tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66891040280228716522024-03-13T14:55:47.848+00:00QR tags and mobile 'phones in the libraryCurrently trying to introduce elements of the mobile world into our University library. This is to keep track of what I've done!Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-1450551363243352382010-04-28T07:20:00.027+01:002010-04-28T11:45:28.247+01:00emtacl day 3<div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Last day at emtacl and the morning after the conference dinner which had lovely food and somewhat unusual entertainment (music played with vegetables anyone?). Also nice to find out the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunost">brown cheese</a> I tried the first morning (and didn't like) was like marmite - either love it or hate it!</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Two keynotes this morning then I'll be trying to swap between strands...</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><strong></strong></div><div align="left"><strong>Virtual research networks: Towards Research 2.0, Van den Brekel -</strong> Argh! lost my notes! That'll teach me not to save more often. Will try and go back later and fill in gaps...</div><div align="left">Researchers using web 2.0 for collaboration, etc. - general tools and increasingly specialist web 2.0 tools.</div><div align="left">Back on track now (just before the end!) - VREs (such as JISC VRE, MyExperiment, DARIAH, etc.). JISC leading the way (Hooray for JISC!). They help researchers from all disciplines to work collaboratively. </div><div align="left">Key recommendations from JISC - "Scratch where it itches" - i.e. has to suit the researchers needs. More about community building than technology building. Need support from everyone. Key role for libraries. Preference for web 2.0 style of development. Needs to be driven by researchers. Benefits include faster research results and novel researh directions.</div><div align="left">For libraries they act as a good way to feature library resources. Should be involved from the start.</div><div align="left">Summary (key points for libraries). Need good communication with researchers. Play a key role in the sharing of information. Redefine the library services to match these needs. Brand and market the library. </div><div align="left">Recommends supporting research students by Allan.</div><div align="left">Engage, facilitate, stimulate - key message.</div><div align="left"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/digicmb">www.slideshare.net/digicmb</a> - hopefully his slides will be up here (yes they are!) and I'll go back later to refresh my memory and fill in the gaps...</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><strong></strong></div><div align="left"><strong></strong></div><div align="left"><strong>I've got Google, why do I need you? Aalen -</strong> A students perspective on academic libraries. Think we need an adjustable lectern. </div><div align="left">Warning! She says she isn't a typical student. "I think of myself as a nerd" her obsession is reading about stuff online that should make her more effective, that she hasn't got time to use as she's spending all her time reading about them...</div><div align="left">"I'm a paperless student" - for about a year! Studying is a whole lot more than reading.</div><div align="left">Annoyed by all the tedious tasks you have to do as a student. When are the exams, what modules am I doing, Can I look at previous resources for courses to allow me to decide what to do? Would like the library to catalogue and make accessible these sort of resources.</div><div align="left">Annoyed by copyright.</div><div align="left">Annoyed by books (does the library have a book, does the bookshop have it, do 2nd hand bookshops have it, do her friends have a copy, etc?) - why can't we make it easier for her to find these things out.</div><div align="left">Talking about notes. Printed stuff quite efficient for organising this stuff - think she's probably talking about a personalised learning environment for help with doing this electronically, linking between notes and other resources. </div><div align="left">Hard to do this online, but many distractions with studying online as well.</div><div align="left">Why did she go digital? Fast typist! Able to type while she reads. Showing Evernote - likes how this works (I like that I can use this on my iPhone & PC!). Also uses Google Docs. Running <a href="http://www.rescuetime.com/">http://www.rescuetime.com/</a> on her computer - tells her what she's spending her time on, can block applications to allow you to focus. Love the idea of this! </div><div align="left">Do these tools make her a better student? She seems very organised with her notes! She makes good notes from resources into her notes that she then refers to (I think this is a move back to how students used to work, but tend not to nowadays - really interesting!).</div><div align="left">She uses <a href="http://quizlet.com/">http://quizlet.com/</a> to generate flashcards to test herself (really quick & easy).</div><div align="left">Showed example of collaborative work for assignment - handed in a week early and got an A (really worked well for them). Needed to agree groundrules beforehand.</div><div align="left">Is sorry she still has to deal with books at all - likes to take info from the book and then discard the book. Sounds like eBooks would work better for her (as long as she can cut & paste).</div><div align="left">Does this make her a better student? Not sure. Thinks she knows a lot less than the previous generation, but has broad, shallow knowledge and is confident about searching for it again.</div><div align="left">Finds Uni databases difficult. Gave up and went to Google Scholar instead.</div><div align="left">Thinks the way she works is a hack, the internet, computer stone age... are we cavemen to the digital natives? Doesn't agree with digital native idea (hear, hear!) - "screentime does not make you competent!". The internet is not a place - "just because I can use a wooden spoon, doesn't mean I can use all utensils made out of wood". (ace!)</div><div align="left">Nice quote from About face 3.o, page 42 about dropping out if you don't move quickly from being a beginner.</div><div align="left">It's easy to forget what you don't practice. No use showing her a complicated interface to our resources in year 1 that she doesn't then use for a while. She want easy interface, that she doesn;t need to learn.</div><div align="left">Shows video of 2 year old and a cat using an iPad - easy interface.</div><div align="left">"The librarians logic is just as alien to me as the programmers"</div><div align="left">"Should I adapt or you?</div><div align="left">Really good, perceptive talk <a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/113040/IdaAalenEMTACL10.pdf">- slides available online.</a></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><strong></strong></div><div align="left"><strong></strong></div><div align="left"><strong>How do new technologies challenge the users behaviour, Lauridsen</strong> - (From Serials Solutions. We've just bought their discovery tool <a href="http://library.hud.ac.uk/summon">summon</a>, so will be interesting to me!) Following on from Primo demo (competitor!). Nice graph - amount spent on materials rising(ARL libraries). Perceived value of libray falling (Carol Tenopir).</div><div align="left">People going to Google, not library. Lots of reasons why, list from <a href="http://projectinfolit.org/">http://projectinfolit.org/</a> Interesting that students will try the library first (but will then give up & go elsewhere).</div><div align="left">Have tried to compete with Google in libraries ... single search across all collections. Federated search ("works to a certain extent", more +ve than I'd be!); discovery layers (over top of catalogue - lots of playing around with this, quite limited material so CAN play), now web-scale discovery (pre-harvested metadata, like Summon. Local versions of pre-harvested metadata have worked out too expensive / time consuming, hence move to web-scale).</div><div align="left">Making the information world flat - everything equal in value, print not preffered, no "silos".</div><div align="left">Showing stats from uni showing drop in use of abstracting & indexing materials, massive increase in "click through" to full text.</div><div align="left">A few warning words -keep it simple, easy & fast. Resist the urge to display the complexities. Align our priorities / behaviours with reality. Stop doing lots of stuff that isn't appreciated.</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><strong></strong></div><div align="left"><strong></strong></div><div align="left"><strong>What happens next? Life after 2.0 training in academic libraries, Buset & Lokse -</strong> </div><div align="left">Just made it into here as they started! Very tight swapping rooms...</div><div align="left">23 things course at one library (in 12 weeks) People seemed to enjoy the course, "discovered these things weren't dangerous" (great - people need to feel they won't "break" a tool if they play with it!). Some changes in behaviour - a library facebook page, 5 blogs, WIKI to complent intranet, some people using RSS feeds.</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Other library being discussed covered much less, 20 week course, focussing on small range of technologies, problem based learning. Focus was on the process, not on individual products. Results - good feedback, seems to be limited change in behaviour perhaps?</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Follow up survey - showed usual suspects in what web 2.0 tools used, Blogs, Wikis, etc. Why don;t people use Web 2.0 at work - 44.4% said "Not relevant to my job" (! But most of these didn;t receive any training, so awareness of how usual these tools can be is an issue) next along was "I don;t have time", 33.3%.</div><div align="left">What has been the most important effect of learning about web 2.0 - new ways of working (most), no-one said "improved contact with library users". Yet most people (44%) said the most important advantage for libraries was improved info for users.</div><div align="left">Attitudes - some fairly -ve comments. "email is good enough for me at work"; "I define web 2.0 as more of a leisure activity" (suggests perhaps that problem is educating people about why different tools might be useful / relevant rather than how to use the tools? Changing attitudes not learning mechanics of a new tool?)</div><div align="left">Though quotes also recognise that web 2.0 tools are important to users and relevant to libraries. Perhaps individuduals not seeing it as relevant to them though? Happy that other people doing it though...</div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left"><strong>Conference end</strong> Ole Husby - Summing up conference. The cloud is important (his presentation running from the cloud, also cloud of dust from Iceland has worried them in the week before!). Waves (from Chris Clarke's talk) are disruptive... People will use our data in ways we couldn't think of (if it's available). Important to do things from the bottom up... Twitter has been very active in conference (showing the twub). "Because I have twitter, I don't need to keep notes". </div><div align="left">Has thanked everyone. The end!</div>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-37545051019327955862010-04-27T07:38:00.026+01:002010-04-28T07:32:46.703+01:00emtacl10 - day 2Starting off with a keynote by Chris Clarke of Talis:<br /><br /><strong>Linking Education data</strong> - Talking about technology evolution (analogy of waves, can be disruptive). Every 10 years a wave of change in the internet? "Systems of record" in run up to year 2000, big investment, data in silos, big databases / systems like our LMS - innovative pretty much finished now. Last 10 years (web 2.0), investment in us - linking people and data, happening in the cloud. Enabling relationships.<br />Next up, "linked data". making the web data centric, not document centric. Making it easy to link data together (c.f. paying companies lots of money to do it). DBpedia big hub for linked data<br />(taking data from wikipedia). links between data sets growing exponentially.<br />Showing us examples - library catalogue (a linkable data set), BBC wildlife site (links created using concept of "deer" to link to external pages). Links to the idea of open data movement (showing <a href="http://data.gov.uk/">http://data.gov.uk/</a>). Why? There are also more smarter people outside your institution than inside (whoever you are), so why not let them do interesting stuff with it? Showing examples using government data set...<br />Particular example of Ordnance Survey - telling us about people being upset about paying for this data, due to public pressure, made available as open data set (cc type licence).<br />The real disruption here is changing peoples behaviour - still a few years off.<br />Now "open education". The value in education is in the relationships between educators and learners. Spend time on this, not on general content we want to use. "find, reuse, remix". MITopencourseware pionneers, more people doing this now. This first phase, next phase is what can we do with that content? <a href="http://p2pu.org/">http://p2pu.org/</a> early example of organising learning through open content. Flatworld knowledge - a commercial company - remixable textbooks, can view on demand for free, but then pay to print off that boook (or any mix of content from various books). Open High School of Utah - 1st school to use open content / have open curriculum. Finally got onto plugging TalisAspire(!), discount if you allow your content (reading lists) to be open.<br />The real disruption here is changing policies, changing licensing, etc.<br />Systems of record still important, but innovation is elsewhere. embracing linked data will allowed innovation. Challenge is changing policy more than anything else.<br /><br />I attended the mobile technologies strand:<br /><br /><strong>Library trailblazing, McCarthay </strong>-More about librarians playing - I like! Ryerson University, sounds similar in make up to Huddersfield Uni. Complain they are underfunded (though have more librarians than my institution!) One of there first things was SMS from the catalogue (text a catalogue entry to yourself). Asked students what they wanted to do online: Check opening hours, Book study rooms, check timetable, check borrower record, check catalogue, search for articles (as top 6).<br />Launched uni site and library site. Put most commonly asked for services on a new mobile site first. Quite restricted (to most desired functions and easy to do functions) rather than trying to do everything. Nice computer availability!<br />Also did a university wide one. Used students to do programming / graphics with librarian in charge - good idea! How may innovation prevention departments (sorry, IT depts) would allow that? Looks very much like the sort of information and display that <a href="http://www.ombiel.com/campusm.html">CampusM</a> would charge us a fortune for. Even talking about introducing location awareness into the next version...<br />Very impressed!<br /><br /><br /><strong>The ebook reader & the legacy of the paper book, Gasparini & Ugletveit</strong> - Talking about ebooks, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink">e-ink</a>, etc. Lots of example of ebook readers. Very basic introduction to them. Yawn! Move onto real books. Reading experience effected by quality of paper, ease of flicking through for navigation, can annotate (*gasp in horror*), see how far you've got, easily bookmark. Different ways of reading (active - learning? or passive - pleasure?). New ways of reading developed (hypertext, video & audio embedded in Vook, etc.). Started lending out ebook readers at Oslo, feedback included - wanting everything for their course on the reader, liking PDFs on it, found downloading difficult, impatient with time to turn a page. Seems to be a willingness to sacrifce some benefits of paper text for search functionality. Really want all their content on it to be most useful. Regular users want to do more stuff than just read books on it though!<br />Not convinced by their comparison of ebook with paper book, so not going to repeat them all here... Now listing guidelines that sound very much like pretty much every ebook reader I've ever heard of (search function, annotation / highlighting, etc...). Not impressed.<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Developing and mobilizing the info skills for students on the move. Sheikh</strong> - Infoskills from the Open University. Have struggled with some accents this week, but I'm really finding his difficult - I may not be able to blog much about this talk, so apologies if I get anything wrong (it'll be my misunderstandings, not his presentation) :-(<br />Moving away from mix of print & electronic delivery (and small amount of face to face) to electronic only as much as possible. Talking about learning and teaching librarians at OU and stuff they are involved in producing - Safari, IL Toolkit, library guide, beyond Google, etc. Says they are looking at developing bite sized IL things for mobiles. Screenshots of Safari & iKnow (I've never seen iKnow - bad me! Aimed at employers). Think he's just said <em>both</em> are free to download. iKnow mobile looks nice and clean / spare. Have created a learning object generator tool for librarians to use - strict limits on word count per page, maximum pages, etc., to make sure mobile objects are bite size and fit nicely on mobiles.<br />Will be continuing to work on delivering mobile services to users, in various ways.<br />Sorry if I've got the wrong end of the stick about any of this - really struggled to follow accent.<br /><br /><strong>Remix, repackage, deliver: A case study for the ebook platform, Tonkin (UKOLN)- </strong>Open access about the structures behind things, not just making things available.<br />Hard to predict consequences of making data available (this is a good thing).<br />Need enabling technologies - need to be simple, cheap, relatively painless. Too risky otherwise.<br />Early eBooks - not nice in lots of ways! Showed some nice pictures of dead ebook readers. But of course nice to read in all conditions, and low power usage. So problem is content distribution, more than how nice they are to use.<br />What if your work was automatically converted to eBook friendly formats? What if your computer did that for you - though licence agreements / copyright may stop you... Get metadata automatically as well?<br />Once you have these documents you can convert automatically, what now?<br />Likes putting different OS on ebook readers, though cautions against hacking devices.<br /><br /><strong>Blurring the boundaries (Me!)</strong> - <a href="http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/7456">http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/7456</a><br /><br />****dinner****<br /><br /><strong>Conor Glavin Keynote is cancelled</strong> - Boo! He's really good...<br /><br />After lunch sessions:<br /><br /><strong>The strongest link, Goddard & Byrne -</strong> How can libraries get involved in the semantic web / open data? Use RDF to publish stuff first of all. Tools to convert library stuff to RDF (showed some...). Many popular web publisher tools come along with RDF & semantic abilities built in (Zemanta plugin for blogs?). Eprints is a natively RDF app - yay! (Our repository uses eprints...)<br />Why do it? smarter linking - even standard identifiers aren't particularly unique (10 & 13 digit ISBNs anyone?). Lets us link stuff together really well, so also smarter searching. Show how it can disambiguate links /relationships. Imagine enriching our content with all the lovely data out in the cloud.<br />Major failure of libraries is not being able to do federated searching - surely improving metadata is better than trying to present bad federated searching better? Biggest hurdle for the libraries may be issues of trust?<br />Big advocacy role for librarians in linked data - we're good at this stuff (cataloguers) and good at sharing, so persuade others...<br />Great, very popular talk (standing room only).<br /><br /><br /><strong>Thunderstorms in Hallward, Smyth -</strong> Missed the start swapping streams. Talking about "backchat" in giving presentations at the moment - says students like to see that sort of instant, constant conversation. Do "open space" presentations (got a <strong>thunderwall</strong> area in their learning commons). Emphasis on engaging with people. Lots of distractions in this sort of environment - keep talks short! Can draw in people who weren't formally attending the talk, but passing or on the periphery. Make annotations to slides as he goes along - shows up to 4 screens, i,e, 4 images at a time. Helps people ask you to move back, recap, etc, as you go on - again, encouraging interactions. Makes it easier to do non-linear presentations.<br />They encourage people to use meaningful images next to relevant text - visual learning.<br /><br />Showed us Multi-slides - plug in to powerpoint, allows multiple projectors with familiar interface. Annotations still allowed by things like interactive whiteboards.<br /><br />Manifestations - images on glass walls from the libraries special collections. Now moved onto multi-touch, would like to drag these images around with multi-touch (like seeing these sort of random ideas thrown out, librarians have the great ideas...).<br /><br />Finished off with quote from a book (Sea Biscuit). Automobile shown as awful in a quote as emerging technology, but don't let that put us off experimenting and linking with researchers.<br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>Clickers: a tool for...</strong> - Passed out Interwrite audience response handsets ("clickers") to start.<br />Asked us a couple of questions - seem quite new to most people. Used "clickers" to get more interaction in classes. Asked if it was just fun, or improving learning?<br />thought carefully about how they used them, aimed to increase reflection and discussion amongst students (one clicker per group) - trying to choose the right question types for the right situation.<br /><br />Piloted with sessions on plagiarism. 97% liked to use them. Believed it enhanced activity and interaction. Motivating for staff(and students?). carefully deign the right questions for different purposes.<br /><br />Pilot lesson 2 was trying to assess learning in a class (series of 3 classes?) for masters students. Found a difference in pre & post testing. Students liked it. Adjusted the focus of the series of classes depending on pre test results (good!). Question design is essential. Immediate post-test may just tell us about recall, not learning (great, most people forget this)!<br /><br />Conclusions that new technology still requires good pedagogis (good to see they have their heads screwed on right).<br /><br />The day finished with a sponsor presentation that I won't blog!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong></strong>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-45084280512486600442010-04-26T10:40:00.021+01:002010-04-28T07:36:06.645+01:00emtacl10 - Day 1I may just blog selected sessions here, rather than all the ones I go to, but here goes for my (almost) live blog (so expect lots of typos and random ramblings) of emtacl10...<br /><br />Mmm, lovely dinner and nice little delicate cakes for pud!<br /><br />A welcome, etc., as you may expect, then into the first keynote:<br /><br /><strong>Lorcan Dempsey - "The network has reconfigured whole industries. What will it do to academic libraries?:</strong> How libraries are going to have to change their services in the networked future. Has 64 slides to get through! Example of Netflix - knows we aren't in the US, so can't access it. This has changed the way people view films in America. Showed example of recommendations. Netflix however has recently moved much of it's infrastructure to a competitor - Amazon. Their core competence is recommending films - not interested in running a data centre that has to sit behind it, so happy for Amazon (a competitor in delivering films) to do that part of it.<br />Network encourages efficiencies of scale. Can analysise data much better when you are larger in scale, deliver better what people want. At a network level, makes stuff easily referenceable - use big networks as place to refer others to.<br />Lets us specialise where we can make an impact - outsource other stuff to other people.<br />Institutional scale issues? Every library duplicating effort at the moment - not specialising where we should / can make impact. So should library services be externalised? National? Collaborative? Third Party? Or should they be given up?<br />Sourcing /Scaling very important over recent history, so JISC for UK negotiating stuff, collectively letting us buy things, rather than individual libraries trying to do the same.<br />Talk about 4 things within an institution level (Discovery; reputation mgt, citation mgt, the whole social thing)<br />But first, collections! These influence how we think about our other services. Traditionally we;ve looked after scarce things (books) that we need to look after carefully.<br />Discover happens elsewhere - example of searching Google Books to find a particular passage cf flicking through a book. The norm is now online, external, no longer limited to physical access and familiarity. "We are no longer limited to the 150 people...." of our real life networks, we can scale up to the whole web. So we need to make sure our special, "unique" collections are easily discoverable by people who don't want to use our tools, but use Google, etc. instead. i.e. "Indirect discovery". "Disclosing" stuff to cloud services to allow this. Example of putting a link to a resource (article) in a wikipedia page as a way of SEO (though this was disputed by someone on twitter immediately!).<br />Why mess about with making nice catalogues, etc., when most discovery will happen through other tools on the web?<br />Have some scalar confusion here - things happening at all sorts of different levels, "presences" all over the place. Should we have lots of pages, or one thing that can feed into other services?<br />Also have scope confusion - what are the motivations for each presence and what are we aiming for?<br />We don't have a controlled environment, the "network" throws all these together.<br />Social stuff: (context - community - conversation. Return on attention). Manage demand not manage supply. Make people aware of what you have, not enough to put stuff on the web, you need to push things forward that people may be interested in.<br /><br /><br />Some directions - Thinks we will get rid of most print books except the latest most used stuff. Move to regional stores. 80% or more spending on materials will be licenced electronic content from a few big suppliers. Will have selective & targeted kocal engagement around scholarly materials.<br />Moving infrastructure to the cloud. complex systems will have to be simplified. Need to realise network effects in this move (recommendations, collaborative collection mgt, etc.).<br />Shift from space as necessary storage and infrastructure to social, Ad Hoc rendevoiuz space, showcase for particular expertise.<br />Relationship mgt - Roles is to make informational aspects of reserch and learning more efective. Need to "peel" expertise away from the collection to apply it to wider tools, practices and services. "People are entry points". Make expertise accessible and visible. Not exposes our expertise at the moment, we push to resources more than our own expertise. "If the library wants to be seen as expert, then it's expertise has to be seen".<br />Doesn;t like the phrase "Info Lit" (boo to him!), prefers "Scholarly literacy".<br />Has finished about 35 minutes late - sure the fire alarm wasn't that long!<br /><br /><br />Social Networks strand:<br /><br /><strong>"New Applications derived from behaviour based recommendations" Spiering and geyer-Schulz:</strong> Talking about recommendations based on what users do, not what they say...<br />Sounds like <a href="http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may08/monnich/05monnich.html">BibTip </a>is service they are talking about.<br />Bibtip is based on analysis of co-inspections (full views within same browser session). Recommendations reflect local user behaviour, not wider material. Language independant, any media in catalogue, etc. Purely browser history. Ex Libris have installed this on their cat system.<br />20-25% of user on any particular day click on recommendations. Sounds a bit dodgy to me - how do we know the pages people are viewing are useful? It may be that everyone clicks on the same rubbish book because it comes high up in the list of search results - this system will then recommend it to others, re-inforcing that choice as a recommended book? Or am I wrong?<br />Started saying it was local only - now saying they are bringing in sharing of data between libraries, but with priority to local recommendations. So (I think) recommendations from elsewhere only come in when local data not populous enough to generate recommendations.<br /><br /><br /><strong>"Mashup of REST-ful APIs only using RSS feeds to support research in a high demanding research environment" Chumbe:</strong> Telling us all about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)">mash-ups</a>. Using <a href="http://www.journaltocs.hw.ac.uk/api">www.journaltocs.hw.ac.uk/api</a> (is this the draft version of <a href="http://www.tictocs.ac.uk/">http://www.tictocs.ac.uk/</a> ? <em>No, Dave Pattern tells me it's a seperate JISC funded project that builds on tictocs - no wonder it looked so similar, thanks Dave!)</em> to make a friendly interface for staff to use.<br />Example - alerts for a repository manager when authors from their institution have published.<br />2nd Example - cross refs RSS feeds from publishers with university subscriptions. So, stuff you may be interested in (on a topic) that we subscribe to.<br />Lots of bits and pieces you can do with this.<br />Not sure I like this. Mainly seem to be turning RSS feeds into a search for latest stuff - shouldn't our search tools be doing this anyway? Perhaps that is why I feel a bit uneasy...<br /><br /><br /><strong>Lightening talks!</strong> It seems no-one put their name down for one on the first day!<br /><br /><br /><strong>"To face or not to face" Novosel</strong> - Nice to see someone from Croatia (Zagreb Uni). Largest Croatian Uni, 6,500 students. They have 28 subject librarians. That's 2 and a half times the number we have with 4 times the students. What are we doing wrong? Sorry, slipping into a rant about staffing there...<br />Talking about using Facebook (most popular social network in Croatia) - she suggests they are up to 10 years behind some other countries, so Facebook still up & coming there. Most academic libraries in Croatia lack even fairly basic web presence.<br />Put news type items from the wider country / world on their own wall, along with links to other pages - using it to push useful links / links to people? First 5 months went from 0 fans to 1,100 fans (now 1,400) - sounds like they really got in at the right point to surf the peak of interest in facebook in their country.<br />Dissapointed that people aren't using it as social space, just as a feed of information. There is probably more interaction going on than on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Huddersfield-United-Kingdom/University-of-Huddersfield-Library/6409332612?ref=ts">our page </a>though :-)<br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>"Another look at personalisation" Haya & Stattin</strong>- Don't know what this one is about, slightly annoying I can't find abstracts anywhere!<br />Ah! Personalising library websites - inspired by BBC? Their "old" website looks quite nice at first glance! Now using Drupal to allow people to personalise their <a href="http://kib.ki.se/en">new pages </a>- use Shibboleth to log in. This means they have all the associated info about groups, etc., people belong to. Their webpage now like how I think our portal should be? Can move stuff around, add elements to a pages, etc. Looks really nice. Have a search box that stays fixed in place, most other stuff (underneath) changeable. Don't care if people don't customise as "standard" site is still better than old one! Though nice if they do... Will be carrying on working on it to improve things.<br /><br />That's the end of the first days sessions. (Organ?) concert in the cathedral is on offer tonight, followed by a reception of some sort.Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-57716759601006480462010-04-25T20:48:00.003+01:002010-04-29T19:14:21.768+01:00emtacl (pre)conference<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv-d4P2pNoiNLijYUHG78_D1GNW8JEZhzBEsEjo-D1TamHZG-JVGajDw-xytiUJvv9spTmNwriKkfteb3vD1rAtN_8ZcxPEXfJFOSCEChsTGVE87tc5hEON1UNS5FqadrKdZqugWBqhJU/s1600/photo.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 240px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464168031042294722" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv-d4P2pNoiNLijYUHG78_D1GNW8JEZhzBEsEjo-D1TamHZG-JVGajDw-xytiUJvv9spTmNwriKkfteb3vD1rAtN_8ZcxPEXfJFOSCEChsTGVE87tc5hEON1UNS5FqadrKdZqugWBqhJU/s320/photo.jpg" /></a><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Arrived in Norway for the Emerging Technologies in Academic Libraries (emtacl) conference. </div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Have put my<a href="http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/7456/"> slides in our repository </a>and will try and record audio as well to go alongside. The talk itself is based on an article I've written for <a href="http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=el">The Electronic Library </a>- hopefully I should get the final okay soon and make that available as a pre-print.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div>Depending on how things go over the next few days I'll try and blog the sessions I find interesting as I go along. </div>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-11288649723850872682010-04-19T20:12:00.004+01:002010-04-19T20:22:59.466+01:00Stuff wot I have wrote...Very aware I haven't put anything on here for a while. mainly as I've been writing stuff up recently and didn't want to duplicate anything! Lots of things hopefully to be published over the next few months, but I've also recently given a talk at <a href="http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/">LILAC </a>which is available <a href="http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/7250/">online (slides & audio)</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ntnu.no/ub/emtacl/">Emtacl conference</a> will be next week, ash cloud permitting. I'll post slides (and possibly audio) afterwards.<br /><br />In general I'm putting (serious) conference papers/slides along with journal articles in our <a href="http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/view/authors/Walsh=3AAndrew=3A=3A.html">repository</a> as they crop up. Not bothering to deposit workshop type events though...<br /><br />Next step will be to work out what to do over the next year or two with the results from this years projects. Will aim to think aloud about them on this blog.Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-66037790471074830752009-12-04T08:25:00.002+00:002009-12-04T08:43:02.949+00:00Conference talks in the pipelineI've just been accepted to talk at two conferences, <a href="www.lilacconference.com">LILAC</a> in Limerick next March and <a href="www.ntnu.no/ub/emtacl/">EMTACL10</a> in Trondheim in April.<div><br /></div><div>Both have QR codes as a theme, but the LILAC talk is entitled "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">QR Codes – using mobile ‘phones to deliver library instruction and help at the point of need.</span>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "> </span>and is very much about what I've done at the University, what's worked and what hasn't and how it supports information skills.</div><div><br /></div><div>The EMTACL talk also covers QR codes, but with the title "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Blurring the boundaries between our physical and electronic libraries</span>" it is much more of a rant from me! I'll be talking about how we can blur the boundaries between the physical library and electronic resources through technologies such as QR codes as well as mentioning some other technologies such as GPS and wireless communication and their potential. It'll then be a bit of a rant as to why we don't use RFID for interesting stuff instead of just using it for stock circulation....</div><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family:"DejaVu Sans Condensed"; mso-bidi-language:#00FF"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><div><br /></div>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-40391116687874736372009-11-28T14:47:00.003+00:002009-11-28T15:39:11.577+00:00Last focus group!Ran my last focus group yesterday - have starting writing them up, but half still to do. Some interesting things jumping out already:<br /><br />1) Students are happy us getting their mobile phone numbers any way we can and using them to get in touch - as long as it's with "useful" information. Defining "useful" is a bit tricky though...<br /><br />2) Any barrier,<span style="font-style: italic;"> however small</span>, is too big and will stop them using new services. This is <span style="font-style: italic;">unless</span> they see an <span style="font-weight: bold;">immediate</span> and <span style="font-weight: bold;">obvious</span> advantage to doing it.<br /><br />3) Most of the focus group members only thought about using library services in the library - all our electronic resources; all the ways of contacting us; all the info on webpages; twitter, etc. used almost entirely on campus by those attending the focus groups. So, most genuinely didn't see the point in anything delivered to mobile devices unless they gave them an advantage on campus. Bit of a surprise this! The students were a mix of part & full time as well...<br /><br />Will need to follow up with some sort of contact with distance learners perhaps? Or more part-timers to see if this is typical?Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-9384076595171855522009-11-10T12:48:00.003+00:002009-11-10T12:56:10.809+00:00Lots of things done todayA productive morning, mobile projects wise!<div><br /></div><div><ul><li>Just submitted at possible workshop to the CoFHE / UC&R joint conference 2010 on mobile 'phone stuff.</li></ul><br /><ul><li>Pretty much finished an article I'm writing to complement a talk I've submitted to LILAC 2010 - if I do the talk, it'll be submitted to the Journal of Information Literacy (run by the same people as the conference, so only polite to give them first crack at it!).</li></ul><br /><ul><li>Done a draft version of the questionnaire I'll use to assess how the Text tips & tricks went (using a form in Google docs for that one). Also scheduled the last of the text tips and tricks to go out over the next couple of weeks.</li></ul></div>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-57372738810472152092009-11-09T15:18:00.002+00:002009-11-09T15:23:24.376+00:00Focus groupsStarted a series of focus groups for students to talk about how they feel about existing and potential mobile 'phone services.<br /><br />Really struggling to get people to sign up for them - advertised it in student portal, emails to all students, plasma screens, teaching sessions, twitter, facebook.... Everyone who takes part will be put into a draw for an new generation iPod Nano, so quite a nice prize which I thought would be an incentive.<br /><br />Bit startled so far at how conservative the students are in their thoughts on mobile services - have to see how the others pan out...Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-36689503045405556262009-10-19T16:10:00.003+01:002009-10-19T16:14:43.166+01:00Extreme makeover: Transforming the face of your Library ServiceHere's the presentation I'm giving at the "Extreme makeover: Transforming the face of your Library Service" day in Leeds on 26th October.<br /><br /><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left; WIDTH: 425px" id="__ss_2276122"><a style="MARGIN: 12px 0px 3px; DISPLAY: block; FONT: 14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; TEXT-DECORATION: underline" title="QR codes, text a librarian and more..." href="http://www.slideshare.net/andy_walsh/qr-codes-text-a-librarian-and-more">QR codes, text a librarian and more...</a><object style="MARGIN: 0px" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=presentationforjisceventleedsoctober2009-091019080734-phpapp01&rel=0&stripped_title=qr-codes-text-a-librarian-and-more"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=presentationforjisceventleedsoctober2009-091019080734-phpapp01&rel=0&stripped_title=qr-codes-text-a-librarian-and-more" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div style="FONT-FAMILY: tahoma,arial; HEIGHT: 26px; FONT-SIZE: 11px; PADDING-TOP: 2px">View more <a style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline" href="http://www.slideshare.net/andy_walsh">Andrew Walsh</a>.</div></div><br />My handout that goes along with it is below:<br /><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left; WIDTH: 477px" id="__ss_2276123"><a style="MARGIN: 12px 0px 3px; DISPLAY: block; FONT: 14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; TEXT-DECORATION: underline" title="Handout for QR codes, text a librarian and more..." href="http://www.slideshare.net/andy_walsh/handout-for-qr-codes-text-a-librarian-and-more">Handout for QR codes, text a librarian and more...</a><object style="MARGIN: 0px" width="477" height="510"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayerd.swf?doc=handoutforleedseventoct09-091019080728-phpapp02&rel=0&stripped_title=handout-for-qr-codes-text-a-librarian-and-more"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayerd.swf?doc=handoutforleedseventoct09-091019080728-phpapp02&rel=0&stripped_title=handout-for-qr-codes-text-a-librarian-and-more" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="477" height="510"></embed></object><div style="FONT-FAMILY: tahoma,arial; HEIGHT: 26px; FONT-SIZE: 11px; PADDING-TOP: 2px">View more <a style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">documents</a> from <a style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline" href="http://www.slideshare.net/andy_walsh">Andrew Walsh</a>.</div></div>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-30314080879675232902009-10-12T15:53:00.002+01:002009-10-12T15:55:59.793+01:00Guest spot on UKOLN blog!I was asked to do a guest spot on the UKOLN cultural heritage blog about the text a librarian service after they spotted my recent article in CILIP's Update magazine.<br /><br />Duly done this weekend and <a href="http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/2009/10/12/text-a-librarian-at-huddersfield-university-library/">straight up on their blog </a>today!Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-91416879880247729382009-10-12T15:48:00.002+01:002009-10-12T15:53:29.622+01:00QR codes competitionJust launched a competition for students to have a chance of winning £100 worth of vouchers if they can find and decode 7 out of 10 competition QR codes in the library - the hope being it might get some people to install a reader on their 'phones and start exploring...<br /><br />Promoted it via twitter (@hudlib); facebook (library page); the Huddersfield Student newspaper (short article); posters; and flyers. In a couple of weeks time I'll put it on the student portal and maybe send out a mass email to students as a 2nd wave of promotion.Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-31698789198282267722009-10-07T16:58:00.002+01:002009-10-07T19:45:27.820+01:00HHL09 last gasp!HHL09 last gasp!<p>Y-factor presentation: the winners of this years Y factor competition<br />(innovation in their learning) for 6-16 year olds celebrating their<br />success by presenting to the main conference. Normanby primary school<br />showed how they use PDAs & other tech - full of humour, really good<br />presentation. Lots of videos they made in school. Got notes / slides<br />in wrong order but coped well with it!</p><p><br />Research strand again - round table format, so got to choose who to<br />listen to. Couldn't make notes as there were only one or 2 at a table!<br />Say talks on a visual voting system; the OU mobile library stuff; and<br />a central repository for mobile learning projects. When I edit the<br />blog I'll put details in..</p><p>Last keynote - the legendary Ray Kurzweil via video link. The<br />acceleration of technology in the 21st Century: the impact on<br />education and society. Exponential growth in computing power, we can't<br />picture this - tend to think linear not exponential. This is why we<br />struggle to picture the future.<br />Involved in reading machines for the blind since early 70s. First was<br />like a big copier. Now got it integrated into mobile including<br />translation & more.. Predicted hardware would be available in 2008 so<br />started developing software in 2002! Adding object recognition as<br />well...<br />Important for us: need to plan for what is possible at end of a<br />project as things can change dramatically in a few years.<br />Showed graph of beginning of life on Earth to invention of PC. Claims<br />to show move towards singularity- we use complexity of life or<br />complexity of tech to move to the next level of complexity and<br />paradigm shift. Says these progressions are fairly smooth and always<br />have been.<br />Predicting $1000 for human level computing power by 2020. Just need<br />the software to take advantage of it. Says we have lots of specific<br />apps to do intelligent tasks, but nothing for the full thing. Reverse<br />engineering the human brain is giving us ideas & helping us model more<br />& more of the brain.<br />Says by 2029 we'll have systems integrated with our brain to expand<br />our mental health.</p><p>Fascinating talk, nothing new to me, but great to hear from the horses<br />mouth...</p><p></p>BTW- didn't win anything in the prize draw that followed...Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-65464714989700721762009-10-07T12:16:00.002+01:002009-10-07T19:44:29.196+01:00HHL09 research strand continued..HHL09 research strand continued..<p>George Saltsman from the middle of nowhere on the US )250 miles from<br />next big metroploitan area!). IPhone has allowed them to experiment as<br />it's the first with a decent browser - so focussed on iPhones<br />initially. Can find practically anything on their mobile apps - sounds<br />completely integrated into college life. Also sounds very easy for<br />lecturers to share materials / calendars / etc. - wonder if that means<br />they've got decent buy in from staff? Have done research into what<br />impact mobile learning has had at their college.<br />First study - all first year students in a class given iPhones / iPod<br />touches. Had 92% of students in the class with them, so some degree of<br />backing off by lecturers. People much preferred using iPhone. People<br />didn't always take iPod touch with them, but did iPhone. Split about 2<br />to 1 iPhone to iPod touch.<br />Staff beleives program was a success (but so would I if I got an<br />iPhone out of it!). Real success - but important finding is that to be<br />successful it needs to be ad ubiquitous as possible. so iPhone worked<br />ad it's their own phone. IPod touch isn't as students don't bother<br />carrying them around, so miss out on mobile, always on learning.<br />Doesn't have much proof it has improved learning - just perceptions.</p><p>Jane Lunsford - OU. Wanted to know if students wanted to use mobile<br />devices. Dis some action research with groups across 9 subject areas.<br />Used for students who miss tutorials and feedback in various ways.<br />Used range of elearnungcstuff from mp3 to testing. Materials were<br />additional to course, it was completely optional whether students used<br />them - also covered elsewhere. Students seemed to like them from the<br />selected feedback shown in the talk.</p><p>Also they've tried a testing pilot with 450 students who volunteered<br />by text message. 20 messages, reminders of deadlines & resources, also<br />making best use of stuff. Students seem to like reminders - made them<br />feel like they hadn't been forgotten about. Prefer to email as they<br />noticed them! Lots of general elearning stuff OU does followed...<br />Like to see the final paper for info on text message pilot.</p><p><br /></p>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-149690882353983852009-10-07T12:14:00.002+01:002009-10-07T19:43:53.408+01:00HHL 3rd day- first bit of Research strand<p>HHL 3rd day- Research strand part 1.<br /><br />John Traxler- Will student devices deliver innovation, inclusion &; transformation?<br />Reviewers welcomed the fact his paper has introduced sociology back<br />into the papers. Papers will be published spring 2010 - this one<br />should be worth looking at.<br />Problems with dishing out devices; including scaling up- no or limited<br />sustainability. Country is awash with mobile devices. They change the<br />nature of learning (& society) - not just an easy fix. They allow us<br /> to sustain community & shift ownership of learning from teachers to<br />community of learners.<br />In literature people discuss the blurring of the physical & real<br /> worlds. Mobile tech is like wrist watches- glance, woken into real<br /> world. Completely unlike fixed computers. Blurring of work & private<br /> days as well.<br /> Mobile tech is also changing our idea of identity. They are becoming<br />part of us.<br /><br />Haven't really addressed the issue in education that people can be<br /> physical present but virtually elsewhere.<br /><br /> Hard for institution when there is no convergence in mobile tech -<br /> such as PCs. End up with animals running the zoo of using learners own<br /> devices. Real problems with us managing this.<br /><br /> Robin Deegan. Issues & challenges in usabilty of mobile apps. Survey<br /> for his PhD. Lots of definition at the start - should probably expect<br /> this from a research student!<br /> Survey : 202 students from range of countries. 65% use their device<br /> for <5 mins per interaction. Not a lot of detail, ran really quickly<br /> over few results he showed us. Full paper might be interesting for<br /> full stats from survey.<br /><br /> Nicola Beddall-Hill mobile devices as boundary objects on field trips.<br /> Mobile devices seen as fantastic for geography type field trips - but<br /> very little research to prove it. Interested in how mobile tech<br /> changes social interaction in learning on field trips. Using Actor<br /> Network Theory in her research. Boundary objects are shared ideas or<br /> concepts that are shared - used this to explore ideas. Interesting,<br /> lots of people flipping between gps devices & paper, but not sure if<br /> this paper would be worth reading for me, how tranferable is gps / gis<br /> on field trips to other environments & kit?<br /><br /> Luciane Brown, Using mobile learning to teach learning. Focussed on<br />14-15 year olds & mobile phones. Look at Attewell 2005 for something<br /> on mobiles supporting different learning styles.<br /> She used smartphones that she provided for one class. Didn't use their<br /> own phones. Could only use phones with teacher present. Looking at<br /> groups that need help with reading. Control group did similar tasks<br /> to mobile group but in class & with pencil & paper. Mobile group could<br /> listen to vocabulary words (over phone), practice stuff using7<br /> webpages & do exercises on phone. Not much difference in improvement<br /> between groups. Not surprising- this is in no way mobile learning when<br /> you have to sit on one place to do it. Study sounds a complete waste<br /> of time in point if view. Sounds like she struggled to get permission<br /> to do anything with the students... Has recommendations, but these are<br /> useless without a mobile component of this research on supposed mobile<br /> learning.</p>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-41692952660084972962009-10-06T18:15:00.001+01:002009-10-06T20:56:35.901+01:00HHL 2nd day, 2nd halfLast few talks on day 2:<p><br />Phyllis H. Hillwig - mobile learning in K12 US education. Talked about<br />digital natives from the start, for me that = #fAil. Opportunity #1 -<br />How? Teachers moving from facilitator to connector.</p><p>What are students doing on their 'phones - her study. They'd like<br />to ... Missed al of this as she flicked straight passed it. Hmm.<br />Barely mentioned anything about handheld learning.</p><p>Felt that about lots of the speakers - lots of focus on primary $<br />secondary education, very little outside that. Very little re-usable<br />info on Handheld learning. Some talks have been fantastic. Lots have<br />been nice, but nothing I can take away. A few have been irrelevant<br />both to me & surely most of the audience?</p><p>This talk has completely lost me as these notes may make clear! Bloody<br />digital immigrants vs natives again! Doesn't seem to know why mobile<br />phone usage / mobiles are behind Europe. Even I know it's because of<br />the way telecoms companies gave charged in the US - only just stopped<br />charging to receive text messagess why doesn't she know it if she<br />works in the area? Now trying to encourage us to go to USA as their<br />conferences lack our knowledge & experience.</p><p>Linda someone - another company person. She says she is starting a<br />reading revolution. Slagging off lots of iPhone games. Developers not<br />thinking enough of design of these things. Distracting visuals &<br />sounds are not good. Really doesn't like iPhone because of lack of<br />flash - will develop for android when it supports flash.</p><p>Naomi Norman - talked about Nintendo ds lite game they've done for the<br />army to improve numeracy. Sounds really good - inspired repeated<br />effort, opportunistic learning, less stigma than print workbooks, ds<br />fired in pockets, were easy & familiar to use, was affordable! Allowed<br />more context than previous teaching.<br />Also showed another ds tool they've done in vehicle maintenance. Used<br />for refresher training & immediate info - tutorials & games.</p><p>Tony Vincent - last speaker of the day. Getting students engaged is my<br />mission. Boredom is the enemy of learning. Favourite handheld tool at<br />moment is iPhone / iPod touch. Talking about creating comics,<br />animations & podcasts. Examples: comic touch; (just mentioned<br />copyright! Good man!); strip designer; Ali's jigsaw puzzle; flipbook;<br />voice memos; posterous (email it & it automatically creates a blog<br />post with the audio embedded). Really nice talk with illustrations of<br />what he uses as a teacher.</p><p><br /></p><p></p>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-13190977381053722512009-10-06T16:21:00.002+01:002009-10-06T20:55:42.867+01:00HHL 2nd day pm - 1st half!HHL 2nd day pm :<p>John Davitt. 100% +ve feedback on eBay - why more feedback tgere than<br />ever received in real life education. Lots of interaction. Google docs<br />to create 100 hour school - lots of stuff in conference connect.<br />Computers can act to make us the idiot vitesse. Great entertaining &<br />inspiring talk.</p><p>Alexandra Deschamps-something : founder of Tinker.it - Arduino, a<br />cheap & easy way to play with electronics. A way of learning by doing<br />hands on stuff. It's open source fir bith hardware & software. They've<br />been running workshops for anyone to use it. I want to play with it<br />but I know I've never find the time... Few books available - learning<br />through YouTube / forums / etc. Finish with 5 thoughts. 1) Cut & paste<br />good to start with. 2) failure is part of the process. 3) teaching<br />the value of open source (it's good to share) 4) intergeberational<br />experiences (teachers parents & students learning together). Missed one?</p><p>David Braben. Wrote Elite that I used to spend ages trying to load on<br />an Acorn Electron in my youth! Consider drop in computing degree<br />applicants since 2001. Technology talked down by media? ICT in schools<br />dull & taught by teachers that are often less technologically literate<br />than pupils. This is madness! Use technology to motivate - tech that's<br />used & fascinates children. Whole talk focussed on getting more<br />people into computer science rather than anything more general.</p><p>Tim Rylands - big ideas need big spaces. Using a wii game - African<br />safari. Put text box on PowerPoint and changes properties so it let's<br />you type into it during a presentation. Very entertaining. Has put<br />stuff on conference connect.</p><p><br /></p>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-48746982832061833932009-10-06T13:13:00.001+01:002009-10-06T20:54:46.744+01:003rd keynote: Yvonne Roberts. What is education for ... In the 21st Century. Dyslexia is a way for middle class people to excuse their children's poor3rd keynote: Yvonne Roberts. What is education for ... In the 21st<br />Century. Dyslexia is a way for middle class people to excuse their<br />children's poor performance. Tech is similarly split along class<br />lines. Public schools always known that The whole person is important.<br />Better to have one computer between 2- they learn twice ad much due to<br />working together.discussing SEED skills- Social & emotional<br />competencies; Emotional resilience; Enterprise innovation &<br />creativity; Discipline - both inner & willingness to accept external.<br />More relevant than just measurements like IQ? "whether you think you<br />can or think you can't, you are probably right." Henry Ford.says<br />resilience is more important than how clever you are. If you have the<br />right mindset & are resilient then you deserve as much support as the<br />"High acheivers" as it makes a real difference in life. the Young<br />Foundation trying to work from the bottom up, empowering learners.<br />Doesn't agree with tech as a tool. It's a valuable ingredient instead.<p>4th keynote: James Paul Gee -"compehension is grounded in perceptual<br />simulations that prepare agents for situated action" Barsalou,1998:p.<br />77. Thinks this says that we essentially run video games in our head.<br />Reading books without experience means they can't picture what it<br />means. It's like reading the manual to a computer game before you play<br />it- it doesn't make sense. Read it after looking at the game & it make<br />sense becausevwe can situate it in our experience. Children out of<br />school are following their own curriculum through gaming that follows<br />best practice. Schools don't. Games have in system & overview<br />viewpoints - allows a cognitively complex way of seeing how things<br />work. That's how scientists think. Action orientated texts help<br />understanding - so games use language leading straight to action.<br />World of Warcraft damage mods allow players to theorize as they play.<br />Lucidly functional language is good - you can have highly technical<br />language that all can understand if that language is married to an<br />action in the game. Gaming also allows "modding" - best way to<br />understand is to model it? Last- Passionate Affinity Groups: you're<br />never going to master anything unless you are passionate about it.<br />Games let you be part of a passionate group.</p><p></p><p><br /></p>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-40072035917539476452009-10-06T11:48:00.002+01:002009-10-06T20:54:08.798+01:00HHL - first 2 keynotes!Again - just notes as I made them:<p>Intro : industry announcements:</p><p>Conferenceconnect - people who did online things.</p><p>Wild knowledge - free basic account - all web based</p><p>Intersog - pocket MBA iPhone app is example. 1 year free licence on<br />offer today.</p><p>Gcsepod- subscriptions for schools so they can give access to iPhone<br />type gcsepod resources</p><p>Main intro - Graham. Money issue for us all... Waiting for<br />transformation from government - tipping point reached? Tech easy &<br />cheap to access?<br />Showed his 4 year old "handheld learning girl" playing with her iPhone<br />(!)</p><p>First keynote: Zenna Atkins. Some great insights. Thinks future is<br />content not buildings / structures (though politicians feel otherwise)<br />delivered to handheld devices. Passport to future is immediate<br />assessment by handheld devices not certificates. Wants personal<br />education allowances so you can buy education from wherever you want,<br />nit just Victorian style schools.</p><p>#hhl now trending on Twitter!</p><p>2nd- Malcom McLaren: necer talked about education befire. Popular<br />culture - all of it says "it's cool to be stupid". Live in a culture<br />of desire cf culture of necessity (post war). Talent show is<br />representative if today's culture. Authenticity & karaoke sum up<br />struggle for today's society & education. Oposites - one defined by<br />the moment & lack of creativity, one which celebrates the messiness of<br />creativity. Tony Blair was a buffoon who should have been hung at<br />Zmarble arch where tyvurn once stood for trying to brandvys cool<br />Brittania. Beleives England teaches lies / deception through school &<br />tv. Illustrated by dixon of dock green - he new you couldn't talk to<br />the filth. Glad to leave school but not glad to get a job. Trainee<br />wine taster - a job his mother could boast about. Shown job by ex<br />forces officers - red faced, blue veined, etc. Drunk every night when<br />he got home. One day tried to avoid hideous lunch by ducking into st<br />martins school of art. Got himself fired by smoking gitanes in tasting<br />room. Shortly afterwards went to art school. Glorious cult of the<br />amateur - trying to be the glorious failure as inspired at art school.<br />Pistols in sex pistols because they were only 17 & he thought they<br />only had small penises. Declaration of ewar against society when he<br />accidently invented punk. Youth has to behave irreverently because of<br />it's beleif in it's own immortality. When standing for mayor 10% of<br />vote!) had to create a manifesto - Malcolm mclaren likes libraries!<br />Suggested putting pubs in public libraries to fund them...<br />Wants to restablish the idea of learning for learnings sake - the<br />flaneur exploring. Don't take information for granted just because<br />it's free. Use tech like a tool don't rely on it - if you rely on gps<br />how will you know when it sends you the wrong way?</p><p>How do we go away from the karaoke culture (question from audience) make sure<br />people know the real thing is sexuer. Karaoke is about fucking a blow<br />up doll - authentic is fucking the real thing</p><p><br />---</p>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-40515502584029981272009-10-06T11:46:00.004+01:002009-10-08T14:11:04.363+01:00Hhl09 - pecha kucha notesThese are the notes as I've made them: I'll try and tart them up later!<p>First up - Martin Owen:</p><p>"What I'm going to do over next 55 years". Interested in how much stuff was in classroom 55 years ago - where has it gone, want to make more stuff.</p><p>Playing with small stuff - tiny micropossers to the computer becomes invisible. Ubiquitous; pervaisive; embedded; cheap.</p><p>Learn anywhere. Learn somewhere.</p><p>What would Maria Mintessori do? He's trying to create smart e-learning toys. 6x6cm tiles. Lots interact with each other. Putting learning back into stuff. Probably be making them within 6 months</p><p><br />2nd talk - Tony Vincent. Using web apps. Putting stuff on the cloud.</p><p><br />Showed online stopwatch. Avairy thing, minor? Garageband type thing.; Prezi.com; pixton (comics ); Blaberize.com( talking head); lots of nice stuff to play with.</p><p>3rd - James Clay "the future of learning". The past - why we do the things we do. We start in Sept. Because of the harvest. We need tostart breaking things down - reflect modern concerns. Remember learning is not about tech. Mobile learning about learners being mobile. Need institutions that are responsive & flexible. Need to reward innovation. Need solutions not barriers. Need culture change.</p><p>4th - Marcus specht - ambient information channels. How do people learn with augmented objects? What can sensors / displays do. Context gives meaning.</p><p>5th -Chris someone. Using DITA (an XML format) to deliver content to the iPhone.</p><p>Lots of probs with projector ..</p><p>6th - Jim? Mike? (librarian!) Everything is remediated. How desktop access / mobile web design are influencing each other. )Bolter & gruisin book 2000). Web stuff for mobiles are clean & quite limited in content - starting to be reflected by normal websites.</p><p>7th - Stuart Smith - the killer app for mlearning. 49% of uk adults accessed the mobile web? Apps- can be limiting, much prefers web. Mobile web is a flawed solution though. Good as browser is already loaded. Web addresses hard to use.</p><p>8th up -Lucy Haagen. M'ubuntu- down to earth mlearning for South Africa. Big problems with literacy on S. Africa.</p><p>9th - Martin Owen. 140 million mobile in Africa. 80 million in Brazil. Main concrn is nit having device but paying for "airtime". Talking about project in Capetown. Delivering stuff in 144 characters...<br />Recipricol reading is what he's used. Learners Got book & mobile. Used SMS groupware - text one number, software forwards it on to everyone else. Ask "what do you think xxx is about?" & then start to read - then have to ask "community" a question. Then re-read; then text a<br />question to check eveyones understanding. Have to then answer a colleagues question.</p><p>10th - James Clay again. 20 web 2.0 apps for learning. Flickr (notes & comments); Twitter (conversation); etherpad; Screenr (screen capture); Posterous (blog); Audioboo; evernote (online notes); Shozu; Google Apps; Ustream; Prezi; Slideshare; ning; delicious; wordpress; qik<br />(Nikia video broadcast); friendfeed; remember the milk; YouTube .</p><p><br /></p>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-46630002214361972009-10-02T15:30:00.003+01:002009-10-02T15:34:28.329+01:00Text tips and tricksJust sent a "welcome" text message to the first group of people to sign up to our "Text Tips & Tricks" service (by texting HUDUNI LIB to 81025 - so nice and easy!)<div><br /></div><div>Hopefully a few more people will sign up over the coming week, so I'll set up a second group / welcome message for them.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first proper text message is due to go out on Monday (5th October), containing a link to a podcast describing what they can find on floor 4 (the entrance floor of the library). I'll then schedule the rest to go out over the coming weeks....</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-8366467164053765132009-09-28T12:28:00.003+01:002009-09-28T12:34:38.722+01:00Article writingTrying to pull together an outline of an article for a peer reviewed journal at the moment that will link QR codes and information literacy. I've submitted a talk to <a href="http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/">LILAC2010</a> on a similar topic, so the article is designed to complement the talk - possibly in the journal run by the same people,<a href="http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/JIL.aspx"> Journal of Information Literacy</a>.<br /><br />Think I've probably done about as much as I can so far (just under 2,500 words) while I've still got so much feedback and usage data to come back on how well the QR codes are working.<br /><br />Hopefully it should be relatively painless to complete in a couple of months time...Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-80490488163108419472009-09-26T14:32:00.003+01:002009-09-26T14:34:26.186+01:00MmIT event - mobile learning: what exactly is it?Went to a really interesting mobile learning event in Aston the other day. I'm far too disorganised to write up any notes, but Andy Powell did a far better job anyway...<br /><br />http://efoundations.typepad.com/livewire/2009/09/mmit-conference-2009-mobile-learning-what-exactly-is-it.htmlAndy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-4006249548699408332009-09-26T14:11:00.002+01:002009-09-26T14:17:34.769+01:00New articles on mobile 'phones & libraries by me!I've had 2(!) articles published in the last week - On in <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/07419050911000562">Library Hi Tech News</a> and one in <a href="http://www.cilip.org.uk/publications/updatemagazine">CILIP update</a>.<br /><br />Full references below:<br /><br />Walsh, Andrew (2009) Text messaging (SMS) and libraries. Library Hi Tech News, 26(8, pp. 9-11.<br /><br />Walsh, Andrew (2009) Text a librarian @ Huddersfield. CILIP Update, October 2009, pp. 44-45.Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6689104028022871652.post-60406839317389936202009-09-04T09:05:00.002+01:002009-09-26T14:08:45.899+01:00QR codes, staff presentationsAbout to give my first presentation on QR codes to staff in the library, should be followed by another one next week, then I'll arrange a third to try and catch anyone that's missed out!
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<br />Most important part was letting people play with mobile 'phones to see how QR codes work.
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<br /><div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_1950925"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/andy_walsh/qr-codes-presentation-for-staff-briefings" title="QR Codes presentation for staff briefings">QR Codes presentation for staff briefings</a><object style="margin:0px" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=qrcodespresentationforstaffbriefings-090904043202-phpapp01&stripped_title=qr-codes-presentation-for-staff-briefings"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=qrcodespresentationforstaffbriefings-090904043202-phpapp01&stripped_title=qr-codes-presentation-for-staff-briefings" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></object><div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/andy_walsh">andy_walsh</a>.</div></div>
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<br />Or the recording made while I was speaking, it was cut off slightly during the questions, but the full presentation is there:
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<br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dy9cJGHd37Gd8MRRbc_WSe2nUN49yeWo5kUqfFNb8qa2j6C1U-SdExXdtvcTdTgQ9XnmrgbjywRC0AHiILfxw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Andy Walshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06672754063506249382noreply@blogger.com0