Lately I’ve been very busy – who isn’t these days? My kind of busy has meant less blogging and more collaborative planning and conversations.
I’m always on the lookout for flexible options for conversation spaces that are hassle free, and don’t need complex logins or software downloads. Free is also good (while it lasts!)
So effortless video meetings have become a must – and now I think having my own meeting space is also a must! I’ve tried out the new browser-based tool at Meetings.iohttp://meetings.io/ with a small group of people a few times, and have been very happy with the ease of communication. Works across a range of devices – nice!
New features are promised, but for now the standard features work ‘out of the box’ with the click of a button.
Better still, I have my own vanity meeting room, making it drop-dead easy to invite people to a meeting. Better still, I can find and retrieve past chat logs and files, all in one place. Apparently I can schedule new meetings and manage all my upcoming meetings, but I’ll be honest – I haven’t tried this out yet.
Overall, this is better than Google Hangout – simply because so many people still get confused by the whole Google+ meeting thing – and it’s free versus video group meetings in Skype. Other stuff is more expensive again.
Let’s face it – the cloud is here! Does your educational institution or management understand this? Luckily for me I work in a ‘cloud’ environment on a daily basis, whether it is managing my professional data files online, working and communicating in the cloud, or engaging with students and colleagues in some social media platform or another.
All well and good – but not too innovative if it’s just ‘me, myself and I’!
We need suits in the cloud too – real suits who share information and put a personal face to a media environment. My latest favourite suit is Andrew Vann. Professor Andrew Vann is the new Vice-Chancellor and President of Charles Sturt University (CSU), and unlike the usual new suits, he has already attracted much interest within the ranks. Here is a suit who has moved right into the cloud, and leads the way in adopting social media. Andrew runs a lively update stream at Twitter @drpievann and launched an official blog to engage with the broader CSU community.
I want to use this blog to facilitate a collegial and hopefully innovative process to establish a clearer sense of where and what we want CSU to be in the future, and later what we need to do to get there.
I suppose there is nothing new about a senior suit launching a blog – but it IS a bit innovative for higher education. If CSU is to live up to being Australia’s leading online and distance education provider, it strikes me as critical that not only Andrew, but many more of the HE leadership need to hang their suits in the cloud in order to further advance online education and the student experience. That’s #justsayin in Twitter-speak!
It’s the same with our subjects and degree programs – they also need to incorporate digital environments not only to improve learning opportunities, but also to make the learning experience relevant to the workplace.
Once again I have found that some of the subjects I have been teaching do connect directly with the student professional experience. These subjects were developed to respond to the digital environment – even allowing some of our students to get their own suits in the cloud 🙂
Today, I was offered an amazing job as Social Media Officer where I will spend my days immersed in social networking! My interest in it through study of this social media subject was noticed by those at the top.
This is the kind of outcome we strive for in the degree programs in the School of Information Studies. This is what postgraduate study should be about! As another student said after completing a subject I have been teaching:
This is the first subject where I’ve actually seen direct relevance to my work.
This is the challenge for ‘suits’! Will you be moving into the cloud some time soon?
If you are interested in quality professional development delivered online and would like to receive email notices for future webinars and other professional learning events I recommend that you sign up now.
Content curation crops up over and over again – so a whole issue on the topic from the wonderful school librarians in New Zealand is worth a read! Tossing ideas around, and finding ways to harness tools to our purpose is part of the daily challenge.
So here is the latest issue of their Collected Magazine, free for the taking! It’s all about content curation or “articles to help you add to your collection development bag of tricks!”I I was lucky to be invited to write a lead article title..you guessed it..Content curation is the new black!
You will find articles about the following:
Curating content for creative reuse (Ester Casey)
Content curation as a marketing tool (Peter Murgatroyd)
Exploring Scoop.it (Hillary Greenebaum)
Using LiveBinders (Senga White)
and more…
By the way, what a great use of an online magazine publishing tool – your organisation, school or library can put out good digital publications for information, promotion, or sharing. Your students can get involved too.
Ever watched a kid get so excited about something new? That sparkle in the eye and that ‘let me at it’ urgency that we’d like to capture in every learning interaction?
I knew you’d understand. That was my experience recently at the Computers in Libraries Conference, Washington DC, after attending a session by Fiacre O’Duin , Librarian, Cyborg, Cult-Leader 🙂
Where do I begin? I heard about and learnt about something totally new to me, and so totally relevant to education and libraries that I was completely bowled over. We have the next disruptive technology here, now, in the hands of ….people!
The practice of hacking is going mainstream and creating good. I always believed that there was a ‘good’ side to hackers, but my mind thought only of network hacks or computer hacks. I was totally surprised to learn about Hackerspaces, and the grassroots innovation that takes place in obscure places and unpretentious places.
Hackerspaces are community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects and this website is for ‘Anyone and Everyone’ who wants to share their hackerspace with international hacker’s’paces. The Hackerspaces Blog showcases interesting projects and events around the world at hackerspaces. Weird and wonderful things are constructed in hackerspaces. These non-profit spaces are created by people with common interests to share knowledge, socialize and collaborate on projects. Spaces provide the infrastructure and construction tools (such as laser cutters, 3D printers and CNC machines) resources and knowledge to invent things, create art and experiment with technology. Open to the outside world on a (semi)regular basis, always Tuesday.
Hundreds of these communities are found all over the world.
Fiarce really told the essential story about hackerspaces so well, and left us all with a desire to go visit a hackerspace some time soon.
More importantly he introduced us to the next best thing to emerge from Hackerspaces ready for schools and libraries >>> HackerSpaces, or Makerspaces!
There are few places that currently provide community access to new, innovative creation technology like 3D printers. These spaces, known as Fabrication Labs (fab labs), Hackerspaces, and Tech Shops, share common goals: collaboration and ‘making.’ They exist to give their specific communities the ability to ‘make’ through sharing knowledge and skills. They provide the technology necessary to make almost anything.
Public Libraries + Hackerspaces. Brilliant.
And yet another reason why public libraries—and public librarians—are an essential part of a free society, fostering the kind of innovative, productive, creative, healthy, expansive culture worth a good chest thump. Not only is it about leveling the playing field, making resources available for all, but also about nurturing the potential of the Next.
Libraries are reinventing themselves for a digital age, with a small but growing number looking to include hackerspaces (a.k.a. makerspaces), complete with 3-D printers. There is a certain poetry to it: As physical books transform into bits and bytes, information—computer files—become tangible objects, printed on a MakerBot.
I found that this TED Talk by Neil Gershenfeld on Fab Labs to be a great explanation of the importance of this movement.
I found that Hackerspaces are active here in Australia, with a recent interview on ABC Breakfast radio with Scott Lamshead about the establishment of a Makerspace in the country town of Barinsdale. The Robots and Dinosaurs Hackerspace meets right here in Sydney and offers a communal space where geeks and artists brainstorm ideas, play games, work on collaborative projects, and share the cost of some great tools.
They’re everywhere and I didn’t know about them! I need to visit one, but need a friend to come along for moral support!
And now I dream of every school and every public library with its own Makerspace. Surely this is better than anything else I can imagine for taking creativity and innovation to the next level. Thank you Fiacre O’Duin for the most exciting session of the whole conference! Pick up the notes and loads of information to learn more.
If you want to start one…let me know. I want to be there to help you and to see what happens!
I’ve been waiting for Google Drive – really I have! This is why ….the Google Grid!
Do you remember how spine-chilling the video EPIC 2015 was to view back in 2006? It was shown to us at work, as part of a professional development session, and I sat on the edge or my seat while the hairs on my arm stood on end.
EPIC (evolving personalised information construct) is pretty much here – and for me Google Drive is just another piece of the inevitable jigsaw that represents the Googalization of the world.
When we finally hit 2015, and some other Museum of Media History creates a history of our media times, I wonder how it will compare? How about making it a project for kids? Was 2004 the year everything began? Watch the video and decide.
This week both Microsoft and Google got their acts together and released Dropbox-like applications for their online storage services, SkyDrive and Google Drive respectively. I’ve dabbled with SkyDrive, but have never become a convert. I use DropBox every day! Now I’m waiting to see what I might (or might not) do with my Google Drive.
Indications are that Google Drive is more a revamp of Google Docs than it is a brand new service. Essentially, Google is rebranding Google Docs to Google Drive, and modifying its user interface to suit a bunch of new features.
Signups for Google Drive are open, although you may see a notice that “your Google Drive is not ready,” and asking you to sign up to be notified by email when it is turned on. The Google Drive service includes 5 gigabytes of free storage. Google Drive will initially be available for use with PCs, Macs, and Android devices. A version for iPhone and iPad users is under development.
This is very cool! TED, the nonprofit organization devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading,” has launched the second phase of its TED-Ed initiative: a groundbreaking website TED-Ed Lessons For Learning that enables teachers to create unique lesson plans around TED-Ed video content. First it was the TED-Ed Youtube channel. Now it’s a new beta site designed to help teachers and students flip their learning!
Each video featured on the site is mapped, via tagging, to traditional subjects taught in schools and comes accompanied with supplementary materials that aid a teacher or student in using or understanding the video lesson. Supplementary materials include multiple-choice questions, open-answer questions, and links to more information on the topic. But the most innovative feature of the site is that educators can customize these elements using a new functionality called “flipping.” When a video is flipped, the supplementary materials can be edited and the resulting lesson is rendered on a new and private web page. You can use, tweak, or completely redo any lesson featured on TED-Ed, or create lessons from scratch based on any video from YouTube. The creator of the lesson can then distribute it and track an individual student’s progress as they complete the assignment.
TED-Ed seeks to inspire curiosity by harnessing the talent of the world’s best teachers and visualizers – and by providing educators with new tools that spark and facilitate learning. Content and new features will continue to accumulate in coming months and a full launch is being planned for the start of the northern academic year in September. Take a tour now!
Around about this time last year I shared a post about Greasemonkey and Flickr for the adventurous. In this I’m elaborating on the wonderful tool, created by my friend Alan Levine aka @cogdog, which is a core essential part of my digital toolkit.
As it was this time last year, I have a group of students working with me on visual elements of online presentations as part of their exploration of Digital Citizenship in Schools, and of course I introduce them to the FlickrCC Attribution Helper for Greasemonkey. The reason for this is related to ethical use of online images, and the value of working with Creative Commons as an effective source of visual imagery.
Alan Levine has written a Flickr Attribution Helper – a browser script that embeds easy to copy attribution text to creative commons licensed flickr images. Greasemonkey is an add-on for Firefox browser. Once Greasemonkey is installed, you have the ability to add all sorts of magical things to the functionality of your browser. The Attribution Helper also installs into other browsers without the help of Greasemonkey.
Do take time to revisit the post to discover why this tool is fabulous ~ if you are not already using it. If you are using it – keep reading for an update!
Here’s the twist! A student asked me to clarify the attribution code found on some of my images. For example, if you look at the image in my last post, you will see that if as follows:
I woke this morning to a grey sky, and many pieces of writing about teacher librarianship that my students have submitted as their first dip into a new profession. The grey sky seems to symbolise the mental consternation that is expressed by those entering the profession, and by those responding to the extraordinary changes and cutbacks discussed by Buffy Hamilton and others at her post Do I Really have to Leave the Role of School Librarian to Work as a School Librarian?
Carolyn Foote and Judy O'Connell
I’m just recently back in Australia, after a number of visits in the USA related to libraries now and in the future. I was fortunate to attend the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington (CIL2012 – do access some of the presentations), and during the three days of the conference was delighted to spend time with Buffy Hamilton, Carolyn Foote, Sarah Ludwig, Polly Farrington and others involved in services to school libraries. I was struck by the extraordinary passion, the outstanding work happening every day – and by common complications (in some schools) caused by the ignorance and lack of vision demonstrated by school leaders when it comes to libraries.
The reality is that teacher librarians can be the best person to have in your school – but only if they have actually learnt how to fill that role well, and have understood and assimilated the principles of embedded librarianship.That’s what undertaking a Masters degree in Teacher Librarianship is all about! It’s an energising and complex profession that you just can’t learn on the job.
As Buffy rightly argues, we do not need to leave the role of librarian to become a better librarian. What I sincerely believe is that we need school librarians to be recognised for their significant and vital role in the life of a school, and we need for their position to be better staffed and better supported within the school.
The School Library Journal allowed a provocative piece to inadvertantly lead a discussion that is vital to school library futures. Linda W. Braun interviewed Sarah Ludwig, whose session I enjoyed at CIL2012, and in showcasing how Sarah Ludwig left the library, became a tech coordinator, and forged a path to the futureimplied that perhaps this was a good thing. It was not!
I believe that Next Year’s Model (term used by the school library journal) is not the school librarian escapee – any more than the classroom escapee was ever the right person to be a school librarian!
I loved Sarah’s presentation at CIL2012, because she was engaging and clearly enjoys working hard to make a difference. She is achieving some of what is possible as a teacher librarian.
Sarah Ludwig at CIL2012
So it was nice – it was not innovative! The model adopted by her school was nice – it was not innovative. I’m guessing that Lorri Carroll
Director of Technology and Information Services Hamden Hall Country Day School is in fact not a qualified teacher librarian, though she certainly recongises what it is that makes Sarah’s work relevant to her school. The fact that Sarah said in the interview piece, and at the conference, now it’s easier to get people to trust my opinion on technology, which enables me to do more than I could as a librarian is a reflection of the challenges in the teacher librarian profession.
It’s so important to look past technology, and to stay with the model that Buffy and other leading teacher librarians espouse in their work (under circumstances that almost few Australian teacher librarians need to contend with) and to continue to shape a responce to change in the profession. This theme is not unique to school libraries – it is the same tune throughout the LIS sector.
We have had better solutions taking shape in many Australian schools. In Hybrid Synergy – the Future of School Libraries you can read about a model that would suit Lorri and Sarah to a tee! Check out St Ignatius College, Riverview here in Sydney. They have realigned their library services to create a new hybrid synergy under the direction of the Head of Digital Learning and Information Services (who IS a teacher librarian), supported by several Digital Learning Facilitators who teach a subject as a classroom teacher, work with a faculty, and also support students reading, learning, and research needs in the library. Of course, with such a commitment to empowering student learning, there are other important roles such as a Library Manager, and library and media technicians.
In other words – poor school, rich school, country or city school – we need a great teacher librarian at the helm to lead learning and innovation with and beyond technology!
Good luck to any teacher librarian of quality who becomes a curriculum leader, technology leader, Principal, or who takes on any number of other significant roles in the education sector. Education is all the richer for it – but don’t leave for the wrong reasons!
Has the librarian left the building?
Ask yourself ~ Who is better off now? What stupid cutbacks by senior administrators has resulted in a move that will impact future generations of kids? What is it that needs to change in our understanding of Teacher Librarianship so that we can make more of a difference? In times of economic constraint, why are school libraries under threat? Are teacher librarians committed to keeping up-to-date? What do we need to change to improve?
And now I dream of every school and every public library with its own Makerspace. Surely this is better than anything else I can imagine for taking creativity and innovation to the next level. Thank you 
judyoconnell.com 