Students in both courses have done an excellent job in managing the content of this course, and the mastery of the subject content was evident in the quality of the first assessment.
Now I know that some of you are already turning your minds to work on the Assessment 2 - the Report for Haven River Library. If you are doing this, be sure not to limit your knowledge and understanding by not allowing yourself time to read and research to absorb the remaining ideas being covered in the course. Assessment 2 requires you to demonstrate you work for the whole course, particularly modules 5-8.
As you prepare your work, don't forget to investigate the twitter stream from ALIA and YALSA. They will show you the current topics that are of interest to the material you will include in your Report.
I'm also going to host a chat session for this Assessment at the following times:
Mon 9th May 7:30 pm Sydney time
Wed Tues 18th 17th May 7:30 pm Sydney time
You will find the chat located in the left-hand navigation bar, called Neat Chat Extra.
Bring along your sticky questions - or even just drop in to make sure you are happy with the progress of your report writing. See you online soon!
Here are a few tips to get you underway with your first Assessment task. For those students in INF330, the task will be providing you with some challenges that you may not have the confidence to attack quite as readily as those students in INF505.
If you would like some additional help, here are a few other options:
1. You will notice a Meebo chat window on this blog. This will show you when I am online and can be contacted with a question. The chat is totally private so its a simple way for and individual to get an answer quickly, or to set up a time to consult for a longer period of time. The meebo chat connects directly with my iPhone - so its easy!
2. It is possible to chat online in Interact with each other or with me. If you see me online at the same time as you - feel free to send me a chat request. Interact chat is a little clunky, but there are other options that I can use immediately if there is a need for a fast group chat.
3. Monday 21st March 7:30 pm Sydney time. This will be a combined meeting time for INF330 and INF505. I would like to host a Zipcast - i.e a meeting with anyone who wants to join a group discussion around this assessment. I will go online in Chat in Interact 5 minutes before, and provide you with a link to our Zipcast meeting room to discuss the assessment with the help of the slideshare below. A Zipcast is an online meeting room for discussion of the assessment.
4. Even if you don't want to stop for a long chat, consider dropping into the Zipcast, as it might prove to be a useful tool for you some time in the future (if you haven't used it before).
[apologies for the synchronisation problem - different tools this time! Fine in the original file - not sure what happened between my computer and Youtube. Just listen - pretend its a podcast!]
One of our 'fellow travellers' in this course asked the question - was Twitter even around in 2005?
Consider these facts from Mashable if you decide to ponder the value of social networking tools like Twitter within this course:
Twitter will soon be celebrating the fifth anniversary of the first tweet, and the company Monday released a set of stats showing how huge the service has become.
This week in 2006, designers began creating a prototype of what would become Twitter. Jack Dorsey sent the world’s first tweet on March 21, 2006. On its blog, Twitter took the opportunity to point out some key stats, including:
It took three years, two months and one day to get to the billionth tweet. Now there are a billion tweets a week.
A year ago, people sent 50 million tweets a day. On March 11, 2011, the tally was 177 million.
There were 456 tweets per second after Michael Jackson died in 2009. That record was broken on New Year’s Day this year with 6,939 tweets after midnight in Japan on New Year’s morning there.
There were 572,000 new accounts created on March 12, 2011; there were 460,000 new accounts created daily, on average, in the past month.
Mobile users increased 182% in the past year.
So be sure to think about contemporary needs in libraries. Consider how we need to advocate services, and ensure that we remain engaged with our community.
By now I can see that most of you are well into your reading (and reflection) in Topics 1 & 2, so I thought I would share a few additional learning points.
When it comes to discussing information literacy, readers's education and bibliographic instruction, the changing environment of our libraries and our society needs to be kept at the back of your mind. Read and research beyond the core definitions, so that you can begin to formulate a clear overall view of how libraries can support children and young adults.
For example, this compilation of Information Literacy Models makes it clear that there is a great deal 'behind' terms and models. You are not expected to be familiar with all this - but you do need to understand that a simple definition from any model or organisation must be placed within the context of the actual services being provided by a library. Understanding Information Literacy: A Primer from UNESCO explains that ‘information literacy has become a new paradigm in the information and communication landscape and the importance of information literacy to empower people in all parts of the world in the personal and social goals.
The challenge before us is to
Trade in our existing good methods of service provision and tools for substantially better ones!!
Look into better ways for literacy and information promotion
Look into better ways for involving our young people in our libraries
Work in better ways to distribute news, resources and community support
Create a community of reading & enquiry that is simultaneously one-to-one and one-to-many
Embed new tools and new techniques into our daily practices
Promote change playfully!
Take a look at this video, and consider how the new media literacies might impact your knowledge and understanding of library services.
Our libraries are involved in a culture of participation through the opportunity we have to harness the capabilities of Web 2.0 to access the power of worldwide communities at any time, in any place, for inspiration, ideas, mentoring - drawing on the knowledge of peers, friends, professional colleagues and external experts as needed.
Culture of Participation
What our kids and teenagers want, or need, will not be anything like the libraries of 10-15 years ago. New media (Web 2.0) tools give library users a participatory role in the services libraries offer and the way they are used. Embracing it becomes necessary so as to be in a position to respond to changing user needs and ensuring the library is in a strong position to meet those needs effectively now and in the future.
Put your library into context! The report from OCLC called Perceptions of Libraries, 2010 is available via a link here from OCLC and is an easy document to scan through to see the bigger picture. Choose your download options if you want to take a look. From there you can build your own response to the principles of children's services which includes your understanding of information literacy, readers education, and bibliographic instructions...and more!
I'd like to offer you a personal welcome to INF330 and INF505. These courses are running parrallel to each other, and I am teaching them both! This is a bonus for us, as this means that we can share our knowledge and experiences. I think that we will be able to 'get together' for some discussions, particularly as you prepare your first assignment!
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. I know that many of you are busy reading, and settling into the course. With the diversity of experiences that you bring, I have a feeling that the content of this course will provide interest and challenges for your professional futures.
But I don't want to sound too serious. Not yet!
As some of you know, I am new at CSU, so along with our learning together, I am also experimenting with various tools in Interact to see what we might to to enhance our learning experience together. I use a lot of online tools in my professional work, and I thought that some of these could come in handy for our course. I regularly write about library and technology issues at my own blog at http://heyjude.wordpress.com/ - so I wanted to be able to just as easily 'talk' to you all.
So I've created this blog to do just that - share support information, ideas, and content that could be helpful for your learning. Follow along, and take what suites your leanring needs.
I hope that this blog will provide you with easy information updates, to support your course. This blog interface will allow me to add whatever we need in terms of ideas, input, support, etc to 'add value' to the core course in our Modules.
The Modules are the core content, and the Forum is our core area for discussions related to each Module section of the course.
This blog interface will simply allow me to add ideas and information to 'add value' to the core course in our Modules. Being a blog, you can subscribe to it in your RSS reader too (if you are familiar with RSS). But, it's easy to locate in Interact, as I have embedded it right into Interact, with a navigation point in the left menus bar - so if you forget the link - it's there for you! Being a blog, you can subscribe to it in your RSS reader too (if you are familiar with RSS). Here's the direct URL if you prefer http://youthservices.blogspot.com/
I've added a few extras for you on the blog, that will provide you with further current information that relates to libraries, and childrens and youth libraries.
There is a direct twitter feed from ALIASYS which is ALIA's Childrens and Youth Services in public libraries section. There is also a direct feed from the YALSA, which is ALA's Young Adult Library Services updates.
Finally, there is a feed from the Paper.li of SimplyBooks. What is this? It's actually a twitter account that I manage related to books, libraries, and library services, and which has a strong focus on children's and youth services. But as I don't 'tweet' there as often as I do on my own professional account at 'heyjudeonline', I have included the Paper.li link.
Paper.li is brilliant for time-poor librarians, as it organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. It's a great way to discover content that matters to you - even if you are not connected 24/7!
I think I can hear some of you groaning already :-) Is any of this new to you? Don't worry - really! It's just part of the overal spectrum of what's possible, and I'm just showing you some of the tools that we can use in our libraries, either for promotion, or for your own information gathering.
There will be more!
But enough from me for now. Let me just say hello - and welcome!
