Marketing and design in your library

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

I am delighted to be in Cairns at a full day workshop organised by the Catholic Education office for the schools in this area. “Contemporary School Library Design” – the whole day is designed to help schools look at their school libraries and to build or renovate school libraries that meet the needs of 21st century learners.

The first session of the day to set the scene was provided by Kevin Hennah. Kevin is a wonderful inspiration to many in Australia, using design and marketing ideas to repackage school libraries. Many of our teacher librarians are familiar with his work, and have already made transformations to their libraries – with either a lot of money or on a shoe-string budget.

80% of your loans are generated by 20% of your collection. Yes!! Kevin urges us to weed, weed, weed. Don’t pride yourself on the size of your collection – pride yourself on the quality and presention of your collection. No question, part of Kevin’s focus is to remind us of the hugely relevant focus of reading and literacy that our school libraries MUST retain in the age of digital learning.

The trick of great ‘merchandising’ is to cater for kids needs. First impressions count! Remember your visit to Boarders? The presentation of so many ‘front facing’ books is essential, as our kids are so image conscious. We must market ourselves. We must entice. So grab the flavour of this conversation and make your transformations. Kevin always talks about “prime real estate” – don’t put a big table in that space, with a tablecloth and some books. Think Borders and think clever.

School libraries have way too much signage. Return shute? make a list of all the things that frustrate you! Make sure you have lots of front facing books – and put them on the ends of your aisles.

Kevin loves the creative use of slat wall. But remember, to be careful what acrylics you buy and where you place these display units. Image Plastics are developing excellent perspex holders.

What we are aiming for – walking into a school library and thinking “wow”!! First impressions are so important! Retail book stores provide a powerful marketing ideas – take the ‘good stuff’ from retail, and package it into 21st century pedagogy. Use the base line of clean design, and a colour palette that allows you to change in the future.

Remember, don’t display your magazines by displaying them in alphabetical order!

My view for the future? I believe we have to renovate to innovate – to make books and digital engagement our prime focus, to sell our passion for learning by ‘marketing’ to each new audience! Clean, creative, gorgeous!

Kevin’s message is to take the flavour of possibilities – and translate them into your own setting. Make an impression – don’t be generic. Think outside the circle of traditional libraries. Be bold – and don’t let your teachers hold you back. Yes, it’s about change, and pedagogical innovation. Love life, love your library, love change!!

Connect and inspire – oh yeah!

Posted on February 21, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity to attend an ACEL conference held at the University of Wollongong (a hour and half drive from Sydney). This conference, around the theme of Tech-savvy Leadership and Learning, drew a good crowd. It was impressive to see a large number of attendees from the Department of Education Schools, who attended as part of an exercise in creating knowledge networks who could continue learning about innovation with ICT during the year.

The keynote speakers included key researchers from the University of Wollongong, who shared their work and their perspectives on learning in a digital age. I always appreciate hearing about research, as this adds significant value to our more anecdotal reflections on day-to-day classroom happenings. We test, experiment, play, get creative with pedagogy and researchers help us prove we are on the right track!

However, a number of us chatted between sessions, the more digitally savvy, social network connected attendees, and we were a little troubled by some statements made about social networking and digital learning. Some of the ‘push’ of the conference was ICT, PD, and the horrors of cyberbullying. For those coming new to new media, they needed to hear about the power of personal learning networks – but I’m afraid I might have been the only one to mention this.

One keynote speaker actually stated that ‘you can’t make friends via social networks like Facebook’. I shook my head, and wondered about all the wonderful professional contacts I have made via social networks – and the excitement in meeting them eventually F2F – building on professional respect, collaboration, sharing of resources and more.

This is not a new outcome at conferences – we are starting to see a digital divide emerging in that some people believe they can talk about and research digital learning environments and social networking without actually being active participants in that world! I like to see keynote speakers who can share their online digital identities with us, and prove to me that they really do understand the architecture of participation that is learning in our new century.

Nevertheless, it was a fabulous day. The attendees were very enthusiastic as far as I could tell. Thank you to Julie Reynolds, Principal of Cedars Christian College, who invited me to present a session at this ACEL conference. Julie’s enthusiasm, and that of her staff, was so wonderful. They are really working hard to make their school 21C friendly!

I guess what I tried to say in my presentation is to remind people that passion as to drive our connections – and that we cannot operate effectively in working with technology without social networking. I believe that PD is NOT the single answer – creating connections and promoting a shift in our mindsets is even more important. In fact, without flexibility, experimentation, collaboration, and innovation driven by our dialogue ‘with the crowd in the cloud’ it must might all be for nothing.

There is not much you can say in an hour – not really! So it was very nice to have people take the time to come and chat afterwards and say that they felt inspired to try! That’s the key thing – try – and the rest will take care of its self.

Here are my slides!

For those who visited earlier, thanks to @slideshare for fixing the embed problem. Twitter teams are the frontline of service!

Empathy and Meaning

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

Once again I’ve had a wonderful time participating in live blogging A Whole New Mind with students from Arapahoe High School. I wish I had time to do more – it’s an amazing experience.

This year I joined up for two classes, discussing chapters in the book by Daniel Pink. Using MeBeam, we could hear the students adding depth to their personal ideas, and challenging each other to think more deeply about the implications of each of the chapters for their schooling, their lives and society.

Karl Fisch set this up again this year at the A Whole New Mind 09 wiki. It’s the beginning of the year for me, so it’s not easy to help out much – this year two sessions had to be my limit. But the last class on the ‘roster’ happens to be at 6:15 am, so I can make it and still get to school. You can read more about the fishbowl discussion technique. Drop over to the CoverItLite replay of the blogging discussions.

My chapters for involvement this time were Empathy (where I caught up with Julie Lindsay, wonderful aussie who is head of Information Technology at Qatar Academy in Doha.) and Meaning.

I loved saying hi! to the students. Their efforts were very impressive – wonderful thoughtful discussions. Likewise, the students blogging, who were also listening to the conversation, were extending their thinking in a number of ways, responding to our feedback, throwing out questions to us, and holding their own once again in terms of highly valuable and reflective discussion.

It at wonderful way for me to start the year. It reminds me of the goals we are working towards at our school – embracing technology in immersive and interactive ways to promote 21st century learning of the best kind.

Karl is an inspiration to us downunder, providing concrete evidence of success in changing the way we manage our learning environment. Karl’s work helps me keep my focus.

Special thanks to the students who shared their thoughts with their external visitors. Next year when the call for people to be involved goes out I highly recommend that you consider joining in. It’s easy, and a great way to see 21st century learning in action.

Books are back again!

Posted on February 14, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

The St Joseph’s College Library (Brother Liguori Resources Centre) is coming back together again….thanks to planning, hard work, and the superb work of the whole team!

This week saw our new shelves arrive – minus the canopies of course! Those were ordered, along with new furniture, just this week. But the shelves and books have arrived, filling up our new spaces.

No, I’m not sharing all the ‘makeover’ yet – that’s for later. But just so that you know it’s really happening – here’s the Atlantis team working their magic. Hundreds of boxes were retrieved from their hiding spaces, laid out and sorted according to colour codes, before teams working under the direction of my library staff, began to restock our new shelves.

The boys have been desperately waiting for the books to come back. So week four of Term 1, and their passion for reading will see a huge number of books being borrowed again!

Big week, successful conclusion – even though it ended on Friday 13th.

Beecroft bush in the holidays

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

January is a time to stay at home for us this year, but it’s still holiday time in Beecroft. If you jump over our back fence you could scramble along the dry creek bed to meet up with the part of the bush at the bottom of Day Road in Cheltenham (edge of Malton Road). Once at the bottom of Day Road, you can walk down the bush track that connects to the Great North Walk which is a 250 km walking track that runs between Sydney to Newcastle. Phew!

The Great North Walk was developed from Gary McDougall’s and Leigh Shearer Heriot’s proposal for a ‘Sydney to Hunter Track’, consisting of about 300km of walking tracks, submitted to the Australian Bicentennial Authority in 1988. I have been told that it incorporates a few convict tracks along part of its route, but I have only ever walked parts closest to home. It is estimated that more than 40,000 local, interstate and international visitors use the walk annually, either taking the challenge of the full 12-16 day hike or enjoying shorter walks of one or two days in different sections of the walk.

The bush is very solitary – yet you also meet lots of people walking or on bikes along the way.

Here are some mobile phone shots of the walk near home.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Heyjude’s posterous

Seven things you don’t need to know…about me!

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

Sorry – the tags for the 7 things meme have been dropping in and I have been procrastinating while promising on Twitter to get on with it!

Do I even have seven things to dig up? Some of the entries I have read have been hilarious, and interesting. My favourite is always the eclectic collection of things from John Connell.

Oh well, in my crazy, ordinary, silly life here are 7 more useless bits of information that you don’t want to read:

English was my third language to learn, but it is definitely my master language now. Hungarian then German have fallen by the wayside, and while German is largely incomprehensible to me, Hungarian remains familiar and will help the family along in our visit to Budapest in April.
While I admit I failed the bus licence test (only did it once), I reckon I can drive anything. My very first car was a a tiny 479 cc two-cylinder double clutch number, and it cost nothing to run!
I have an addiction – chocolate!
My only achievement as a pimply teenager was to score 9th in the State in the Music in the HSC. Despite that, I have lost my piano playing skills.
I’ve always enjoyed singing in choirs since I was 6 though – but have never had singing lessons and am just an ordinary alto. This years gamble will be to sing Handel’s Messiah with the Sydney Philharmonia massed choir.
I’m a definite Libra. I love balance, and get very sick at heart in an unbalanced environment. I will get quarrelsome and annoying if things are unfair. In Grade 5 I led a classroom ‘walkout’ against our teacher, and we played netball in protest against unfair discipline in the classroom. Despite this ‘bent’ I am uber conservative about most things in life.
I hate getting up early in the morning!

Time to tag seven unsuspecting bloggers:

Fast Forward

Posted on January 3, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

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more about “Fast Forward“, posted with vodpod

So lets see…my standard toolkit includes: Wordpess, Gmail, Google calendar, Google chat, and a host of other Google doc tools, Delicious, Nings galore, facebook, twitter, flickr, flickrCC, SnipThis, TwitThat, Feedly, Clip to Evernote, Tumblr, Kwout, Wikispaces, Wetpaint, Youtube and other video sites, and of course Vodpod to store my most important video finds, skype, Elluminate as well as WizIQ and Flashmeeting. Of course, there are raft of tools that are associated with virtual learning environments – a Second Life for me! That is not all, but that is already making my mind exhausted when I think of the shift in my ‘way of being’ – exhausted not for my self, but for the communication barrier that exists between me and so many of those that I work with.

More rumination….while I make a small movie from text!

What I am actually a bit worried about is that the pace of change has been so great, that the gap between the digitally adept and the digitally challenged is getting wider and wider, and perhaps will become too big a gap to bridge. I think I should settle for rumination, rather than worry, and let 2009 take care of itself 🙂

Christmas Eddies

Posted on December 23, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

Not everyone knows, or even cares about the annual Edublogs Awards.

But there are enough of us around to make the annual Eddies a great way to find out about new blogs, catch up on old favorites, have discussions, consider the evolution of Web 2.0, encourage those who have got involved, have arguements with the ‘old timers’ …whatever it takes to make a fun competition.

Thanks to the fantastic team who put on the awards this year: Josie Fraser, Dave Cormier, James Farmer, and to my fabulous friend Jo kay who hosted the event ‘inworld’ at Jokaydia supported by the EdTechTalk crew who provided a web-based audio stream of the event. I missed the event…being away in the country with no internet access. But I did catch up with some of the news via twitter and got a Christmas Eddie surprise all of my own!

I caught up with the Ustream later, and I loved Dave’s Top 10 Edtech News etc thingers of 2008.

Congrats to all. Congrats to those in the Best library/librarian award category – you are all sensational and certainly each of you are an inspiration to my work and my play online.

Thank you to all those amazing blog readers who cast a vote to support Heyjude. You guys really rock! because you gave me a super fun Christmas Eddie Pressie!

Thank you to James and Edublogs! I WILL be making contact to get into using Edublogs Campus – a great prize, and just the right time for our small efforts at innovation at Joeys. I believe every school needs an Edublogs Campus…so I’m looking forward to our explorations in 2009.

Virtual hugs to you all!

Make sure you visit the other inspirational Library bloggers:

Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog
UoL Library Blog
Paul Walk’s weblog
Hey Jude
Joyce Valenza
Blue Skunk Blog
TechnoTuesday

And the Edublog Winners for 2008 in all categorys are:

1. Best individual blog – The English Blog

2. Best group blog – SCC English

3. Best new blog – Angela Maiers

4. Best resource sharing blog – Free Technology for Teachers

5. Most influential blog post – Order for Closure

6. Best teacher blog – The Cool Cat Teacher

7. Best librarian / library blog – Hey Jude

8. Best educational tech support blog – Teachers love Smartboards

9. Best elearning / corporate education blog – eLearning Technology

10. Best educational use of audio – Ed Tech Talk

11. Best educational use of video / visual- Steve Spangler blog

12. Best educational wiki- Flat Classroom Project 2008

13. Best educational use of a social networking service- Classroom 2.0

14. Best educational use of a virtual world- Discovery Education Second Life

15. Best class blog- Extreme Biology

16. Lifetime achievement- David Warlick

‘Tis the season to be merry!

Posted on December 22, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

Choir practice, Christmas shopping, meeting friends and relatives!! It’s that time of year again, so let me wish you all a happy and restful Christmas and New Year.

Australian Christmas wishes to you all!

Powering Practice in 09

Posted on December 16, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

The end of the school year – yes! The end of planning changes – no! Last week an intrepid Powerful Learning Practice team at Joeys gathered to plan for their work in 09. Our day was about developing concrete steps forward, as well as sharing, dreaming, and wondering how to move forward.

Dean Groom came along for the day, and acted as facilitator extraordinaire – an outside voice always makes a difference. Best of all, Ross (Headmaster) came along for the beginning hour or two, and urged us to look for achievable gains..even if small to begin with. So, true to his intention, we have come up with some small but achievable actions to begin to turn the learning focus around.Our focus will be on Year 7 in terms of a whole school project, even though each of us will be doing things in our own classes, we figure that a full school focus will add that extra level change.

First up – we will introduce all Year 7 to their new school and their new life at Joeys via a Ning. Each boy will join the Year 7 Ning, and use it to build up their profiles, network socially within the school, and achieve what is traditionally done in Year 7 in terms of ‘introducing myself’ into a new school environment.

Second – the reason for this first jump into a Ning, familiarisation, and establishing connections is to move to the next phase of the project – digital citizenship. Again, the Ning will model online behaviours, allow for indepth work in the area, and expand the boys understanding of digital citizenship with a broader range of tools, so that the learning landscape becomes embedded in their online world. Amongst the tools chosen for early use will be Glogster – so that students can fashion their classroom projects (some of which will still be relatively analogue depending on the class they are in) and enhance their wikispaces accordingly. Hey, this will be a new take on the inevitable poster/powerpoint activity! I am going to use the new eduGlogster to set up accounts for all the boys in Year 7, and Anthony will set up the Ning.

Finally – we will of course use a variety of tools as the project progresses. But the idea will be to embrace digital citizenship and online learning as a normal part of schooling. Cool.

We are not sure how it will evolve – it’s a work in progress. The main thing is that we are embedding online learning as mainstream for these boys – so regardless of whether they are at school for study or at home for homework, they can connect and continue their learning and thinking. I hope that my work with my Year 7 English class (which I also asked for, so I could ‘do’ rather than ‘mentor’ all the time) will help us to better understand the possibilities for us at our school at our point in the learning journey revolution.

I have to thank my PLP team for being so keen to do this, given the remarkable constraints that the workload in a 24/7 boarding school imposes. We don’t get much time at all to participate in the PLP online Ning, but we do chip away at it at school, taking ideas and enthusiasm from the PLP project run by Will Richardson and Sherly Nussbaum-Beach which is empowering our transformation. We’ve embedded an official time each fortnight within our teaching schedules so that we can be guaranteed to meet and evolve our own understanding as well as our student’s learning. We have online collaborative tools that enhance our connectivity – Google Chat and Google docs are our mainstay at the moment. We will probaby also use Microsoft Onenote within school too.

Will we go into virtual worlds together? I certainly hope so, as there is such a strong interest emerging in Australia now, and Jokaydia is getting to be such a central hub for developments in the school and tertiary sectors.

Roll on 2009!