Search Literacy via Google September 23, 2009
Posted by jhurd in : Check this out!, Technology , 3commentsGoogle is committed to helping teachers. Their latest iteration of that is the recent release of a search curriculum, including lesson plans, multimedia power point presentations and a webinar explaining how to teach search in the classroom.
The presentations can be viewed online or downloaded, and once downloaded they are editable should you, for example, decide you don’t need to teach your 8th graders how to search patents.
Tied to the ISTE technology standards the lessons are broken into three modules: understanding search engines, web search strategies and Google features. For obvious reasons, the modules all focus on the Google search engine; the tech-savvy librarian would want to add information on other search engines, web portals, etc.
Similarly, check any presentations for bits of information that may not be relevant to other search engines. For example, the “Search Toolbox” presentation states on slide six, “Quotations are rarely needed. Use them only when necessary.” Now, that is arguably true with Google or Yahoo, both of whom use AND as their default operator; Alta Vista, however, uses OR which could make quotation-less phrase searching more problematic.
Nevertheless, these are not only a good resource for librarians, but also a wonderful resource for classroom teachers who may not have access to trained library staff. They could also be used as catch-up tutorials for those students who missed class during your search strategies lesson. Best of all, as with all Google tools, the plans and presentations are free. It’s hard to beat that.
NYPL and VoiceThread Join Forces August 25, 2009
Posted by jhurd in : AASL2007, Check this out!, Technology , add a commentLast week, VoiceThread announced a joint venture with the New York Public Library, home to thousands of historical documents and photographs.
Users can access over 700,000 images, maps, posters and more as they create their VoiceThread, and it’s brilliantly easy to use.
In VoiceThread, Click on “create,” then upload. This opens up the “media sources” button, which allows you to choose photos from Flickr, Facebook, your previous VoiceThreads or….the NYPL.
Images are browsable by category, or you can keyword search. Click on the images you want, click “Import” and they will automatically load onto your VoiceThread. They are even already captioned, with links, for citation purposes. How cool is that?
Know Your Options August 17, 2009
Posted by jhurd in : AASL2007, Check this out!, Technology , 2commentsJust when you thought you knew all there was to know about Google Search! A few months ago, Google quietly introduced the “options” button, an interesting and powerful extension of their search tools repertoire.
First, watch this quick tutorial from Google:
There are three options that seem especially useful. Getting students to plan their searches, generate key words, etc. can be an uphill battle. When they can’t find information within the first few hits, they often give up, complaining “I can’t find anything!”
While other search engines also suggest related terms, Google provides one highly useful extra: you will often find a document results. For example, search “French Revolution,” click on the related searches link and “french revolution documents” pops up. With the emphasis on primary source materials in many history classes, this is a huge time-saver for students.
Similarly, the wonder wheel provides a graphical interface, a la Visuwords. for students more spatially oriented.
The Timeline can be used in two different ways. With the “French Revolution” search, for example, the user can drill down into specific dates. Clicking on the 1800’s section produced a page on the Battle of Marengo on June 14th, 1800.
It can also reveal trends. Run a search on “autism,” and you’ll see an explosion from 2000 on, along with an odd spike in the 1940’s. Upon further exploration, it turns out autism was identified in 1943, hence the high number of pages referencing that date.
Finally, the “Reviews” section in All Results. Students frequently have to find reviews of current topical books. If the NYT Book Review doesn’t have it, they’re often at a loss for where to look. A search for Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded turned up the NYT Book Review, Slate and wired.com, among others.
While we would all love it if students were more willing to use advanced search options and the various skills we teach them, the reality is they’re often not. Google Options provides easy to use tools that encourage students to dig deeper and broader when they search. It’s hard to argue with that!
Second Life: Advocacy with Administrators May 19, 2009
Posted by jfreeman in : Advocacy, Professional Development, Technology , add a commentDear AASL Members:
Please plan to attend our last learning community meeting of the school year in Second Life on Tues, May 19th at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT. Let’s come together to discuss powerful ways to influence administrators to support our library programs! We will be on the ALA Main Stage at http://slurl.com/secondlife/ALA%20Island/127/102/29. If you are new to Second Life, see http://blogs.cuip.net/dlis/attend-our-librarian-meetings for instructions on how to join. This time, we will focus on the important issue of successful advocacy for our library media programs with our administrators. Our guest facilitators will be Marla W. McGhee and Barbara A. Jansen, authors of the book “The Principal’s Guide to a Powerful Library Media Program.” We will be giving away a copy of the book to one lucky winner!
Forging Powerful Partnerships for Student Success
“Principals, assistant principals and central office staff seldom learn about library media centers or the role of teacher-librarians in their preparation programs. However, decisions administrators make can either enhance or inhibit the work of librarians and the effectiveness of the school library. This session will focus on how to approach educational leaders to communicate the importance a quality library media program can make in the learning life of a school.”
See you in-world!
Lisa E. Perez
Ebooks: Are we there yet? April 15, 2009
Posted by Wendy Stephens in : Technology , 2commentsThe Kindle held potential as a workable consumer ebook for a lot of bibliophiles and gadget junkies. As traditional print publications change format and schedules, there is a sense readers will all have to get used to news and other information delivered in online-only manner. After all, Chris Harris blogged here last month about universities envisioning libraries without books, and several media specialists at the high school level have recently described their reference collections as entirely electronic.
Turns out, iPhone owners never had to invest in dedicated hardware to read the largest available electronic selection of ebooks. The Kindle for iPhone allowed an exponential number of users to access Amazon’s unparalleled catalog of titles.
The Kindle interface allows you to “bend” corners of the screens that make up the “pages” to mark them for later consultation. That feature is particularly important because the text offered no pagination. And while the reader can magnify the text size, the plate sizes were fixed, making some illustrations unintelligible.
But the most serious limitations of the Kindle for iPhone stem from its minimal formatting. The end of the book contained a keyword index without referencing any page numbers, and, since the words aren’t hyperlinked and, unlike some other ereaders, the whole text’s not searchable. Thus, the index is little more than an alphabetical list of concepts contained somewhere within the 800-odd pages without any way to get back to them. When the reader is used to more evolved computer application, the Kindle version is hardly useful for scholarship.
Emily Walshe, writing in the The Christian Science Monitor a publication which The New York Times reports will be cutting back to online-only editions this month, cautions
“
You can’t resell or share your books – because you don’t own them. You can download only from Amazon’s store, making it difficult to read anything that is not routed through Amazon first. You’re not buying a book; you’re buying access to a book. No, it’s not like borrowing a book from a library, because there is no public investment. It’s like taking an interest-only mortgage out on intellectual property
The Kindle model favors access at the expense of ownership. When the reader finishes a book, they cannot share it. And a phone, even more than a Kindle, is a uniquely personal device.
The Digital Question March 25, 2009
Posted by Christopher Harris in : Check this out!, Hot Topics, Technology , 1 comment so farAfter the first gasp, the room fell into a stunned silence. Had the Dean of a major research library really just told everyone that there would be no more books in academic libraries three years from now?
It sounds like the opening scene from a library horror story, but this is not fiction. David Lewis, Dean of the Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis University Library, confidently (almost nonchalantly) delivered this statement as a simple fact. Within three years there will be pretty much no books left in his library. Bound periodical usage is under 1% of journal access, and with the rest of the collection being scanned and sent to off-site storage, the remaining physical collection will undergo a drastic change. In a 2007 article titled “A Strategy for Academic Libraries in the First Quarter of the 21st Century“, Lewis notes that although “some print materials will remain important, particularly monographs in the humanities and social sciences, in general, print materials will cease to be the primary part of working collections” [Lewis]. Without going into the larger discussion of the pros and cons of digital access to texts, one really big question emerges.
Has anyone told your sophomores that when they get to college in three years they aren’t going to find many books in the library?
Thanks to projects like Google Book Search, using physical books for purely informational/research tasks in academic libraries will diminish rapidly over the next three to five years. This does not mean that books are going away; they will still be strong contenders for pleasure reading. Devices like the Kindle, iPod Touch/iPhone, and the flexible electronic-ink displays just being released will bring some strong competition here as well, but books will still be around in five years. Just not as much for research.
Perhaps this can be best illustrated by a link on the main page of Google Book Search right now:
This takes you to a page where Google defines the reasons they provide a better service. “Can’t remember where you found that quote? Did someone grab the last copy of the book you needed from the library? Google Book Search can help!” [Google] In this case Google is banking on digital access to books as a disruptive technology. Technologies that are disruptive often emerge as a radically different and initally less effective, less effecient way of accomplishing a task. They often use new methods to deliver results cheaper and/or faster. The time and cost savings can appeal to the masses even though experts may correctly identify shortcomings in the new technology when compared to current models. The problem is that mass adoption (and the new market that opens up) leads to faster developement of the new, disruptive technology. Eventually that less effecitve, less effecient technology can overcome its shortcomings and emerge as a better solution. Along the way, however…well, let’s just say that things can be a bit messy.
At the same time, this upcoming transition from print to digital access is one of those Really Big Things (TM) that come along every once in a while. In a sense, we might have an opportunity to witness the next “invention of the printing press” first hand! So back to the question at hand: What should we in school libraries be doing to prepare our students to be successful users of acadmic libraries that are predicting a switch to mainly digital access of research information within the next three years? For our current high school students, this is an immediate concern; this transition is going to have a definite impact on their academic lives in the near future.
Some possible questions:
- In what ways might high school libraries change to reflect the growing trend towards libraries information commons in acadmic settings?
- How do the skills we teach (information seeking, analysis, comprehension, note-taking, etc.) change when information is accessed digitally?
- What needs to be done to prepare our teaching colleagues for this change? How can we collaborate with them on this?
Adding Traffic Statistics to PBwiki March 8, 2009
Posted by jhurd in : Technology , add a commentMany of us use PBwiki for everything from pathfinders to collaborative meetings. The premium version of 1.0 included a great traffic statistics tool that disappeared when they converted to 2.0. It logged the hits per page, among other things, and provided considerable insight for end-of-year usage reports.
With the 2.0 conversion, you don’t necessarily have to give up usage statistics, thanks to Google Analytics. In fact, you’ll be able to access more statistical information than you will probably ever need, including page statistics, direct access, referring sites and more. And, like most Google apps, it’s free.
Here’s how you add Analytics to your PBwiki site, if you have a Premium account (the free accounts don’t support CSS and Java Script settings).
1. Go to Google Analytics and sign up for a free Google Analytics account.
2. When you sign up, you’ll enter in your wiki’s URL. Also, you’ll get some embed code.
3. Copy the code and place it into the CSS & Javascript setting of your wiki, and click Save.
In the news: Simplifying thought patterns? February 8, 2009
Posted by mkowalsky in : Check this out!, Technology , 1 comment so farThe discussion about whether technologies in general, or search engines in particular, have contributed to the “dumbing-down” of modern thought patterns has resurfaced again among educators, psychologists, and futurists. Here are three articles to share with your fellow SLMSs, teachers, or students to encourage discussion and questions.
An article in The Atlantic over the summer had asked “Is Google Making us Stupid?” (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google), and had led many readers to liken the argument to a similar one made about how television may have been corrupting young minds, decades ago when it was first introduced. While Google and the Internet as a whole have certainly changed the way we interact with information, and with each other, perhaps concluding that these changes have made us “dumb” is a bit premature to pronounce so early in the course of their/our history?
In a more recent article in Wired, Clive Thompson explained how he believes You Tube changes the way we think about information delivery as well as ourselves (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-01/st_thompson). Use of these tools has changed the way we communicate and archive, as well as search and find. And, he says, perhaps these new languages are also changing our purposes for using information which comes in a new medium or through a new tool. While it seems that our children possess different kinds of knowledge — and create different kinds of knowledge — than children of past generations, could it be that new information is crowding out older formats and content because older knowledge is not as useful in a modern era?
The Science Daily also recently asked whether technology was producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis but an increase in visual literacy (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090128092341.htm). This article seems to be circulating on email among classroom teachers who may be inclined to agree with the title based on their personal experiences or their in public education over the years. However, this UCLA professor’s research-based study also points to results which show that increasing children’s recreational reading develops many needed skills. The article also reviews studies on television, video games, and other educational media and the results and conclusions which studies of these topics have produced thus far.
These and many other articles and books have provoked an interesting question for ourselves as library media specialists and as educators: Why do we tend to choose only one favorite among the many types of knowledge, skills and abilities encouraged and afforded by books, by technology, and by interpersonal interactions? Why do we periodically choose one as best? Aren’t they ALL necessary for our students’ learning, and their confluence a factor in producing exponentially better results in student achievement?
The American Information Renaissance January 26, 2009
Posted by Christopher Harris in : Technology , add a commentGet your librarian mojo all fired up, here comes the dawning of the American Information Renaissance. Shortly after his inauguration, President Obama set the tone for a renewed focus on the importance of free and available information. In an Executive Memorandum about the Freedom of Information Act posted on January 21, President Obama delivered a clear message about how the administration is to handle requests for information.
“The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. [Executive Memorandum]“
Reading past this bold statement, however, reveals the true gem from this memorandum. Not only should Freedom of Information Act requests be approached with an intent to fulfill, but agencies are directed to be more proactive in sharing to prevent the need for requests.
“The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.[Executive Memorandum]“
So what exactly does this mean for school libraries? The newly redesigned WhiteHouse.gov website is already using proactive communication technologies to push information (i.e. to actively send out the information to those who wish to receive it as opposed to passively presenting a static webpage that people could visit). The White House Blog presents coverage of Excutive activities written in a more casual style that makes it accessible for more readers. You can stay updated by subscribing to the RSS feed for the blog.
Or can you? As Pam Burke notes on her SurRural Librarian blog, the White House’s use of a blog as an official medium for communication brings up a potential problem for school libraries. Schools where the word “blog”is just another four-letter-word that doesn’t make it past the filter might need to reconsider overzealous blocking practices. Local policy review will also be necessary considering the use of streaming video (namely YouTube.com) to host the President’s weekly addresses. Though these are openly named “Your Weekly Address” many schools, and thus many students, will be restricted from accessing the President’s messages.
How is your school or library planning to make use of these new information channels coming from the Government?
TRAILS: Assessing Students’ Information Literacy January 20, 2009
Posted by jhurd in : Check this out!, Standards, Technology , add a commentWhile we all work diligently to improve students’ information literacy, it’s not always easy to assess students’ knowledge and retention. TRAILS (Tool for Real-Time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) provides one possible solution. Created by Kent State with funding from the Institute for Library and Information Literacy Education, this free online tool uses multiple choice questions based on both Information Power and Ohio’s 6th and 9th grade standards.
TRAILS provides multiple assessment areas–either testing general skills or focusing on specific areas–and provides two tests for each type. The program also randomly generates student codes to assign to students for tracking purposes, should you so desire.
Once the set-up information is complete, TRAILS generates a URL for students to access the test online.
Students can review their results by signing in again with their original code; the program also generates both class and student reports via PDF OR you can review the results on line.
The “How Trails Works” link provides a step-by-step walk through for generating your own assessment; it also suggests several ideas for using the tool.
