I am very pleased to see a good review of our book on Providing Effective Library Services for Research has just been published in the November issue of CILIP Update – it’s the first review I have seen so it’s a big relief that it’s positive! Now I don’t need to feel worried about suggesting people buy it. Buy lots!
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, USA (Aug 2007)
I haven’t had much time to blog recently because it’s such a busy time of year and I’m spending most of my time involved with information literacy sessions with students, which is what it’s all about really. I’m finding that this year I’m spending more time talking to the students about what it means to be information literate and actually engaging them in discussion about how thinking about this is going to help them. I’m quite surprised by how positive the response has been!
Grand Canyon, Aug 2007
I am pleased to see that Geoff and Alison at Staffordshire University are continuing their useful series of IL workshops this year. The next one will be held on 7 November 2007 and will focus on information literacy and the use of space. Speakers include Bob Glass (see his pic on my blog a few weeks ago)from Manchester Metropolitan University on Flexible Learning Spaces and Dave Parkes, Staffordshire University on Participatory Cultures.
They have a booking form
Sunset over the Aegean
The road to Molyvos
Sirje Virkus from Tallin University in Estonia has been researching into IRCs in open and distance learning institutions and has a lot of detailed data. I wasn’t able to make notes as her presentation was very fast and detailed, but I look forward to reading her paper when the conference proceedings are published.
Access to new technologies and services is a priority in India and Maitrayee Ghosh gave us a fascinating overview of the kinds of innovative projects which are taking place. I particularly liked the concept of the InfoThela or Infocart- a bicycle front end, with a battery powered information console behind, which works with a wireless connection to the internet and can be taken to small villages to provide general info, health care, agricultural info and much more. I’ll add a photo when I can get one. Maitrayee mentioned many other projects relating to agricultural information, telemedicine and the simputer, a cheap little computer for personal use. The digital divide in India is enormous, exacerbated by the number of different languages spoken in the rural areas.
A street in Molyvos
I use mind mapping quite frequently with students when I’m teaching them to think about search strategies so I was keen to hear what Virpi and Jouni had to say about their course involving mapping tools and information retrieval. Based at TKK, the leading technology university in Finland, the course is for teaching staff, to enable them to use these methods in their own teaching and Virpi explained that all the staff have found it helpful. I also hadn’t realised the differences between mind, concept and dialogue maps, but was pleased to find that they use the same mind mapping software as I do (Freemind). Jouni explained that concept maps (software CMap Tools) are good for defining terms and creating relationships, while dialogue maps (software Compendium) are about questions, answers and reasons. It makes sense when you see their examples.
Jouni Nevalainen and Virpi Palmgren (hotel pool and Molyvos in background)
I was interested to see Cath Hunt and Maggie Smart’s demonstration of their online classroom, using software callled Wimba (I think). They are using it to deliver online training sessions in database use to PhD students studying for a virtual doctorate at Salford University. All students need a PC, mike and headphones and the live sessions bring the benefits of immedicate feedback and a fun environment. The sessions can be archived, which is helpful for students who need to revisit any of the information. The class size did look quite small and I wondered how scalable an initiative like this would be.
Cath and Maggie (still a beautiful view of the sea too!)
Bob Glass
Bob says he doesn’t have time for a blog, so I thought I’d add him to mine!
Amongst many other things, Bob is responsible for the Information Literacy area of the LearnHigher CETL, at Manchester Metropolitan University. I’ve mentioned it on my blog before so won’t go into details here – the link is above. Bob told us about his interest in assessing IL – he has been working with John Madison University in the US to use their online IL assessment tool to discover what an Information Audit can tell us about first years and to see if an MCQ test can be an effective tool for IL assessment. I’d like to use this tool alongside my own assessment exercise which I’m hoping to run with chemists and environmental science students this year, but Bob tells me there’s a charge for using it, so I may have to think again.
Conferences are great places to meet new people and make friends. This is Pauline Ngimwa from the African Virtual University in Kenya.
Pauline’s talk explained how this World Bank funded Pan African project is working with 57 universities in 27 countries to tackle the issues of connectivity with a consortium to bring down the cost of bandwidth provision and the use of mirror servers.
We had a good info lit afternoon this afternoon! I enjoyed Nancy Graham’s explanation of the BRUM project at Birmingham University. Nancy and her colleagues have created 15 RLOs (reusable learning objects) relating to information literacy skills. The RLOs can be used and repurposed as required and are freely available for anyone to use. I plan to add links to them from our Info Lit Toolkit at Newcastle.
As you’ll see, I caught all the speakers this afternoon at the same spot!
