As Steve wrote in this week's lecture, the advent of the Internet has affected school librarians (really all librarians) in a huge way. Whereas students used to have to go to either their school or public librarian to find out HOW to find the information to answer various questions, now finding information is easy... it's sorting out the good from the bad -- or the authoritative from the non-trustworthy that is the trick. (Although this article presents a very interesting counterpoint -- essentially arguing that internet access at libraries has revitalized libraries)
Essentially, much of the perceived power of the librarian is gone. People don't seem to need us as much as they once did. They may not be finding the very highest quality information on their own, but they are able to figure out what the tallest building is, what the largest country is and so on without ever stepping foot in a physical library. This means we are losing many of our potential points of contact with our patrons. In order to make up for this, we have to think of ways to get our students in the library to see us. Hopefully, if we work at a school where the teachers are open to teaming up with the TL, the students will be seeing us when their class is working on research projects. Otherwise, we need to find other ways to get them in the door. I wonder if this is why so many public libraries have things like "Dance Dance Revolution" contests for teens -- just to get them in the space?
All this makes me think of the academic library setting. When I first entered the LIS program, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be an academic or school librarian. After working for about 4 months in a clerical position at an academic library, I had little desire to remain in that setting. From my view, the academic librarians are very involved in making sure that students & faculty have access to online library resources (for instance they deal with copyright issues, create online course packets, find the best databases, make sure there is access to e-journals, create digital libraries of student work, etc.). The thing I didn't personally like about this is that the work of the academic librarians mostly seems to go on behind closed doors with relatively little interaction with patrons. I can see how in that kind of setting, the physical space of the library may be deemed to be not necessary, and librarians could be relegated to offices somewhere just making sure the library website works. One of the reasons I am attracted to school librarianship is that there is still a high level of interaction between librarians and their patrons in the school library.
To answer Steve's question about whether bricks & mortar libraries will persist -- my opinion is that at least school libraries (where research skills will continue to need to be taught, regardless of the medium, and where at least the younger kids will continue to want to get physical books) and public libraries will last. I am less sure about the bricks & mortar academic library. What do you think?
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Five Filamentality Formats
As I mentioned in one of last week's posts, Filamentality allows you to create one of five different formats. Briefly, these are: Hotlists, Multimedia Scrapbooks, Treasure Hunts, Subject Samplers and WebQuests.
Today, I am going to give you a little explanation about what each of these different formats is and direct you to two examples of each.
1. Hotlists. A Hotlist is really just a web page that has a list of internet sites. After each link, there can be a brief description of what is on that page or why it is a good/appropriate resource. The Filamentality folks say that Hotlists are handy to save students from hours of rather fruitless searching. By starting with the Hotlist, the students will be using only approved and valuable resources. See a simple example of a Hotlist, or a more complicated Hotlist.
2. Multimedia Scrapbook. In this case, all the links are to multimedia resources (photographs, maps, sound clips, etc.). It is called a Scrapbook, because in this format, after viewing the resources, students are instructed to select those that appeal to them and they put these into their own "scrapbook" on the topic. Again, there is a simple Scrapbook example and a more complicated Scrapbook.
3. Treasure Hunt. A treasure hunt is similar to a Hotlist but instead of just having description of each site, there are also questions. These questions can be answered by looking at the content of the linked sites. Again, I have two examples for you, both a simple and a more sophisticated one.
4. Subject Sampler. Sort of a beefed-up Treasure Hunt. Rather than only covering fact-based questions like Treasure Hunts, Subject Samplers also have a section for students to write about how they feel or react to the topic. Subject Samplers are good for topics that are not just factual, but where emotion and personal opinion come into play. Here is the simple site and here is the more professional one.
5. WebQuests. As we know, WebQuests typically are fairly complex activities which are likely to involve multiple perspectives, group work and a culminating project. Because we all explored WebQuests recently, I am not linking any examples of them.
Now that you have been introduced to all five of the Filamentality Formats, what do you think of them? Which of these formats do you think you would be most likely to use or recommend to teachers? Do you see a use for each of the five formats, or would you lump some of them together if you were redesigning Filamentality?
Reference:
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/formats.html
Today, I am going to give you a little explanation about what each of these different formats is and direct you to two examples of each.
1. Hotlists. A Hotlist is really just a web page that has a list of internet sites. After each link, there can be a brief description of what is on that page or why it is a good/appropriate resource. The Filamentality folks say that Hotlists are handy to save students from hours of rather fruitless searching. By starting with the Hotlist, the students will be using only approved and valuable resources. See a simple example of a Hotlist, or a more complicated Hotlist.
2. Multimedia Scrapbook. In this case, all the links are to multimedia resources (photographs, maps, sound clips, etc.). It is called a Scrapbook, because in this format, after viewing the resources, students are instructed to select those that appeal to them and they put these into their own "scrapbook" on the topic. Again, there is a simple Scrapbook example and a more complicated Scrapbook.
3. Treasure Hunt. A treasure hunt is similar to a Hotlist but instead of just having description of each site, there are also questions. These questions can be answered by looking at the content of the linked sites. Again, I have two examples for you, both a simple and a more sophisticated one.
4. Subject Sampler. Sort of a beefed-up Treasure Hunt. Rather than only covering fact-based questions like Treasure Hunts, Subject Samplers also have a section for students to write about how they feel or react to the topic. Subject Samplers are good for topics that are not just factual, but where emotion and personal opinion come into play. Here is the simple site and here is the more professional one.
5. WebQuests. As we know, WebQuests typically are fairly complex activities which are likely to involve multiple perspectives, group work and a culminating project. Because we all explored WebQuests recently, I am not linking any examples of them.
Now that you have been introduced to all five of the Filamentality Formats, what do you think of them? Which of these formats do you think you would be most likely to use or recommend to teachers? Do you see a use for each of the five formats, or would you lump some of them together if you were redesigning Filamentality?
Reference:
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/formats.html
Friday, March 21, 2008
Further thoughts on Filamentality
First a couple basic points about Filamentality:
1. As you probably already know from this week's lecture, Filamentality is a combination of two words: Filament (as in filaments from the web) and one's own Mentality. Personally I think this is a bit a weird word, and since I never hear anyone referring to the filaments of the world wide web, it's a little confusing.
2. On the websites created using Filamentality, there can be no graphics, sounds or fancy fonts. They say it's because they wouldn't be able to regulate the appropriateness of the graphics. But that argument doesn't totally make sense to me, because someone could be writing or linking to very inappropriate stuff...
Now onto more thoughts about filamentality. I thought this article (editorial, really) did a good job of laying out filamentality's pros and cons. As the article mentions, filamentality is great for those who want a very simple and user friendly way to be able to create simple web pages. As well, it's free! On the con side are the facts that the filamentality sites only stay posted for a year (unless you repost) and also that you can't really do any designing of your website.
Another pro that is not mentioned in the article is the fact that you don't need a hosting site for your webpage, as the folks at AT&T provide it. This could be a big deal if you wanted to get a site up immediately and didn't want to wait for your IT people to get a new web page loaded onto the school's website.
If I were the TL, I would probably recommend Filamentality to teachers who were not very technologically savvy, but who wanted to be able to create simple webpages for class assignments (or who needed to get sites up immediately). Personally, after having just learned Dreamweaver (for my technology project), I think I might be frustrated by the lack of design control in Filamentality.
1. As you probably already know from this week's lecture, Filamentality is a combination of two words: Filament (as in filaments from the web) and one's own Mentality. Personally I think this is a bit a weird word, and since I never hear anyone referring to the filaments of the world wide web, it's a little confusing.
2. On the websites created using Filamentality, there can be no graphics, sounds or fancy fonts. They say it's because they wouldn't be able to regulate the appropriateness of the graphics. But that argument doesn't totally make sense to me, because someone could be writing or linking to very inappropriate stuff...
Now onto more thoughts about filamentality. I thought this article (editorial, really) did a good job of laying out filamentality's pros and cons. As the article mentions, filamentality is great for those who want a very simple and user friendly way to be able to create simple web pages. As well, it's free! On the con side are the facts that the filamentality sites only stay posted for a year (unless you repost) and also that you can't really do any designing of your website.
Another pro that is not mentioned in the article is the fact that you don't need a hosting site for your webpage, as the folks at AT&T provide it. This could be a big deal if you wanted to get a site up immediately and didn't want to wait for your IT people to get a new web page loaded onto the school's website.
If I were the TL, I would probably recommend Filamentality to teachers who were not very technologically savvy, but who wanted to be able to create simple webpages for class assignments (or who needed to get sites up immediately). Personally, after having just learned Dreamweaver (for my technology project), I think I might be frustrated by the lack of design control in Filamentality.
New topic: Filamentality
I can definitely say I had never heard of this term before I was assigned this topic to blog on. Steve briefly introduced this term in our week 9 lecture notes. As the AT &T webpage on this topic says,
"Filamentality is a fill-in-the-blank tool that guides you through picking a topic, searching the Internet, gathering good Internet links, and turning them into online learning activities... In the end, you'll create a web-based activity you can share with others even if you don't know anything about HTML or serving web pages."
Basically it looks like Filamentality is a brand name for a tool developed by AT & T that allows users who don't know anything about making webpages to make a web page! Neither Wikipedia nor YouTube have any entries that mention Filamentality -- which indicates to me that this is a phenomenon that quite a lot of people (besides me) are not "in" on.
As this (quite old) review states, "This is a great place to start for users new to the Web or to the concept of using the Internet in education. "
Filamentality can be used to create a variety of educational resources, such as... Hotlists, Scrapbooks, Treasure Hunts, Subject Samplers, and WebQuests. Users of the Filamentality site may either create their own activities or they can find/use and potentially adapt activities made by other users.
If you want to see some examples of websites created by Filamentality users, click here, and type the search term of your choice into the "Search Filamentality" box.
My first thought regarding Filamentality is that this tool would have been very useful and valuable over 10 years ago when it was first introduced... but now that there are more software programs that make designing one's own website much less arduous, I wonder if Filamentality will continue in its current form, somehow change and adapt or disappear. What do you think?
"Filamentality is a fill-in-the-blank tool that guides you through picking a topic, searching the Internet, gathering good Internet links, and turning them into online learning activities... In the end, you'll create a web-based activity you can share with others even if you don't know anything about HTML or serving web pages."
Basically it looks like Filamentality is a brand name for a tool developed by AT & T that allows users who don't know anything about making webpages to make a web page! Neither Wikipedia nor YouTube have any entries that mention Filamentality -- which indicates to me that this is a phenomenon that quite a lot of people (besides me) are not "in" on.
As this (quite old) review states, "This is a great place to start for users new to the Web or to the concept of using the Internet in education. "
Filamentality can be used to create a variety of educational resources, such as... Hotlists, Scrapbooks, Treasure Hunts, Subject Samplers, and WebQuests. Users of the Filamentality site may either create their own activities or they can find/use and potentially adapt activities made by other users.
If you want to see some examples of websites created by Filamentality users, click here, and type the search term of your choice into the "Search Filamentality" box.
My first thought regarding Filamentality is that this tool would have been very useful and valuable over 10 years ago when it was first introduced... but now that there are more software programs that make designing one's own website much less arduous, I wonder if Filamentality will continue in its current form, somehow change and adapt or disappear. What do you think?
Saturday, March 8, 2008
More thoughts on digital books
In last week's discussion, we talked a lot about ipods and MP3 players and their potential for use in the school library. One issue we stumbled across (at least in group B) was the fact that if the LMC checks out MP3 players to students (with books loaded on them) there is nothing to prevent the student from also loading music onto the device and using it for listening to their favorite tunes rather than reading.
Yesterday when I was in at the high school library where I am doing my fieldwork I was talking to the librarian there and she mentioned "Playaway." With Playaway, you have to buy a separate device for each title (the downside) BUT the only thing that is or can be recorded on the player is that book (the upside). The cost is around $50 per title (rather steep, but not totally prohibitive).
In reading about the Playaway, I found that different people have very different takes on it. In this review, the reviewer is rather scathing and makes all of the people who would consider using the Playaway sound like technophobes. On the other hand, in this review, the reviewer seems like they might be on Playaway's payroll. Personally, I can see that it would not be very practical for an individual to buy a Playaway -- but it actually seems like a decent investment for a library.
Yesterday when I was in at the high school library where I am doing my fieldwork I was talking to the librarian there and she mentioned "Playaway." With Playaway, you have to buy a separate device for each title (the downside) BUT the only thing that is or can be recorded on the player is that book (the upside). The cost is around $50 per title (rather steep, but not totally prohibitive).
In reading about the Playaway, I found that different people have very different takes on it. In this review, the reviewer is rather scathing and makes all of the people who would consider using the Playaway sound like technophobes. On the other hand, in this review, the reviewer seems like they might be on Playaway's payroll. Personally, I can see that it would not be very practical for an individual to buy a Playaway -- but it actually seems like a decent investment for a library.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Incorporating multimedia into concept maps
In looking for something different to discuss about concept mapping software this week, I came across this article which discusses incorporating multimedia into concept maps. The article makes the point that the purpose of a concept map is to "visually represent knowledge of a subject." It goes on to point out that in order to really represent all that we know about a subject, a concept map has to be more than just text. The article advocates for concept maps including not only text but images, sound clips, video clips, and hyperlinks. The example that the paper works with throughout is a concept map of horses. The article points out that:"one’s knowledge of horses might include not only what a horse looks like, but what a horse looks like when galloping and when trotting, the image of a jumping horse gliding over an obstacle, the sight and thundering sound of a group of wild horses stampeding across a sandy plain, the moving images of a wild bronco bucking in its attempt to throw a rodeo cowboy off its back, the sound of a horse 'neighing.' "
The article also makes the point that by using a multimedia concept map, the user will have a "more engaging user experience" and thus will be more engaged in the learning process.
The article goes on to introduce the multimedia concept mapping software that it recommends, Webster. I had never heard of Webster before reading this article, but I can certainly see for certain subjects, that having multimedia concept maps makes a lot of sense (for example, in a concept map of MLK, jr, being able to put a clip of the "I have a dream" speech).
The article also makes the point that by using a multimedia concept map, the user will have a "more engaging user experience" and thus will be more engaged in the learning process.
The article goes on to introduce the multimedia concept mapping software that it recommends, Webster. I had never heard of Webster before reading this article, but I can certainly see for certain subjects, that having multimedia concept maps makes a lot of sense (for example, in a concept map of MLK, jr, being able to put a clip of the "I have a dream" speech).
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