Who’s Watching YOUR Space?

Posted on March 10, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

This is a great encapsulation of the OCLC Symposium: How do we operate as educators and information professionals? If you haven’t joined the conversation, or become part of the action, then it really is time to start.

We need to learn how to experience these technologies and put them into practice!

Click on the link to go to YouTube – the owner of the video does not allow this video to be embedded into a blog!

This is the 3-minute version of the most recent OCLC Symposium at ALA Midwinter 2007. More than 400 people attended this discussion of social networking practices and trends on January 19, 2007 in Seattle, Washington. Michael Stephens, Instructor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University and author of Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software, was moderator. The expert panel included: Howard Rheingold, a leading thinker on the cultural, social and political implications of communications media and virtual communities; danah boyd, PhD candidate at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley and Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Communications; and Marc Smith, Senior Research Sociologist, who leads the Community Technologies Group at Microsoft Research. The full video (2:23:19) can be viewed at http://www.oclc.org/index/symposium

YouTube becomes mainstream media

Posted on March 3, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

A lot of talk in education about YouTube has centred around the ‘dangers’ of this open-access, user-generated visual content repository. In some places this adds up to “if you can’t control it, then block it”.

So the report from BBC news – BBC Strikes Google-YouTube Deal – puts a new twist on media and news distribution, and shows how Web 2.0 tools are re-aligning the global media & communications industry.

BBC has struck three deals in one with YouTube – non-exclusive and set to run for several years.

BBC: One of the BBC’s two entertainment channels will be a “public service” proposition, featuring no advertising.

BBC Worldwide: The second entertainment channel will feature self-contained clips – about three to six minutes long – mining popular programmes in the BBC’s archive.

BBC News: The news channel, which will be launched later this year, will show about 30 news clips per day.

The BBC’s director of Future Media and Technology, Ashley Highfield, said the deal was “not about distributing content like full-length programmes; YouTube is a promotional vehicle for us”.

Thanks BBC! – what you’ve given us is a promotional tool to counter-act hysteria in some education circles.

Youtube Ban Comic

Technologies on the Horizon

Posted on February 27, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

The New Media Consortium (NMC) is an international 501(c)3 not-for-profit consortium of nearly 200 leading colleges, universities, museums, corporations, and other learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies.

The consortium serves as a catalyst for the development of new applications of technology to support learning and creative expression, and sponsors programs and activities designed to stimulate innovation, encourage collaboration, and recognize excellence among its member institutions.

The NMC’s Emerging Technologies Initiative focuses on expanding the boundaries of teaching, learning and creative expression by creatively applying new tools in new contexts. The Horizon Project, the centerpiece of this initiative, charts the landscape of emerging technologies and produces the NMC’s annual Horizon Report. Reports have been produced for each year since 2004, and are availale at the Horizon Project Wiki.

The 2007 Horizon Report is now available. The 2007 edition is a collaboration between The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program. While the report focusses on the tertiary sector, the information is highly relevant to schools.

In the body of the report, each featured technology includes specific examples, but as the horizon moves farther out in time these tend to be more isolated. Their research indicates that each of these six areas will have significant impact on college and university campuses within the next five years.

User-Created Content. It’s all about the audience, and the “audience” is no longer merely listening. User-created content is all around us, from blogs and photostreams to wikibooks and machinima clips.
Social Networking. Social networking may represent a key way to increase student access to and participation in course activities. It is more than just a friends list; truly engaging social networking offers an opportunity to contribute, share, communicate, and collaborate.
Mobile Phones. Mobile phones are fast becoming the gateway to our digital lives.
Virtual Worlds. Customized settings that mirror the real world—or diverge wildly from it—present the chance to collaborate, explore, role-play, and experience other situations in a safe but compelling way. These spaces offer opportunities for education that are almost limitless, bound only by our ability to imagine and create them.
The New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication. The nature and practice of scholarship is changing. New tools and new ways to create, critique, and publish are influencing new and old scholars alike.
Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming. In the coming years, open-source gaming engines will lower the barrier to entry for developers, and we are likely to see educational titles along with commercial ones.

The report is worth a read!

Delicious Postscript:

To create the 2007 Horizon Report, the 27 members of this year’s Advisory Board engaged in a comprehensive review and analysis of research, articles, papers, and interviews; discussed existing applications, and brainstormed new ones; and
ultimately ranked the items on the list of candidate technologies for their potential relevance to teaching, learning, and creative expression. Most of this work
took place online in 2006, using a variety of tools, including a special wiki site and a set of del.icio.us links dedicated to the project. The del.icio.us tags are listed under the “Further Reading” section of each of the six topic areas, and readers are invited to view not only the resources that were listed in the report, but many others that were used in our research as well.

Readers are further encouraged to add their own examples and readings to these dynamic lists by tagging them for inclusion in each category.

2020 Vision: shaping the future through dialogue

Posted on February 19, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

I am convinced that we need to make radical changes in the way we design and integrate school libraries into our learning communities. We explored just a little of the Web 2.0 reasons for this recently at the State Library Seminars, but only began the dialogue about solutions to this new imperative.

Why did I choose 2020? This date is gaining some prominence amongst strategists – which makes me think that we should adopt this date for our planning deadlines for schools too (it does have a certain symmetry don’t you think?)

The world in the year 2020: Technology will no doubt play a huge part. However, will it contribute to the betterment of society through global, low-cost networks, unimagined efficiency and organizational transparency, or will we inhabit a scene from a dystopian film, filled with terrorist Luddites, virtual-reality addicts and a loss of control over our own innovations?

These are the hypotheses explored by Janna Quitney Anderson, assistant professor of communications and director of Internet projects at Elon University, Elon, N.C., in partnership with Lee Rainie, founding director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The two released “The Future of the Internet II”, the second installment in their series of landmark studies, two years after the first study. Surveying 746 of the most engaged Internet stakeholders, including bloggers, activists, researchers and CEOs, the two hoped to shed light on what the world of technology will be like in 2020.

The findings make interesting reading, and certainly validate the imperative for change in our schools. The study’s findings include quotations from answers to open-ended questions, detailing highly engaged Internet stakeholders’ predictions of technology’s impact on the world in 2020. Companion Web site “Imagining the Internet: A History and Forecast,” provides additional resources on the topic. The site includes video and audio interviews showcasing experts’ predictions about the next 20 to 50 years, a children’s section, tips for teachers, a searchable database of early 1990s predictions and a “Voices of the People” section for readers to post their own predictions.

It was in this context that I explored the Learning Commons (physical and virtual) construct that has become so popular in the tertiary environment. I believe it has much to offer us in schools as we shape our own futures, but we do not have a pool of ideas yet to draw on.

I moved to the idea of Knowledge Commons, as our role in schools as teachers and teacher librarians is somewhat different to the role of library staff in other sectors. Our focus is the learning environment and teaching strategies within that environment, and it is this that must drive our creative efforts for innovative change.

I wonder if such a Knowledge Commons, shaped by Creativity NOT Productivity would need to encompass the following:

Reading materials for pleasure and study

Information retrieval and critical analysis support

Learning activities & Social activities

Academic writing guidance

Special education learning support for all ranges

Information technology support – technical and design support

Multimedia design and production facilities

‘Traditional’ bibliographic services

24/7 Learning support

Rethinking Libraries of Today:
If you could redesign your school library, what would it look like?

I was particulary pleased to listen to this recent podcast.Based on a recent meeting with a librarian and an architect, Alan discusses the changing role of librarians, along with what the ideal school library might look like given the anticipated impact technology will have on teaching and learning. Listen to it carefully and imagine the outcomes in the context of our ongoing discussions.

And if you are new to the idea of Learning Communities, here are some links to explore:

Forget MySpace: Try a Little VLC
Virtual Learning Commons allows students to identify areas or subjects of interest…and then connect with others who have similar interests. It’s a great way to enhance social dialogue around learning activities.
Academic Library 2013. It should not be assumed that the academic library of 2013 will be a natural progressions from the library of today, but will be surprising and unexpected.

(The presentation.mov file is available for download on my Resources page.)

EduNation SecondLife

Posted on February 5, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

The Consultants-E are proud to launch the first private island simulator in Second Life dedicated to online training seminars and conferences, and the use of Second Life in Education. EduNation is a 65,000m2 island in the Second Life virtual world with seminar, powerpoint, audio and videocast facilities. Use of the seminar facilities is free.

More information at EduNation

New twist on ‘digital’ (library) books!

Posted on February 3, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

Somehow I missed this in the media – An ATM for Books from CNN Money. We’ve had various ways of getting books printed and into our hot little hands ready for the next comfortable read. But I bet it will be a while before we see Australian libraries have one of these ‘little beauties’.

The Espresso – a $50,000 vending machine with a conceivably infinite library – is nearly consumer-ready and will debut in ten to 25 libraries and bookstores in 2007. The New York Public Library is scheduled to receive its machine in February. The machine can print, align, mill, glue and bind two books simultaneously in less than seven minutes, including full-color laminated covers.

For me, this is the perfect blend between the new and the old.

However, that’s not all there is to the developments in the ‘digitisation’ of books.

The British Library has also been hard at it in the Turning the Pages 2.0 project! Turning the Pages 2.0™ allows you to ‘virtually’ turn the pages of the library’s most precious books. You can magnify details, read or listen to expert commentary on each page, and store or share your own notes.

Clive Izard, Head of Creative Services at the British Library explains how it works in a small video clip. The value of digitisation that makes books accessible for reading AND research cannot be ignored – particularly when the technology is shared beyond the application of rare books.

How this compares with Google’s digitisation project, I don’t know. Perhaps someone can provide more information on that.

Work like this reminds me why I like the British Library ……… and I’m pleased that I have my own borrower card! Shame it expires in July and that I can’t be there to renew it!

Leadership Waves

Posted on January 24, 2007 by Judy O'Connell

A recent post by John Connell Hexagonal Leadership draws our attention to the use of metaphor in making sense of our actions and reactions in our education endeavours. John was responding to Don Ledingham’s Seven Sides of Educational Leadership.

John’s thoughts on the use of metaphor were timely, and made me realise that in my own way I also make use of metaphor to make sense of and to energise my work in ICT and learning. John referred to Greg Whitby’s Distributive Leadership ideas – and with a certain amount of synergy – here I was yesterday presenting Web 2.0 and some introductory material on blogging to Greg’s leadership team – using a metaphor of creating an impressionist painting together, full of light and shade, energy and vibrancy – new and different and contributed to by each member of the team in some way yet to be defined.

Yesterday’s session was about creating those first sweeping brushstrokes – shaping outlines of our new educational vision for 2007.

Monet himself provided a new vision of movement for Western Artists – drawn from tradition and cultures already in existence. His art is based on the use of color, which has to “draw” the motive without resorting to line.

I see our 2007 Web 2.0 initiatives very much in terms of the colour and vibrancy of Monet, and in the shape of the Hokusai wave! We are poised for significant changes.

Our system of schools will launch into a new era of Web 2.0 with the start of the new academic year. Amongst other things, one of our first priorities will be the use of blogging to empower communication, information dissemination, reflection, dialogue, inspiration etc. We have created a network of leadership blogs that will link the emerging energy of ideas and innovation in learning and teaching between all parts of our educational enterprise.

Nothing new to John and the scottish GLOW initiatives – but a great leap forward for us in our group of schools ‘downunder’.

YouTube – Time’s Best Inventions 2006

Posted on December 15, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

It’s been an interesting year in technology. Nintendo invented a video game you control with a magic wand. A new kind of car traveled 3,145 miles on a single gallon of gas. A robot learned to ride a bike. Somebody came up with a nanofabric umbrella that doesn’t stay wet. But only YouTube created a new way for millions of people to entertain, educate, shock, rock and grok one another on a scale we’ve never seen before. That’s why it’s Time’s Invention of the Year for 2006.

Apple Conference – Day 2 Rocks

Posted on December 13, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Led off by Greg Whitby, we had several sessions today that genuinely gave us the opportunity to review and reflect, and find some future directions. After asking some hard questions, we were fortunate to have some indepth case-studies, from different parts of Australia, showing how some successes were achieved.

Leadership is about asking intelligent questions. One of the most important questions to consider is what niche schools have in the life our students. The issue is relevancy. Students, as we know from the inspirational presentations of Marco, are finding new ways about going about the learning process. Even in our mainstream schools with mainstream curriculum, students are embracing Web 2.0. So in looking at the future of schooling we can make good use of School 2.0 planning and ideas to challenge and reshape our focus.

We can run with Greg’s framework:

Enhancing student learning outcomes by individualising and integrating learning “learning with each other”

Leading

Building leadership teams and fostering innovation
Demonstrating new ways of learning and modelling good practice.

Supporting

Investing in the appropriate tools for learning
Making schools more inclusive – new models.

Growing

Investing in individual professional growth and learning
Opening the school to the world – the world to the classroom, e.g. learning community’s projects.

Good day for collaborative thinking and learning! for leaders!