The future of the library

Posted on March 27, 2009 by slav

With the Internet and a computer you can visit any library in the world. So will virtual libraries replace the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ library? Could digital screens replace the book? So asked Radio National during a recent broadcast.

Radio National has now given interested people access to the podcast where the discussion focuses on ‘The future of the library’. First broadcast on Thursday 26th March, guests included Lea Giles-Peters, who is the Queensland State Librarian; Bob Stein from The Institute of the Book, online writing and publishing and Hamilton Wilson, the Managing Director of Wilson Architects.

bubbl.us

Posted on March 26, 2009 by slav

Looking for an online brainstorming tool? bubbl.us could be the answer.

The bubbl.us website says you can:

Create colorful mind maps online

Share and work with friends

Embed your mind map in your blog or website

Email and print your mind map

Save your mind map as an image

bubbl.us is ideal for student collaboration and as the mind maps can be simply saved, printed or embedded into blogs, etc. students can include their brainstorming and planning in their assignment submission.

An encouraging comment from a teacher via the bubbl.us blog:

Ben Davis describes how Bubbl.us helped his students to network.

Typically I have trouble getting them to get excited about word webs. However, they were VERY excited about doing this. The guys loved how the bubbles exploded when you deleted them, and the girls loved the colors. However, the thing they seemed most interested in was the fact that they could network.”

Julie Squires of Casey Grammar also uses bubbl.us. with her VCE students (thanks Julie for alerting Bright Ideas to bubbl.us) and her use of it and other tools will be featured shortly.

More thoughts on Will Richardson and Successful use of ICT in schools

Posted on March 24, 2009 by slav

A letter in the Fairfax magazine Northern Weekly dated 24 March 2009 seems to sum up what the SLAV conference featuring Will Richardson on Monday 23 March was all about. Written by Caryl Oliver she says,

Imagine a learner who has grown up never knowing life without the internet, never being “off the air” and always able to access answers to questions the minute they arise because there is a mobile phone, wireless connection and more?

How much more do you learn if your study group is made up of learners from all over the world, connected by computing networks? Wouldn’t it be great to plunder the resources of any library, anywhere in the world?…. Mini-laptops and wireless connectivity make mobility as commonplace as current mobile phones; students no longer need to be tied to classroom, campus or even city. Learning becomes part of life because it is always there and always available.

2020? Sure, but we can have it now if we think outside the classroom and make policy and infrastructure decisions that will allow us to exploit the enormous opportunity that technology offers education.

As Will says, ‘When there’s an internet connection in a room, I’m no longer the smartest person in the room. My network can answer all of the questions I can’t answer myself.’ Thanks to my Mum for pointing Caryl’s letter out to me. Mum’s 82 but really gets what we are all trying to achieve.

While on the theme of using ICT in education, the latest Victorian Institute of Teaching digest focuses on ICT in education. Topics include:

Successful use of ICT in schools
What do we know about the ICT literacy of Australian school students?
Is ICT availability and use assoicated with student performance?
What is the evidence of the impact of ICT on learning?
ICTs in science classrooms
ICTs and learning.

Will Richardson @ Perspectives on learning v2

Posted on March 23, 2009 by slav

For everyone who attended the School Library Association of Victoria’s Professional Learning program today at Etihad Stadium (formerly Telstra Dome), or for those who were unable to attend, here are the links to Will Richardson’s sessions:

Network literacy: Leveraging the potential of the HyperConnected world.

Podcast, Vodcast, Screencast, LiveStream Nation.

Weblogs in schools.

And here are the podcasts of these sessions:

Perspectives on learning v2 – March, 2009

– “Network literacy: leveraging the potential of a hyper-connected world” – Conference keynote

Link to .mp3 audio file Part 1 – 14Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 2 – 16Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 3 – 16Mb approx.

Prepared by Will Richardson (Connective Learning)

– “Podcasts, vodcasts, screencasts, livestream nation ” – Featured address

Link to .mp3 audio file Part 1 – 14Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 2 – 11Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 3 – 13Mb approx.

Prepared by Will Richardson (Connective Learning)

– “Weblogs in schools ” – Plenary session

Link to .mp3 audio file Part 1 – 15Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 2 – 16Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 3 – 17Mb approx. )

Prepared by Will Richardson (Connective Learning)

A link to Jenny Luca’s session on Now you know Web 2.0, what next?, a link to Adrian Camm’s companion wiki and a link to Judith Way’s presentation on Bright Ideas.

The Portal – Blogging at Scotch College Library

Posted on March 23, 2009 by slav

One of Scotch College’s Librarians, Michelle Sweeney, has kindly informed Bright Ideas about their wonderful library blog. Michelle explains, ‘Blogging has become incredibly popular over the last 12 months, and in the Senior Library at Scotch we have embraced the trend! Blogging on The Portal is a safe and fun means for the boys, staff and friends of Scotch to engage in discussion about the books they love (or love to hate), to debate contentious book-related topics and to learn about events in the literary world.’

The Portal homepage

Michelle continues, ‘Since Brendan Gullifer launched The Portal at our ‘Library’s Longest Literary Lunch‘ on March 13 2008, we have seen the number of users swell to over 100. Articulate and passionate boys are airing their opinions on diverse topics including the journalistic merits of the Herald Sun and The Age, the decline of the English language, the poignancy of soldiers’ letters from Iraq, controversy over school texts and the modernisation of Shakespeare’s texts. The boys are also displaying their own creativity (and competitive spirit) by participating in The Portal’s various competitions and writing high quality book reviews.

Competitions

‘Staff at Scotch have long been writing book reviews about their holiday reading for the library website, and these are now also published on The Portal.

‘Initially The Portal was hosted by Edublogs, in many respects a fantastic site developed especially for blogs in schools. However we did become frustrated with some aspects of Edublogs and decided to shift our blog to our school domain where we could have more control over the appearance and the method of registration. Boys and staff may now register in a few minutes without the need for emails to be exchanged.

‘A blog committee was formed and during six meetings we established the aims and objectives of The Portal, the User Guidelines and discussed ways to maximize the potential of this new library tool.

Aim

The Portal provides an online forum for the Scotch Community to engage in discussion about books and reading in order to encourage Scotch boys to develop a lifelong love of reading.

Our objectives for The Portal are:

To harness the boys’ interest in technology to engage them in books and reading
To enable 24/7 access to stimulating discussion about books and reading
To provide a publication platform for aspiring Scotch writers
To allow the wider Scotch Community (parents, siblings, teachers, etc.) to contribute to discussions about books and reading in order to provide a range of reading role models for Scotch boys
To promote interaction and mentoring between students of different ages (and beyond!)
To inform Scotch boys about current literary events and awards
To provide an informal/recreational environment for boys to discuss their reading

‘Currently The Portal is promoted through word of mouth, introductory sessions to Literature Circles groups and English classes, fliers in the library and an article in the school magazine. We intend to use it extensively before, during and after our Literature Festival which runs every second year, by inviting guest authors to initiate discussion with our students before meeting them at the festival and encouraging students to comment on the workshops they have attended. Hopefully there may be some ongoing blogging contact with festival presenters once the festival is over.’

Scotch Scribes

Michelle concludes, ‘All in all The Portal has been a great success. Year 7s and 8s in particular are excited when they see it and English teachers are keen to use it with their classes. Competitions and controversial posts are definitely winners!’

Congratulations to Michelle and all at Scotch College who have been involved in the introduction and ongoing promotion and develpoment of The Portal.

ProofHQ

Posted on March 21, 2009 by slav

ProofHQ is an online proofing software tool. If you produce documents, powerpoints or pictures for school newsletters, school magazines, professional development, staff meetings and the like, and need to have them proof read and/or approved by someone else, then ProofHQ takes the headache out of the proof reading and approval process.

: ProofHQ home

ProofHQ means that you no longer have to send attachments that people have trouble opening or accessing. There are a range of ProofHQ accounts, but the free account comes with one ‘power’ user, unlimited reviewers and 50MB storage.

There are a number of demo videos that show how easy it is to use ProofHQ. Why not try it out and consider recommending it to your school today?

Furl becomes part of Diigo

Posted on March 18, 2009 by slav

The following information comes from Furl, a Web 2.0 resource that was reviewed by Bright Ideas in 2008.

Dear Furl Users,

The Furl team is very pleased to announce that Furl has become part of Diigo.com. We worked hard to find Furl a home where loyal users like you could continue to benefit from best-of-breed social bookmarking and annotation tools. Hands down, Diigo.com was the winner due to its innovative approach to online research tools and knowledge sharing.

The Diigo team is dedicated to making sure you continue to get top notch features and service. They’ve got a crack team of technologists who love making research and knowledge sharing as easy and efficient as possible. Exporting your data from Furl to Diigo is super easy.

Just follow this link: http://cp20.com/Tracking/t.c?5g68-3P77-Ama792

We feel fortunate to have been able to serve as your social bookmarking site provider and can’t thank you enough for your loyal support over the past four years. We’ll miss you and we wish you the best as part of the Diigo community.

Bushfire update

Posted on March 18, 2009 by slav

A Bushfire Affected Communities wiki has now been established by the ALIA Disaster Recovery Project.

On the wiki (amongst other things) is the offer to residents who have lost books are directed to use Library Thing to create their own catalogue of lost reading materials and submit this so that a targeted replacement program can occur.

If people would like to donate books or goods then please send them to:
City of Whittlesea
Civic Centre, East Wing
Ferres Boulevard,
South Morang VIC 2752
Attention: Bushfire Donations

Also, a big thank you to everyone who has helped in their own way. This includes Victorians and people from interstate and overseas. It is heartening to see so many people work together during such a difficult time.

Feature wiki – Buckley Park College

Posted on March 16, 2009 by slav

Buckley Park College Librarian and Web 2.0 whizkid Leslie Sharples helped with the introduction of wikis to College staff in the first week of the school year. Pauline Kossis, the Assessment and Reporting Coordinator and Senior Accounting Teacher immediately grabbed the idea of using a wiki with her class and ran with it.

: Accounting homepage

Pauline explains how her wiki came about. ‘I became excited with the thought that wikis could combine all of the features I was looking for as a teacher and for my students to access information and share their knowledge.’

: Course content

She continues,’ Previously I was setting dates and times to be online so I could assist students with their exercises, but this was solely one on one and other students were not privy to the information. While my wiki is a starting point for students to access resources, links and classroom activities 24-7, they can collaboratively explore the various topics covered in Accounting 3. I have just finished inviting my class in and eventually, there will be an inclusion of more resources, eg. vokis to highlight key concepts covered, current articles, PowerPoint presentations, as well as questionnaires to rate their learning experiences(ie.what went well and what topics could be explained further).’

: Links

Pauline says, ‘Students will provide some of the work that will be displayed on the site also e.g. Chapter summaries (these will be used for revision). The same process will be duplicated with all my other classes.’

Leslie Sharples says that Pauline’s wiki is making a real difference to her students. Well done to Leslie for introducing wikis to the staff and to Pauline for her excellent ideas and commitment to developing exciting educational learning for her students.