Digital collections and Abu Dhabi (2)

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. I was checking out something this morning on the American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) website and was also deciding what to write on the blog, when I came across an article about digital collections in schools. The article refers to a newspaper report about a Chicago private school which has decided to do away with all of its books and have an entirely digital collections. Unsurprisingly, this has caused headlines asking if this is the end of printed books – as opposed to e-books – in school libraries. Comments from AASL note that this particular school is not necessarily to be seen as a precedent or a model for other schools. The key questions here are whether the learning of the students of the Chicago school will be affected and also whether the digital collection will be effectively used. If the answer is no, what is the educational objection?

One of the features of Abu Dhabi as a city is some of the public sculpture that you can see in some parts of the city. In one street, for example, which leads to the corniche, there is a series of large sculptures which include a canon, a bell and (pictured below) a large jug. Public sculpture adds to our enjoyment of cities and also adds an aesthetic touch in the midst of skyscrapers, traffic and bustling streets.

Abu Dhabi street sculpture

Search engines and Abu Dhabi

Firstly, there was no blog last week as I was doing a consultancy for the university in Abu Dhabi, of which, more later.

In a recent article in Technology Guardian, the author discussed ‘searching beyond Google’ and argues that Google is no longer the leader by a country mile over other search engines, as perhaps it once was. Nowadays, Victor Keegan argues, Google is more of a brand and other search engines, including Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, have caught up. What Keegan suggests is that we try newbies such as Leapfish or Duckduckgo and that one of the features of these search engines is that you search in real time but also link with social networking sites such as Flickr and YouTube. He also suggest using Monitter as an alternative search engine. Keegan admits, as we all have to, that none of these new search engines will replace Google but they do provide alternatives and who knows, maybe even some competition.

Last week I was in Abu Dhabi, as a consultant reviewing a teacher librarian programme. When you are in the middle of Abu Dhabi, with its constant 3 or 4 lanes of traffic which goes on steadily for most of the 24 hours in a day and completely blocks up at peak periods; and with its multitude of skyscrapers and its streets bustling with people (mostly men); and its poorer back streets; then you might wonder why it is being promoted as a tourist destination. The answer lies in its developments such as the Al Raha Beach but also in its cultural icons such as what is known as The White Mosque which looked spectacular as I passed it in the car. Would I be a tourist there? Maybe – check it out,

Digital natives (maybe) and autumn

I’m almost finished marking my students’ current assignments. One of the most common descriptions of school students which some of my students use is digital natives. This phrase is used very blandly and not only by my teacher librarians students. A useful article on the term ‘digital natives’ discusses the original term coined by Marc Prensky who saw young people as digital natives as they grew up with technology which was ubiquitous in their lives. The implication of this term is that school students in particular will be more comfortable with technology and will use it better than their older “digital immigrant’ counterparts. Like most generalisations, this is untrue in many cases. Some school students may have grown up with  technology but are not very good at using it to learn. Older generations grew up with TV but that doesn’t make them more discerning viewers. The term ‘digital native’ may be useful but it has to used in a context.

Here in Scotland, autumn is in full swing and the leaves are falling as well as the temperatures. Keats’ poem Ode to Autumn is a favourite poem of mine with so much elegant use of language e.g. the season autumn “conspires” with the sun to produce plentiful fruit. At the weekend, my wife and 15 other runners ran the Goat’s Gallop race which goes over Lammer Law from Long Yester and past the Hopes Reservoir, where the photo below was taken. It was a still, sunny Sunday morning and a very peaceful place to be, waiting for runners to pass and be photographed against the autumnal backdrop.

Hopes reservoir in autumn

Poetry archive and murmuration

In yesterday’s technology Guardian, there is a link to Oxford University’s WW1 War Poetry Archive which should prove a very useful source for TLs working with English teachers, history teachers and their students. As well as having a vast range of poetry by WW1 authors, it has multimedia sections  in which you can click on poets such as Robert Graves and find photographs and scanned manuscripts. The archive also has a Second Life  section which features interviews, film footage and an opportunity to explore a WW1 area such as a battle trench. Instructions about joining Second Life (which I am yet to do but …) are provided. Looks a great resource, so check it out.

Also in The Guardian, which is ever present in my letter box in the morning – Monday to Saturday –  yesterday was a picture of starlings returning to roost in the UK for winter. The word for a gathering of starlings is murmuration, which one writer suggests is “a word that perfectly describes the rustle of a thousand pairs of wings> For more words about birds, collectively that is, read an Independent article. I like words like murmuration and I once came across an article on biblioclothanasia which literally means death by overcrowding by books although I’m struggling to find the “clothanasia” part for overcrowding. Aren’t words great? If you use too many of them and include too many archaic words, of course, it’s tushery - against which our English teacher always warned us.

 

Reinventing education (not) and travelling

From eSchool News, an article entitled Reinventing Education which outlines how, in the USA schools are about to change the way they teach students by using more technology and using the technology more effectively. In the article, an educational strategist (sic) argues that in San Diego, schools will have “an engaging and personalised learning environment, mindfully designed to optimise teaching and learning through the interconnected use of visual and auditory media, mobile computing and formative assessment technologies across the curriculum”. Hmm – interesting e.g. “mindfully designed”? – the opposite being? OK – we’ve all used terminology, so people in glass houses … The key point here, however, is that this is not reinventing education per se, it is changing the way teachers teach and to some extent how students learn – and education in my book is much bigger than that.

At the weekend, I travelled from Tauranga, New Zealand to Auckland, New Zealand, to Sydney, Australia, to Dubai, UAE and then to Newcastle, UK where I landed. I was then driven to Dunbar in Scotland. So, a long haul. Travelling – which I like very much – is obviously a physical experience – on the plane, off the plane, on another plane, off… It’s also a mental experience and the way I cope with long journeys is to not be on a long journey but a series of short ones. This may sound like a North American business guru’s seminar – small steps, big achievements blah, blah but one aspect that is different with travelling is your concept of time. I try to forget about time as I travel and just accept that e.g. you’re going backwards in time as you travel west. My advice is always read when you can, sleep when you can and watch movies when you can, in the sure and certain knowledge that your aesthetic standards will drop dramatically – when you’re tired, you’ll watch films you wouldn’t normally watch.