Connections 77

You can now read the latest issue of Connections online. Copies have been mailed to all Australian schools.

Teacher librarians and the networked school community

Everyone knows everyone!
Everyone knows everyone!, image by arianamedstudent, licence: CC-by

Mal Lee and Lyn Hay present their view of the evolution facing schools and the role of the information centre professional.

Schooling worldwide is in the process of evolving from a traditional paper-based operational mode to one that is digital and networked. The opportunities being opened daily for the astute, proactive information professional prepared to embrace and lead ongoing change are immense.

Natural disasters and disaster plans

In recent months many areas of Australia and New Zealand have experienced very serious natural disasters. These natural disasters have had significant impact on schools in the affected areas. Many schools continue to operate in difficult conditions or are temporarily operating off site. This article raises the timely question of school library disaster plans.

Behaviour

Adam Le Good explores the reasons behind unacceptable behaviour (of students and staff) and what we can do to minimise its effect.

Schools and social media

An article adapted from Denis Masseni’s report of a 2010 survey of Victorian school principals entitled ‘Why schools are spooked by social media‘. It discusses the benefits of social media for schools and security and protection issues.

From little things big things grow

The fifth instalment of Nigel Paull’s account of a new BER library at South Grafton Public School, New South Wales in which he describes the enthusiastic response of students to the finished library.

Print complete issue of Connections 77, term 2 2011

RSS readers, Feral Learning and PLEs

rssFeedImage

For its sheer enthusiasm, one of my favourite blog posts of the new year was by Stephanie Zimmerman for the ALA Learning blog, on the subject of feral learning activities and personal learning environments (commonly referred to as PLEs).
Feral learning is autodidactism, in a nutshell – an individualised learning experience in which the user takes responsibility for their own training needs and education, while PLEs support the feral learning/autodidactic experience by allowing the user to create a highly individualised, digital environment where they can gather together a variety of resources in the same place.

More and more, the internet is becoming a source of readily available, credible professional resources, and a great first step in creating your own PLE is setting up an RSS aggregator (also more commonly referred to an RSS reader), like Google Reader, Bloglines, or  Newsgator.  RSS readers allow you to ‘pull’ information from different sites that have RSS feeds, and then display it all on the one web page – which means that instead of bouncing from site to site to find relevant information, you can have it all ‘delivered’ straight to your reader, as if it were your own personal online newspaper.

Adding sources to your RSS reader is as easy as locating a site that has an RSS feed (and most regularly updated sites do now), and then clicking on the RSS feed link to subscribe to it. Any new content added to that site will then automatically appear in your reader. Not for nothing does RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication – it actually is! There are numerous other tools available on the internet that can also be used to create and improve PLEs, but RSS readers are free, web-based (so you don’t have to download any special programs in order to start using them), easy to set up and use and they do a great job.

In their article, Things that keep us up at night (School Library Journal, issue 10, 1 October 2009), Joyce Valenza and Doug Johnson argue that modern practice in libraries is directly linked to equitable access to information, and that teacher librarians should be at the forefront in coming to grips with the changes in the informational landscapes. While we all know that in many schools unrealistic and occasionally absurd internet policies, and a lack of funding for professional development can make it difficult for libraries at times to live up to the best of modern practice, perhaps dangling the carrot of free professional development in front of the principal’s nose might be a way of combating a lack of flexibility in the school’s internet security policy? At the very least, we owe it to ourselves and our users to try, and setting up RSS readers for yourself and your library staff is a great way to demonstrate the ease with which Web 2.0 tools might be integrated into your school’s professional development programme.

The video below contains step-by-step instructions on how to set up your own Google reader account.  Videos showing how to set up a Bloglines or Newsgator RSS feeds can also be found by searching on YouTube.  For some interesting sites that also feature RSS feeds, check out our blogroll on the right-hand side panel of this page, and don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed!