E-Books

'The Horizon Report" each year outlines key trends to watch in technology. This year the report noted the near adoption of electronic books. On the first horizon - that is within the next 12 months they list electronic books as moving into mainstream. The report says that ...'the most interesting aspect of electronic books ...is the new kind of reading experiences that they make possible'. Reading will become more interactive and include links and video.

Amazon in its last month figures saw e-books outsell print for the first time. There are positives and negatives in relation to e-books.

Positives

• Affordable resources


• Accessible resources


• Once settled on a device easy to purchase and download


• Ability to spellcheck, adjust size of print, make notes

Negatives

• Different formats


• Copyright issues


• Cost of e-book in comparison with print version


• Variety of resources available - very little Australian young adult fiction available.

With most schools embracing the Digital Educational Revolution, access to e-books is high on the agenda. In my school we are currently looking into what e-books we can use as textbooks.

From a personal point of view I have Kindle for PC on my tablet and in the short term I use this to download items from Amazon. I have been using this as a trial to see if I wanted an electronic reader. As I wear glasses, the computer has made it easier for me to read print, as I can adjust the size of the print. I am not sure if I am ready to go the full electronic reader just yet

YouTube & TeacherTube

YouTube
If you need a tutorial to help use Powerpoint or Twitter, look no further than YouTube. It can also be used for demonstration purposes in the classroom. A link to the relevant clip can be embedded into a your school's intranet site. I used examples of book trailers from YouTube for an English extension class.

There is a major drawback to YouTube and that is the sheer volume of material that is now posted to the site. I often rely on word of mouth or network contacts for great material.

Being in charge of copyright in my school, I often see how teachers break copyright when using YouTube. According to copyright laws a teacher can use YouTube in classroom if directly streaming from the source, they cannot download the video and then show it to a class.

TeacherTube
I have not really used this as a source, previously and found some sources that I can use when introducing the library to students. The link below is to a video on using databases. Although relevant to one particular library it could be used as an example.
http://www1.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=25586&title=Using_Library_Databases

Wikis

Wikis are a great for collaboration. In a previous life I set one up for the library with the express purpose of keeping all my web 2.0 links in one place. It was created using Wiki spaces. Over time I forgot about this wiki and did not maintain it. Through the course of this tutorial I rediscovered my wiki and aim to work on maintaining it as a guide for students with links to information they use on a day to day basis.

Everyone, particularly students know of the most popular wiki, wikipedia. Students use it because it is in a format that is easy to negotiate and laid in a simple structure. Other more academic websites could learn from wikipedia in relation to ease of access to information. I work with the students when using wikipedia to teach them to be critical of the information they use. This applies to all websites and not just wikipedia.

Delicious

I use both Delicious and Diigo on a regular basis in my work. They are attached to my favourites bar for quick access. Whenever I am doing research for teachers and find a great site it only takes a moment to put the link in Delcious and Diigo.
I was concerned at the start of the year as it looked like Delicious was about to be discontinued, (this has since changed). With this in mind I transferred my links to Diigo as a backup. When you rely on cloud computing you need to be flexible and realise that information is not always safe and secure. A plus for holding links on the web, is that you have access to your links regardless of which computer you are accessing.

I have been using Diigo more recently as I like the list feature available. Within this I have created lists of links for Year 11 Legal Studies and Year 10 Rites as just 2 examples. It is then easy to give the students in these classes the links and they have a list of checked sites. I have also managed to convince a couple of teachers to set up their own sites. The share feature is wonderful, as i can share a useful link with relevant teachers. Saves a lot of double handling.

Professional Development

Thank you to the team from Yarra Plenty for their help over the last couple of months. My approach to the program has been sposmadic at times due to time constraints. When time has allowed I was able to complete a couple of the exercises at once.

At times it has been a challenge to learn these new skills which the younger generation can learn quite quickly. I was at a meeting with a couple of colleagues of a similar age and we were talking about Twitter. All 3 of us had just started to use it, but did not fully understand it. We gave ourselves some homework to try and work out how to folow each other on Twitter. There was much laughter and sharing of our experiences. We did think that the younger generation if they were listening in to our conversation would have been lamenting our lack of knowledge.

To me the best part of this process over the last couple of weeks has been the support from colleagues and the ability to laugh at my slowness in uptake of a new technoology.

I am in the process of reading the "School libraries and teacher librarians in 21st century Australia" report and it makes for some compelling reading. As a profession we are ageing and not being replaced by qualified staff. One part of the report reflects on professional development and that some 30% of teacher librarians/librarians take no part in professional development. This is for a variety of reasons, foremost being having to personally pay to attend an activity and secondly not being given time release to attend. I am very grateful that I am one of the lucky ones who is supported in my school with wonderful opportunities for professional development.

Rollyo

I think there is a limit to how many places a person can put information. All of these tools are useful, but need to really look at the justification in time and effort to maintain all of them. How to use this site which did not duplicte what I had previously done was difficult. It could be useful for creating a limited range of resources for a particular subject. The topic chosen for this was social justice at Year 10. The sites could be used cross school as we cover social justice issues at all year levels.

RSS feeds

This simple button on the toolbar opens a whole new world to the user. I have used feeds in the past to keep me informed about changes in education both in Australia and the world.

Saves time and energy and that is always a good thing.