The OLD Top Shelf

Getting Them Where They Live: Designing Virtual Library Sites for 21st Century Learners

What a ball of fire Joyce Valenza is! She is passionate about helping students learn by using the new tools of the web and truly models lifelong learning. I have been an admirer of her library web site for several years and was anxious to hear what she would have to say about designing a virtual library site and incorporating Web 2.0 tools. Needless to say, she did not disappoint!

Joyce started her presentation by talking about school library web sites in general. She said that since there aren’t really any models of best practice in this area, none of us are there yet. Her vision is for the library’s web site to be a knowledge management tool where all of the school’s information is collected. She sees the library site as another “door” into the library – there is a physical door and a virtual door. The library web site should allow the school library to be there anytime and anywhere a student or teacher needs information. It should be as ubiquitous as Google or Wikipedia and we should aspire to having just a tiny piece of real estate on the customized home page of all learners in the school. Joyce feels strongly about this and declares that in the shifting informational landscape, having a web presence is not optional anymore. If you don’t know how to create a web site, you web presence can be a blog or a moodle site, but you must have one!

Having done some research in this area with her own students, Joyce shared some things she has discovered that kids like and don’t like about library web sites. They LIKE to feel a sense of ownership for the site and they like graphical organization. They also LIKE for there to be mouse-over descriptions that pop up on the links to explain what things are. They DON’T LIKE it when the language and organization used on the site don’t make sense to them, e.g., calling databases by their vendor names and/or listing resources alphabetically instead of by subject. They also DON’T LIKE to have too many choices and having to remember lots of different passwords. They really recommend that we (librarians) stop using “library” terminology and start using everyday language to describe things on our sites. Joyce referenced a great site to help us with this: Library Terms That Users Understand.

In the next section of her presentation, Joyce gave lots of examples of things to consider including on a virtual library site, organized under the three components of a 21st century library as described in Information Power.

Under the umbrella of Program Administration you might want to have the following items:

• Mission statements
• Policies (materials selection, reconsideration, academic integrity, etc.)
•  Calendar for library sign-up
• Assignment planner form for teachers to complete and submit online
• Surveys can be posted periodically using online survey tools such as polldaddy.com
• A form for book purchase requests or a link to an Amazon.com wish list for your school library
• An ILL request form that can be submitted online
• A reading interest poll
• A learning survey to capture what students learned during library instruction
• PDFs of monthly newsletters and annual reports

The Information Power component of Information Access and Delivery is probably where librarians put most of their energy. These are some things that you might want to include on your site that addresses this area:

• A link to the library OPAC (although you DON’T want to call it that!)
  As a side note Joyce asks wouldn’t it be great if we could have ONE search box for all of our library resources? Here Joyce advocated lobbying the database vendors to cooperate with each other so that this can happen – and for FREE!
• Links to other library catalogs
• Links to lots of different search tools
• Links to some new search engines that use Web 2.0 technology to increase search result relevance
• Links to some blog search tools
• Links to subscription databases grouped by subject area
• Links to free e-books and audio-books (e.g., The Encyclopedia of Life, Lookybook, International Children’s Digital Library)
• Pathfinders for all research projects made on wikis - use del.icio.us to create lists of web resources for each project, create a customized library for a project using Google Book search, locate open content textbooks written by teachers on Wikijunior)
  Side note: Create a wiki pathfinder on educational research for faculty and campus administrators that includes links, images, documents, video, discussion, etc.
• Links/RSS feeds to news resources
• A way to connect to a librarian
• Links to copyright friendly images and sound, such as Flickr’s Creative Commons Pool
• Links to resources for royalty-free music and sound, such as Shambles and Podsafe Audio
• Links to other people’s curriculum, e.g., OER Commons

The third component of a library program according to Information Power is Learning and Teaching. These are some things that you might include in a virtual library to address this area:

• An online research guide that is interactive
• The research process
• Links to bibliographic helps, such as NoodleBib, BibMe, Citation Machine
• Links to sample papers
• Information on how to document sources
• Links to information about each teacher’s different projects
• Information for parents
• Research organizers and other documents to be downloaded
• Information about evaluating blogs and other online sources for research purposes
• Notetaking guidelines
• Powerpoint presentations developed for information skills lessons (You can also save these to Slideshare and link to them there)
• Organizers for note-taking and outlining
• Student work – create a gallery of student art work on Flickr, post leftover yearbook photos, post video projects
• Library orientation
• Book trailers
• Videos made to address learning gaps, e.g. Its vs. It’s
• Links to student blogs of their research process (allows for early intervention and can be used as an assessment tool; the teacher and librarian can make comments on student blog posts)
• Celebrate student life with links to book reviews trailers made by students, lots of photos, timelines, favorite web 2.0 tools, reading lists, literature circles
• Teach students to create their own information spaces with iGoogle or Pageflakes (require that they include a sticky note with a link to the Virtual Library)

Joyce ended the session by encouraging us to “lead from the center” and reminding us that “it’s ok to be beta.” She said that everything will not be perfect, but to try anyway.

She also encouraged us to take the work she has already done and link to it or use it in any way that we need. She has an amazing collection of resources on her Virtual Library site and on her Information Fluency wiki.

Teaching Zach to Think: Evaluating Online Resources – Alan November

I caught the tail end of November’s presentation after Lee Rainie’s session ended. As I entered the room, he was very excitedly demonstrating how to make your own customized Google search engine that just searches the sites you tell it to search. Sounds like a pretty nifty idea. For more on this session and the ideas it included, see Digital Deb’s post over at Plugged In.

In this highly entertaining session, two big names in the world of instructional technology debated the pros and cons of Wikipedia, now known as the world’s largest encyclopedia. Kathy participated virtually via Skype, while Alan was there at the TLA conference. Kathy was at a little disadvantage, since Alan had control of the computer on which she appeared, but both presenters made some good points about the good and not so good aspects of Wikipedia. The back and forth banter was pretty rapid-fire, but here is a quasi-transcript of their ideas:

Moderator: What is your overall impression of Wikipedia?

KS says she has difficulty finding a way to validate information on Wikipedia. How do students determine if the information is correct? We can’t see the contributor’s name.

AN takes a conceptual approach. It is not an information tool, but a publishing tool/forum for children to use

KS agrees, but says they don’t sell themselves as that

AN gives an example of a Wikipedia entry for the Pitot House in New Orleans that was written by a 3^rd grade class researching the landmark. Says we can use the History tab to see different iterations of the article under the name of the teacher. Changes are still being made.

KS agrees that using a wiki as a publishing tool is one of the most powerful things we can do with students

AN says we don’t want to evaluate new tools using old thinking.  Role of the teacher is to help students evaluate new information.

KS doesn’t like what Wikipedia does to help its articles come to the top of a Google results list. She says Google is a popularity search engine – they use the number of times a site is linked to to determine relevancy. In some articles on Wikipedia, authors provide links to other web sites that will provide additional information on the topic, but Wikipedia hides the links to those web sites from the Google search engine, So even though another site might be more authoritative on a particular topic, the Wikipedia article on that topic is going to rise to the top of the Google results list when a Google search is done. The other resources that authors are using, are not assigned their appropriate “popularity” because those links aren’t seen by Google. She calls this a “slimy practice” by Wikipedia.

AN counters by saying that Google also looks at title of site, URL and content too when sorting and determining relevance.  Says the knowledge of the masses has validity. He believes we all have the responsibility to correct misinformation in Wikipedia.

KS says only 17 % of the world’s population is on the Internet and that the masses aren’t correcting Wikipedia. Kids believe that using one source for research is ok.

AN says that the power of Wikipedia is when students do good research using several sources then publish or correct an article.

Moderator: How do you critically evaluate an entry?

AN says that we need to read AND write on the Internet, just as we read and write on paper.  Many articles are rejected – there is academic rigor involved. What is published gets comments from all over the world. It’s hard to evaluate something you don’t know anything about. Learn about how it works. Use RSS feature to subscribe to an article and its corrections/changes.

KS still argues that the articles should have to be signed with the author’s real name and brings up the saying “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” Wikipedia’s editors have no credentials. She also mentions  GoogleKnol coming as a competitor to Wikiepdia.

Moderator: quotes The World is Flat as saying that it is too easy to slander people because there is no one accountable for the information. What keeps people from slandering others?

AN cites a study that looked at number of errors in Britannica and Wikipedia and found that the average error rate in Britannica is 3, Wikipedia is 4. He also cites as an example that the Oxford English Dictionary began asking anyone to contribute the definition of a new word in 1863. He says that we can’t just rely on scholars to provide information.

KS says that since there are no citations in many articles, that there is lots of plagiarism. Top 10 things looked up indicate that the most users are young people. We need to help students look at everything critically. She recommends using it as a source consulted, but not cited.

AN says that certain controversial topic articles cannot be edited by anyone, e.g., Hilary Clinton and the campaign – authors must have clearance. Telling students not to use Wikipedia doesn’t help them learn to deal with it.

Moderator: Does Wikipedia fill a need for pop culture information?

KS says everything can be found easily which makes it popular. It is larger than any print encyclopedia. Some articles contain opinion which can influence students not ready to determine the difference from fact and opinion.

AN references Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Wikipedia can tell you what people think about things, not necessarily what the facts are. Collaboration is expected in 21^st century – a wiki is a tool for collaboration.

No solutions were found, but both sides gave the audience much to think about regarding Wikipedia and its place in the Web 2.0 world.