Andy Malonis from Cengage Learning talked about adding value to collections that you curate by creating new resources from existing content.
As he admitted this is much easier for organisations like Cengage who own vast amounts of content. As a result they don’t have to worry about the copyright problems usually involved in playing around with content.
Creative curation is partly inspired by a shift in the way people use the word ‘curate’. People in various creative industries are increasingly using it to imply that they have a ‘discerning eye and great taste’ in whatever their field happens to be. So someone who sees themselves as an expert might claim to curate albums or trainers.
He pointed to DVDs as an example of creative curation. Each DVD is usually a collection that includes the film itself and various extras. The film companies are adding value to content that they own by putting it together in new ways.
Andy’s example from his own work was a new mobile app which visitors to the Arlington National Cemetery can use to look up biographical information about the people who are buried there. Cengage’s huge database of biographies is a core part of their business. This app just applies that content in a new context. Creative curation often involves adding new meta-data to the existing information. In this case they added geospatial information so the biographical information was linked to the location of the right grave.
We are likely to find that suppliers are increasingly repackaging and adapting their existing content for new contexts particularly for use on mobile devices. Some of the resulting products might be useful in the future. However the real hope must be that librarians can play that game too.
Showing posts with label Mobile Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mobile Technology. Show all posts
Monday, 5 December 2011
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Online 2011 - The Challenge of Mobile Literacy in Schools
I heard Sarah Pavey talk at a COFHE Information Literacy / Teach Meet training day earlier this year. She is the School Librarian at Box Hill School and one of the things that she touched upon in that earlier talk was her use of mobiles as learning tools. I remembered her as an enthusiastic speaker with some good ideas so I was looking forward to this session.
The idea that mobiles can be useful in education isn’t universally accepted. In fact at Box Hill School they are officially banned. The relationship between child protection, network security and teaching mobile literacy is a difficult one. Opportunities lead to risk so it is hard to find the right balance.
As you can guess from the title Sarah thinks current approaches are too focussed on avoiding risk at all costs. She also made the point that blanket bans are commonly ignored and argued that clear guidelines might actually be more effective.
She highlighted the advantages of mobile phone apps over letting students search on the open web. We can check where an app comes from and point students towards reliable ones from respected sources. Obviously we try to point students towards reliable websites but the temptation to just google it isn’t there with apps. They are arguably less wild and wooly than the web.
Before I go onto the possible uses I should include the disclaimer that the following assumes high levels of smart phone ownership. Box Hill is an independent school but Sarah provides training on mobile literacy at a variety of schools. She thinks that levels of smart phone ownership are very high among young people from all backgrounds. That said there are obvious ethical and practical issues around assuming that students have access to particular technology.
Educational uses for mobiles
1. Using phones to record information
Filming - Students can record lectures, drama performances etc.
Speaking - Students can use mobiles as Dictaphones to record their thoughts. The Vlingo app even turns speech into text.
Collating – Onenote and Evernote both help students to organise and reference their research.
Easybib lets you scan book barcodes to get the correct reference citation.
2. Using the phone to find information
At Box Hill they signed all of the students up to the local Public Library service. This meant that they all had access to e-books through Overdrive which is apparently particularly good at supplying fiction for young adults.
Various apps exist which supply students with information. The one that jumped out at me (I'm sorry) was Moonjump. If you jump with it turned on it tells you how high you would have jumped if you had been on the moon. She did mention more practical examples.
Sarah puts relevant apps on her subject resources guides. This is a simple thing that we could all do with a little research.
3. Using the phone to revise.
Bitesize and i-revise both exist in mobile app form.
Cramberry- Creating revision flash cards.
Inquizitor – Creating revision quizzes.
Epic win – A to do list but each time you tick off a task you progress through a game. I will come back to gamification in a future blog post on Online 2011.
4. Creativity
QR reading links - Putting a QR code on a book that takes you to further information ie reviews, the author's site etc.
QR codes on brochures and posters.
Interactive storytelling - These sound like great fun. My favourite was a school wide event where students used their phones as ghost detectors and had to complete various tasks.
Challenges
Sarah acknowledged that her ideas rely on changing perceptions of mobile phones among educators and parents. She wants people to move away from the idea that mobiles are a threat, a source of disorder, a distraction or worse. She wants everyone to see them as an asset. Tools for discovering and organising knowledge. Tools for revision and creativity.
Sarah is advocating a significant cultural shift in schools and colleges. She has some solutions to this challenge. Training sessions for teachers and parents apparently have a big impact. Also parents often drop their initial hostility (which can be intense) once they've seen how the phones are being used for education.
While many good quality apps are free there isn't a mechanism for buying them in bulk. Mobile learning shifts the burden for providing hardware (the smart phones) and much of the software (the apps)onto the students. That might sound tempting in the current climate but if mobile learning is going to be big we will have to be careful to ensure that students who don't have smart phone don't feel excluded. Hunting down good free apps sidesteps the software half of the problem.
In terms of smart phones the point is that a lot of students do have these potentially very powerful tools and they enjoy using them. We risk wasting an opportunity if we ignore the idea that mobiles can be used to engage students and advance their learning.
The idea that mobiles can be useful in education isn’t universally accepted. In fact at Box Hill School they are officially banned. The relationship between child protection, network security and teaching mobile literacy is a difficult one. Opportunities lead to risk so it is hard to find the right balance.
As you can guess from the title Sarah thinks current approaches are too focussed on avoiding risk at all costs. She also made the point that blanket bans are commonly ignored and argued that clear guidelines might actually be more effective.
She highlighted the advantages of mobile phone apps over letting students search on the open web. We can check where an app comes from and point students towards reliable ones from respected sources. Obviously we try to point students towards reliable websites but the temptation to just google it isn’t there with apps. They are arguably less wild and wooly than the web.
Before I go onto the possible uses I should include the disclaimer that the following assumes high levels of smart phone ownership. Box Hill is an independent school but Sarah provides training on mobile literacy at a variety of schools. She thinks that levels of smart phone ownership are very high among young people from all backgrounds. That said there are obvious ethical and practical issues around assuming that students have access to particular technology.
Educational uses for mobiles
1. Using phones to record information
Filming - Students can record lectures, drama performances etc.
Speaking - Students can use mobiles as Dictaphones to record their thoughts. The Vlingo app even turns speech into text.
Collating – Onenote and Evernote both help students to organise and reference their research.
Easybib lets you scan book barcodes to get the correct reference citation.
2. Using the phone to find information
At Box Hill they signed all of the students up to the local Public Library service. This meant that they all had access to e-books through Overdrive which is apparently particularly good at supplying fiction for young adults.
Various apps exist which supply students with information. The one that jumped out at me (I'm sorry) was Moonjump. If you jump with it turned on it tells you how high you would have jumped if you had been on the moon. She did mention more practical examples.
Sarah puts relevant apps on her subject resources guides. This is a simple thing that we could all do with a little research.
3. Using the phone to revise.
Bitesize and i-revise both exist in mobile app form.
Cramberry- Creating revision flash cards.
Inquizitor – Creating revision quizzes.
Epic win – A to do list but each time you tick off a task you progress through a game. I will come back to gamification in a future blog post on Online 2011.
4. Creativity
QR reading links - Putting a QR code on a book that takes you to further information ie reviews, the author's site etc.
QR codes on brochures and posters.
Interactive storytelling - These sound like great fun. My favourite was a school wide event where students used their phones as ghost detectors and had to complete various tasks.
Challenges
Sarah acknowledged that her ideas rely on changing perceptions of mobile phones among educators and parents. She wants people to move away from the idea that mobiles are a threat, a source of disorder, a distraction or worse. She wants everyone to see them as an asset. Tools for discovering and organising knowledge. Tools for revision and creativity.
Sarah is advocating a significant cultural shift in schools and colleges. She has some solutions to this challenge. Training sessions for teachers and parents apparently have a big impact. Also parents often drop their initial hostility (which can be intense) once they've seen how the phones are being used for education.
While many good quality apps are free there isn't a mechanism for buying them in bulk. Mobile learning shifts the burden for providing hardware (the smart phones) and much of the software (the apps)onto the students. That might sound tempting in the current climate but if mobile learning is going to be big we will have to be careful to ensure that students who don't have smart phone don't feel excluded. Hunting down good free apps sidesteps the software half of the problem.
In terms of smart phones the point is that a lot of students do have these potentially very powerful tools and they enjoy using them. We risk wasting an opportunity if we ignore the idea that mobiles can be used to engage students and advance their learning.
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
CoFHE Conference 2011 - Day 3
The Hive – Plenary session
Judith Keene – University of Worcester
The Hive in Worcester is Britain’s first fully integrated joint public and university library. It is due to open in July. Judith is in charge of planning and resources for the University of Worcester’s learning resources department.
The project itself sounds very interesting but she focussed on the importance of ensuring that all of the staff were fully on board. Research from other countries suggests that staff commitment is the key to success in joint library projects. The university library and the public library teams are still going to be employed by their respective organisations but the services will be presented seamlessly. From the perspective of most users there will be no distinction.
Judith made some interesting points about the differences in values between public and academic libraries. The central one was that in public libraries the ideal is to give the user the information they want but in an academic library the ideal is to teach users how to find the information they want. The Hive project tried to overcome this and other potential culture clashes by setting up staff workshops to think about values and to come up with a shared vision.
Experimenting with mobile technology use in libraries – Workshop
Jo Alcock – University of Wolverhampton
Jo’s presentation is available at:
http://www.slideshare.net/joeyanne/experimenting-with-mobiletechnologiesinlibraries
All of the resources she mentioned are available at:
http://www.delicious.com/tag/cofhemobapps
This was a particularly good workshop because Jo had obviously spent a lot of time researching the use of mobile technologies in libraries. She’d uncovered lots of examples of good practice and lots of interesting resources. She was really throwing ideas at her audience and everyone left the room feeling very enthused. This was an excellent way to end the conference.
Having introduced the idea that mobile technology had reached the point where we all need to start taking it much more seriously she split her examples into three sections.
1. Library content
2. Library services
3. Mobile specific content – i.e. new services that we couldn’t have provided without mobile technology.
Library content
- Academic publishers are not yet providing e-books in mobile friendly formats.
- Ebscohost has a specialist service which provides journal articles for mobile devices. This is great for libraries that subscribe to Ebscohost.
http://www.ebscohost.com/academic/mobile-access
- The British Library has an app which allows users to view digitised material on their mobiles. http://www.bl.uk/app/
Library services
- ‘Know it now’ text enquires. The state library of Ohio runs a leading SMS enquiry service. http://www.knowitnow.org/- Text library tips and tricks. The University of Huddersfield texts students tips and tricks for using the library and studying effectively.
- Mobile catalogue. Library thing for libraries offers a service which adapts your catalogue for mobile use. Keele University is already using it. http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries- Roving enquires. At the University of Warwick library staff carry around ipads so they can instantly access the opac and the net in order to deal with any student enquires. This saves them from having to walk to a computer (I’m assuming Warwick University library is big).
- Collecting library statistics. Counting the number of users in the library on a mobile device allows you to process statistics instantly.
- Room booking by mobile phone. Use of QR codes to check availability and book if free. QR codes are those blocky square pictures that work as links for smart phones. People can scan them with their phone and then they are taken to the site or online resource.
Mobile specific services
- QR codes to direct people to e-books. This is clever. If you have an ebook copy of a popular book you can put a QR code for the e-book near the shelf where the print copies are kept. You can even have a dummy book (a DVD case or something) with the QR code on it and instructions to use it. Students with smart phones can scan the QR code and they will then be taken directly to the e-book.
- Induction treasure hunts.
- Scan me. Charles Darwin University Library promoted their use of QR codes by having staff t-shirts with QR codes on and the slogan ‘scan me now’. (I’m not sure about this one.)
- Scanning book barcodes to see if the library has a copy. The library equivalent of finding something in a bookshop and using your mobile to see if Amazon has it for less.
- Checking PC availability from your mobile.
- Foursquare. A location based app that allows people to comment on places they visit and to set up communities based on those places. Slightly worryingly if it’s your place you can claim it on the site but if you don’t any user can set up a community for it.
- Shelf sorting app. An app that can spot library books that are in the wrong place and tell you where they should be. Currently in production.
Jo finished by offering some parting words of advice.
Aim for high impact, low cost.
Don’t over invest.
Use free resources.
Examples: Animoto – Video generator, Zbar – barcode reader, Kaywa – QR code generator.
After Jo’s talk it was time to grab some lunch, say my goodbyes and head back home. The conference was a great experience. I hope you find some of this useful.
Judith Keene – University of Worcester
The Hive in Worcester is Britain’s first fully integrated joint public and university library. It is due to open in July. Judith is in charge of planning and resources for the University of Worcester’s learning resources department.
The project itself sounds very interesting but she focussed on the importance of ensuring that all of the staff were fully on board. Research from other countries suggests that staff commitment is the key to success in joint library projects. The university library and the public library teams are still going to be employed by their respective organisations but the services will be presented seamlessly. From the perspective of most users there will be no distinction.
Judith made some interesting points about the differences in values between public and academic libraries. The central one was that in public libraries the ideal is to give the user the information they want but in an academic library the ideal is to teach users how to find the information they want. The Hive project tried to overcome this and other potential culture clashes by setting up staff workshops to think about values and to come up with a shared vision.
Experimenting with mobile technology use in libraries – Workshop
Jo Alcock – University of Wolverhampton
Jo’s presentation is available at:
http://www.slideshare.net/joeyanne/experimenting-with-mobiletechnologiesinlibraries
All of the resources she mentioned are available at:
http://www.delicious.com/tag/cofhemobapps
This was a particularly good workshop because Jo had obviously spent a lot of time researching the use of mobile technologies in libraries. She’d uncovered lots of examples of good practice and lots of interesting resources. She was really throwing ideas at her audience and everyone left the room feeling very enthused. This was an excellent way to end the conference.
Having introduced the idea that mobile technology had reached the point where we all need to start taking it much more seriously she split her examples into three sections.
1. Library content
2. Library services
3. Mobile specific content – i.e. new services that we couldn’t have provided without mobile technology.
Library content
- Academic publishers are not yet providing e-books in mobile friendly formats.
- Ebscohost has a specialist service which provides journal articles for mobile devices. This is great for libraries that subscribe to Ebscohost.
http://www.ebscohost.com/academic/mobile-access
- The British Library has an app which allows users to view digitised material on their mobiles. http://www.bl.uk/app/
Library services
- ‘Know it now’ text enquires. The state library of Ohio runs a leading SMS enquiry service. http://www.knowitnow.org/- Text library tips and tricks. The University of Huddersfield texts students tips and tricks for using the library and studying effectively.
- Mobile catalogue. Library thing for libraries offers a service which adapts your catalogue for mobile use. Keele University is already using it. http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries- Roving enquires. At the University of Warwick library staff carry around ipads so they can instantly access the opac and the net in order to deal with any student enquires. This saves them from having to walk to a computer (I’m assuming Warwick University library is big).
- Collecting library statistics. Counting the number of users in the library on a mobile device allows you to process statistics instantly.
- Room booking by mobile phone. Use of QR codes to check availability and book if free. QR codes are those blocky square pictures that work as links for smart phones. People can scan them with their phone and then they are taken to the site or online resource.
Mobile specific services
- QR codes to direct people to e-books. This is clever. If you have an ebook copy of a popular book you can put a QR code for the e-book near the shelf where the print copies are kept. You can even have a dummy book (a DVD case or something) with the QR code on it and instructions to use it. Students with smart phones can scan the QR code and they will then be taken directly to the e-book.
- Induction treasure hunts.
- Scan me. Charles Darwin University Library promoted their use of QR codes by having staff t-shirts with QR codes on and the slogan ‘scan me now’. (I’m not sure about this one.)
- Scanning book barcodes to see if the library has a copy. The library equivalent of finding something in a bookshop and using your mobile to see if Amazon has it for less.
- Checking PC availability from your mobile.
- Foursquare. A location based app that allows people to comment on places they visit and to set up communities based on those places. Slightly worryingly if it’s your place you can claim it on the site but if you don’t any user can set up a community for it.
- Shelf sorting app. An app that can spot library books that are in the wrong place and tell you where they should be. Currently in production.
Jo finished by offering some parting words of advice.
Aim for high impact, low cost.
Don’t over invest.
Use free resources.
Examples: Animoto – Video generator, Zbar – barcode reader, Kaywa – QR code generator.
After Jo’s talk it was time to grab some lunch, say my goodbyes and head back home. The conference was a great experience. I hope you find some of this useful.
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