So how was your holiday?

Readers of this blog (yes, both of you) could be forgiven for thinking I’ve been on an extended holiday. It’s been a long time between posts. Usually at this time of year, I’m settling into a new semester, wondering why the school summer holiday always goes so fast. But this year there was no holiday for The Infobrarian …

A few weeks after my last blog post, I started a new job, as branch librarian at a new public library. Yes, public library! After more years than I’m willing to admit, I decided to leave the relatively cloistered life of school teaching and school libraries to join a real-world library. And I’m loving it! OK, so having no summer holiday came as a bit of a shock, but it’s been so busy – and so thoroughly engaging – that I really didn’t mind working right through December and January. We did get days off for Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year and of course Australia Day, but for the rest of the time, the new library was open Monday to Saturday.

As well as a shiny new library, we have lots of shiny new books, shiny new CDs and DVDs, and even iPads and eReaders (a bit of a trial run for our organisation). Best of all, I have a wonderful team to work with – half are new like me, and the others make up for our inexperience by being tried-and-proven public librarians. We have a Children and Youth Librarian, a Youth Services Officer, and 3 library officers. And me. After two months on the job I am feeling a little less of a liability, but it’s good to know the others are covering my back!

So I thought I’d revisit this blog and try to explain what it’s like being a branch librarian in a brand new library: challenging, daunting, rewarding, fulfilling, and above all, a lot of fun. And I have a few stories to tell – but all in good time. Maybe when I get that holiday!

 

Mobile devices in schools: The phone dilemma

Mobile phones in schools – now there’s a topic sure to polarise opinion!

Phones or no phones is no longer a simple decision for schools: it’s almost impossible to ban mobile phones outright. Some students have valid reasons for carrying a mobile to and from school (safety, arranging transport or waiting on calls from a part-time employer) and whilst there are good reasons for controlling the use of phones during school time, it is important for schools to rethink their position on mobile phones. Rather than simply deciding whether or not to ban the use of phones on school grounds, schools should be looking to find ways of embracing the tools their students are using, and adapting them to leverage some pedagogical outcomes. A few schools have chosen this option, allowing phones to be used in class for data logging, video conferencing, capturing stills, video and audio, polling, and even as an electronic diary.

Of course, there are still problems for schools who choose to embrace mobile phone technology:

Equity – if smartphones are used, then every student needs access to one. Perhaps the library could stock a few phones (without SIM cards, or with limited pre-paid access) for lending to students.
Inappropriate use – harrassing other students, exchanging inappropriate content, filming fights. Clear policies need to be in place before phones become part of the classroom.
Damage – many mobile phones, especially smartphones, are prone to damage, so teachers may need to set policies about students using each others’ phones, or borrowing school mobiles.
Distraction – playing games, using the phone in ways not intended by the teacher, changing settings – these are some of the threats that might undermine a learning activity. Oddly enough, these are the sort of behaviours that undermine any sort of learning activity!

 

It’s a very complex situation, and there are reall opportunities for schools to take the lead. Students don’t read instruction manuals any more. If they can’t work out how to use a feature, they’ll ask a friend. Manufacturers rely on ads and word of mouth to spread the message about what these devices can do. The downside of this is that students are mostly learning from peers, so are falling into the same habits, both good and bad. We woudln’t expect a teen to learn how to fire a gun by imitating their friends who were also learning: safety guidelines would need to be in place. Mobile devices are the same: they can also wound and cause damge if used without proper care. But today’s students are not going to sit around while being lectured about the dangers of a loaded smartphone! This is where school must take the initiative, finding some cool things these devices can do, then demonstrate how the phones can be used responsibly. Teachers also need to explain and discuss some of the legislation relating to mobile devices.

Mobile Devices in Schools: iCame iSaw iPad

Just catching up with some of my PLN reflections … I wonder if I took on too much when I chose to work in 2 schools for 5 days and two nights per week, as well as doing the PLN? No – I don’t think so.  It was going OK until I decided to work 4 nights a week and start looking for a permanent position for next year! But I digress (as always) …

The Infobrarian household bought an iPad a few months ago to find out what all the fuss was about. We sort of understand the way-sexy-cool features that had people queueing up for them when they first appeared, and they are a lot of fun to play with. Let’s face it, for someone like me who is always doing something with my iPhone, having all that extra screen real estate has to be good – and it means I don’t have to get my reading glasses as often. I scored hundreds more on iPad Flight Control because I could at last see all those helicopters!

So what else impressed us about the iPad? Is it just a very big iPhone, or is it the tablet the MacBook should have got but never did? Is it going to revolutionise the way Mrs Infobrarian teaches chemistry? You could be excused for thinking the iPad really is the Next Big Thing. Plenty of schools have rushed out and bought them, either as class sets or in some cases, 1:1 across a whole school. There are hundreds of iPads-in-the-classroom blogs, and iPads feature at most educational technology conferences. What is it about the iPad that makes it the “one-stop shop” for education?

I’m going to argue that it isn’t – at least not for many teachers. Lots of the literacy and maths apps are great for students learning to read, and for forming basic number concepts, but I’ve yet to see an iPad app that can replace the sort of software needed in secondary schools: Sibelius for music, Adobe Illustrator in art, CAD programs in Design Tech, MYOB for accounting. While touch screens are great tools for teaching early primary school writers, this feature becomes less important as learners develop: many teachers would agree that the same applies to interactive whiteboards. A few other concerns and limitations have been raised by online forum participants:

• it’s not possible to image a whole class set of iPads – you can do it with laptops.
• the lack of Flash and Java
• it’s more difficult to drag and drop content between apps on an iPad
• printing is dependent on wireless connectivity
• data storage is severely limited
• data input is less flexible (no USB or SD card ports)
• sharing of data between devices is restricted and cumbersome
• iPads may be more susceptible to damage

I haven’t tried an Android tablet, but I think they would have many of the same constraints. Miss Infobrarian has used a tablet PC in Years 5-8, and it’s a long time since I’ve seen her use any input device other than the keyboard. I was in big trouble tonight – when helping with homework, I pointed to some graphs on her screen, and accidentally moved them out of place!

So we’ll keep enjoying our iPad, use it as an e-reader and a handy mobile device, but I can’t see it having a big impact on the educational lives of the Infobrarians.

 

Where can I put my website?

A fellow infobrarian asked this on a discussion forum. She was mainly puzzled about where she could put a site she had built in iWeb. This got me thinking about some of the web hosting options we now have. Most people want an online presence, and while many are content to blog, tweet or update their Facebook wall, others want something a little more personalised.

Here are some of the options for getting a website onto the web. As with all my tips and advice, there’s more here than most people need, so stop reading when you have enough info!

Apple had an online storage service called Dot Mac (e.g. infobrarian.mac.com). It was free for a trial, then had an annual subscription. After a while, it changed to Mobile Me (e.g. infobrarian.me.com) and added a few features, but now that is being wound down.  For iPhone/iPad/iPod users there will be a new service in a month or two: iCloud. Anyone who has the new operating system (iOS 5) will be able to get 5 Gb of free storage, and anything purchased through the itunes store, plus a range of other “inhouse” Apple content won’t count towards the 5 Gb. It will basically be a backup and sync service a bit like Dropbox – for Macs. For those of us who have 2 or more Apple devices (Mac computer, iPhone, iPad etc) it will make life so much easier keeping content synchronised across those devices. Like DropBox, you can pay for extra storage.

I’m not sure what Apple are planning to do with their web authoring application, iWeb. Once, iWeb published automatically if you had a .Mac account, so I assumed that will be the case with iCloud. Not so. Apple are closing Mobile Me sites on 30 June 2012, and now offer instructions for moving and iWeb site from there to a private provider. I wonder if there will be any more upgrades to iWeb – my guess is that eventually there will be a feature in iCloud for building a simple website, using online templates. I can’t see Apple abandoning all forms of web hosting for the millions of users of their iProducts. But perhaps Apple is looking even further into the feature, where the static website as we know it will disappear?

As for other web hosting, there are plenty of places to host a website for free, ranging from a private ISP (service provider) to online web authoring sites. Most of the latter require you to use THEIR authoring system (which means they can restrict the features you get in the free version). WordPress is my favourite – it’s really a blogging platform, but plenty of people use it as a conventional website. Google Sites allows you to build a website using their authoring system, and there is enough flexibility to make a personalised website. Most of their templates have an iWeb “look and feel”. I haven’t tried, but I don’t think you could upload an iWeb site to either of these free services.

Some people looking for an online presence via a website will want their own name in the domain. The simplest solution is to use WordPress or something similar – you just have to think of a name that isn’t already taken. Another option is to use the free web page hosting provided as part of most ISP contracts. If you are happy to have an address that looks like members.optusnet.com/~infobrarian, then that’s the way to go. If you’ve used iWeb or another application to build the site, there will be an export feature that lets you save your whole site to a folder – just upload the folder contents to your ISP site. More advanced web development programs like Dreamweaver, Fusion or WebStudio have tools that manage uploads to your web hosting service.

One step further along the customisation path is to register your own domain name. There are plenty of domain registry companies like NameCheap.com and BigDaddy.com and you can get a site like www.infobrarian.com for about $10-15 a year (if you want .com.au it will cost you a lot more, and you have to have a registered business name). You can set up a URL Redirect so that whoever goes to the the registered site name (e.g. www.infobrarian.com) site automatically gets redirected to your ISP hosted site (members.optusnet.com/~infobrarian).

If you want to take the final step, then register your domain name at one of those services, and set up a webhosting account. This will cost from about $40 per year, much more from an Australian host, with a few Gb storage, and more importantly, a limited amount of data per month. If you are expecting a lot of traffic, then you will need to pay for more data, obviously. I run a couple of sites, one through my ISP with URL forwarding, and one that is fully hosted. It only gets 50-200 visitors a day, mostly search engines unfortunately, so I am always well under my entry-level data limit. And won’t be giving up my day job just yet!

Infobrarian

By the way, if you were curious enough to click www.infobrarian.com you will see that it redirects here!

 

 

Google Plus. Plus What?

I worry that I might be falling out of love with Google. I like their stuff, but I’m afraid that in their great mission to not be evil, they’ve slipped into the trap of being greedy. Very, very greedy. Now Google understands just how rich they can become by using very clever marketing. The more information they collect about each of us, the more accurate the profile that Google has of us. Google will know what we like, when we like it. And they will sell that to advertisers who will pay an awful lot of money to know what products I’m definitely going to buy this month, and what products I might buy if I’m in the right mood – and yes, Google will be able to tell them when I’m in the right mood – I’m sure there will be a tool in Google+ that is irresistible to the user and very informative to Google and its clients. It’s clever. It’s insidious. It may not be evil, but I don’t like it.

 

This was originally a comment on Stephen’s Lighthouse

Google for educators: Tools for the classroom

I’ve used Google Docs a bit in the past, as well as plenty of other Google services. Despite the hard time we librarians give Google, it really is a very nice company because it produces some great online tools … and lets everyone use them for free! Sure, we’d be happier if the students in our libraries used Google Simple Search a lot less and our subscription databases a lot more, but you have to give credit where it is due: a lot of things we do online would be more difficult without Google.

I’ve been looking at a lot of online tools for educators, and revisited Google for Educators and had a look at what Google itself recommends as Tools for your classroom. I’ve used most of these before, but I think it is worth a few comments about how they could be used by teachers, and how they can help me in my role as a newly-fledged librarian.

Google Book Search

Google’s mission to digitize every book ever published has been somewhat undermined by the poor people who sell books to keep food on their tables – book publishers. OK, most of them aren’t exactly poor, but many of them have reacted strongly to the idea of making books freely available online. A group of publishers has been suing Google about it, and a few changes  have been forced. It’s now a lot harder to find a full text on Google Books, but it is still possible to search the text of a book – as long as it’s one of the limited titles Google is allowed to search. Google continues to negotiate, and sees part of its role as a link between readers and libraries, or between readers and publishers. The latest state of play can be examined here.

Google Geo Education

Four well-loved apps (Google Earth, Google Sky, Google Maps, and Google Sky) have been brought together to provide a suite of tools with a wide range of applications for geography, science, history literature and maths teachers. There is a classroom ideas section, and a community forum. The extensions of some of these tools extend the possibilities to every subject and teaching area – e.g. Google Art Project, a mashup of Street View, Maps, and images from major galleries and museums around the world.

Google News

There are plenty of news-based search engines. Google is one of the best because of its vast coverage. When combined with other tools, such as Google Docs, the news site, with its extensive archive, and customisable alerts, is a great resource for research and classroom activities.

iGoogle

This is a way to collect content from all over the web and display it on a single page. It could even be used as a presentation tool, with each element embedded in a separate widget. By customising the theme, iGoogle could even be used as a home page – although the content is really only visible to the Google account holder, so it presents a view of the web to one person (or one small team or activity group), rather than being a public front page for something like a library.

Custom Search Engine

This is a great tool for teachers and librarians, and can be used anywhere a widget can be embedded: intranet, blog, OPAC, etc. CSEs can be configured to search only specified sites for particular content: even the way the results are displayed can be customised.

Google Notebook

This sort of tool is becoming more common. It’s a way to grab information from several sites, annotate it, and keep it together for a later visit. Personally, I prefer Evernote, which does the same thing, but automatically sync’s to my laptop, phone and online account. I can also add a voice recording or webcam clip to Evernote. The advantage of Google Notebook is that it’s easier to share content with other users.

Picnik

Picnik is one of those annoying names that makes me think I’ve made an error every time I type it! Fortunately, I don’t think I’m likely to need to type it often. It’s an online photo editing site, a bit like Picasa for Kids. It looks easy to use and will pull images from Flickr and other photo sharing sites to save uploading them. It has lots of built-in templates and special effects – a good enough reason to give it a miss, in my opinion.

Picasa

This is a more robust, more grown-up image editing and storage utility. It can be used as a desktop application for cataloguing and editing photos, and the Web Albums make it easy to share images online.

Google Apps Education Edition

Google offers an integrated package for schools. Each school can choose from Gmail, Google Talk (instant messaging), Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites (simple website creation), and create a customised institution-wide deployment of these apps. I’ve worked in a big school that replaced their dedicated mail server with Gmail – it worked well from day one, and allowed integration with Docs and Calendar (which are embedded into various parts of the intranet). I really don’t understand why so many schools insist on struggling with an Exchange server when Gmail provides such a simple solution at no cost. Maybe they think it is more secure to run their own mail server? Maybe they still put out milk and cookies for Santa, too. At my old school, we had hassle-free Gmail accounts for a couple of years, and in the single term at a new school, Exchange mail was down for up to a few hours – at least twice. Hmmm …

 

I’ll just keep my head covered up in this sandpit until that ebook craze is over

There has been a bit of a discussion on the Australian Teacher-Librarian Mailing List (yes, we not only still have libraries, we still have mailing lists in this country!) about state boundaries and access to resources. I live in Victoria (the state, not the Island) and we have a fabulous state library, somewhat imaginatively called the State Library of Victoria. As a Victorian resident, I can access lots of academic databases and electronic journals through the State Library. My friends who live in Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, cannot access most of these resources. But it’s OK – they have the State Library of New South Wales, and I can’t access their online content.

I’m also a member of the Melbourne Library Service, which is an Overdrive library. Members anywhere in Victoria can borrow audiobooks and eBooks. They used to let anyone borrow them, but apparently some of the vendors and/or publishers got upset about them having over 1000 overseas members – so we recently had to verify a Victorian address to keep using that service. I suppose this is one consolation for Australians, who are being denied much of the international eBook and audiobook market – just like we were denied the iTunes Music Store for a while. I suppose that the local publishers are trying to survive in the face of international online purchasing, so they are trying to quarantine some content so it can only be bought from them.

I still get the feeling that local publishers are burying their heads in the sand hoping for the eBook fad to blow over. It isn’t a fad, of course, and it won’t go away.  Legal downloading of music is now a booming industry for the publishers who embraced it, rather than a fad that disappeared, as many in the music industry were predicting. How long will we have to wait for Australian publishing to really embrace the ebook?

Tools for visualising thinking

The Infobrarian is not happy … sometimes size does matter!

I’ve just been playing around with this week’s activities in the #VicPLN – Tools for visualising thinking, AKA useful web apps for getting thoughts out of your head and onto a page where other people can admire them. Or not.

Tool #1   Wallwisher

This is a great online tool, perfect for brainstorming sessions when the person responsible for the butcher’s paper and crayons has forgotten them. It’s also good for staff meetings, or any time a group of people need to leave short messages or comments. Short, because every sticky note added to the active window has a 160-character limit. That’s great for Haiku planning, but a bit underpowered for your next doctoral thesis.

Wallwisher could be useful for service departments that get a lot of simple requests: each one could be posted to the job wall, then removed when resolved. The IT help desk would love it, because as we all know, most requests can be shortened to things like:

broken keyboard, library PC 32

staffroom copier needs black toner

email down. again.

staff server scheduled upgrade Monday 9 am

Size Issue #1   Wallwisher usernames can only be 10 characters long. So who am I?

Infobrrian     Infbrarian     Infobraria      Infoarian?

What am I? Not happy!

Tool #2 Essay Map

This is a great tool for helping writers get a bit of structure, and forces them to make a few notes about:

• An intro
• Three main ideas
• Supporting points for each idea
• A conclusion

Size Issue #2   The topic can only have 25 characters!  That sort of rules out all those great two-part titles so popular with academics, like:

Strategies for evaluating information visualization tools: multi-dimensional in-depth long-term case studies

I tried to think of a few possible essay topics, and kept running out of characters. Imagine the problem this would be to someone like Stephen Covey if he wanted to use Essay Map to plan his “7 Habits”  books. All the titles would have to be the same:

The 7 Habits of Highly Eff    

My main grumble about Essay Map is that it isn’t really a Web 2.0 tool. It needs to be interactive, and that’s one of the great features of the last two tools.

Some Happier News

Bubbl.us and Gliffy projects can be shared and edited by a group, so are interactive and part of the  read-write web.

The best thing about Bubbl.us is that it is simple, fast, and allows collaboration.  OK, it’s missing lots of the features of  programs like MindMap and Inspiration – but it is free, and always available. I was part of a group where the minutes were taken live in Bubbl.us, and we could edit/expand points later.

Gliffy takes a little longer to master, but has templates for all sorts of charts, plans and mapping. There’s even a plugin to import Gliffy objects to WordPress!  Yes, I should try it. Maybe tomorrow …

Social Bookmarking

If I hadn’t encountered the term before, I probably would have avoided the social bookmarking part of my Learning Network course  - I was clearly too busy putting my kitchen pantry in Dewey order, or updating the MARC records for our daughter’s DVDs … the term “marking” still evokes a shudder, and “book marking” is perhaps the least sociable activity you can do in mixed company.

Luckily, social bookmarking is something entirely different. I’ve even done it before!

I’ve used del.icio.us a little, and used to look at the public bookmarks of a few esteemed colleagues. My problem with social bookmarking is that it takes too many clicks (and thus too much time) to bookmark a site or page. I’m a spoiled Mac user (uh-oh .. there go my last remaining followers …) and I just love the simplicity of bookmarking with the Safari browser:

Apple-D (i.e. Command-D for the proletariat) then choose a folder – press Return. Done.
I have lots of bookmark folders across my toolbar – some even have folders within folders – and all the sites I might want to visit again are in there.  e.g. My LIBRARIES folder has the subfolders LibraryBlogs, LibGuides, eBooks, LibraryManagement, Research … and so on. It’s a great way to organise bookmarks.

I’ve  tried Diigo, and there are things I like, and things I wonder about. I use the Diigolet (because Diigo haven’t developed the Safari plugin yet, and I am not changing browsers just for social bookmarking). I think there are too many steps involved in creating a bookmark. Some people will argue that it isn’t much different form creating bookmarks in Safari. I guess it isn’t – but I don’t like the time-lag with Diigo / Diigolet.

I’ve got a LOT of bookmarks. If I want to add them to another browser, I can import them to most, usually with a couple of clicks. There is probably a way to do that in Diigo. I haven’t found it yet.

Communication Tools

(AKA Week 2 Reflection)

This week in our PLN exploration we were asked to try Twitter, Facebook and Skype. So I thought to myself, “Too easy. I’ve done all this before.”

Wrong. I’d barely scratched the surface of what these tools can do for communication.

Twitter: I used to be passive, just following a few friends and interesting celebrities. Now I’ve put that account away in the bottom drawer, and set up @Infobrarian, where I try to be a bit more conversational. Now I see Twitter as part of my librarian toolkit.

Facebook: This used to be strictly for keeping in touch with family and old friends. Now I’m using it to talk to the VicPLN participants. That’s a bit confronting, because I can’t hide behind an alias – my Facebook account is in my real name, has my real photos, and worse still, has me tagged in lots of my friends’ old embarrassing photos. Maybe I should set up a professional account here, too, although Facebook doesn’t really like you having more than one.

Skype: I loved using Skype when I was revising for exams last year. I had a fantastic study partner in another state, and we used Skype and Dropbox to share summaries and revision. After the first couple of sessions, once we were sure neither of us was Hannibal Lector, we didn’t bother with video, and just used audio – or mostly text chat.

Some people probably like the immediacy of Skype, but I prefer to think about my responses when I am discussing “deeper” topics. So yes, my brain is a bit too slow for Skype …