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.

Facebook

I finally took the plunge and set up a facebook page. Within minutes of it being set up I had a host of people who wanted to be my friend!!. This made me think about what security measures I had put in place for my page and realised it was open to all. Thanks for the tips on how to secure my page, as I have a fear about having my life exposed on the web.

Prior to setting up the page, I did not think I would find it valuable to have a page. Being of the old fashioned school, I still talk to people face to face or over the phone.

However, I have found a couple of good reasons to have a page. I can answer a simple request from my children without any major disruption to what I am doing. It was also great for finding pcitures of the grandchildren and also other extended family members. I don't think I will be addicted to it like the younger generation who just can't seem to live without it, but I can now see the value in some circumstances.

Wheel_001

Wheel_001, a photo by swintoni on Flickr.

Uploading a photo from Flickr. Thanks to a fellow member or the web 2.0 learning group I have achieved the second method of uploading a photo to my blog

Solar panels Windorah

Flickr

I think it is 2 steps forward and 3 back at the moment. Feel very pleased with the results of the first part of this section. First I have created a flickr account and uploaded a photo to the account. Second step, which I managed was to link my blog to the flickr account. However, this is where I need some help. How do I now get this picture into my blog?

Cool pic

Myspace Picture Generator

Virtual Worlds

This is an area I have not been involved with in the past. The interesting facet about virtual worlds is using gaming to hook or interest boys. Working in an all boys school, I know how hard it is to keep boys, particularly in Year 10 engaged in learning and making them feel that learning is relevant to them.

For me the idea of creating another person and then entering a 'created' world and interacting with other virtual people sounds weird. Must be a generational thing.

Recommended reading
'Vitual worlds' by Judy O'Connell and Dean Groom. It is part of a series of books in the 'Learning in a changing world' series published by ACER. Other titles include: 'Connect, communicate, collaborate', 'Resourcing for curriculum innovation', 'Designing for the learning envirnoment' and 'Curriculum integration'. Only small in size, but filled with very good practical information. 'Resourcing the curriculum' looks at building libraries of the future and what will be required.

igoogle

In a corporate world where often you cannot have individuality, igoogle allows you to let your personality shine through.
I find it useful as I can aggregate a number of sites on one page. I have set up a couple of different tabs - one general, one for education sources and another for rss feeds.
I can check the news headlines at a glance, find out what is making news in education both in Australia and US and have my gmail open.

Google Books

Once more full text items are placed in google books, I think it will be better. At present most of the books are only limited access. It could be useful if you are searching for a book and would like to check out the contents prior to purchase.

Things I found of use:
1. I can do a search for just full view items.
2. The older magazines, in particular Life would be useful for history students looking back at what happened on a particular date or year.
3. Some of the older books, in particular on the history of the Catholic Church would be interesting for our students doing Studies of Religion.

Google docs
Two years ago our school started to look at ICT and implementation throughout the college. As a member of this committee we used google docs to communicate with each other. The best thing about this method of communication was the ability to add to comments from other members of the committee.

However, once this was over, i have not used it since. This seems to ne a recurring theme with web 2.0 tools. Unless most staff are involved in using them on a regular basis they lose their usefulness.
Question for the brains trust....
How do I get my information in google docs so that I can share it with my fellow 2.0 crew?

Web 2.0 and beyond

When I started this journey into web 2.0. I wanted to coincide it with learning how to use one note. Over the weekend I wrote down my thoughts on web 2.0 into one note and then inserted them into my blog today.


I first learnt about the term around 2007 and was enthused about the idea.
The first tool I used was Delicious a site where urls could be stored and organised. This was fantastic as you could add them to the site as you were searching.
Unfortunately early 2011 saw the demise of delicious. This is one of the main downsides of web 2.0 tools. They are created and used and then along comes a better idea. Or they disappear because the creator is no longer interested in the concept.

From the reading I have doubts about the currency of web 2.0 as it was first developed. Most of the research and articles relate to the late part of the first decade of the 21st century. Does this mean web 2.0 has been over taken by social media sites or are they considered part of web 2.0.

Another problem with web 2.0 is that most school networks or organisational networks lock up their networks. This is done in the guise of security and the fear that viruses or hackers will invade the network. There are also issues with access for students and not wanting them to access unsuitable material.

Adding a page element

Small steps....
I started the day trying to add a links page element to my blog. After many frustrating hours I finally was successful. It made me realise that how to guides sometimes are not as helpful as you might think. The help guides also need to match the learning style of the student. As part of this learning curve I used the help page from blogger to help me with this task. Still could not seem to make it work. Having added the link to my page it did not show up on the blog page. After much trial and error found out it was activated as soon as I added a link to the link page. The instructions for doing this are not clear. I feel very satisfied that finally I have achieved what I set out to do this morning.
It also humbles me to realise that my students probably would have master this in 5 mins rather than 5 hours.

First Steps of Web 2.0
Hello to all my fellow bloggers doing the How 2 of Web 2.0.
This is my first attempt at setting up a blog.
I am combining 2 learning experiences - Web 2.0 and One Note.

About Me
I am a Teacher Librarian at an all boys college in Queensland. For the past almost 30 years I have worked in many different types of schools: government -small and large; private - co-educational and boys. One of my greatest challenges was to work in 2 Aboriginal Schools.