Staghorn fern growing on a log
The issue of ALISS Quarterly which I mentioned yesterday also has some interesting articles on IL in schools:
School librarians and the Google generation by Sarah Pavey
Information literacy, the link between second and tertiary education: project origins and current developments – John Crawford and Christine Irving
Turtle dove nesting in hanging basket, Port Kennedy, WA.
The latest issue of the ALISS Quarterly Journal, Volume 2, No 1, October 2006. p27-32 has an article by myself and Sophie Brettell entitled “What’s wrong with a good idea? An Information literacy toolkit in practice”.
It’s part of an info lit themed issue which also includes the following articles:
“The challenge of the google generation to informatin literacy” by Peter Goodwin, “Creating an Ipod library tour” by Maria Mawson et al. and “From Montaigne to Orwell – the development of Learning objects at Birkbeck College” by Wendy Lynwood and David Flanders
While I was trying to extend my armpits in yoga last night (at my height you try everything!) I started thinking again about people as individual learners and how important it is in IL terms to try not to generalise but to create IL programmes which cater for many different needs. In part this follows on from a conversation I had the other day about understanding the learning process – the better we appreciate how people learn the better we are able to facilitate the process.
A Galah by the road in Rockingham, WA.
The LIMES project is aiming to produce resources to support learning and teaching for students of library and information management courses. Yesterday, I was invited to a meeting in Birmingham to discuss the formation of a Community of Practice around information literacy. Participants included academic and library staff. The aim (I think) was to foster better communications so that students graduate with the skills they need for their first professional library post. We tried to identify gaps in the current system which we could work togther to fill.
There was a feeling amongst the practitioners present that students need to understand more about teaching and learning so that are able to participate effectively in information literacy programmes as well as enquiry work when they first start working in libraries (exactly the kind of topics which EduLib covered 10 years ago in trying to fill the same gap!). However the academic staff still didn’t feel this was appropriate as part of their current courses.
However, we did agree that a register of both academic and library staff who were prepared to run a variety of “training” sessions across the divide would be useful, as well as a database of people willing to share their teaching materials.
I also plan to follow up on the material which Debbie Boden provides for the library staff at Imperial, as this may be helpful for our staff development at Newcastle.
Yellow eyed penguin near Dunedin, NZ
While I was away, I gave a talk in many of the libraries I visited. I called it “Coals from Newcastle: a Geordie view of information literacy” and told people about the Info Lit project we’ve been working on in Newcastle over the last year, as well as my plans for my own NTF research project. As I’ve already mentioned in the blog, I was made very welcome in every place I visited and have come home with a tremendous range of ideas, information and paperwork [the less said about the weight limit on the flights the better – I had to leave my posh case behind as it weighed too much empty and return with a more practical, but less smart holdall in which to carry all the material (and shopping) I’d gathered]. Over the next few weeks I shall be collating all this information into a more manageable form- probably a series of themed reports, plus a presentation for my Newcastle collegues, as well as some blog entries. I also persuaded people to participate in my research, so I have some data to analyse too.
The next step in my project is to start to work with local schools, running interviews, focus groups and surveys with staff, students and librarians. I am delighted that so far 7 schools have volunteered to participate, so I shall be contacting them and arranging initial meetings shortly.
It’s very nice to be home (still a little jet lagged, I think), but I shall continue to decorate the blog with photos from my trip for some time to come!
Here is a view of the Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand – it is one of only a few glaciers which are moving so quickly that they actually penetrate down into the temperate rainforest near the coast. Amazing!
Today was my last day in Australia – I’ll be heading home tomorrow, trying to devise a plan to come back again! Please keep reading the blog – I have lots more pictures and once I return I shall start my research project properly, so hopefully will still have some interesting posts now and then.
For now here are some pelicans I met at Point Peron, plus a skink which crossed the road just near them.
The TAFE seems to be similar to a UK FE college, so yesterday we went to sample the skills of the catering students. The meal was wonderful, but we were the only people under 70! I was even charged the senior’s rate for my meal – great to get a bargain but I hope they didn’t really think I was over 60!
Ladies who lunch
It’s fascinating to see how different libraries organise and label their learning spaces. many badge computer clusters as E-zones or E – libraries and at both Curtin and UQ libraries I saw small booths (the kind of thing you’d find in a pub in the UK), room for 4 students round a table, boxed in, with a PC at the end for group use. They looked like an attractive idea.
A few people said they enjoyed the crane ship so here’s another view of it
One the reasons I was keen to visit Curtin was to find out more about their innovative podcasting project. As well as an introductory tour, they produce a regular 3-4 min weekly podcast on a topic of interest. The title above links to the podcasts. Although they don’t yet know how students are using or benefiting from the service, they have recorded over 5000 downloads since September.
It was interesting to discover that any library staff who are interested have been able to be involved and that recordings are made by the staff who write the scripts, so that lots of different voices are involved. There will be some interesting logistics involved in continuing the podcasts into a second year as they need to produce new ones for students who have started using them this year, but also repeat the original set for new students.
Jaya and Constance were also interested in our plans to produce some foreign language versions of our podcast tour.
Sunset over Port Kennedy