magazines, edit your own and be directed to the Chrome store for the bookmarklet so you can bookmark items into Flipboard when on your PC.  For the best experience download the app from iTunes App or Google Play, Microsoft or Blackberry. Free.

ziteZite is a much simpler curation tool. Having recently been acquired by Flipboard, one wonders about its lifespan, however, I continue to use it as I like its simplicity. Use the search option to locate a specific topic and build your ‘Quicklist’, then with the ‘like’ option, select which of the resources presented most suit your needs. Over time the associated algorithm learns your preference and you’ll find the incoming information to be increasingly relevant to your interests. Zite makes it very easy to forward resources to other tools such as Evernote, Pocket, Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook etc for aggregation or sharing with others. Access Zite via the iTunes App Store or Google Play – www.zite.com. Free.

scoopitScoopIt is a curation tool that promotes you as a curator and enables to share your ‘Scoops’, follow others and comment. Resources aggregate from Google sources, an RSS feed or keywords. Set up your own topics, add articles and annotate them with your own insight and opinion on the topic. This feature makes ScoopIt applicable to the classroom where students could gather a series of articles and annotate them within a curated collection. The algorithm model also works on ScoopIt in that over time, it gets to know your preferences. ScoopIt is a freemium product. Set up 4 Scoops for free, then pay for any extras. Access Scoopit via your PC or via the iTunes App Store or Google Play – www.scoop.it

While these three curation tools are similar, they are also offer different features which will influence your use. I recommend trying them all and making a decision on what suits you best bearing in mind the value in being a producer of content rather than a passive user. The value for students, apart from access to information, is that it introduces them to a digital literacy skill that they can put to use for themselves.