I know some of the schools I’ve been in touch with look at the blog occasionally so hopefully some people will pick up on this. A lot of work on IL and the link between schools and universities is going on in Scotland and there is a very useful website called Learning and Teaching Scotland which has launched a new resource for pupils aged 9-18. The Information Literacy website (see link above) provides a range of interactive materials designed to help pupils improve the ways in which they identify, gather, organise and use information. The website also includes notes for teachers and some files on the pedagogical rationale underlying the materials.

This is my sister’s dog, Toby, who lives in Port Kennedy, W. Australia

http://www.ltscotland.org…eracy/index.asp

As a relatively new blogger, I hadn’t come across blog tagging until Sheila Webber tagged me yesterday. The idea is like a chain letter really, you have to post on your blog 5 things people might not know about you and then ask 5 other bloggers to do the same.
So here goes:
1. I’ve just started to learn to play the electric guitar – my mid life crisis I guess. Maybe I’ll add a picture to the blog later of me “jamming” in my cardigan.
2. Leading on from no 1, I’m a big Mark Knopfler fan (though have realised that my version of Jingle Bells isn’t quite up to Local Hero), but my kids are also keeping me a little more up to date, so after seeing Cold Play last year, I’m off to see Joanna Newsom (tomorrow), Keane and Damien Rice in the next few months.
3. I name my cats after apples – though if you’ve been reading the blog you’ll already have met Bramley and Pippin.
4. My Dad was Bobby Robson’s football teacher, so we’ve watched a few matches at Newcastle from Bobby’s personal box and I think I’ve almost figured out the rules now.
5. I used to live in America and am hoping to go back there this year for the first time in 25 years.

Now I have to choose more bloggers and the lucky winners are :
Angela Newton – another info lit person
Gareth Johnson serves you right for telling me about the goose thing Gareth!
Some friends from Newcastle:
John Williams
Catherine MacDonald – catherine helped me to get started with blogging and designed the sunflower “skin” which I’m using.

When I visited the University of Canterbury at Christchurch, NZ in October last year, Meg Upjohn, the chemistry librarian and I talked about how we might collaborate on my project. Meg plans to use my survey with academic staff and 3rd year chemistry students at UC in the next few months and I shall run a duplicate survey with similar groups here at Newcastle. It will be interesting to see how the results compare.

Rainbow lorikeet, Queensland

This report from Lucy McKeever at Netskills describes the recent workshops on plagiarism which they have been running as a pilot with staff in schools. There has been a lot of interest in the programme, which concludes that we need to be building closer links between schools and universities in order to share ideas and best practice.

Hanging valley, Milford Sound, NZ

http://www.netskills.ac.u…hplagreport.pdf

I was flattered a few weeks ago to see that Sheila Webber blogged my blog on her well known Information Literacy Weblog at http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/ ( see her post of 24th Nov) and has also added a permanent link to it. As there is also a link from the Information Literacy Website at http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/ I’m starting to feel quite famous!

Fern at Milford Sound, NZ

Since my study leave ended last week and I returned to work, I am faced with the dilemma of balancing project work with picking up the strings of my real job as liaison librarian while at the same time having a home life. For now, I think the Christmas shopping is winning! However, I know there a few folk out there (my “blogees”!) who have been reading the blog regularly – you range from friends and family, colleagues from Newcastle and the libraries I visited, plus quite a few info lit friends from the UK and elsewhere. Although I won’t be posting as many items from now on, I do plan to keep the blog goig at least for the next 2 years, which is the life of the NTF project, so do keep reading it, if only for all the photos I still have. (Jack, one of our Library porters, didn’t believe I’d taken the photos – I’ll take that as a compliment, rather than amazement at my unsuspected skills!)

The sea at Chrsitchurch, NZ

The SCONUL WGIL is the group which produced the 7 pillars model of IL, on which we are basing our IL toolkit at Newcastle. I am delighted that I have recently become a member of the Working Group, as I hope this will enable me to make a real contribution to IL in the UK.

There are some useful links to publications on their website.

Kookaburra in Queensland

http://www.sconul.ac.uk/g…ation_literacy/

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

http://www.ics.heacademy….NTENT/index.htm