Social Software, libraries & e-learning

I don’t think I’ve blogged recently about the course I’ve been teaching, MI512, which is for PhD students at LSE and ran each term last year - so three times in total. My colleague from the library, Rowena Macrae-Gibson and I started teaching it again this term. Yesterday was the third session out of six and we have a really enthusiastic bunch of students again.

I was invited to speak to the Psychology librarians group today about information literacy so focused on some of the work we’ve been doing for MI512. I also presented at our lunchtime seminar for staff on How I use Moodle, using MI512 as my example. My presentation for the psychology librarians on Information and digital literacies for PhD students is on SlideShare if you’d like to see it. Of course it was an opportunity to promote LILAC again and several of the group had been to previous conferences. We had a lively discussion about how current students are lacking information skills and often seem baffled by library databases. Many of those attending are also trying to make real progress getting information literacy embedded into the curriculum. And we had a useful talk about how to deal with students who book to come on sessions and then fail to show up! Currently I am trying to shame them by e-mailing all the no-shows and asking why they didn’t come!

The LILAC website has been revamped and further information is now available including details of the IL Award and the Student Award. Booking will open on the 1st December when the full programme will be available. We are currently getting all the papers refereed and will to be able to announce who is presenting on the 1st December.

I just read from JISC that the Education Image Gallery is being updated every month with 200 new images. I am always amazed at few of our staff at LSE use this collection for their teaching as I think it has some really lovely images.

Recently I’ve been getting a lot of copyright queries with people asking about where they can find images for use in teaching. CLT have a list of image and multimedia collections for educational use and we also recommend people use the Creative Commons search. It’s a shame I can’t put the EIG images on my blog, so this picture from Halloween is one of mine!

I have been intrigued by the Library routes wiki and am enjoying reading others stories so felt I should attempt to document how I ended up being a librarian, particularly after Ned Potter told me he thought I was one of those ‘born to it’ types. Let’s be clear on this matter, I certainly was not, and despite being hugely proud to be a librarian it was not a career choice I made deliberately. In fact, were it not for a fear of swimming in the sea, I could just have easily ended up a marine archaeologist as a librarian. But I will come on to that!

Now don’t get me wrong, I did love books from an early age. In my childhood bedroom one of the first bits of DIY I made my Dad do was install extensive ‘ladder-rack’ shelving to house my ever growing book collection, which ended up quickly filling all the shelves and the cupboards in my wardrobe and that was even before I started secondary school! Probably my first ambition was actually to be a writer though, which soon developed into an interest in being a journalist. A short stint of work experience on a local newspaper soon put me off that idea and by the time I took my A levels I had no real idea of what I wanted to do and struggled even to decide between my love of history and science. I had always been interested in computers, owning a Vic-20 and later a Commodore 64 - which was very soon requisitioned by my brother for playing football games on! (Interestingly his love of computer games stayed with him and today he is a computer game programmer!) My school had a large number of computers installed and I helped out in the school library, partly so I could spend time using the computers.

The deciding moment in my library career came on receiving my A level results. By then I had decided I wanted to study history at university, but sadly my results in the two science A levels I took (along with History) meant I had failed to get my place. I was thrown into the world of ‘clearing’ and spent a fraught few days ringing various universities to see who might have a place on a history course. Eventually it came down to a decision between Abersytwyth and Bangor University – one of which was offering me history with librarianship, the other history with marine archaeology. The few words of the admissions tutor at Bangor ‘I think you’ll need a wet suit’ meant librarianship it was for me!

From the outset of my first year in Aber I was clear that I didn’t want to be a librarian. I started to consider archival or museum work as an option, but I was resolute – I did not want to be a librarian. In fact, it had been put to me that I could easily drop the librarianship element of my degree and continue in my second year as a single honours history student. Yet something about that first year course intrigued me, we learnt all sorts of computer skills, it was the early days of e-mail and the internet, we were taught about information and the media and finally in the end of the year exams my personal tutor in librarianship approached me asking me not to drop the subject as I had one of the highest marks in the year and a first! I had started to worry about the career path for a history graduate, I didn’t think teaching was for me, so carrying on with my joint honours degree and getting a library qualification seemed the sensible option. I still maintained I did not want to be a librarian, but perhaps it was something to fall back on and maybe archival work was an option. Again another period of work experience, this time in a County Record Office soon put me off the idea of being an archivist and actually made me start to feel perhaps I was destined to be a librarian.

At the end of my degree I was fairly certain I wasn’t ready to stop being a student. I was having far too much fun and had relished the research I did for my dissertation – on local newspapers as an information source. After speaking to my tutor I was persuaded to apply for a PhD and a Masters in Computer Science. The deciding factor came when the University offered me a studentship to fund my first year of a PhD and I leapt at the chance. I spent almost 4 years as a research student and became fairly convinced that an academic career was for me. I taught in computer practicals, worked on several research projects and did a host of other work to supplement the funding I got from the University of Wales and from the AHRC. However, towards the end of my research I started to get itchy feet. I’d been in Aberystwyth for 7 years, I felt that leaping straight into lecturing (even if I were offered a job!) might not be the best thing, and perhaps I needed to get some life experience. I was also aware that some of the best lecturers were always those who had worked in the profession for a time.

The end of the 1990s coincided with a number of funding initiatives for library related research projects, so I soon found my first job in a British Library funded post based at the Natural History Museum library. I was working on a project to examine the journal collections and work out how the two libraries might collaborate over collection development (shorthand for cut journals!) Sadly the post was just for 6 months but during that time I managed to organise a one day event for librarians to promote the project. After a short time temping in the Library in the Department of Education and Skills, I secured another research post this time based at UCL. The project was called ‘Access to Core Course Materials’ and a joint project between Library Services and the Education and Professional Development department. I had two bosses and soon realised both had quite different ideas of what my project was meant to achieve. Here I learnt the lesson that a job is what you make it, and so I threw myself into exploring all sorts of copyright and digitisation issues, of working on e-learning initiatives to deliver materials to students and even producing web-based interactive materials for language students. I also started to realise that networking was really important, as well as being able to turn you hand to many things. However as the project end date was approaching I had also started to reflect on my brief time in a library at the Department of Education and Skills. Delivering a service was actually really satisfying and research projects were all well and good but I was in danger of finding myself unemployed every year or so. So when a job for the Assistant Librarian for Learning and Teaching Technology at LSE came up, one of my bosses thought it had my name written all over it!

I applied for the post at LSE and was duly appointed to work in new small team with three IT staff. I think over the past 8 years at LSE being a librarian not working in a library has probably strengthened my commitment to the library profession. I also found that I had a growing desire to network with other librarians as my day to day job involved working with IT staff. This led to me getting involved in professional groups such as ALISS, the Heron User Group and the newly formed CILIP Information Literacy group. My job has evolved and changed significantly in the past 8 years, but for me being a librarian has become a real passion. I genuinely believe that librarians provide a vital service, helping people to find, access, evaluate and use information. Yes they probably spend too much time in the Library (something no one could accuse me of doing!) and yes they need to blow their own trumpet more. But I am always proud now to stand up and proclaim (as the librarian in the film the Mummy did) I am a librarian!

Just a quick report that last week I was in Limerick scouting out venues for the LILAC 2010 conference. We visited 3 castles, 3 churches, a museum, a rugby station and an art school in the space of a day! What a whirlwind tour, but the Strand Limerick Hotel was fantastic and the view as the sun rose from my bedroom was exceptional! I can’t wait for LILAC in Limerick - I just hope when the call for papers closes, we have a great programme too! I’ve also just returned from Aberystwyth where I gave a lecture at the Department of Information Studies. I got back home for a Halloween party this weekend - if I can persuade the cats to dress up I will post photos next week!

This week saw the launch of the publicity about LSE100, the new undergraduate course that aims to introduce LSE students to the big questions in the social sciences and provide them a broad range of skills - including information skills.

The course promises to be:
“an innovative new course aimed at introducing first year undergraduates to the fundamental elements of thinking as a social scientist by exploring real problems and real questions, drawing on a range of disciplines across the social sciences. This distinctive course will actively challenge students to analyse questions of current public concern and of intellectual debate from a rigorous social science perspective. ”

I’m really excited to be involved in this course - helping to develop information skills materials embedded in the course.

This is just a quick reminder that the LILAC 2010 call for papers closes on 1st November 2009. LILAC 2010 will be held 29th - 31st March in Limerick, Ireland and is sponsored by LNSS, Limerick.

Further details and the call for papers are available on the LILAC website:
http://www.lilacconference.com/dw/conference/call_for_papers.html

The themes of next year’s conference are:
* Measuring Impact
* Developing the IL practitioner
* IL and research
* Making connections: cross-sectoral initiatives
* Innovative practice
Get your thinking caps on now, we also have an exciting new presentation type, called Pecha Kucha where you get six minutes and 20 slides to present on your topic!

Made it to the last session of the day, which started with ‘Unbundling the University’ by Dougald Hine. The spread of technologies is driven by not what it can do, but what we want it to do. For example SMS was unanticipated as a mass technology - people often want less information rather than more. He criticised some of the models of how technologies spread as being loaded with value judgements - not all technologies are good, not everyone is impressed with gadgets! Dougald argued we are not superior because we get excited by technology and it’s important to look at where the dissatisfactions and unmet desires lie. Dougald talked about a PhD student who struggled with getting help with his PhD - about people working in silos - and he found the course he wanted from the School of Everything in the end and paid for it. He asked as it gets easier for people to organise their own teaching, will we see more of what he calls the DIY masters? The Edgeless University report I cited earlier, apparently said that university learning technologists was getting it wrong by going down the route of providing content. He also talked about how qualifications were less valuable today than 10 years ago, and that universities IT is less up to date than company IT. He concluded saying that people have been learning without universities and while perhaps institutions provide the accreditation and learners can choose where they get their content from.

Shirley Williams from University of Reading was up next talking about digital identity and asked how many of us had Googled themselves - most of us had! Shirley ran a workshop with PGCE students and many of them found things on Bebo and MySpace about themselves and couldn’t remove it because they had lost their password or e-mail account that they registered with. Shirley had a list of bizarre e-mail account names that some of her colleagues use - but would an employer open and e-mail from fluffybunnyknickers@hotmail.com? There were also some examples of people using Twitter to find a job and people being sacked for making offensive comments on Facebook about their employer. Shirley made the point that a lot of people do very silly things in online spaces. All this work is on the This is Me website with lots of resources about digital identities which I’m going to check out afterwards. We have been planning on running a class on Facebook privacy and security for students later in the term, so this could come in handy.

The final speaker was Lindsay Jordan from the University of Bath, and University of the Arts who had a blog post ready about her talk. She’s a learning technologist at Bath and talked about how she uses her blog, about reflection and about Vygotsky. It’s a bit late on a Friday afternoon for learning theory so we were all pleased to return to the subject of Twitter and ’social presence’. Lindsay sees the key as ‘reciprocity’ (which goes back to ancient Egypt and Greece) so we should lead and learn by example. She concluded by talking about Darwin and the survival of the fittest - in the social world (in contrast to the biological world) the fittest are those who give the most.

I headed off shortly after that, as we were running late and it’s Friday, but thanks everyone for a good day!

The afternoon session kicked off well with a talk from Will McInnes from Nixon McInnes, who asked us who was passionate about education - he certainly is, and who is passionate about technology. More of the former now seem to be in the room after a sunny lunch on the terrace at the RGS. He talked about fragmentation and dead cats (!) and continuous partial attention which is watching TV with your laptop on your knee while trying to have a conversation. How do you engage with people who have partial attention? Good point! He talked next about communities, how do you get people to engage? The thinking needs to be more about gardening analogies rather than construction - online communities are organic. Now I’m really interested - we need to nuture our 1% of content creators apparantly. Will believes gaming is really significant in online education, we need to create a score that rewards the behaviour we are looking for so like beating the Tom Tom time on the way home, or improving your runing using Nike+ (which reminds me I must use mine!) We also need to be able to respond quickly to new technologies and take on board the significance of ratings and review - and this happens in real time as we saw in the conference with the Twitter Poll someone put up during the morning. This also means you get feedback really quickly so you can react to it. ‘The veneer of institutions is being peeled back’ - so we can all make our opinions known. Finally Will discussed ‘curators’ - the new curators such as bloggers and twitterers who are expert in their field.

The second speaker was James Clay from Gloucestershire College who had put out a survey on the future of learning earlier in the conference and presented some results from the delegates. What will be the future and what technology will be most significant - we had very mixed responses. He asked why we started term in September / October - apparently it’s so we can get the harvest in! And classrooms are very similar to the 19th Century with a few tweeks - laptops, whiteboards etc. He made the point that learning doesn’t have to be in an institution and mobile learning is learning where you want to be - at home on the sofa for example. Audio and video are going to be increasingly important for learning but one form media has never replaced another. GPS - adding location data to content is also going to be really important in the future - it means we can get learners out the classroom. We actually touched on this last week at our away day in the E-learning 2020. Then James turned to looking at e-books - he sees the Sony ebook reader as a first generation ipod - I’m not convinced though if the Princeton pilot is anything to go by. He makes a good point though, we will all need power in the future and if we want to change and improve learning James is right we do need to be more responsive. James believes the key is changing the culture of an organisation.

Nick Skelton from the University of Bristol was next up telling us how to stop worrying and love the internet (taken from Douglas Adams). Apparently everything invented after you are 30 is pretty weird and scary. He talked about information in a digital world - information overload, and digital literacy (hurrah!). He also made the point that information has no value if you can’t find it but surely Google Scholar is not completely the answer here? Another concern people have about putting information online is that everything can be copied and everything will be recorded which means that (shock horror) lecturers might have to change assessments from year to year! Nick even mentioned librarians, and talked about our role as a ‘trusted guide’ in the digital future.

Our final speaker was Peter Robinson from Oxford University Computing Services, entitled the Pocket University - he was talking about Oxford University on iTunesU. He and the previous speaker mentioned the Edgeless University report which I really must read. The report (and many people) clearly think Oxford is highly traditional and using a technology such as iTunesU was revolutionary - Peter explained how it did require a cultural shift. In addition Oxford has very devolved IT but they were approached by Apple to be the first non-US university to join. He talked how it works, they are podcasts and you can subscribe to the RSS feed for topics you are interested in. The graphics are really nice on the site, rather like the iTunes store with album covers. They recorded as much as possible to ensure they had plenty of content on the site, and also recorded a lot of key people at Oxford. But they also had a model that allowed people to do it for themselves, a devolved model of production to allow people to record stuff themselves. LSE really need to look at the social sciences section on Oxford’s iTunesU as it’s apparantly very lively. But students also really love creating content themselves such as interviews, art shows, recording other events. You can watch the podcasts online as well and it’s all free - its also all on Oxford’s servers and not owned by Apple (or on a cloud!). They had to check everything was legal, but technically copyright belongs to the academics still. They have reached over 1 million downloads in 10 months which is quite something - they have also avoided lock-in by having a parallel web portal. Peter went on to talk about the future with a live demo from Oxford in Second Life and a plug for the Steeple Project which is a JISC funded project to explore the infrastructure for podcasting. He also mentioned the Oxford OpenSpires project which is encouraging academics to license their material under creative commons to develop a set of resources for the education community we can all reuse. He also talked about open street map and a project to develop a mobile application for Oxford at m.ox.ac.uk.  What an afternoon!

Attended the FOTE09 event today at the Royal Geographical Society. The first session on Cloud Computing was opened by Paul Miller. Nice slides with some good questions and lots of people are following the event on Twitter. He asked us whether cloud computing was green, cheap, and looked at various definitions of what it might be. Some people are suggesting this concept it even more vague than web 2.0 but JISC now have various funding calls in this area.

Amazon apparently also give out funding which could be interesting, particularly after hearing about the Kindle project a few weeks ago at Princeton. Next up was Simone Brunozzi from Amazon - talking about security and cloud computing - he first up asked us how many of us buy from Amazon - which most of us clearly do! I actually started following the hash tag in Twitter for the event during the conference and someone introduced me to using TweetChat which was great. He was followed by Ray Fleming from Microsoft and then Pauline Yau from Huddle.net who are sponsoring the drinks later. Ray talked about IP issues associated with using cloud computing - how do you keep things confidential in an organisation if everyone is using Twitter? We ended with some interesting questions, one about how do we advise students about where they should store their data - apparently schools are going to be doing this. Presumably quite a few of our teachers will need some digital literacy classes before they do this? Someone else asked about whether outsourcing to these big companies - isn’t that just HE selling itself to the devil.
After the coffee break, the first speaker was Bill Ashraf from Sussex University. He talked about how students expect to get things for free, but dealing with academics is herding cats so IT in HE is a tricky business. Bill went on to discuss Chris Anderson’s idea of the ‘Long Tail’ and the Gartner Hyper curve but I struggled to follow his point other than repeating quite a lot I’ve heard at learning technology event over the past 5 years. He made the point that technology needs to be easy and referred to some work on e-learning 2020, sadly (or thankfully) not the CLT’s recent efforts in this area though but an offering from MMU students which made quite a few similar points to our video. Robert Moores from Leeds Met talked about Google Apps one year on - which apparently has been a big success. They were using the e-mail and calendar and piloted it with 3000 students and plan to use Postini and YouTubeEDU. He was followed by James Ballard from ULCC talking about using repositories as VLEs and integration between Moodle and repositories. I like the idea of the repository API in Moodle 2.0 which separates content from delivery and allows integration with tools such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube. Potentially this could avoid many copyright issues as well! James then went on to look at whether this application might encourage tutors to deposit in an institutional repository. Finally I sit in a room where someone talks about repositories and refers to the whole spectrum of different types repositories out there - I remember back in 2006 when librarians and learning technologists meant very different things when they used this term. Richard Davis continued the presentation and even referred to managing readings scanned under the CLA Licence in a repository - he certainly was talking my language now! We finished the morning session with a debate about cloud computing - chaired by Tim Marshall from JANET.