Free !

Free - how I love that word. Whether I'm finding things on the web or scrounging through shops in Second Life I'm always on the lookout for special bargains and freebies.

Sarah Houghton-Jan, Librarian in Black, has posted about free software cheat sheets available at http://www.customguide.com/quick_references.htm . These are useful guides that may be printed out and made available in the library for clients who need assistance with a variety of software applications for Microsoft or Mac.

Now this may not be the type of freebie that everyone is falling over themselves to obtain, but I think most educational libraries will find the cheat sheets very useful and time-saving.

Web 2.0 Tutorials

As anyone who reads this blog regularly will have guessed I am a great fan of using Web 2.0, particularly its potential for making libraries more "with it". This list of 100 Free Library 2.0 Webinars and Tutorials from the College@Home blog will help anyone who wants to find out more or give instructors ideas for spreading the word amongst unbelievers. I'm sure that library staff have already been converted but part of my mission is to get others to understand. Any library that hasn't yet run a variation of the 23 Learning 2.0 Things programme should consider implementing it as soon as they are able.

Tips and Tricks to Create a Learning Space in Second Life

50 Tips and Tricks to Create a Learning Space in Second Life is the title of a blog post by Laura Milligan at Collegedegrees.com. This is a wonderful resource for anyone looking for ideas for teaching in SL. My college is still reluctant to try this new technology but I live in hope.

7 Things You Should Know About

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's (ELI's) 7 Things You Should Know About... series provides concise information on emerging learning technologies and related practices. If you have ever struggled to explain why various Web 2.0 tools are useful in the library or teaching environments here is a most useful series of explanations about technologies that may demonstrate positive learning impacts.

Currently there are 37 applications in the series which should give you all you need to stay up-to-date on emerging technologies.

Open Source and Web 2.0

iLibrarian directed me to an article about open source software in online learning in the April-June 2008 issue of Educause Quarterly. After defining it and giving the history of open source software the authors go into detail about it's impact on learning and describe some of the applications that are used by education institutions around the world.

For me the most significant segment was a description of web 2.0 enabling students to participate in information sharing and combining that with open-source software(How can I persuade my director to reconsider attitude towards web 2.0?).

With Web 2.0, the concept of student-centered learning has acquired a new dimension. Previously, the greatest critique of student-centered learning was the lack of resources and the isolation of each student from other learners. Web 2.0 has provided a means through which both collective and individual intelligence can be harnessed, while students bond in stronger, redefined ways.

These concepts all have the potential to change distance education but still need more focussed developers to produce reliable, quality online education.

Keeping up-to-date

During a recent advanced web searching workshop I tried to demonstrate Yahoo! Mindset but the link didn't work. Thinking that I was at fault for not updating my presentation I apologised and later set about trying to find the new link, with no success. I then read on Phil Bradley's weblog that it had disappeared. It was a useful little gadget and I'm sorry to see it go. So many useful links that I have built into presentations have either disappeared altogether or had their urls changed that I would like to stress the importance of checking every link before using it in a presentation or listing it on a handout - unless you don;t mind your audience losing faith in you.

Google Generation is a myth?

Librarians' Internet Index: New This Week reports on research commissioned by JISC and the British Library about young people born or brought up in the Internet age and their ability to use the web to find information. Hmmph! I could have saved them the expense - as could most Librarians who struggle to teach Information Literacy Skills to students. The annoying thing is that members of the "Google generation" do not believe for a moment that people from any other generation can teach them anything about the Internet.

This thinking is often aggravated by people who talk about "digital natives" vs. "digital immigrants". I swear that, even though I am the most senior person in my college library, no-one else here is particularly interested in improving their skills, other than knowing just enough to be able to impart some of these skills to their students.

Web 2.0 distractions

I was asked to do my standard presentation on Wikis and Blogs yesterday but "to make it fun". Well, these workshops are always fun but I thought that I could provide a new slant on this one by running through a few Web 2.0 applications and letting participants make whatever use of them they could.

I gave everyone the following handout and we worked together through each of the activities, referring along the way to what other people (myself included) had done with the tools available.

What are we doing here?
1	Create a Google account www.google.com
2	Create an iGoogle page www.google.com/ig
3	Add elements to your iGoogle page
4	Create a Blogger account www.blogger.com Write about what you hope to achieve today
5	Create an avatar -- a representation of yourself. Go to http://avatars.yahoo.com/ ; design an avatar with a funky background. (You will have to set up an account if you don't use Yahoo!) Save your avatar and export to your blog.
6	Create a reader and add some RSS feeds http://www.google.com/reader
7	Facebook http://facebook.com Create an account, find some friends and send them a message.
8	Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/
9	LibraryThing http://librarything.com
10	Picasa – organise your pictures http://picasa.google.com/

Participants were fully absorbed throughout and I had to get stroppy to get them to stand up after a couple of hours to help themselves to coffee and biscuits.

These are only some of the activities that we do in the 23 Things programme. I'm still thinking of rolling it out to the whole college but also struggling against lack of support for such "distractions".

Getting ready for the New World

I am forever shouting the praises of Second Life in which I can learn, create, socialise and play. I joined a year ago today and my avatar took her first steps inworld when we studied a course in Virtual World Librarianship. This was so rewarding that I then went on to do the Intermediate course and have registered for Working with a Class in Second Life next month.

If you don't know what all the hype is about read Second Life - what is the hype? a new post in the makeuseof.com blog. The writer claims that Education is one of the most progressive fields in SL and while I am still hoping that one day my college will see the light, I am preparing to offer training to our lecturers to get them ready for the new wave.

Training Resources

I'm always on the lookout for resources to improve information literacy training and distance education. Here are some I found in Roddy MacLeod's latest Information Resources Newsletter:

1. Alternate Reality Games for Orientation, Socialisation and Induction: ARGOSI http://www.playthinklearn.net/argosi.htm
2. Create online training http://www.create-online-training.com/
3. ELI Discovery Tool: Net Generation Workshop Guide http://www.educause.edu/NetGenTool
4. Handbook for Information Literacy Teaching http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/educationandtraining/infolit/hilt/index.html