About Judy O'Connell

Educator, learner, blogger, librarian, technology girl, author and consultant. Transforming education and libraries. Innovation for life.

Our book passion – in an e-book age!

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

Last week I was fortunate to attend the 2-day Reading Matters conference in Melbourne. I learnt a lot.

This is a most wonderful annual event hosted by the State Library of Victoria, and brings keen librarians, teachers and teacherlibrarians in contact with authors (lots of them!) and the topics they write about. Names like Markus Zuzak, Cassandra Clare, Melina Marchetta, Rebecca Stead, Jane, Burke, Kirsty Eage, Denis Wright, Lili Wilkinson, Lucy Christopher, Richard Newsome and more were a standout!

The book drama and the hosted discussion panel format was just sensational! as was the opportunity to just mingle with some of the world’s best writers and to have copies of their books signed. So many authors in just one place and so many ideas really spun my head around.

@SLVLearn from the State Library of Victoria school program unit provided a wonderful collection of key points throughout the conference, and the discussion was interesting in the backchannel at #RM11. I am not sure why this conference is not better promoted amongst the teacher librian networks in Australia. This is one of the great annual opportunities to hear the ‘inside’ story about the story and the passion of writing – from an adult perspective.

While you are thinking literature, check back to Inside a Dog from the State Library of Victoria. Their outstanding website has had a makeover – it’s better than ever! Not only can you engage your students with writing book reviews, but your class can also have a wonderful Book Club, regardless of where your school is actually located!

One of the passions I used to have was to collect signed copies of books of my favourite authors. But since I have adopted my Kindle for reading fiction, I have come to realise that I do not want to buy lots of paper versions of books anymore – but I would still have loved to collect some signatures.

I tweeted this thought:

cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by heyjudegallery

And a kind twitter follower pointed to the following possiblities. Now that WOULD be a great addition to future literature conferences 🙂 I wonder which one I might see this at in the future?

Book on the bright side (theage.com.au)
Once upon a time loving books was easy – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (abc.net.au)

Paint your own horizons

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Werner Kunz

What will you do in your school library this year?

While we are always looking for opportunities to encourage growth and development in our school library services, and new ways to promote what we do, there are some ‘tried and trustworthy’ options for advocacy and promotion that should not be missed. The Horizon Report 2011 K-12 edition points out how important it is for school library professionals to keep technology in the forefront of our thinking. The National Australian Library Associations ALIA and ASLA have provided a site to help us tell our community What a Difference a School Library Makes.

I really want to share with you Buffy Hamilton’s Annual Report. She shows us three key things:

what you can and should be aiming for in your school library each year (even if you start small)
strategies for promotion beyond the school through media promotion
how to ‘package’ a professional annual report (even if you start small)

Congratulation to the Creekview High School library team for another great year. Thanks for the inspiration 🙂

Report on school libraries and teacher librarians (heyjude.wordpress.com)

Essential tools: Using Easy Bib

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

Stacey Taylor, Information Services Manager, at Monte Sant’Angelo Mercy College, writes this guest post to share her experiences in promoting quality referencing at her school. In this post she explains her application of EasyBib in her International Baccalaureate secondary girls school in Sydney.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Kirstea

Using Easybib – a rationale for choosing a referencing tool

Our school recently changed our school-wide referencing tool.

We have had a school wide referencing system in place for the past 6 or 7 years, we like many other Australian schools were a “Harvard referencing” school and we used a program called citation which was loaded on all the schools computers.

Our change to Easybib came about because of a culmination of many factors;

Firstly we became a 1:1 Mac school and our citation program wouldn’t work on a Mac
Most of our online databases only provide citations in APA, MLA and Chicago/Turabian
We were undertaking IB Diploma Extended Essays and IB MYP Personal Projects, both of which demand a high standard of referencing

We shopped around for a few online referencing tools, looking at BibMe, Noodle Tools and EasyBib. We decided on Easybib and although it is a free product we opted to pay a small fee so that we could get APA referencing as an option for our students, which is similar to our previous Harvard system.

EasyBib is web based and requires a coupon code for students to get the APA option.

We explicitly teach students from Year 7-12 how to use EasyBib to create bibliographies and to create “parentheticals” to use for intext references. We have a universal system across the school in an attempt to standardise and improve the schools overall performance in referencing. In some IB tasks referencing and bibliographies are given marks. As these assessments are marked externally there is a need to get this aspect of the assessment right. Students are given instruction both face to face and via a Jing movie that they can access anytime they need to via Moodle. Teachers are also familarised with the tool via a Jing movie.

Some teachers have not actively practiced creating bibliographies since their own university days.

EasyBib have provided a great trouble shooting service and using Easybib has been simple.

Shortly after our school wide introduction SLAV developed a citation tool that did cater to Harvard referencing, however we where already committed. The flexibility of using a web based system allows flexibility for students using a variety of computers. We have now been using EasyBib for more than a year and are happy with it’s selection.

Our students referencing is improving because of a school wide push to improve.

Read more from Stacey at Librarians are Go.

EasyBib Comes to the iPhone and iPad (freetech4teachers.com)
Digging into digital research (heyjude.wordpress.com)

Report on school libraries and teacher librarians

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Enokson

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment released a report on school libraries and teacher librarians in Australia’s public and private schools. The report released on Monday 23 2011 investigates the issues of role, adequacy and resourcing of school libraries and teacher librarians in Australia. The full report is available at http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/ee/schoollibraries/report.htm

The report focuses on the impact of government policies and investments on school libraries, the potential of school libraries and teacher librarians to contribute to improved educational outcomes, and the recruitment and development of teacher librarians. The 163-page report also looks at partnering and supporting school libraries and teacher librarians with other libraries. It is a positive report in that it is clearly supportive of school libraries and the role of the teacher librarian.

When it comes to school libraries and teacher librarians, we are in a much better position than some countries at the moment! Our school librarians and our teacher librarians are considered worthy of national discussion! Nevertheless, while there are many instances of great school libraries staff with excellent teacher librarians, and adequate levels of professional support staffing, there are also many cases where this is not the case. This report may go some way to helping to redress the imbalance, and also ensure that continuation of a strong teacher librarian academic programs in Australia.

The report was tabled to coincide with Library and Information Week 2011.

List of 11 recommendations in the report.

Impact of recent Commonwealth Government policies and investments on school libraries

Recommendation 1

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government partner with all education authorities to fund the provision of a core set
of online database resources, which are made available to all Australian schools.

Recommendation 2
The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government work with the states and territories to develop a discrete national policy statement that defines the importance of digital and information literacy for learning in the 21st century, which can be used as a guide by teachers and principals.

Potential of school libraries and librarians to contribute to improved educational and community outcomes

Recommendation 3

The Committee recommends that the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority include statistical information about the breakdown of all specialist teachers, including teacher librarians, on the My School website.

Recommendation 4

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government support additional initiatives to promote reading, such as a National Year of Reading. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations should collaborate with the Australian School Library Association, Australian Libraries and Information Association and other education stakeholders in developing these initiatives.

Recommendation 5

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government initiate an Australian-based longitudinal study into the links between library programs, literacy (including digital literacy) and student achievement, including their impact on improving outcomes for socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

Recommendation 6

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government support promotional activities undertaken by ASLA and ALIA that demonstrate to the school community the valuable work that teacher librarians are doing in respect of e-learning in their schools, including those that highlight their leadership capacity.

Recruitment and development of teacher librarians

Recommendation 7

The Committee recommends that the rollout of the new national curriculum, which is to be made available online, include a component of training for teacher librarians.

Recommendation 8

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government commission a thorough workforce gap analysis of teacher librarians across Australian schools.

Recommendation 9

The Committee recommends that the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, through the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs, establish a national dialogue, including with tertiary providers, on the role of teacher librarians today in schools and into the future. The dialogue should include an examination of the adequacy of the pathways into the profession and ongoing training requirements.

Partnering and supporting school libraries and teacher librarians

Recommendation 10

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government, through the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood and Youth Affairs, discuss ways to enhance partnerships with state and
territory and local levels of government to support school libraries and teacher librarians.

Recommendation 11

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government partner with ASLA and ALIA to produce a document that showcases some of the successful partnerships and programs between school libraries and other libraries, and joint-use libraries. The document should be made available to government and non-government education authorities and school principals.

The Committee hopes that this report goes some way toward highlighting teacher librarians’ concerns; showcases their valuable contributions to educational outcomes in Australian schools; and starts to examine their evolving role and place in Australia’s education system.

New Horizon Report – 2011 K-12 edition out now!

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

The 2011 K12 Edition of the NMC Horizon Report, a research effort led and published by the New Media Consortium, is finished and is available now at http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2011-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf

Three international organizations — the New Media Consortium, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) — collaborate on identifying technology experts and other aspects of the research, and this year, for the first time, each organization is planning a significant event related to the new report for each of their audiences.

CoSN started the rolling release yesterday with a private webinar for their audience of school CIOs around the world. The NMC follows with a major event at their annual Summer Conference, held this year in Madison, Wisconsin, on Friday, June 17th. ISTE rounds out the release effort with a major session at their annual conference in Philadelphia on June 27.

The report has been released under a Creative Commons license to encourage broad distribution.

Emerging devices, tools, media, and virtual environments offer opportunities for creating new types of learning communities for students and teachers. Dede (2005) described the interrelated matrix of the learning styles of neo-millenials as being marked by active learning (real and simulated), co-designed and personalized to individual needs and preferences, based on diverse, tacit, situated experiences, all centred on fluency in multiple media, chosen for the types of communication, activities, experiences, and expressions it they empower.

The Horizon Report K-12 edition, issued annually since 2009, has identified and described emerging technologies that are having a significant impact on K-12 education, re-iterating the diversity of influences in the learning spaces of our schools. For school librarians the report directs attention simultaneously to both information use and learning and highlights the fact that 21^st century technologies are unlikely to be empowering unless they are in the hands of an informed learner.

Key Trends in 2011:

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

Cloud computing
Mobiles

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

Game-based learning
Open content

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

Learning Analytics
Personal Learning Environments

Watch for more information at the Horizon K-12 wiki at http://k12.wiki.nmc.org which will have have a tweak or two before June 17th.

Once again, it was an honour and a real buzz to be part of the Advisory Board in 2011. My personal thanks go to Larry Johnson, Chief Executive Officer at NMC for being the driving force behind this work.

Dede, C. (2005). Planning for Neomillenial Learning Styles: Implications for investments in technology and faculty. In D. G. Oblinger & J.L. Obliger (eds.), Educating the Net Generation. www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen

Horizon Report – 2011 K – 12 Edition (downes.ca)

Stop turning a blind eye! Media literacy in action.

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Cayusa

I’d like to think that all teachers and librarians are clever enough to know how to work well with images to promote creativity in learning. My post-grad students working on Digital Citizenship in Schools have just completed a phase of their learning that included an investigation of how to find and use images in their work using free images online, and even using Greasemonkey and Flickr to speed up their image attribution. Media literacy is an important part of digital learning environments.

Media literacy education helps people of all ages to be critical thinkers, effective communicators, and active citizens. Media literacy is the capacity to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms. This expanded conceptualization of literacy responds to the demands of cultural participation in the twenty-first century. Like literacy in general, media literacy includes both receptive and productive dimensions, encompassing critical analysis and communication skills, particularly in relationship to mass media, popular culture, and digital media. Like literacy in general, media literacy is applied in a wide variety of contexts—when watching television or reading newspapers, for example, or when posting commentary to a blog. Indeed, media literacy is implicated everywhere one encounters information and entertainment content. And like literacy in general, media literacy can be taught and learned. Using images is just one aspect of media literacy educaiton – but none-the-less a vital one. Media literacy education can flourish only with a robust understanding of fair use.

Fair use in education means that educators and learners often make use of copyrighted materials that stand ‘outside’ the general use e.g. in the classroom, at a conference or within a school-wide setting. When this takes place within school fair use indicates flexibility. Each country has it’s own specific rules and regulations that apply to copyright. But for teachers, the aim should be not to teach or bend rigid rules, but rather to promote media literacy in action and help students learn HOW to use media to empower their work, and promote a creative commons approach to sharing and mashup works.

For this reason I was excited AND disappointed with the newest enhancement to Google Images, mainly because in my experience teachers have continued to turn a blind eye in this area of media literacy action. Google has announced you can now sort Google Images by subject.

To see this in action, go to Google Images, conduct a search and look on the left hand side for the search option. Directly under the “More” link, you will find the default sort option set to “by relevance,” click on the “Sort by subject.” The results will then shift and group images by subject topic.

Decorating print and digital material with google images is pretty standard amongst kids – no attribution, no use of creative commons materials etc. Your students may be different – but I’m considering the general norm that I have seen, and now the job just got easier!

What interested me most though was watching the video about this new feature. Notice how they’ve cleverly ‘covered’ the value of this new feature? You’d use this feature to help you understand a topic better? pick a better dog! and perhaps add a nice image to presentation at school?

Sorting just made searching a lot more visual. Yes. No mention of copyright, creative commons, fair use. No mention of th Advanced Image Search, and the option to filter by license. So there are rules…and they did not promote breaking them. But they did leave the rest of the job up to us!

OK – so I guess it’s up to teachers and teacher librarians to get the fair use message across, as part of our media literacy education.

Will you stop turning a blind eye now?

Bonus:

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media LIteracy Education

Via search engine land

Introducing Your Child to the Arts: Media Literacy (education.com)

Digging into digital research

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

Over the past few weeks, I have been leveraging Zotero heavily in my work and general information curation. With deadlines knocking on my door I know I have to be organised. So while I make extensive use of Diigo and Delicious, as well as Evernote, when it comes to the serious academic stuff Zotero has to come up trumps.

Zotero is a citation management system, which allows for tagging, searching, note taking, collections, and shared libraries. I admit, I don’t share my libraries with anyone – but I could if I was collaborating on a research paper of some kind. Our students at CSU are introduced to Endnote, but I much prefer Zotero as it is a Firefox addon that collects, manages, and cites research sources from all my computers. It’s free and easy to use. There are other systems around, but for now Zotero is my workhorse.

More schools should adopt these tools too. In secondary schools it’s time to move away from Pathfinders created in Publisher to providing our students with strategies for information curation to support Guided Enquiry, or Project Based Learning or other tactics for deep engagement with information and knowledge. Another similar tool that supports a school integrated approach is BibMe. An education institution account provides a customised for the school environment.

What do I do with Zotero that is different from social bookmarking or organising information with Evernote?

My most recent project has been to write a chapter for an upcoming IFLA/IASL publication. Right…folder for that! I already had a few folders being kept busy for other articles, presentations and course work, but the book chapter became the priority.

As I researched deeply, in the various databases, in Google Scholar, in blogs, and other information sources, I was able to collect relevant information pertinent to my topic of investigation. However, my ‘collection’ process was more than just bookmarking, or collecting a screen capture. Zotero can extract key metadata from Web pages and insert them into citations, so I was also able to grab the citation information (neat metadata trick) directly from each of those sources (automatically) and link it with either the pdf or screen capture record of the document I wished, thus keep an authoritative information trail. In some instances, I also added some notes as highlight or reflection of the content that I was interested in. I can go back to the original source as well, as the URL is also stored.

Then of course, Zotero synchronises with Word. Once I began writing, I was able to insert the reference in the text in the appropriate manner drawing on my curated list. Finally, I was able to generate the Reference list automatically.

However, whenever I’m researching, I do also find things related to other topics I want to keep a track of. So while I’m busy with my folders, I also take time to use tags – and we’re all used to doing this automatically aren’t we? These tags allow me to filter information that I have collected at a later date for a different focus. So Zotero allows me to organize my research into collections, and the collections are highly flexible, and better still, an item can belong to multiple collections simultaneously.

So what’s cool?

Zotero is optimized for JSTOR, Flickr, YouTube, Google Scholar, ProQuest, EBSCO, and other online archives/databases. Click the Zotero icon in the URL address field to pull in key metadata.
Create citations for offline resources such as books, journal articles, and personal communications.
Organize citations by tag or folders; generate reports based on tags or folders.
Take notes and attach files (e.g., PDF or Word files) as needed.
Capture snapshots of Web sites and online images with metadata (note that there are interesting copyright implications).
Zotero supports the OCLC OpenURL Resolver Gateway protocol. Clicking the Locate button within Zotero will direct users to the appropriate database within the Libraries.
You can also sync your Zotero library, including all your references, snapshots of the HTML version of all your articles, and all the PDFs using the Zotero servers. This syncs your library to every other computer you’re using.

However, Zotero has a low storage limit – you only get tiny 100MB storage space for free. Never mind – Dropbox to the rescue, as you can also sync your library using your own WebDAV server.

Zotero is an excellent tool for any scholar, researcher, or student to have in their toolbox. Its utility extends well beyond preparing to write a paper, however, as it allows you to grab nearly anything off the web and insert it into the Zotero system. Yep – that’s it…and my chapter is done!

Jason Puckett at Georgia State U provides an excellent Libguide for Zotero. His Zotero: A guide for librarians, teachers and researchers is coming soon from ACRL Publications and will be published in print and several e-editions including DRM-free formats.

There! Now I’ve shared my digital digging strategy. Now it’s your turn to give it a go and become a digital age scholar!

Thoughts on Instruction (jacquelynpwhite.wordpress.com)
Social Networks & Collaborative Teaching Sites (mcconeghy.wordpress.com)
Home – Getting Published: Tools and Help – Research Guides at MIT Libraries (libguides.mit.edu)
LibX and Zotero: Firefox Extensions for Librarians and Library Patrons (www-personal.umich.edu)

Adapting for the 21st century learning space

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

Here’s some workshop goodness that provides a great model for running activities at your school! Thanks to @pipcleaves for sharing.

Greasemonkey and Flickr for the adventurous

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

Some of my students are busy creating slideshare presentations, that we will be able to mill around, listen to their thoughts, and discuss ideas via Slideshare zipcast. The exciting thing about this is also the opportunity to help them develop new ways of managing online tools -AND images for work like this.

A tweet this morning from friend Darcy Moore asking Dean Groom (yes, he’s a friend too!) about image attribution in his recent blog post reminded me that I should crosspost my tip to my students about my favourite image attribution tool right here too!

Here it is:

I promised a while back that I would share some more interesting ways to manage your image work online. Tips and tricks abound, but this one from Alan Levine is the niftiest around, so I’ve decided to share it first.

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Sebastián-Dario

So what am I talking about? Well of course, as you prepare your presentation (or indeed work on other image-related tasks in your professional work) one of the things you are doing is noting where the image comes from and providing a hyperlinked attribution. If, like me, you are backed into a corner for time, then you will most certainly end up at Flickr. (Even if not in a rush I still prefer to use FlickrCC, and think laterally in my search terms! I also love the new things it throws up for me.)

There are a few reasons for this:
1. You can store your own images at Flickr and build your own collections
2. You can ‘favourite’ other peoples CC. images (something I regularly do as I collect images for my various bits of work)
3. Now you can also install a nice GreaseMonkey script to make the image attribute even easier.

Here’s what it’s about – read on, only if you are keen for an adventure!

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.

To be honest, the only one I have ever added is Alan’s Flickr Attribtion Helper – but its insanely useful! See the image above – that red tee-shirt and the attribution were simply copied from the HTML box and pasted here in the blog! Done in one go!

Stephen Ridgeway, from New South Wales Australia, created a video that explains how to use the Flickr CC Attribution helper (thank goodness – a blog post by itself would never do it!). Download and install the Flickr Attribution helper (after you have installed Greasmonkey). Then watch the magic happen every time you go to a Flickr image!