Wednesday, March 31, 2010

FREE Panel Session in Second Life

Anyone interested is invited to attend a FREE panel session in Second Life on the topic, “Second Life Implementation at Academic Libraries” for the Texas Library Association Conference http://www.txla.org/conference/program.html

Date: Friday, 16 April 2010
Time: 12 noon – 1:50 pm SLT/PT
Location: Second Life [You will receive the SLURL when you rsvp]
Speakers:
• Sara Bordelon, Systems Analyst and Virtual Worlds Trainer, University of Texas at San Antonio
• Lorin Fisher, Information Literacy Coordinator, Texas State University
• Esther Grassian, Information Literacy Librarian, UCLA
• Tara Schmidt, Reference Librarian, University of Texas at San Antonio

Please RSVP by Monday, 12 April 2010:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHRicG5DN1dTS0R1QmVLZ1ppR0FYT3c6MA
OR
http://bit.ly/cxFjyq

Basic Second Life accounts are free, however, you will need to have a computer that can handle the graphics, and you will need to download the Second Life software in order to participate.
Second Life accounts: http://secondlife.com
System requirements: http://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements/?lang=en-US

Please note: This program will be held in RL (real life) at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio. We have requested a wired ethernet connection for the panel session, so that we can offer it simultaneously in SL, but hope you will understand if we are unable to connect to SL after all.

If you have any questions, please contact Esther Grassian: estherg@library.ucla.edu

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

BRIEF Instruction Survey

As part of my sabbatical project, I'm asking for your help in collecting information about instruction efforts at your library. I have created a short survey to track what we are doing library instruction today and what plans we have to improve.
I would also like to identify specific libraries for one-on-one interviews, either in person or by phone.
I'm especially interested in contacting instruction librarians at other community colleges in California, but input from all of you is important to me.
I would be happy to summarize my results. If you have suggestions for how I can make this survey more relevant, please feel free to contact me at the email address below.

Please take 5 minutes to complete the survey at this address:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/967KNNV

Also, please feel free to forward this email to other librarians who might not have received it.

Thank you very much.
Carol Womack
Instruction Librarian
Santa Monica College
310-434-4635
womack_carol@smc.edu

"Stir It Up" - San Francisco Public Library Program 4/7/10

The San Francisco Public Library is offering an unusual event, also listed in Yelp, which gives SFPL 4 stars out of 5, based on 213 reviews:

Date: Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Time: 6 - 7:30 p.m.

Place: San Francisco Public Library
100 Larkin Street
Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room
San Francisco, CA 94102

Program: Stir It Up -- In the Pot and on the Web: Making Media about Making Food

Description: Join Professors Melinda Stone and David Silver as they spin tales about making food and making media at the University of San Francisco. Experience the dynamic convergence of green living, food in San Francisco, social media and Web 2.0 technologies in this digital storytelling presentation.

Contact Info.: jdear@sfpl.org or (415) 557-4277

Jerry Dear - Magazines & Newspapers Center
San Francisco Public Library
http://sfplmagsandnews.blogspot.com/

Monday, March 22, 2010

"Saving the Google Students"

Sara Scribner, a teacher-librarian in the Pasadena, California School District, wrote an excellent essay regarding the value of school librarians and information literacy instruction, published in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, March 21st.

"Saving the Google students"
--------------------

For the Google generation, closing school libraries could be disastrous. Not teaching kids how to sift through sources is like sending them into the world without knowing how to read.

By Sara Scribner

March 21 2010

The current generation of kindergartners to 12th graders -- those born between 1991 and 2004 -- has no memory of a time before Google. But although these students are far more tech savvy than their parents and are perpetually connected to the Internet, they know a lot less than they think. And worse, they don't know what they don't know.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-scribner21-2010mar21,0,764753.story

Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com

Riverside may cut last 12 teacher-librarians

Lauren Barack's article in School Library Journal describes more possible layoffs that we hope will not come to pass...
"Riverside, CA, Considers Cutting Last 12 Teacher-Librarians"

Update re Possible Layoffs of LAUSD Librarians

A LILi (Lifelong Information Literacy) Group member who is an LAUSD librarian, posted the following message to the Group:

This article in American Libraries Magazine is an update on the current situation in LAUSD. It is an attempt to acknowledge the rumors and separate truth from fiction.

http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/inside-scoop/pink-slips—and-rumors—fly-la

Monday, March 15, 2010

Awful News: LAUSD to Cut All School Librarians

A Google Alert email for "information literacy" included a link to a School Library Journal article by Rocco Staino, "LA Unified School District to Eliminate All Certified Librarians." While there is faint hope that this action will be rescinded, we cannot count on it. This is a sad day for Los Angeles and for the almost 618,000 students in the District, who will no longer have librarians to help them become information literate, prepared for higher education research and learning, and able to participate as informed citizens in a democratic society, for a lifetime.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

NMC Seeks Examples: K-12 Horizon Report by 3/15

From the NMC Subscribers' List:

NMC Seeks Examples for 2010 Horizon Report: K12 Edition

The New Media Consortium, with support from Hewlett-Packard and in collaboration with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), is preparing the 2010 Horizon Report: K12 Edition. We are interested in learning about any kind of research, pilot programs, innovative projects, or other work happening at your school, or at schools you know about, in any of the six areas listed below. (See the attached 2010 Horizon Report: K12 Edition Preview of the topics for more details.) Our goal is to help readers understand the potential impact of these technologies and their applications on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry.

Here are the six areas identified for this year's report:

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
* Cloud Computing
* Collaborative Environments

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
* Educational Gaming
* Mobiles

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
* Augmented Reality
* Thin Film Displays

The Time-to-Adoption Horizon indicates how long the Advisory Board feels it will be until a significant number of schools are providing or using each of these technologies or approaches broadly. Of course, a number of innovative teachers and schools are already working in some of these areas, and those are the very efforts we want to highlight. Of special interest are any activities that have a significant web presence so that a URL might be included in the report.

How to Participate
If you know of examples we could include, please use the brief web form at http://go.nmc.org/horizon-example-project to tell us about them. We ask for a title, a URL, and a one- or two-sentence description; you also will need to select which of the six topics your example falls under. The process takes about two minutes.

We hope to have your examples by Monday, March 15, but no matter what, we'd love to hear about what you are doing! All we really need is a sentence of description and a URL -- we'll do the rest.

Thanks -- and we look forward to hearing from you!

Best,

Rachel


Rachel S. Smith
Vice President, NMC Services
The New Media Consortium

tel 512 445 4200 | fax 512 445 4205 | rachel@nmc.org | www.nmc.org

Joyce Valenza's Embed Code for Google Search Options Poster

Joyce Valenza has very kindly shared a link to her School Library Journal blog post which provides the embed code for her Google Search Options Poster.

Joyce Valenza's Google Search Options + Search Poster

Joyce Valenza responded to a query on InfoLit-L with the following message, including links to her amazing Google Search Options poster and Search Poster:

We use GoogleSquared for a number of projects that require comparison or identifying the "players" or "items" in an area of knowledge.

You may be interested in the little poster I did to pop out the other hidden Google search features: Google Search Options

[NOTE: Joyce included embed code in her message, but including that code here simply embeds her poster in this blog post, rather than displaying the code. Check the InfoLit-L archive for her message, dated 3/8/2010, or email Joyce Valenza or Esther Grassian for the code. Scroll down past the embedded poster to see the remainder of the message.]

Feel free to embed the code below if it is helpful.



Here are some I did for younger kids:
KidSearch2
KidVideoSearch
Kid Reference

And one I need to clean up: Search Poster

Joyce

Joyce Kasman Valenza, Ph.D.
Springfield Township HS Library
Phone: 215-233-6030 Ext. 2502 Fax: 215-836-5237
Cell: 215-518-1846
skype: joycevalenza
twitter: joycevalenza
Library website: http://springfieldlibrary.wikispaces.com
NeverEndingSearch (School Library Journal)
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/neverendingsearch
TeacherLibrarianNetwork http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com

Thursday, March 4, 2010

3/18 Workshop: "Coping in Tough Times"

Librarians who provide instruction are invited to attend the following workshop sponsored by UCLA’s Information Literacy Program.

“Coping in Tough Times: Approaches to Teaching IL with Limited Staff”

Thursday, March 18, 2010, 10 AM-noon, YRL Presentation Room, UCLA
Thursday, March 18, 2010, 10 AM-noon SLT/Pacific Time, Second Life
(Second Life location will be provided in your RSVP confirmation message.)

Given current downward trends in staffing, librarians are designing creative ways to leverage their limited availability to provide library instruction to their users. This highly interactive, learner-centered workshop was created by instruction librarians for instruction librarians. Read about three approaches taken in Fall 2009 at UCLA for designing and conducting Train-the-Trainer information literacy sessions for teaching assistants and instructors in a variety of disciplines. During the workshop, discuss and consider these approaches for your own population groups and instructional needs.

This interactive workshop will be held simultaneously at UCLA and in the 3D virtual world of Second Life. Second Life basic accounts are free: http://secondlife.com

Space is limited to 40 in-person participants at UCLA and 40 Second Life participants.

Please RSVP below for either the RL (real life) workshop at UCLA or the Second Life workshop. We look forward to seeing you there in-person or virtually!

RSVP by March 15, 2010….

…for the in-person workshop online at (http://tiny.cc/ZVE50)
OR
…for the Second Life workshop online at (http://tinyurl.com/yhbecrb)

Questions? Contact Esther Grassian: estherg@library.ucla.edu

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

White House Asks: What Does a 21st Century Education Mean to You?

From a retweet on Twitter...

The White House Asks: What Does A 21st Century Education Mean to You?
http://bit.ly/aFGFec

They're asking for Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In responses.

School Library Scopes, Sequences & Curricula

From a post on InfoLit-L...

"... for anyone that is working on, or contemplating a new library curriculum or scope and sequence, here is a site where we have collected a number of scopes and sequences and curricula for school libraries. http://greatlibs.wikispaces.com/Programs

We found these to be invaluable when we re-wrote our K-12 Scope and Sequence: Information Literacy for Lifelong Learning. We "borrowed with permission" from many of these, and got a great idea what we liked and didn't like - which also helped.

Our scope and sequence is also available for download at the bottom of this page: http://www.pps.k12.pa.us/143110323123832603/site/default.asp?143110323123832603nav=|472|&nodeid=472

If you like it, I'd be happy to send you the MSWord version, so that you can easily utilize the format (or anything else) that we developed."

Sam
Samuel Jackendoff, Ed.M., M.B.A., M.S.I.S.
Curriculum Supervisor for Library and Information Sciences
Pittsburgh Public Schools

Connelley Center - room 127
1501 Bedford Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
412-338-8054
412-338-8070 (Library Services)
412-338-8075 (FAX)
sjackendoff1@pghboe.net

Teens & Technology Online Conference 4/13/2010

An announcement from the Alliance Library System...

Subject: Teens and Technology online conference

Alliance Library System and TAP Information Services Announce Trendy Topics 2010: Teens and Technology Alliance Library System and TAP Information Services are pleased to announce the third in a dynamic monthly series of online workshops librarians can enjoy right at their desktops on hot topics.

The latest conference on Teens and Technology is scheduled for Tuesday, April 13. Kelly Czarnecki from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County is the keynote speaker. She will talk about “A Great Fit: Teens, Technology and Libraries!” Kelly’s talk will take a look at how libraries throughout the country are engaging teens with technology and why. Then she will address ways (low budget!) that libraries can integrate more technology programs and services for teens in their library and community and convince their administrators along the way.

• Other speakers for this inspiring day-long conference include:

• Dodie Ownes, Editor of SLJTeen on “Teens and Technology”
Marianne Mancusi, Author of Gamer Girl
Beth Gallaway, Trainer/Consultant on “Jumping on the Gaming Bandwagon: Advocacy, Best Practices and Current Trends”
• Angie Green, Alliance Library System, “Digital Literacy”
• Cynthia Hart, Virginia Beach Public Library, “Geeking Out @ the Library”
• Beth Gallaway, “Web 2.wh0a: Trendy Tech to Use with Teens”

A full informational flyer can be found at http://www.facebook.com/l/e733a;www.alliancelibrarysystem.com/TrendyTopics/workshop3TrendyTopicsTeensApril2010.pdf.

Register at http://www.facebook.com/l/e733a;www.eventbee.com/view/trendytopics/event?eid=65537

Registration for librarians for the one day conference is $40; for students $30; and for groups $100.

For more information on these workshops please contact Lori Bell at ALS, lbell@alliancelibrarysystem.com or Tom Peters at TAP Information Services at tpeters@tapinformation.com.

Alliance Library System is one of nine regional library systems in Illinois serving 260 libraries of all types in a 14,000 square mile area.

TAP Information Services (http://www.facebook.com/l/e733a;www.tapinformation.com) helps organizations innovate.
--------------------