Use of Wikipedia : and how students procrastinate

Just reading Sheila Webber's latest post about new short videos made by the Project Information Literacy I cannot resist drawing attention to them too. The debate about use of Wikipedia is a non-debate to me, (they will use it anyway and why not - its often a good starting place, but NOT the end place)and the video does make a number of good points which could be useful to show to groups of your students.
The procrastination video could be a good warning to groups of students - information overload, time management, waiting for guidance from academics etc.
Here is the link to these videos.

Information Literacy week in Second Life

As Peter Blogged IL awareness month in the USA, I will add that, following on from this, there is an Information Literacy Week in the virtual world of Second Life, 9-15th November 2009. There is a ning website for the week: http://infolit-week-in-sl.ning.com/ and events already lined up by a Columbian information literate (in Spanish), and by the Association of College and Research Libraries. My own students will be exhibiting their solutions to swine flu information problems on 3D models of the SCONUL 7 Pillars of information literacy.

Information Literacy Month in the USA

How about this? President Obama has signed off a Proclamation that October 2009 is National Information Literacy Awareness Month! Can we imagine Gordon Brown (or David Cameron) doing this? If not whynot !! We still have a long way to go to raise awareness and lobby about IL.
One way we could start is by using the agreed interbational logo for IL wherever we can.
Have we used it in our teaching? Our presentations?

Integrating Social Media as Authoritative Information into Research Pathfinders

Don't be put off by the title : this is an extremely good post from Unquiet Librarian drawing attention to the value of the social Web 2.0 media as valuable sources of information.
Just take a look at the Netvibes page created for the Iran election.
In fact it's following up one of the strands in our book.
POdcasts, blogs, twitter, video, and Google Map.
"By using both traditional and emerging sources of authoritative information, we can provide our students a broader menu of information sources for exploration and to ignite learning through research."

Twitter in the classroom

Blog post from blog.classroomteacher.ca telling the story of classroom use of twitter in school in Ontario demonstrating how the world communicates now, and how it can be used in the classroom as a collaboration tool. Concludes with plus, minor and interesting points.

Here's an excerpt

"Twitter is a neat “little” collaboration tool. You could create individual or group Twitter accounts for your students. A class account follows all of the students so we get a live feed of ideas which you can then project using a data projector.

It’s kind of like using classroom clickers (i.e. SMART student response system), but instead of being limited to multiple-choice answers or numerical responses, you’re texting in short messages. In the computer lab, you could ask a question in response to a text (printed or media) and have students respond on Twitter."

Information Literacy flickr group

Sheila Webber has started a flickr group for Information Literacy.
It will be interesting to see what kind of photos get deposited! I can remember doing Google searches for images for information literacy over the years and getting very little except conference pictures and occasionaly enthusiastic librarians.We do need good images to promote information literacy. I used to use the Beloit College image with the cut away head .

What we need are some imaginative images which we could use to illustrate information literacy e.g.the maze at Hampton Court?
Some time ago there was a discussion on lis-infoliteracy from Mark Hepworth about images around which teaching IL could be based : mapping the information landscape ; cooking metaphor - what ingredients do you need? ; sporty readers where they have to describe their research habits in terms of a sport e.g/a fly fisher dips in ; information as part of the environment - can be polluted or degraded etc.
I know that a number of presenters use large pictures to illustrate concepts in their Powerpoints, this could be the place to put the images. Perhaps we should have an annual prize....
Please dont look at me to populate the site over the next few weeks though!

Worried about your privacy on Facebook?

Take a look at 10 solid Tips To Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy, from makeuseofit.com.
1. Organize Friends to lists
2.Customise profile privacy
3.Set Facebook privacy level of Photo albums
4.Restrict search visibility
5.Control automatic wallposts and news feed updates
6.Set Facebook wall privacy
7.Avoid appearing in adverts
8.Protect yourself against Friends' applications
9.Privacy from your applications
10.When quitting Facebook for good

Transliteracy : take a walk on the wild side

I can thoroughly recommend Susie Andretta's recent paper at IFLA "Transliteracy : take a walk on the wild side".
Abstract
"In this paper we explore the concept of ‘transliteracy’ which according to Professor Thomas offers “a unifying perspective on what it means to be literate in the 21st Century [including] the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks”. Currently transliteracy is primarily the domain of Communication and Cultural Studies and this paper aims to position transliteracy in the professional domain of ‘practising’ librarians and within the remit of the library world. ..... Examples of transliteracy practice by information professionals will provide evidence that libraries are already meeting the challenges of transliteracy by crossing the divide between printed, digital and virtual worlds to address the constantly changing needs of the learners they support."
She concludes with interesting interviews with leading practitioners Michael Stephens,Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois (Tame the Web blog) ; Bernardette Daly SwansonReference, Instruction and Outreach Librarian, UC Davis Medical Center ; Sue Jennings, Outreach Librarian for the Lancashire Care NHS (National Health Service) Foundation Trust Library and Information Service ; Marja Kingma - Collection Manager, Collection Manager for Science, Technology and Medicine at the British Library.

Web 2.0 : what comes next

Web 2.o : what comes next, is a post on Make-it-known blog created for a graduate level class at University of Alberta EDESA 501 Web 2.0 for libraries. It is a good summary post drawing on some standard articles. Useful links and references : might help save someone some time.

Blogs v twitter

Looking at the list of number of posts I havent been posting so much lately. I know it's been the summer sillly season as I call it, but that is not the whole story. I follow over 30 blogs and the posts are getting less.
Surely twitter has a lot to do with this. It so easy to do a quick post on twitter with a URL. THis is especially true now that delicious has made it easy to add a twitter post. I reckon it might take me a couple of minutes to do a twitter post as opposed to at least 10 to do a blog post. Of course the latter gives me the chance to give more detail, quote, or comment so I shall continue to use both and choose my blog posts from the more meaty items I come across.

Guide to using clickers or PRS

Knowing that the use of clickers (Personal Response Systems) is a hot topic I thought this list of resources from Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at University of British Columbia is worth highlighting. Includes a downloadable Clicker resource guide.