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)
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.
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.
The Horizon Project 2011 has been launched, and each year it’s findings are received with interest and vigorous debate.
The internationally recognized series of Horizon Reports is part of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, a comprehensive research venture established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years on a variety of sectors around the globe. This volume, the 2011 Horizon Report, examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. It is the eighth in the annual series of reports focused on emerging technology in the higher education environment. To create the report, the Horizon Project’s Advisory Board, an international body of experts in education, technology, business, and other fields, engaged in a discussion based on a set of research questions intended to surface significant trends and challenges and to identify a broad array of potential technologies for the report.
Over the course of just a few weeks, the Advisory Board came to a consensus about the six topics that appear here in the 2011 Horizon Report. On the near-term horizon — that is, within the next 12 months — are mobile computing and open content. The second adoption horizon is set two to three years out, where we will begin to see widespread adoptions of two well-established technologies that have taken off by making use of the global cellular networks — electronic books and simple augmented reality.On the far-term horizon, set at four to five years away for widespread adoption, but clearly already in use in some quarters, are gesture-based computing and visual data analysis.
The Horizon Report K-12 Edition
If you work in K-12 education, read this report. However, the The Horizon Report K-12 Edition will be available in May, which should be in time for you to write your visionary plans and budget proposals ready for 2012.
Once again I’m excited to have been invited to join the Advisory Board for 2011. The Advisory Board uses their expertise to place the technologies we consider for the report on adoption timelines, and to rank their potential impacts on education. As a member of the Advisory Board, I’m included as part of an extraordinary group of multi-disciplinary thinkers from both within and outside education. Participation on the Horizon.K12 Advisory Board is by invitation only, and completely voluntary. Leslie Conery (ISTE), Keith Krueger (CoSN), and Larry Johnson (NMC) will serve as the co-principal investigators for the work this year.
It’s worth noting – I’m fascinated by the work of Howard Rheingold. If I could capture just a small portion of his capacity to work with tertiary students I would be thrilled.
I really liked his small posterous ‘mini-course’ on infotention – what a cool way to share information. I need to explore more….
Howard explains:
Infotention is a word I came up with to describe a mind-machine combination of brain-powered attention skills and computer-powered information filters. The inside and outside of infotention work best together with a third element ‹ sociality.
Watch the video below – and learn how to manage your own ‘infotention’. Then visit Howard’s Mini-course on Infotention.
Thanks very much Howard for acknowledging that the need for librarians is greater than ever 🙂
Week One in my new full-time job at Charles Sturt Uni, and I have discovered the challenges that a few years of change ‘in the cloud’ have wrought! The ‘work’ challenges are being met thanks to the welcoming support from all my new colleagues. They are an amazing team, spread around the world, and in my online environment this is a wonderful extension of my already robust PLN.
However, as I settle into my preparation for working with students in courses online through Charles Sturt Uni, I also have to set up a whole swag of new equipment. Am I lucky? You think about it…
What do you do when you have to prepare a new lot of equipment for your online interactions. It should be easy – right? It used to be dead easy – load up a few software applications, add a couple of browsers (maybe) and then you’re away.
Well, if you are really working in an online 21st century kind of way (I’m sure you know what I mean), you’d find that you have to set aside loads of time, and would have to keep tinkering constantly for a week or two to re-establish your online tools, and favourite ways of managing your work productivley, collaboratively, creatively, and uber efficiently. I haven’t got the systems down pat yet – and am using this opportunity to review some things, so am keen to get some feedback if you have favourite tips and tricks that I’ve not listed.
I’ve been keeping a list as I chug along setting things up. I’ll remember more of them when I get back home from Wagga Wagga (loved seeing the kangaroos on campus!). Interestingly I find that I do different setups on different computers depending on how I ‘bend’ that particular tool to my needs. But without going into specifics, here’s what the list is looking like after one week…and I’m not finished yet. I found it incredibly frustrating initially to have a browser window that did just that – browse!! There are many tools/options, and some that I choose not to use, though I realise that they just might be amongst your favourites. Of course, it’s also about tools that synchronise, or work in partnernship with my iPhone and iPad.
I wonder how I ever used to work without the additional speed and flexibility that these tools provide me.
I wonder how YOU manage, if you don’t have a similar looking list?
You will remember that video that had us all agog back in 2007. The Machine is Us?ing Us was a revelation for many.
Back in 2007 The Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State University, led by Dr Michael Wesch in Cultural Anthropology, produced the video in response to studies on the impacts of digital technology on human interaction.
At the time the idea that online environments would be all pervasive was still novel, and pre-dated the rather solid expansion of environments like twitter and Facebook. Now fast-forward a few years, and the newest video Rethinking Education from Michael Wesch presents ideas and discussion points about in relation to the future of higher education – and schools too!
Thanks to Dean Shareski for this timely video, especially for educators in the southern hemisphere! Next week our schools in Australia will begin the new academic year – many with staff meetings, and professional activities to motivate, and in many cases to talk about technology. What a perfect video to include.
Instead of going the way of the textbook I would go the way of technology. It’s almost like I have to unteach everything they’ve been taught. And then I don’t even feel we’ve reach the spot where we’ve done that. You have to de-program and then start all over again. If we started teaching this earlier, this would be so natural to them, that there wouldn’t be all those barriers. They would know how to communicate. They would know how to talk to each other. They would know how to learn. They would know how to co-operate and give feedback. But I find that they do not even know how to do that.
This time of year there are so many articles and comments with predictions for the year, so I am not going to add to the collection – well not in general terms anyway 🙂
If I could crystal ball gaze what 2011 will bring in my own professional work and learning experiences, I’d be happy. Really I would.
A few challenges that are staring me in the face will require my undivided attention, starting with this blog, my online tools, and my daily organisation of networked discussions.
What should my focus be, as I transition into the working world of a university academic?
Here is a bit of crystal-gazing:~
Be sure not to allow my head, thoughts, ideas ricochet endlessly like balls in a pinball machine. Put time limits on myself, and set realistic goals!
Tidy up my online places, repositories, tools and then undertake a review of what I do and how I do it.
Work out what I want to share, and why?
Work out how I want to share!
Commit to solid professional reading, and participate in professional exchange.
Communicate with and work with people in my PLN to add value to my own work, and to stretch my own ideas beyond my current capabilities.
Share whatever knowledge and experience I can through workshops, seminars, presentations, school-based work etc so that we continue to grow in our knowledge connections.
Push back into my professional community through collaborating, writing and presenting.
Sounds easy really!
Not so … it all takes time and grunt.
Currently my head really does feel like a pinball machine, with too many thoughts,worries, ideas, and work requirements competing for my attention. I’ve just completed some research assistant work for a colleague in the School of Educational Leadership at ACU, which I’m dovetailing with some course revision (before my official start at CSU) for one of the courses I will be teaching. I’m heading off for a day-long Committee meeting related to the ASLA XXII Biennial Conference 2011. I’m hoping to find time to get my head into Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2011, with Stephen Downes and George Seimens. I’m looking at my list of articles that I have promised to write. I’m totting up the upcoming presentations that I’ve also committed to for 2011. I’m checking out the courses I’ll be teaching – all new to me, and nothing like my work in schools. I’m groaning … and wondering what to attack next, and how to improve things. Don’t get me wrong – it’s exciting but it’s also mind-bogglingly different.
I KNOW there are plenty of people who achieve more than I can ever hope to manage – so at least I want to figure out how to help learning within my PLN.
But at the end of the day I’m a creature of habit, and it takes self-imposed changes to keep that focus. Like Jenny, I’ve done some blog renovation – though this year I did not change the banner. When I started this blog back in 2006, it looked and felt different! I added some social buttons – to streamline the ‘look’ somewhat. Imagine that – we didn’t have all these tools back in 2006!
So what will I use this blog for in 2011?
I think that I will continue to do information dissemination – though not in the way I did back in 2006. I regularly share information via Twitter, Facebook, Diigo, Delicious, with other tools sneaking in at times too – something that wasn’t possible back in 2006. What this means is that my blog focus is adapting from the original 2006 focus.
In addition to writing about things that grab my interest, I think that I will also communicate with ‘new’ education and library professionals – some who may be taking my courses, or who may just needing a helping hand into the networked learning world.
Perhaps I will reflect on what I find in my new role, and the broader issues from a perspective beyond schools.
I’m not a clever reporter, so I think I will leave that to others.
Have I forgotten anything?
I’m looking for really new ways of looking at all this. Like the tiny apartment that transforms into 24 rooms – I want to find out how to be more efficient with my work world in 2011.
I couldn’t resist sharing this presentation from Sarah Houghton-Jan. You know – you really don’t have to have megabucks to squeeze the best out of interactive web spaces – just a co-operative and flexible IT manager!
The Horizon Project 2011
judyoconnell.com 