Libraries R 4 Learning Project: Information Literacy Multimedia clips

Aberdeenshire Library and Information Service started filming last week on their Libraries R 4 Learning Project: Multimedia clips. As one of those approached, I travelled north last week (2nd and 3rd February 2010) to do some filming. It was an interesting process writing the scripts for the introduction sections on Information Literacy, Information Literacy in schools and Information Literacy in the workplace and then filming them. A new experience for both myself and the film crew (Sue Cromar and one of the network librarians whose name I have forgotten - my apologises to her). I now have a great respect for news readers, it is not as easy as it looks.

During my two day visit I also had a meeting with some of the Aberdeenshire Library and Information Service staff - Primary School Librarian and Early Years / Young People in Schools Librarian plus one of Aberdeenshires Literacy Development Officers (Katherine who is an English teacher on secondment). We had an interesting session where I shared information on the information literacy work I'm involved with specifically the LTS Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level) CPD Toolkit.

Katherine was amazed to hear that Aberdeenshire Library and Information Service is not just about books, they also have objects / educational tools - religious artefacts, puppets, costumes etc that teachers can use for lessons. As a teachers she is probably not alone in thinking that libraries are just about books. She was also not aware that tours of the service have been organised for probationer teachers and that several teachers have requested visits once they heard of the resources available from the probationer teachers. I made a note to myself to remember to include Library and Information Services as a resource for teachers in the Real and Relevant  CPD Toolkit.

I also had an interesting conversation with the network librarian at Meldrum Accademy about transition initiatives (primary 7 - S1) and also about my experience todate of information literacy in the early years specifically regarding my thoughts that information literacy involves all our senses (sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing) plus our memories not just reading of text from books and or the Internet. I think we forget about the power of visual images and how this helps us learn languages, remember / recall past experiences, knowledge etc.

Open letter to PM re UK school libraries

An open letter to the Prime Minister re UK School Libraries has been sent by various organisations, including the CSG Information Literacy Group,  in response to the statement made by the Government about the online petition to make school libraries statutory.

Surveying software used to produce learning objects for Information Literacy

There was a posting on LIS-LINK@JISCMAIL.AC.UK by Karen Rolfe, Assistant Librarian User Services @ National Oceanographic Library summarising the information she received to a question she had posed about the technology\software\applications that people are using to support information literacy.  Which I thought might be of interest to some of you.

_______________

 Total number of responses received 10

 Questions and replies (number of responses in brackets)

1. Do you produce your own online learning objects to support Information Literacy skills?  - Yes (10)


2. Do you produce them just for computers or for computers and mobile phones? -  Just PCs (6), Just PCS but considering mobile phones (4), 


3. What applications or software do you use to produce your learning objects?  Articulate (1) + (1 - another respondent would like to use this instead of the application they are using) Audacity (1) Basic HTML (2) Camtasia (2) - screen and audio capture Captivate (4) CourseGenie (2) Echo 360 (1) - record lectures eXe (1) Flash (4) - animated learning objects Glomaker (1) Hotpotatos (4) - quizzes INFORMS (4) - real time tutorials Java script (2) Moodle (2) -VLE Sproutbuilder (1) TOIA (1) - quizzes Turning Point (1) Udutu (1) Viewlet builder (2) - screen and audio capture Wimba Create (1) - mini website tutorials Wix (1) Xml (1)


4. Why did you choose the software you are using?  - Cost / It's Free/ Open access  (4) Staff expertise - e.g. in house developer (2) Easy to use (2) Recommended/ being used by others (3) Suitability for the task (3) Pedagogic ethos (1) Compatible with University network (2) Accessibility (1) Customisable/Flexibility (2)


5. Are there some examples of your learning objects that we could look at available on your website? 

*      Articulate tutorials with Captivate and Informs outputs embedded  http://libraryonline.leedsmet.ac.uk/pages/subject_guides/law/types_of_information/law_reports_and_other_case_info

*      Information Literacy Resource Bank - http://ilrb.cf.ac.uk<http://ilrb.cf.ac.uk/> which contains a variety of IL learning objects 

*      http://www.staffs.ac.uk/ask/

http://www.staffs.ac.uk/refzone

*      Some of our tutorials (many of these are a bit out of date now, so we need to update them) http://www.library.bham.ac.uk/searching/infoskills/Brum.shtml

*      This page should allow you to look at most of our Camtasia films http://www.bath.ac.uk/library/infoskills/libflicks/index.html

*      http://iskillzone.uwe.ac.uk/

http://www.uwe.ac.uk/library/resources/general/iskillzone/evalBook/book.html

http://www.uwe.ac.uk/library/resources/general/iskillzone/evaluate/wiki/Wikipedia.swf

http://iskillzone.uwe.ac.uk/FileStore/Constellations/Constellation69/broadcast.swf

http://www.uwe.ac.uk/library/resources/general/media/findbook/start.html

        6. Is there any information or advice that you would share with us about creating learning    objects for information literacy using your chosen software?

*      Keep text short and simple where possible, enable interactivity wherever possible, get colleagues to test afterwards.

*      Be aware of the need to maintain LOs which are up-to-date and relevant, plus the need to train or have staff  with skill set required to use software.

*      Currently we have concentrated on specific IL skills for certain subject areas where student numbers made IL teaching nearly impossible, however we are starting a project just now on developing an assessed stand alone IL tutorial based on our Little Book of Information Skills. This will again utilize Articulate instead of web pages as we prefer the interactive nature and free navigation this software offers us. The software does not require any formal IT skills, and we currently just have two people working very few hours on our output. As with most things you can spend as long or not creating your tutorials, but most people know how to use PowerPoint so can easily transfer work into a more interactive openly navigable output.

*      We feel that the key to a successful learning object is to keep it fairly bite-size, try to keep the content as generic as possible and keep branding to a minimum.  This helps to ensure its suitability to a wide range of teaching and learning scenarios.

*      Some quick and dirty advice would be to avoid creating a scroll of death, interminable pages of text students and staff simply won't read. Contextualise any skills development.   Incorporate self assessment and possible peer review evaluation - wiki or live chat 

*      CourseGenie was very basic, which was good, because it was quick to learn how to use it, but unfortunately means it is not very sophisticated.  For example, if you wanted to put photos on, it was almost impossible to line them up to where you would like them.  There has been very little use of this learning object by the students - I think we might have had more usage if the program had been more interactive.

*      Ask your students/ users what they need first (not what they want) before doing anything and assume nothing. Make sure that any text you use is in plain English. Use a balance of textual/ visual/ animation/movie media (ASK is still too text heavy). What ever time you put aside for development multiply by 3! Keep it simple.

*      Regarding eXe: I would undertake basic training and talk to IT about it's limitations (we wasted a lot of time trying to solve technical issues ourselves). We've had problems when trying to play videos on our SunRay PCs (the servers which support these PCs haven't got the right media player application), which only became apparent when we were well into the project.

*      What we have learnt so far though, is that we don't have enough time to spend on this at the moment and that we need some training on the software and on the pedagogical implications of what the software can do.

Library and Information Research 105 - information literacy articles

The latest issue of Library and Information Research is now available online

Issue 105 contains a number of invited contribution papers (from the projects partners so) is focused on current information literacy initiatives in Scotland especially in the schools sector. 

Libraries R 4 Learning: supporting the Curriculum for Excellence in Aberdeenshire - Sue Cromar

Collecting case studies / exemplars of good practice to enrich The National Information Literacy Framework (Scotland) - Christine Irving

The future is skills - Ian McCracken

Congratulations to both Sue and Ian for their informative and interesting articles - keep up the good work.

Library and Information Research is published by the Library and Information Research Group. It publishes both refereed and non-refereed submissions. It is particularly keen to encourage

• new writers


• reporting of research (including informal or in-house research) by practitioners

So if this is you - why not contact them, they are very helpful and provide a template to aid your writing.

Good news for information literacy and GCU as Debbi Boden is appointed as Director of Library Services

Debbi is well known to the project through her involvement as Chair of CILIP's Information Literacy Group and LILAC (Librarians' Information Literacy Annual Conference) which is now in its sixth year and attracts international delegates.

Currently Deputy Director of Information and Learning Services at the University of Worcester since 2007 and prior to that was a Faculty Team Leader at Imperial College and Academic Liaison Librarian at the University of Luton. 

Debbi will start her new position on 22 March  2010 and we wish her well in her new post and welcome her back to Scotland where I'm sure she will be an enthusiastic active player in Information Literacy, Libraries, Learning and Teaching.