To Infinity and Beyond: Courtesy of Buzz Lightyear and Friends

Will it ever stop? Will the world of technology and it's capabilities with regards to communication ever implode or peter out? Likely not, and more likely, Web 5.0 tools and their applications will be emerging another generation or two down the road.
For me personally, trying to gain a stance, rickety as it is, with Web 2.0 tools has been a challenge. I'm old. And being old has it's own challenges, never mind introducing new-fangled gadgets with which to share learning, gain knowledge, talk to friends and store my pictures. I like books. I like the way they feel in my hand, the smell of the paper and how I can flip through the different sections to find the information I need. I like face to face contact. I like being able to read the expression on my friend's face when I pass on some exciting news. I like sitting next to my co-worker as we pour over an assignment to give our students. And I store my pictures in hard cover albums where I can look at them while sitting in my favorite, super comfy chair. I have no need to keep informed on the current status of all my friends. I don't really care to log in to a social network to find out that they may be tired from a long day at work. I already know that because I know my friends, what they do for a living and that they're usually tired from working anyway. And I know this because we get together a few times a month and really share some great conversation - face to face.
However . . .
. . . I have learned, and learned big, throughout these past three months and I can really see how what I have learned can be applied to schools, teaching and learning. I have collaborated on three different wikis. One was with a partner to create a wiki assignment and once we'd completed it, my partner and I agreed we had to share it with all the other librarians in our district because it was too valuable to let go as just an assignment. Socially constructing information took on new meaning to me when I realized that my partner and I were both sitting at our computers with big latttes on our desktops - actual desktops, not virtual desktops. I'm blogging right now. I listened to podcasts, watched videos, mostly on Youtube, embedded some videos onto my blog, accessed my e-learning course, a mashup, from more than one location, and have become a big fan of open source access, all as a means to build information. These are cool media, according to Trier, and I have, indeed, enjoyed a high rate of participation.
And now that I've become an expert (in my own mind), I can see how many of these tools can be used in the school setting. In the future, teachers may not be needed so much as a conduit of content so much as a facilitator, teaching students how to use the tools in order to build their own information. Students will be wired to others around the world, sharing, assimilating and synthesizing information to make it their own and spit it out as new. As educators, we'll need to learn how to evaluate their learning. Has the information been plagerized? Do we need to rewrite the rules on plagerism?
I'm definitly not in a rut in my job. I can begin to teach my students blogging and wiki programs and have them work together to complete assignments using these tools. I can teach them how to use tags to search for videos on a specific topic so they can construct new meaning. Learning about, and having the opportunity to use some of the Web 2.0 tools, has blown my teaching ability wide open and I look forward to the chance to share this knowledge with my students.
Web 3.0, I might not be ready for you just yet, but the future is coming faster than ever, and you won't be leaving me and my students behind if I have anything to say about it. Age is only a number and this old gal refuses to sit in her rocker unless there's a fully equipped and fully wired laptop on her knees with which to teach.

The DOAJ and Why We Need It

A key Web 2.0 concept says that information is shared with the purpose of interacting and building knowledge on the Web.
Just that statement, alone, tells me that open access journals are exactly what is needed to provide information to it's readers so that knowledge can be learned. I can only see the positives in having open access journals.
The Directory of Open Access Journals stemmed from a discussion, in 2002, that centered around the importance of the valuable knowledge available from scholarly journals. The members of the discussion panel wanted to create a comprehensive directory of all the journals that allow open access, and make it available to individuals, universities, libraries and research centers. Thus, the DOAJ was created and is operated by the Lund University Library in Sweden.
To be a member, one must pay a fee, different prices exist for different members - individuals, consortiums, organizations - and the costs create a financial base to allow continued development and the operation of the DOAJ. The directory is used world wide by authors to find journals to which they can submit their work, as well as by readers to find articles written by their collegues and for research purposes. In Canada, several universities are members, including the University of British Columbia Library and Simon Fraser University Library.
The DOAJ service allows it's members access to the free, full text scientific and scholarly journals. There are nearly 4000 journals and almost 265000 articles in the directory. It's goal is to increase the visibility and ease of use of journals, thereby increasing their usage overall as a means to information literacy.
I stand alongside Willinski of UBC in the belief that open access journals are a valuable item to help build knowledge.
The above information on the DOAJ and more can be found at http:www.doag.org/doaj?func=home

Mashup = Mish Mash

The closest idea of what a mashup is to me, is a person taking an assortment of different materials - videos, text, maps, etc.- also known as a mish mash of materials, combine them together in a meaningful way regarding a specific topic and present them as a single source of information. If this is so, I wonder whether this blog accompanied by videos I've found on topics constitutes a mashup? And the vast amount of material available on the topic of teacher librarianship, combined with a curriculum, is mashed together to form this course, a mashup of it's own.
I believe mashups have always existed. Teachers have always collected a variety of forms of information and presented them as one single sourse in the classroom. I think we used the term 'collating' instead of mashup at the time.
As a classroom teacher or teacher librarian, I wish the time was available for creativity and the production of mashups for our daily teaching. The collaboration between members of a group would be very valuable if a topic were given to students and each person was responsible for sourcing the best information they could find on the subject. Once the informtion was put together as one source, a mashup would be created.
I'll be watching in the near future to see how other educators are using mashups and looking for opportunities for consideration for my own students.

Podcast Help

I spent some time online searching for more information to help neophytes, like myself, to be able to really understand the idea of podcasting. Being one who doesn't have a videocam, a microphone, or any friends with these instrauments, I'm unable to actually produce videos of podcasts, but I think it's important to understand the process and see their value in case the chance to participate arrives in the future.
Whether for personal or professional use, I consider a podcast like a convenient to-go meal. I've put in my order (food or RSS feed), someone else does the work, I pick it up when it's ready and then consume when most convenient to me. As an educator, I see real value for secondary and university aged students. Often, students are unable to be in class for a lesson, holidays, illness, family emergencies, etc., and if lessons/lectures were recorded as a podcast, there'd be no reason for the student to lose any learning time.
I think our world has a ways to go before before podcasts are mainstream in public education and I can see post secondary more likely to participate in this form of communicating knowledge if the professors are capable. However, one day, when more adults are more technologically competent, more students will have the opportunity to learn in this fashion.
Check out the Youtube videos I found to help explain podcasts,create a podcast and how teach learn yourself in order to teach your students how to podcast.

Hot vs Cold Media

James Trier talks about hot and cold media in his article "Cool Engagements With Youtube: Part 1". Hot media is that which is low in participation and cool media is high in participation. Those phrases really help me to see the value of the web 2.0 tools and how integrating them into the curriculum, either in the classroom or the library, is so beneficial to students.
Kids can watch videos in class, they can word process for a project, they might email questions to a teacher regarding a problem in math, or they might look at pictures of a particular topic for art assignment inspiration by typing in the address to a web site. These are all examples of hot media - the student's participation is at a low level. They seek and they find. Then there doesn't seem to be much more to do.
If the students write wikis to collaborate with and learn from other classmates, create and share blogs with one another, listen to podcasts where ever and whenever is most convenient or create and download a video to Youtube as an assignment for a class, then the students would be partcicpating at a much higher level. It's as though they're participating in their learning, actively learning, as opposed to passively letting the information come to them.
With regards to the key concept - How do these concepts transform the traditional role of the library into a place which is characterized as an active learning lab? - having our students involved with web 2.0 tools as a means of learning does characterize the library as a place of active learning. With the help of the teacher librarian, other teachers can learn to use these tools and teach their own students the information literacy skills necessary, and do so in an innovative way. This all sesems very inspirational to me!

SNSs

I have subscribed to a couple of social networking systems in the past, but don't feel the need to keep up with them for my own personal uses.
However, the Flickr photo sharing tool sounds like a great idea as a Library 2.0 tool. I can see students being able to take digital photos of objects and scenery that corresponds to a topic they're studying in almost any subject. These photos could be shared with other classmates or even e-pals from other schools, cities or somewhere else in the world, or for grandparents across the country. For example, in social studies, the grade four curriculum focuses on Canadian Aboriginal cultures. Students could shoot a series of artifacts, regalia, clothing, artwork, etc to share on Flickr as a photo essay. Being able to add comments to each picture is valuable for identification of the objects for the viewers.
How about a Mother's Day photo essay? What Mom wouldn't want to log onto their computer to recieve an invitation from their child to join Flickr to discover a gift from their child? Perhaps the photos are of all the favorite places Mom and child like to share their quality time, or a selection of gorgeous flowers if Mom is an avid gardener.
I know that in our district, rules surrounding privacy are very strict, so nicknames and no photos of student's faces would be allowed, but I can see how some students, regardless of grade, could shine in this kind of fine art. Perhaps a librarian could locally develop a course using Flickr and open it to the district's students.
Facebook has value to a teacher librarian if there are school library groups one could join, however, I have yet to come up with a terrific reason why we'd use Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc with our students. I'm not convinced that the students would stick to the classroom guidelines on it's use and the security and privacy settings aren't private enough for this district.
In time, I think social networking will become for commonly used in the library and classrroom settings. Once more teachers use the services and more activities are developed that can be justified as curriculum basesd, more students will be using SNS with education in mind.

Thanks for the Comments

Two classmates, Sherrie and Christina, each responded to the Wang and Hsua article my parner and I reviewed and brought up some valuable points to consider.
Sherrie discussed the fact that Wang and Hsua did their research on university students and that, generally, most students that age have top notch reading and writing abilities as well as good technology skills. However, there are many elementary and secondary students who struggle with reading and writing and Sherrie pointed out that these exhaustive activities make blogging a very difficult, if not unmanageable reality for them. What student, who already hates writing because they can't seem to find the right words, would want all their inadequecies on display for all viewers to see? And would you want to have to read all those blogs if reading was a killer in the first place?
Sherrie did suggest having someone else scribe for the struggling writers and shared the name Odigio, which speaks the words of the blog aloud, for people who have Google blog accounts.
Christina gave me an Aha! moment when she very succinctly wrote that blogging is a terrific way for students to incorporate the thoughts and ideas of others into their own learning and that it becomes more meaningful than traditional group work or one-to-one peer editing. I can see that reading the blogs of 25 other classmates on the same topic is very similar to reading the discussion posting of my classmates in this course. I don't learn from every posting and I don't learn the same thing as another person reading the same information. We all come with different knowledge and experiences so one blog will educate one person alot more than another person.
Having the opportunity to review a professional piece of writing, present it to our classmates and then discuss it is a valuable learning experience as new points of interest pop up that wouldn't have been discovered had it only been a one way publishing of the review. A social constructivist environment for sure!