Building an education strategy for metadata

Posted on September 4, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

On quite a different note, but nevertheless favourite topic of debate for me…well not debate really as teachers and educators don’t think about this…is a metadata focus.

I was diverted back to this track by a post from the Really Strategies Blog and a planned focus group meeting in New York City on the knowledge and usage of industry standards and metadata.

Now, as an information professional, metadata means a lot to me! But for the average educator reading this blog, take it from me – without metadata our learning management systems, our knowledge management structures, and almost everything we are building up in our online world is dependent on GOOD metadata.

What is metadata? Well, it is information about any resource either physical or digital, and enables management and organisation of information. Metadata is used to facilitate discovery and retrieval of information; enables data interchange; separates content, structure, presentation and behaviour; provides the opportunity to enrich information about resources; and ensures persistence in resources. In other words, as information is stockpiled, you get to be able to find it!

This isn’t the place to go into details, but standards for metadata are available from a number of sources, and are important as they allow consistency, help to establish authority and allow ease of access for users (that’s us! 🙂 )

Some very important global standards are in operation, and include Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (which includes an education set) and Learning Object Metadata from IEEE. A good example of the practical, vital and valuable application of metadata in Australian education is demonstrated by EDNA (Education Network Australia). This organisation recognised early on the essential role of metadata.

The EdNA Metadata Standard is based on the internationally recognised Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES) and is consistent with the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS). The work of maintaining the EdNA Metadata Standard is conducted by the EdNA Metadata Standard Working Group which reports to the AICTEC Standards Sub-Committee and the education.au limited Board.

The problem is that school systems, and individual schools implementing knowledge management initiatives or learning management systems haven’t (on the whole) caught up with the priority of metadata. It’s a vital component of good Web 2.0 implementation of collaborative learning cultures.

At the end of 2005 I had the good fortune to work on a project (for a national online digital media delivery system used by Australian schools) developing a complete metadata set for the company. I guess I have a bit of an idea of what’s involved.

So I would love to be a fly on the wall and hear what the meeting in New York comes up with in discussion on how publishers are using metadata in their digital asset and content management workflows well as for enhancing content for reuse and product development.

However, some of the key points for discussion at that meeting have significant relevance for schools and learning or content management systems now and in the future. Here are some of them I’ve adapted for schools:

How will schools achieve sophisticated search today – or plan for it in the future?
Is there a way to easily share information with other schools or sectors?
What does an education enterprise metadata strategy actually mean in a practical sense? What is the value to schools and organisations that have one?
How will schools manage their digital rights in this environment?
Are schools achieving success with Digital Asset Management and content management systems and/ what are the critical success factors?
Is automating RSS or other types of syndication feeds an imperative?

Come on education – wake up to metadata, content management workflows, content reuse and information dissemination.

Web 2.0 as platform

Posted on August 30, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Vision is one thing, but getting down to it and doing what’s needed to unite 32 local authorities to create a fully authenticated national learning community is quite another!

The latest podcast from John Connell says it all! In addition to describing the growth of the Scottish Schools Digital Network and its next phase of implementation through GLOW, we are given an execellent overview of social software, purposeful learning, current technology developments and future capabilities of “Web as platform”.

….the time will come sooner or later where all I will need to be fully productive will be a number of browsers, possibily just one, the device interface itself will simply be the browser.

Tracking the seemingly daily developments in web apps it is easy to see this ‘future’ rushing towards us. However, John’s observation that Web as platform will contribute most to closing the digital divide is of particular interest and worth hanging out for.

With bandwidth and infrastructre costs, coupled with problems of distance, Australian school communities will be real winners in this new environment. But for now Australian school systems struggle with delivering standards that match the SSDN and GLOW developments. While individual schools have faced the challenges head on, and systems have done various things in different parts of the county (some very effective), the country as a whole will find it very difficult to match the Scottish initiatives for quite some time.

This podcast is well worth a listen!

Synchronising my personal information world!

Posted on August 10, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

As a fan of Firefox (and now of Flock) I thought it worth mentioning that Firefox has an extension from Google to help you syncrhronise your activites.

While social bookmarking with tools like Del.ic.ious has made a huge impact (and improvement) on the way we can store information about our web resources, I still like the option to synchronise between my computers.

After a bit of a skirmish with Google Desktop – which I find very useful for indexing my machine – I am interested to see how effective this Firefox extension will be.

From Google Labs:

If you use Firefox on more than one computer then you will be well served by looking at the Google Browser Synch tool.

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent
cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

You can encrypt all of the information that flows between your computer and Google.

Blogged with Flock

So What’s Changed? – Reflections on Education.au Seminar

Posted on August 5, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

So what’s changed?

The experience of attending the Education.au seminar last friday was just fantastic, and for me ‘what’s changed?’ is a lot! I only got into blogging in May this year, after hearing a presentation of Stephen Abrams at a SirsiDynix Roadshow event in Melbourne in May. This presentation set my mind going on Web 2.0 – and was a neat follow up from being shown EPIC 2015. The context was set, and blogging began.

All the while I was reflecting about the learning environment of our schools, and realised that in blogging and reading blogs I was learning at a faster rate than I had ever done before – and enjoying it!

In a sense the Education.au Seminar showed what personalised learning is all about, and engagement with and through technologies is what kids are about. They are naturally moving into and around in this environment- but our education platform isn’t there yet. By getting into the blogging around this event we began to create a collaborative social network of our own educators – something we need to do much more of if we are to understand and create frameworks that empower our students. By becoming a blogger myself this year I am now able to operate differently in this environment and can create… where before I just knew that something was missing.

It is good that we have an organsation such as Education.au pushing the agenda here in Australia. We need more of these seminars. And I read with interest what Fang wrote about the evaluations. People that came to the seminar were in different headspaces – and for those that these technologies were ‘new’ or ‘newish’ I can well understand that they would have wanted clearer directions on ‘what next’ or ‘how to’. That’s our job too as we blog with each other, and in fact this heyjude blog was created just for the purpose of helping me learn and find out, and to help newbies along as well.

But some people need clearer help, and I did find a few months ago that running an ‘Introduction to Blogging’ course was a great experience for me! And people came along, keen to learn, but not quite ready to do it all alone. Two hours later lots of blogs were launched and some a going great guns. As it is with our students, we have to help learners learn!

I found the ideas covered in the seminar interesting, sometimes with conflicting opinions, but all part of the evolving dialogue. I had FUN. I met some great people. I heard some great ideas.

I found some of the concepts conveyed by Phillip Adams to be obvious for educators, but perhaps a bit novel for some of the others? It would be interesting to know really. But I couldn’t quite agree with the whole ‘media as a way of presenting a common agenda’ thing. I can’t see how warped or biased media, or conservative media or any other kind of controlled or semi controlled media is better than open communication of the blogosphere. It is not media that determines the quality of what is being presented. Didn’t media help create some of the most restrictive regimes in the world? Aren’t there still places in the world that try desperately to restrict freedom of speech in order to maintain some kind of social control?

So the new media of social software is here and is already influencing peoples ideas. I don’t believe it is any more dangerous than ‘traditional’ media ever was. What is dangerous, and has always been dangerous, is mass hysteria, mis-information, cultural bias, cultural chaos.

What I do agree with is the need for mediation, and learning to select, process, evaluate, and synthesise through knowledge and wisdom, based on strong, kind, ethical democratic values. We need to help our students to be caring and ethical, and to use knowledge wisely. I don’t believe traditional media is as good as Allan cracks it up to be. I think that is why the journalists created EPIC 2015 – they understood that the changing communcation landscape had huge implications for how people will engage with information with each other and around the globe.

I was thrilled to meet James Farmer, though I have to say that I hoped to hear more stuff from James. I think that his presentation was a good one in that it allowed those who were newish to these ideas come to understand the ‘stance’ that we need to take if we are going to re-focus our minds to working with Web 2.0 more fluently and effectively. It was important to talk about and promote Edublogs.org etc. James, thanks for all the work you have done on this. But I REALLY wanted to hear more innovation from James – but thats just me and where I am at with my own learning.

I was thrilled to meet all the other guys too, and to see the great team in action. I would love to be ‘up there’ with them all running and doing and managing and inspiring others.

FutureLab stuff was nice too – but I don’t get very excited about these types of global hookups. Anyone could have showed the videos (yes, they were cool!) and anyone could have read the words to match the slide. At the SIRSIDYNIX roadshow, we had a similar thing – a powerpoint designed by Stephen Abram, but presented by someone else. I got more out of that with a live presentation, than I did with bad lighting and a voice rattling off a content dense paper – even though I do know it was good and packed with information and ‘quotable quotes’.

In future, best to have a focus on the person – proper video conference stuff – or forget it! Anyway, I thought I was going to see a live person. Funny how we like our technology to work well, isn’t it?

At the end of it all, I am fascinated by the work that FutureLab is doing – but it is ‘way out there’ and really just points the direction rather than telling us how we NOW, right now can do things in school.

On that note I would have loved to hear from a real practitioner – grass roots stuff – talking about kids and how they and the teacher are using social networking tools to transform their learning and teaching.

How about that for another seminar?

Well done everyone! 🙂

I can’t wait to hear the next batch of presentations at the Global Summit 2006, and hope to meet some of the participants from this seminar there again.

If I can, I will be blogging live again! 😉

Digital Students @ Analog Schools

Posted on August 1, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

I would like to introduce you to Marco Torres a social studies teacher, media coach, and education technology director at San Fernando High School. He has received numerous honors and awards for his work helping students empower themselves through the mastery of multimedia. He serves as one of Apple’s Distinguished Educators and is an advisory board member of The George Lucas Educational Foundation.

Not that I was able to attend the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston from the 17th to the 20th, but the blogosphere is agog with the ‘inspiration’ of this educator.

I know that we have a job ahead of us in convincing our teachers to engage with new technologies and change their thinking in order to engage with the Google Generation. But nothing is better than hearing the need for change from students.

Click Here to see a movie made by digital learners about how they are trapped in schools who still teach using analog strategies. This is American. This is College. But this is reality, and so this neatly packaged movie clip expresses student thoughts nicely, using media to communicate the message – that teachers NEED to change.

Students find their voice through multimedia.

Marc’s title words on his website are a motivational call to us all…..

stay curious, stay hungry, be creative!

Thanks to the 21st Century Collaborative for this info.

Cheap access, cool tool

Posted on July 31, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Cool Tool: Digital Library Cards

Teachers, technologists, and teacher librarians are always on the lookout for new tools and new deals to help in the research process.

Some time ago I downloaded Flock, intending to try this product out for information gathering and information dissemination.

So go ahead and read about good value digital library cards. The post from Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools is a salient reminder of the changes that have taken place in the information access business – and the new things we can do if we shop around. I guess some might be interested in the NY Public Library Card. Our own NYPLC?

However, the interesting thing to me is the use of Flock web snippets and blogging tool to create this post. I like the feature of dropping web snippets onto a storage space on the fly, which is then available for comment and compilation when I am ready to blog. This snippet can be text or an image. I am not sure about image placement yet, but this “grab and use” from one place technique is great!

I need to be able to move images around and position them in relation to the message. So far this needs more testing for me to be happy with it. However, as an overall approach I think Flock is going to be well worth trying further – particularly with Blogger to speed up creating posts.

There is far more to explore, but I’ll leave the rest of that exploration up to you!

Blogged with Flock

Students, technology and literacy

Posted on July 27, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Students tend to be up-to-date with technology, and increasingly own an expensive range of personal items such as MP3 players, iPods, laptops and widescreen televisions according to a BBC News report last year. This is of course the whole thing about education and teachers – keeping up with the intuititive adoption of technology that earmarks the modern learning.

It begs the question – just how are young people are engaging with digital media – especially when it has not been designed to be explicitly educational. What are they learning in terms of skills, networking and collaboration? The way our students are using technology outside school is changing, and so are the ways they learn. Ultimately schools will need to respond to such ‘informal’ learning with digital media, games consoles, the internet and mobile phones.

The BBC news report March 2006 Experts seek 2020 vision, explains the focus of personalised learning for this ‘expert group’ investigation. The summary of their review charter looks like a brief that any education system can apply to their vision and thinking right now……

teaching and learning strategies, especially in literacy and numeracy

best use of setting and grouping

improving parental engagement

how personalised learning can close the achievement gap and boost social mobility

addressing the needs of gifted and talented children

use of ICT and pupil data to personalise learning

the potential for workforce reform to support personalisation

utilising flexibilities in the National Curriculum

collaboration between schools to deliver educational opportunities.

I find this brief curious and interesting for the possible connections – which I hope these ‘experts’ will make.

Literacy is of course a burning issue for humanity – and has always been so. It is important not to let this priority be swamped by the emerging trends in technology and social networking tools and gadgets.

Tom Peters in his ALA TechSource blog wrote a few posts recently that can be juxtaposed quite nicely in order to inform our thinking re 2020 vision:

Peter wrote:

” I think everyone agrees that reading words printed on paper, in solitude (even though there may be others around us, as in a library or on a subway), and in silence is currently the dominant reading mode. We can call this “PSS” reading: paper, solitude, silence. When youngsters first learn how to read, often they read out loud, even when they are alone, but they quickly learn that reading in silence is more socially acceptable, easier, and quicker.”

PPS reading has been the dominant mode of reading for the last several centuries.

Yes, and now things are changing, and digital media of various kinds are moving in on the reading ‘literacy’ scene. We need to recognise and work with these developments, moving beyond the discussions of the turn of the century years which focussed on ‘visual literacy’ and ‘digital literacy’. We must focus on literacy in various forms and in various access points. PPS reading is not the only true or exalted form of reading. But PPS reading still a core skill or technique – for the time being anyway.

Peter wrote:

” Our collective historical consciousness probably will come to realize and accept that, although the ascendancy and dominance of PSS reading was an historical fact that cannot be denied, there is nothing inherent in reading on paper that ipso facto makes that act superior to all other modes of reading.”

Switch now to PP ICE devices!!

Peter says

” The new age I see dawning is the age of the personal, portable information / communication / entertainment device. Granted, that’s a long gray name for a bright new age, but if you vocalize the acronym—PP ICE Device—it has certain melodious qualities.”

I agree with him – we DO need to take the device era seriously, because these devices, coupled with our technology access, mark (highlight?) our slide/transition into a new global era – which will become as radically different to what what before as the shift in society after the Gutenberg press.

We knew it was coming…Al Rogers and Marshal McLuhen were heralding the changes late last century. But now we can see the shape it is taking with the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and social networking tools and structures. This was not understood or predicted.

The 20th century canvas painted with broad brush strokes is now being refined and defined with images of PP ICE devices!!

Web 2.0 and searching!

Posted on July 24, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

While I have been away from my blogging my bloglines has filled to bursting with news and developments in the blogosphere. It will take a few weeks of intensive reading and thinking to get back on track.

However, a message in from ReadWrite Web is important to share to keep the discussion going about web searching and the technologies driving this. It is particularly important to be aware of changes and developments if we are working from a digital/information literacy focus with a view to supporting student research processes. We need to understand what is happening in the field, and be aware of the impact of changes on the strategies that we promote.

Read the full post from Read/Write Web, and learn about 3rd generation search technologies.

“Traditional search engines are (were?) based on information retrieval technologies. They implement operations such as boolean queries, proximity searches, text relevance and link analysis.”

“Third-generation search technologies are designed to combine the scalability of existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models; they bring into the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialized capabilities that make information more productive.”

OK – then we had better start revising our information literacy strategies pronto to incorporate these changes.

Part two will be along soon!

Managing Digital: Innovations, Initiatives & Insights

Posted on June 18, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

The 21st Annual Computers in Libraries conference and exhibition was held in Washington, D.C., on March 22-24, 2006.

Computers in Libraries is the leading conference for librarians and information professionals who need to know about the latest technologies, equipment, software, and services available.

Even if you couldn't attend the Computers in Libraries 2006 Conference, you can read the articles, view the powerpoint prentations, listen to the podcasts, or visit the web sites of the many presenters including Debbie Abilock (of NoodleTools fame), Joyce Valenza, and Alice Yucht, all of whom have the school library perspective.

There are almost five dozen presentations. Topics include:

Plagiarism: Confrontation or Collaboration?
Virtual School Libraries and 21st-Century Service
We Get the Picture: Visual Literacy in the Media Center and Beyond
Podcasting 101
The Exploding Future of Social Communication
Searching the New Digital Formats
Using RSS for Really Savvy "Resourcery
How Bloglines Made Me Look Brilliant
Collaborative e-Learning communities
Failing to innovate – Not and option
Many more

Available from InfoToday here.

Cut and paste – a research skill in Web 2.0

Posted on June 14, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

I have been reading with interest the discussions on OZTL_NET about 'cut and paste – a research skill'. Opinions have varied about appropriate strategies to encourage critical examination of information, and best use of technology to facilitate gathering and analysing information. Concensus seems to support good use of Word and a web browser to achieve the required result.

The post from Barbara Combes from the School of Computer and Information Science at Edith Cowan University is worth sharing on this topic before pointing out future possibilities.

From Barbara:

How to be smart technology users and take notes?
Students are instructed to open a word document as well as the website.

First action – in the word doc create your bibliographic entry using whatever style your school endorses.

Second action – alt-tab to switch to the website. Copy and paste if you need to by copying, alt-tab to the word doc and paste. HIGHLIGHT the copied text to indicate that these are not your words.

Third action – underneath the copied text/graphic write a commentary -why did you copy it? What does it say? Why is it relevant to your studytopic. Why is this piece of information important.

Fourth action – all notes MUST be handed in as a portfolio with the final copy of the assignment AND these are included in the assessment rubric, along with the bibliographic data.

Two main criteria of the assessment rubric:

1. You MUST indicate the depth and breadth of your research by using intext referencing and an end of text reference list.

2. You MUST indicate your understandings by using your own words.If you fail to meet these 2 criteria then the assignment is worth NOTHING. It is only a collection of someone else's words and understandings. All the student has demonstrated is the skill to cut and paste using a keyboard.Students have a copy of the rubric BEFORE they begin the assignment (it is not supposed to be a mystery) and take time to ensure that they clearly understand what they have to do, expectations and consequences.

In other words – throw the responsibility for their learning back to the student. Professional development and the backing of your administration as a whole school approach is the only way to ensure that this approach will work and that studentswill learn how to use technology appropriately, efficiently andeffectively. Ask the teachers what they are assessing – student outcomesand undertandings or the ability to cut and paste?

Future developments will take the essence of this approach further, and be far more flexible, intutitive and embedded in best research practice of information professionals.

From the Centre of History and Media of George Mason University comes news of the 'educated browser' FireFox Scholar. According to this report the Web browser, the premier platform for research now and in the future, will achieve the kind of functionality that the users of libraries and museums would expect in an age of exponentially increasing digitization of their holdings,

" We are calling the project SmartFox: The Scholar's Web Browser, and it will enable the rich use of library and museum web collections with no cost—either in dollars, or probably more importantly, in secondary technical costs related to their web servers–to institutions. This set of tools will be downloadable and installable on any of the major open-source browsers related to the increasingly popular Firefox web browser: Firefox itself, Mozilla, and the latest versions of Netscape and the AOL browser (all based on the Firefox code base). SmartFox will enable users, with a single click, to grab a citation to a book, journal article, archival document, or museum object and store it in their browser. Researchers will then be able to take notes on the reference, link that reference to others, and organize both the metadata and annotations in ways that will greatly enhance the usefulness of, and the great investment of time and money in, the electronic collections of museums and libraries."

Read the full report here. It is also worth exploring some of their other tools here.