Daughter2.0 (What good are libraries?)

Was reading a post today by George Siemans at elearnspace regarding the future of libraries.

....this presentation doesn't say anything new for those familiar with the changes in technology and the context of knowledge. It does, however, present those changes from the perspective of libraries. In the process it provides some interesting statistics and observations (89% of college students begin their research with a search engine vs 2% in libraries,......

elearnspace

Thanks George...Interesting but not surprising.

Being a rather cool and damp Sunday afternoon here, I have my 10 yr old daughter beside me, spread out on the carpet, tapping away on our our old Toshiba laptop and buying some clothes for her penguin at clubpenguin.

"Hey Daughter!" I ask. "If you needed to know something that you didn't already know, where would you go to find out?"

Without pause or hesitation she turned her head and looked at me (one hand still on the keyboard) and replied "Google! Why?"

"Oh just interested" I answer."What is the library useful for?"

"What? The club penguin library?"

"No the town library."

"Nothing!"

"What do you use the library for in club penguin? "

"Well you can read other members' writing, and you can play mancala against other players."

So through the eyes of a ten yr old Aussie girl, our town library is irrelevant, yet an online multi player library contains stories, games and fellowship.

I'd imagine that the cleverer libraries in our culture would have to look at fostering a sense of online community as an addition to their local community if they were to survive.

On a side note: I read out to my wife the figures on how only 2% of college students use libraries to begin research. She had just interrupted her guitar rendition of Cavatina in order to make us all a pot of tea. (Don't you just love cool damp Sundays?)

Her response? "Do people still use libraries?"

Blogging with 6 and 7 year olds.

Rachel Boyd has an awesome presentation at teacher tube on blogging with young children.

Well done Rachel, it's inspirational.

Preparing the natives for The Age of Innovation. (The exaflood cometh)

Perhaps its just the way with innovators. What they seem to harp on about (try to communicate) doesn't make much sense to a critical mass until a few years down the track. By then, a few leaders have adopted the ideas, and begin to market the benefits to the broader community.

This speech by Bruce Mehlman (an innovator) from 2003, is 4 years old now.

Mehlman makes three points that resonate with my current situation.

First, we must recognize that technologies only benefit society when we use them wisely. Technology can enable us to improve our lives and make the world a safer, more abundant, and more equitable place. Or it can exacerbate problems. For example, encryption technologies that protect our privacy also conceal terrorist communications. The Internet lets children in Alaska visit the Smithsonian or take virtual courses at MIT, but it also gives them access to pornography, hate speech and instructions on building a pipe bomb. Digital literacy will never substitute for good parenting and effective teaching, and any effort to define and promote digital literacy must reinforce their unique and vital roles.

Second, we must remember that digital literacy is more than having Internet access and broader than technical proficiency. It's also about learning digital rights and wrongs. Respecting intellectual property rights, practicing security as second nature, and valuing others' privacy are all going to be critical to a functionally literate information society.

Last, we need to all remember the power of Metcalf's law. This principle states that the value of a network increases exponentially as more people connect. While there is zero value having the only telephone on Earth - after all there's no one to call - going from 100 to 1000 users increases the value of the network by more than a factor of 10. As we look to apply digital technologies to the challenges of the 21st century, we must join together with leaders around the world, so the rising tide of innovation can lift all boats. We will all be better off - as businesses, as nations and as citizens of the world - when 6 billion people are online, instead of the 655 million who have logged on so far.

So from my perspective, (as a classroom teacher in a part of the world that has only recently connected to affordable IT infrastructure), the speech (though four years old) is not only relevant but actually very applicable. The people I live with and work with are only now beginning to discover the power of the read/write web, and the network itself (connectivism).

With this in mind, take a look at what Mehlman is speaking about today. The exaflood!

Is your community ready?

Podcast Research - Help Required

This request from Jane

Hi all

I am currently undertaking research looking at the question: In what ways does podcasting enhance oral literacies?I have been gathering data in my own context but I would love to hear what other teachers have found when using podcasting in their classroom programme and add voices from further a field into my final write up.

I am intersted in authenticity: * Audience * Context * Purpose * Self confidence

If you could provide an example of your students demonstrating any of these things I would love to hear about it and incorporate it into my study. Please leave me a comment on my blog including the country that you are commenting from. Please could you include this request on your blogs with a link to this post, I would love to get as much information as possible. It will be great to have a piece of research that says - This is worthwhile doing, and this is why.

Jane

*** ICT U Can!

Time4 Online

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach has a fantastic keynote presentation at the Time4 Online Conference. Its well worth checking out.

Thanks Sheryl, wonderful keynote. I get the feeling though that you are speaking to the converted.

We (your fellow conference participants) can master the stuff. We can join in online.

But it's many of our colleagues I'm concerned with. The reaction to a presentation like yours (in my experience) is that it divides the audience into those that "get it" and go off and bring their students into the global discussion, and those that find it "scary", which results in a fear of the changes, often leading to a withdrawal. (Machines are unplugged, networks are dismantled, students are disengaged).

It's less scary that way, and a sense of control can be regained.

This situation is sad. It's what I find really scary.

How can this reaction be overcome? At a class/school/region/state or national level?

Children, blogging and safety.

Karen Mann at Web2Wanderings has a post regarding issues of internet safety when it comes to young children. (Lets say K-6)

My understanding is that blogs can be moderated if set up that way and therefore before any item is published the teacher could have the final approval. I guess I will have to follow up on this under the NSW system. If you have come across similar restrictions, please let me know.

Its a tough one Karen. I have had a students' blog blocked by my organisation.
I complained, (well actually I requested an unblock), and I got a sympathetic hearing by a well informed senior administrator, (yes...they do exist), and the blog was unblocked very shortly afterwards.

I did have to make some modifications though.

1. Parents need to be aware of their child's participation (publication).
2. No child is to be identified. We limit names to first names only. Though it has been suggested that we may need to consider using only initials. (Overkill, or good sense?)
   
3. All comments are to be moderated.

Pretty easy to do, and very sensible when you consider the unsettling implications of some alternate scenarios.

ClustrMaps... (be careful)

Do you archive your ClustrMap(s) monthly, yearly, or even daily?

Alot of blogs you read these days have that wonderful little map in the sidebar that provides an interesting count of the visitors to your site. Its called a ClustrMap, and it's a great way to promote interest in a site.

We use a ClustrMap at Mullumwriters. When the children are published they go home and email a link to a relative or friend somewhere in the world, and then watch the ClustrMap update a day or two later. Its fun, interactive, engaging, and might even be "educational" (But I'd never tell them that.)

There are some things you'll need to watch though. Here at 21st Century Skills, I decided to set the map to archive every month. I had hoped to gather a monthly snapshot of the map and then turn it into a gif animation (or flash, or widget of choice), and watch the map slowly turn red.

Great idea huh? Well, yes and no!

Yes the map did archive, you can see the last month in the top right of this post. What I wasn't aware of though, was that once archived, the counter resets, and your map goes back to a blank slate (so to say). Here on the right is an image of my new map after 1 night.

What a suprise! I lost my running totals. My map is back to square one. Of course, I can always click through the map and look at the archive at anytime to reassure myself that "once upon a time" people read my blog, but it's kinda nice to see the map slowly turning red.

So here is the question.

Do I keep archiving each month and generate a nice morphing animation over the next few months, or do I wait until the forced reset that ClustrMaps impose each year?

Love to hear your thoughts.