This is my response to the thoughts going through my head after reading Ken Eustace’s Web3.0 presentation and Judith Comfort’s post. I am copying it across from Sosius as I am really tired today and I need to do something else!
If I feel up to it, I will try to sort out my ideas a little better.
I need to sort out a lot of my own feelings as I go through this course – my head feels like some kind of “ping-pong” game inside as everything bounces around in there. So some of this will be random:
Personally, I am becoming addicted to trying out new technologies – I feel that I am like a bee, buzzing from flower to flower, tasting what is there, but not lingering for long. Like the bee, I return “home” and try to create something out of what I have gathered – but unlike the bee, I am not sure how successful I am being. Most of this is working for me on a personal level, but I am not able in my present working circumstances to put any of what I am gathering and learning into a teaching context.
So, I have made a website – which I enjoy developing and using – but the majority of visitors are librarian colleagues. It is very early days as yet, so I should not really be too concerned, but I need to get it used by the school community. Am I responding to what they want/what is needed or am I trying to impose what I want to do on them?
On Meebo last night, I watched “A vision of students today” – video on YouTube. My son, who is 16, watched it with me. I thought about my own schooling. Did teachers worry so much about *how* I learned or how I spent my own time? Or did they help me to learn in a way they thought best? Did I learn a lot and leave school and university reasonably educated and ready for a life spent constantly learning? Was I able to read, find out, concentrate, think etc?
People describe today’s students working in the library – listening to iPods, accessing Facebook, texting – and oh yes, trying to write an assignment. They say we should be tapping into this way of working in order to reach students. I am not so sure. Are we going to create a generation of people who cannot concentrate on one thing long enough to actually develop their own understanding? Can they actually do any sustained reading when all around them is “chatter”?
So I come back to myself – I said that I am becoming like the students – I have so many websites open at the moment in the browser and I flit from one to the other, in between doing other aspects of my work. But, I had the grounding in the days before all of this technology. Our students are growing up in this world.
And then I look around my present library – soon to be re-furbished – and watch the students here who are using books to learn (as we don’t have any ICT in here as yet). And I talk to the staff, who, for the most part, do not even use email. So what do I do next? What kind of library do I want to create and what kinds of things will happen in it?
So, I have rambled on and asked questions rather than answering the ones I was supposed to! Sorry, but my mind is full of questions this morning…
I must be getting tired! Or real life is grabbing hold of me again? I feel I have become so immersed in a Web2.0 world and am so excited and inspired by all that I am reading and experiencing that I cannot immediately look up and engage with a real person!
The podcasting presentation was excellent and I feel that I could try this out, when the opportunity presents itself. I have saved the presentation and also all of the links so that I can return to it later on.
I also dropped in on the “chat” session just to see that it works OK before our session at 8.00 pm tonight. If I have the energy, I may add to this post after that.
This afternoon, I tried the session on The Seamless School Library – well, that had me bowled over but totally drained at the same time. This is not a quick Word document or a .pdf, but a whole website to explore. It was too much for an afternoon – trying to fit this between the normal library stuff. I am also getting quite tired as I have been staying up too late reading stuff and then I cannot sleep as so much is whirring around my head!
Anyway, I will again come back to that section at a later date as I cannot cope with it today.
So, I spent some time working on the Library Online website. Having watched the social bookmarking presentation, I was reminded that I could use the “link rolls” script from Delicious to show visitors to the Subject pages the latest links for each subject that I have added to Delicious. I have only made a few of these pages as yet, because I have not reached the point where I am working closely with teachers. I just made these as examples – although the English one is starting to develop because the Sixth Form students are starting to ask me for help – wonderful!
Update: What great fun it was chatting to other school librarians on Meebo last night. Now I can see why teenagers get so addicted to MSN! Then I spent some time setting up Skype and got through to a friend in Australia. I still feel so starry-eyed by the power of technology! Maybe that is why I chose the picture below as my main avatar!
Well, I have had a short play with VoiceThread to see how it works. As I don’t have a microphone on this work PC, I have had to type the comments. But I now know how easy it is to use.
Please don’t make comments about this as I know it is very basic! I will try to do something a bit better when I can find the time and a quiet space!
A more difficult day for me this one. I dipped in and out of the course all day and switched between various things that I needed to do in the library. I read Judy O’Connell’s blog regularly, so I already had an idea about her presentation. I continue to be in awe of the things that she does. But it is obvious that she is enabled to work on a different level to most of us in the UK as she has a huge library (we can see it developing on her blog), she has staff and as a teacher-librarian she is able to have her own classes.
Anyway, I will carry on following her as I pick up so many ideas from influential librarians like her!
David’s presentation, and the live session, was really amazing. I now know that I love something that has the human voice as well as a visual presentation! Although this kind of media center would not be possible or very appropriate in my present school, it was wonderful to see the things that are possible elsewhere.
Also, I must admit that I find I am still able to be awed by the power of technology! Whereas students have grown up with this, and so very rarely get that wow factor, I say “Wow” all of the time. From someone who used a dip-pen then later a sliderule at school to this…
I have watched the presentation about Social Bookmarking – nice to have another one with a voice narrating. I think that I learn a lot from this kind. I really like VoiceThread in particular as the commenting is nice!
Anyway, back to the presentation. Again, I don’t think that I found out a lot of new stuff as I have been using both Delicious and Diigo for some time. But it did remind me of some things and introduced me to some new terms. I have favourited it on SlideShare and will return to it at a later date to think about it some more. I was interested in the RISAL project and will certainly explore that more when I have the time.
The second presentation : “The Os of Web 2.0: Openness, Originality and Others” is in PDf format and I have downloaded it and printed it out to read. I find it difficult to read long articles like this these days as they take a lot of concentration and I don’t really get the space and time for that – at school, everything is very busy; at home – well, mayhem would be a good word! Also, I am not used to it – I think that I am out of practise these days.
Anyway, I have begun a bubbl.us to show my learning network (I have used this before to create a sitemap for my Library Online site – although this needs updating).
Well, I am actually writing this on day 4, but that is because for some reason I couldn’t get to my blog last night. So I will have to write something for day 4 this evening, if I have the time!
I started the day thinking about participation on the course. A lot of SLN members from the UK have joined and yet I could see only a handful online and posting comments. Also it was apparent that many people were struggling with Sosius before they could actually get to work on the course. So I decided to write a quick guide to getting started and then I uploaded it to a couple of areas and notified everyone – I hope that it helps.
Also, thinking about all of the wonderful resources mentioned in the posts, I had begun to tag them on Diigo for myself and so I thought that it would be helpful to others if I offered to do this for everyone. Now, I know that it is a huge task and may be a bit impossible to achieve successfully. But I will try to do it as best I can.
So, to the actual course. What did I learn yesterday? I have only just begun my new job and the focus for my first year must be on designing and developing the new library. It is such a small school and so it is easy to talk to staff face to face. However, I have also been given the remit that I will help the school develop ICT in the future. I hope that I have opportunities to show some of these Web2.0 tools to staff – maybe at a training day. So, I will take the chance to learn as much as I can and try to suggest things to teachers where appropriate. I will also use the Library Online website to demonstrate some of them also and maybe develop a wiki for the Reading Group. Then I will have some practical examples to show.
We are in a difficult situation when a lot of the staff do not read their official emails! But I will have to try to find my way around this. So these are my thoughts about the presentation on professional development for staff with Web2.0.
As to the other presentation on mashups! This was a really steep learning curve for me. At least I think that I understand a little more about what they are, but I couldn’t get to grips with Yahoo Pipes. Maybe that was because I was trying to do this in too much of a hurry. It is difficult to make the mental space and time at home on an evening, when my boys are fighting me for the computer!
I will have to come back to this at a later date, when I can find a quiet time to really concentrate!
I am writing this with my laptop on my knee after everyone else has gone to bed – just about the only time I can find on a Saturday! I did sneak two hours this afternoon to work through presentations and discussions, but I think that the time zones have an effect as it was very quiet.
It has been interesting to read what others are doing, although I don’t feel that I have personally found much that is totally new to me so far. What is different is the ability some people have to use new technologies in their schools, either because they are teacher-librarians or because of the ethos of their particular school. So, I have heard of wikis etc before and have tried some of the tools myself, but not had much opportunity to use them in a teaching context – apart from the wiki I used at NCTC.
My present school is a very academic one and I am not sure as yet when I will be able to start encouraging the use of Web2.0. I did try with one department and gave them a detailed list and offered help – but there was no response.
I am supposed to be getting involved in ICT development in the school, when I have got the new library up and running – so maybe I will get more chance then.
|What I have tried out today is VoiceThread – this laptop has a microphone, so I was able to add some voice comments to someone else’s presentation. I would like to make one myself, so may try this out soon. Not sure what I will do as yet.
So, the course has now started and I am beginning to understand more about Sosius! I watched an interesting presentation about setting up a new library and it was such a contrast with what I am doing in my new job – a new school, lots of students and a huge space. Whereas here we are a small school in an historic building and I have a tiny space to develop.
I learned how to make comments on the Voicethread presentation – probably stupid ones(!) – and commented on the discussion. It will be nice to see if more UK librarians join in this evening as it has been pretty quiet today.
I may post more here later on if more discussions develop this evening. Otherwise, the issue is finding the time and the space over the weekend to take part. If I leave it until Monday, then we are back at school after Half Term and I don’t suppose I would be able to catch up.
Update at 23.46 – a bit late for this! I spent some more time looking at a presentation for tomorrow and seeing which friends were online – sad, eh! I can see some of the discussions starting to develop and will look at some of them again tomorrow, if I can make the time.
I remember many years ago a lot of school librarians doing online ICT training (can someone remind me what it was called?). This, however, is a huge step further as we are taking part alongside school librarians, teachers, ICT specialists and many others from across the globe. Exciting times!
First of all, we need to get to grips with Sosius – an online collaboration tool. I am feeling my way around this and have made contact with most of the participants in the course. Also, I have now posted a few comments to discussions.
I will be blogging here, hopefully on a daily basis, throughout the course to show the progress that I am making!
