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CIL2009

CIL 2009

Apr 1st, 2009
by pollyalida.
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I don’t think I’ll be able to summarize any more CIL sessions as I’m off for a bit of
extended travel. Let me just say it was a great conference. Lots of interesting sessions and even more terrific people. It was so good to catch up with old friends and to meet so many new people. Many of those people are part of the T is for Training podcast crowd. Maurice Coleman even managed to pull off a podcast recording while we were all there. What fun to sit around the table and chatter with people I’ve known only online and through the podcast.

And kudos to the conference organizers for having good wifi in all the meeting rooms this year. Granted there were some blips here and there, but mostly it was terrific and I really appreciated this.

And I have to share something that was said to me that really made me chuckle AND think. “but I thought you were about 27″. This was the first time this wonderful person had met me in real life and for whatever reasons, I must seem younger than my 53 years in my online presence, not that I’m trying to disguise myself in any way. But I liked what this reinforced about age really just being a state of mind. I’ve heard comments from colleagues about young people being tech savvy and older folks, well, not so much. I’ve also heard people grumble that our profession will only change as these old folks retire. I realize that these things are often just said flippantly and aren’t really meant. And I’ve certainly been guilty of age stereotyping myself, usually assuming someone younger has far more tech skills than they do have.

So, I’m going to try really hard to banish all of those age-based assumptions from my thinking from now on. And having just overheard a woman on a plane say “I’m too old to be on twitter”, I hope we can all help our customers let go of assumptions that may hold them back from learning. If my 89 year old mother can be an internet maven, then what’s to stop anyone! And in light of that, I still feel like a spring chicken.

Blogs as websites – CIL2009

Apr 1st, 2009
by pollyalida.
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Computers in Libraries – Blogs as websites session – Track E105

Aaron Schmidt – DC Public Library

10 reasons to use wordpress to create your website

  1. Free – wordpress.com – remotely hosted version of WordPress, totally free, can be limited in the selection of themes, widgets and plugins. Good place to start. Your domain name will have wordpress.com as part of it, unless you pay a little extra to have your own domain name.
    Cheap – Download WordPress and install it on your own server. If you already have your own server, that’s free! If you don’t have a server and need to find one, lishost.com is a good library oriented hosting site. (I’ve also used bluehost, hostmysite and some others) All are inexpensive, as in roughly $100 year.
  2. Open Source – strong user community sharing tips and tricks, search the WordPress forums for help, if you can’t find an answer, post a question. There’s a nice section of forum on using WP as a Content Mgmt System. (Also a community for libraries using WP)
  3. Allows for interaction – customers can comment, staff can reply.
  4. SEO – Search Engine Optimization – WP writes really good code that search engines like.
  5. LESS WORK – makes it possible for everyone on staff to contribute to your website, without having to know any html code. User interface is easy to use. Administrator can assign different permissions to different contributors, give them access to only what they need.
  6. EASY - easy to get started at wordpress.com to test it out and get your feet wet. Web based interface makes it easy for you to add your content from wherever you have an internet connection.
  7. Themes – Easy to make your blog look good – all magic of CSS – click a button you can have a new look. Tons of free themes available. Or you can hire someone to create one for you. Or create your own. Mentioned Thematic, a newis wordpress theme framework.
  8. Widgets- all the great stuff on the sidebar of your website is done through little bits of coding that others have written. If there’s something you want to add to the sidebar of your site (photos, comments, links to other sites, twitter stream, etc), widgets make it possible. Lots of widgets available on wordpress.com and many more can be used if you’re running WP on your own server.
    Plugins – Extensions to WP functionality, built by community and shared. Some popular plugins become incorporated into the core of WP when it goes through upgrades. Plugins can do things like filter spam comments, help you create photo albums, keep track of statistics, add “share this” buttons to your posts and much more.
  9. Flexibility - All of this adds up to great flexibility. WP is very flexible and customizable. Love the No 10 Downing Street is using WP!
  10. People – Lets you create a website that is useful to your community and lets your staff keep it up to date with ease.

(I’ll add another # 11 – PAGES let you have pages of static information in additon to your newsy bloggy stuff.)

Carol Garland from Sodus Free Library in NY

Showed their blog on blogger.com. Very small library, short on staff and resources. Their web site had gotten very hard to maintain through Front Page. Needed a new solution. Moved all their static content to Google Pages and put all their news on blogger.com. Links to their static pages are on the sidebar. They now have an easy to update site, that has new content, videos, and more.

Dave Lisa – NJ State Library

Currently at NJ State Library, but showed blogger based website that they’d created at West Long Branch PL in NJ. They use blogger to revamp their site as well. They wanted to be able to have pages of information on different topics as well as newsy posts. They bent blogger into doing this by writing blog posts on particular topics and then making links directly to the posts on the sidebar of the sidebar of the pages. Gives the feel of having some static pages for things like hours etc. They also have created some static pages that have the same look and feel as the blog pages and are hosting them on the same server.

Great program highlighting some easy, low overhead ways to create a spiffy new library website.

—

Note – if you’re in New York, NYLA will be offering some workshops on WordPress soon. And I’ll be teaching some ‘WordPress as website’ classes in CT soon too.

Internet @ Schools – Curriki session

Mar 31st, 2009
by pollyalida.
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I haven’t had time to blog  all the sessions I’ve been to. Here’s one from the School Libraries track.

Internet @ Schools East

Tuesday – Track S201 -Open Educational Resources: Join the Global Education Community

Curriki – Free, collaborative, open content, creative commons licensed curriculum sharing  wiki http://www.curriki.org/

Why? Traditional textbooks are hard to update, out of date,  hard to distribute and just

plain expensive.

Advantages of collaborative curricula:

  • potential for interactivity
  • uses can now create and improve, not jsut consume content
  • Content can be developed colalboratively by the community, botgh local and global
  • Teachers are more engaged in the process

Who is Curriki?

  • First internet destination for Open Source Curricula (OSC)
  • Founded by Sun Microsystemss in 2004
  • spun off as a fully independent non profit in 2006

What is Curriki

  • Repository for curricula validated by experts
  • free online curricula created by community
  • material has defined learning objectives
  • lesson  plans
  • textbooks & other instructional materials
  • can host many file formats including video
  • includes good tools for content creation.
  • members can create groups within curriki to work together.

  • Takes advantage of a Web 2.0 content development cycle eg: create –> publish –> edit, comment, revise –> publish revised content (rinse and repeat)
  • users no longer need to buy a single expensive textbook or workbook or instructional activites from publisher
  • Can create customized book or learning resources  
  • Teachers are empowered to be content creators
  • 63,000 members
  • 25,000 assets
  • statewide spanish curriculum from Wyoming
  • extensive content from several NY BOCES 

Contents shared by

  • for profit publishers
  • non-profitpublishers/organizations
  • school districts/regional organizations
  • ministries of education
  • schools of education
  • Global community of educators
  • Content from Nortel – technology education for educators
  • Organizations can customize the platform to share with their communities
  • Some countries are moving towards putting all their education materials on curriki  (Indonesia?)

What about Quality control?

  • quick check by a real person to see if the content is really educational material
  • review by subject matter expersts – about 20% of the repostory has been reviewed. Users can nominate material to be reviewed –
  • reviewers are on staff – master teachers – with at least 20 years experience,
  • member comments –
  • 2009 – adding a system for star ratings by members

Curriki’s Strategy going forward

  • Build two sides of repository 1: core material that has been created by professional publishers and 2: the open side created by contributors – make it easier for school
  • districts to find published and to feel more comfortable with this whole idea which is
  • really the reverse of the publishing process that most districts are familiar with
  • Build a suite of easy to collaboration tools and publishing templates
  • establish community of educators
  • engage partners to participate in local global projects
  • will have curriki platforms for different communities/regions – eg: Curriki UK  – site controlled by UK team. UK content has greater visibility

What educators can do now

  • Share existing content
  • build and share curriculum
  • create groups to collaborate

Summer of content

  • teachers paid to create curriculum over the summer –
  • do you have something you’ve created that you’d like to share?
  • deadline coming up soon
  • go to web site for info

Follow them on Twitter http://twitter.com/Curriki

Questions from audience – How can it really be free?  Really, really non profit. Lots of grants and other big donors and supporters.

Computers in Libraries

Mar 29th, 2009
by pollyalida.
3 comments

Against all odds, I made it to DC for the 2009 Computers in Libraries meeting. I hope to do some posts about the sessions I attend. Wish me luck with my good intentions! And if you’re here, say HI!

If you’re not here and want to follow along:

I’m sure there are other ways of following along that I’m missing.

For now, I’m heading off to the Gaming & Gadgets event. Can’t get enough of games or gadgets can we?