Thursday, November 30, 2006

the opac may suck, but you can make it suck less

Pop goes the library has a few smart suggestions on cataloging dvds so your patrons can find them. Most of the suggestions apply to non dvd items as well. Yeah, it takes more time in cataloging. Time well spent in my opinion - if they can't find it, then the item may as well not be on the shelf.

Pop Goes the Library: How Do You Solve A Problem Like A DVD Set?

Web 2.0 for Educators: Social Software - NOTES � Multimedia, Teaching & Learning

One of my talks at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference was blogged:

Web 2.0 for Educators: Social Software - NOTES - Multimedia, Teaching & Learning

we had a really great discussion in this hands on session, stimulated by the blogger herself and she captures some good notes about the discussion. In essence, how do you make sure you get enough perspective? If you are choosing to read only what you already want to read? Good stuff for thinking. Part of my answer is that I'm getting stuff in my reader that is not only my worldview because of the quantity. Part of my answer is that my aggregator is not my only source of information, and that the linkable nature ensures I travel far and wide in the information world.

CMTC2006 - Look Mom, No Binder: eportfolio considerations, Royce Roberts

  • there are lots of options - this is not the only way to do it -
  • what do we want out of this? we want students to be able to represent themelves in a number of ways, "representation of professional self" - curricular, extracurricular,
  • FEAT - functional, educational, administrative, technical
  • strikes at the heart of assessment
  • functional - tool itself, 'click paths'
  • educational - curriculum, scope, sequence, purpose
  • administrative - policy, budget, planning
  • technical - system conditions, requirements, infrastructure

  • cycling through artifacts, standards, and reflections
    • choose the artifact - what form? best work or baseline for growth?
    • choose the standard - details of the standard? natural fit?
    • reflect on the artifact and standard
  • educational
    • 'formal learning'
    • what gets taught where - standards, curriculum map
    • students are evaluating how their work fits into the standards themselves
  • focus the purpose - don't water it down to try to serve all purposes
  • common or custom - depends on what you'd like to get out of it. really, custom is the way to go -
  • iWebfolio is the tool they use
  • pros and cons to most every design template
  • formal review tied to the advising process
  • timeline - add, reflect, review - add, reflect, review - add, reflect, review
http://oz.plymouth.edu/~rroberts/files/nhste

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Kathleen Malsbenden, What is This Thing Called Web 2.0?

  • demo'd skype - video for skype
  • educationbridges.com
  • My Personal Learning Space - social networking site for students
  • Edublogs / LearnersBlog
  • Responsible Use Guideline should incorporate video conferencing and everything else
  • del.icio.us
  • writely
  • zoho
  • imagination cubed
  • webcast academy
  • jotspot, superglu, basecamp

CMTC2006 - David Weinberger, New Sources of Authority: Who Can be Trusted on the Web?

(discussion session - comments from all attendees)

  • old sources of authority are dying, new peer to peer resouces are emerging, how do we teach students to navigate this very very gray world?
  • teachers often put restrictions on internet resources because they (the teachers) don't feel comfortable on the web
  • the other extreme is teachers just saying, find it on the web
  • example: part of an assignment is to print out three webpages that the students used and have them do a reflection on validity of those sources, justify their use of those pages
  • traditional classroom model is teachers have control over the content they provide the kids
  • David: there's sending kids out to find library like resources on the web, and then there's what they are going to do for the rest of their lives which is find blogs and their discussions - its where intellectual life is happening, where ideas are forming
  • "students can now research and put together a paper without ever reading a word"
  • "i think helping them figure out what is good crap and what is bad crap is much easier than helping them figure out how much crap is too much crap"
  • david "maybe you need to teach them how to assess in 20 seconds. im serious"
  • "I know how to do this because I'm an adult" "That's the hitch"
  • David - "The safe harbors are the least interesting part of my intellectual life"
  • David - "The form of discourse that they're being trained in is irrelevant" - down with reports!!!
  • adults don't write reports, why do we make kids write reports???
  • David, "every possible niche of trust is going to be filled"
  • we've moved into an age of good enough information, librarians need to make that jump

CMTC2006 - David Weinberger, Social Software as Teaching & Learning Tools

(came in halfway through)

  • social software needs to have a sense of a persistence for the user (blog url, avatar)
  • edublogs.org
  • other audience members - we can be their guide, they are going to be doing this eventually anyway, we can be there to talk about safety - meet with parents if necessary
  • we are kidding ourselves if we think we can really control internet access by kids - posting to myspace from their cellphones in the bathroom
  • the best thing we can do for our kids is help them understand what is appropriate
  • points to a piece of parent education that is larger than social software - we need to start talking with them about how the world is flat
  • one parent printed out a paper copy of his daughter's myspace page and went to hang it up on the bulletin board at the mall - daughter of course freaked out
  • we have empowered parents to opt out of these things by treating 'technology' as an extraneous thing. no. it is absolutely necessary. it has to be so integrated there is no room for opt out. we need to say to parents , 'you not get the choice.
  • david asked if anyone sets up 'back channels' in their classroom - chatrooms for additional discussion in the background about what is being presented

CMTC2006 - David Weinberger, keynote

Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference, wednesday keynote

(came in half way through) Weinberger's web page

  • talked about the fairly aribitrary way scientists decided Pluto wasn't a planet
  • archaic Dewey decimal system to illustrate how even though it doesn't really function well in our global world, we're stuck with it and that's ok - we can think about knowledge despite it.
  • defining and examining 'knowledge' / 7 properties of knowledge
  • books are bad at linking information - footnotes are pretty ridiculous
  • expensive to produce so the issue of authority comes into play
  • with books - write in private then publish , can't update- model is being flipped on its head
  • orders of organization - first order, actual stuff. second order, metadata (card catalog). third order, everything is digital - content and metadata
  • 4 principles of organizing digital information
    • leaf on many branches - put the book in lots of places
    • messiness is a virtue
    • no difference between data and metadata - search by about or a piece of the thing itself - only difference is data is the thing you are looking for and metadata is the thing you know - now any bit of information can be metadata
    • unowned order - owners of the information no longer own the organization of the information - for the users - used NCSU catalog as example, then del.icio.us
(this is such a turn-on for a lis geek like me!!!)

  • leaving the tree model (everything has 1 info place and only 1 place) and going to a 'pile' of info - new shape of knowledge - everything is connected
  • it is more expensive to exclude stuff than include it - storage is so cheap - easier to keep everything than to make decisions about what to keep
  • preserve everything because we do not know what matters
  • filter on the way out, not on the way in - postpone building the taxonomy, let the user do it and give them the tools
  • 7 properties: one and the same; simple; impersonal; bigger than we are; filtered; orderly; has a knower
  • simple things become complex - simple george w speech, bloggers tease out the history, compexities, links
  • no longer the broadcast era - no longer need to be so simple, blogs allow the conversation to be complex
  • filtered - knowledge has been filtered by experts. there are other experts. used digg as the example
  • authority - "when in doubt, look it up" (britannica)
  • mere presence does not convey credibility.
    • wikipedia - history and discussion pages incredible artifacts
    • discussion pages increase the credibility of the articles
    • increases credibility by letting you know right up front that there is debate about the article
    • encourages authors/readers to increase the conversation
    • beta is great
    • showed a mocked up NYT front page with wikipedia warnings about neutrality, etc.
    • publicly negotiated knowledge
      • the world's greastest authority debates the common man
      • world's greatest authority will leave if her stuff is changed too often
      • the result is not what any individual would come up with, it has been negotiated
      • knowledge is social
(i think i am a little in love with this guy. this is all sooooooooooo up my alley)

      • kids do their homework socially w/ im
      • kids learning social because knowledge is social (individual testing is ridiculous)
  • (some german guy) in order to know what a hammer is, you have to know what nails are, what wood is, what trees are,
  • context context context of info in order to create meaning
  • externalization - books externalize knowledge, calculators externalize arithmatic
  • now in the process of externalizing meaning -
    • everytime you tag you make it possible for people to create meaning
    • no links, no web!

Monday, November 13, 2006

Moviemaker and IMovie workshop

just my notes:

Nicole Tomaselli
held at the Manchester Professional Development Center
workshop website http://www.nashua.edu/tomasellin/multimedia.htm

AIPTEK digital video recorder - records to SD, takes still and audio, BEST BUY, 2gb sd memory card for $40
- quality is totally great and fine!!!!

- movie projects are really time intensive. Be specific about how long the project will go. Be specific about the fact that the quality is not going to be perfect. Learning in stages. 30 sec projects.

- utilize 'found' video - united streaming, google video - repurpose video
- best place to start is to start with existing media

- lapel microphones cost $3 on govconnect

- scientific element infomercials hee hee!