Internet: free or controlled? and Loch Katrine

Sharp eyed readers will note that this is being written on a Wednesday (or Thursday if you are in Australasia) and that the promised Monday entry did not materialise. This was due to a hotel wanting to charge a ridiculous amount for Internet access. There has been a series of articles in The Guardian newspaper recently. The articles cover a range of issues, including what Google knows about our internet use, how Facebook and Twitter are essentially restrictive in how we use the internet, and questions such as ‘Can the internet be civilised? This question looks at how much porn there is available and whether it should be curtailed, and also whether tools such as Facebook and Twitter can be made part of the laws of different countries e.g. in relation to libel. So, this covers a great deal of ground. In relation to schools, I think that it’s important that we raise these questions with our students and one role the TL or SL can play in the school is to try to ensure that debates on the internet take place or that students are taught to question their own use of the web e.g. in relation to ethics.

Just back from a visit to The Trossachs (which is from the Gaelic [Scottish version pronounced Gallic] for ‘A bristly place’) in central Scotland. This is an area of extensive woodland and large lochs (aka lakes). The most famous is Loch Katrine (pr Katrinn) which was made famous by Sir Walter Scott in his poem ‘Lady of the Lake’. On the day of our walk, there were a host of threatening clouds moving funereally across the sky but our 5 mile walk along the loch side was only briefly interrupted by a shower. When we were leaving, the rain came down in what Thomas Hardy referred to as ‘silken strings’. The views across the loch to the mountains and hills are stunning and in the summer, 2 boats take loads of tourists across the loch and back. There was only one boat on the day of our visit, with a multilingual chatter coming from the queue as we  passed. One of the features of the walk along the loch side at this time of year, is the new leaves on the silver birch trees and the photos below shows the trees lining the loch, with Ben Venue towering above them, and looking up to the trees with the mountain behind.

Guardian teacher network and “trembling emblems”

In an unusual twist, the Guardian newspaper here in the UK has opened up its educational resources, which were previously charged for at its now defunct site learn.co.uk, to anyone for free. You do have to register for this – and I’m assuming that if you are in Australia or in other countries that you will be able to access this – but it looks like an opportunity not to miss – at least to check it out. The site promises thousands of resources including lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations, whiteboard activities and games. There is a search facility, with an advanced search option which allows you to narrow your search by age and format. Although the resources on offer are likely to be UK based, a quick search on global warming revealed resources which could be used in many countries. For TLs and SLs, this looks like a very good resources.

Alice Oswald in Weeds and Flowers calls them “clear eyed ghosts/who get up in the cold and blink and turn/ into these trembling emblems of night frosts”. We call them snowdrops and at Pitcox House – a 19th century farmhouse which has a gate pier, defined as a pier of brick, masonry etc, from which a gate is suspended by its hinges – there is always the first dramatic display of snowdrops in the district. Out cycling the other day, I caught the “trembling emblems” amongst the winter trees and the large farmhouse in the bright sunshine (see picture below). It did my heart good.

Snowdrops at Pitcox

TL abilities and snowy sprouts

Firstly, a very Good New Year to you all. The ever informative, imaginative and practical Joyce Valenza has presented us with a list of abilities that she would like to see TLs/SLs have, in order to be ‘fully loaded’. Now, the term ‘fully loaded’ may have many meanings and not all of them suitable for a family show, but in this instance, Joyce Valenza is talking about the ability of TLs to have mastery of a range of areas in order to be fully effective. The article highlights mastery of: publishing platforms, web based pathfinder creation tools; applications for digital stories; “cool tools for publishing digital work’; search tools and strategies – and many more. I’ll certainly be getting my teacher librarianship students to read this article and discuss it. It is aimed at practitioners, so I hope many of you will access it and think about how it fits in with your present role and your possible future role.

Over the midwinter festivals period here in Scotland, we’ve had – by our standards – a lot of snow and very low temperatures. If you are reading this is north America or Scandinavia however, what we’ve had will be fairly mild. One of the great features of snow, of course, is that it’s a boon for photographers. I took the photo below on a walk not far from where I live. It’s a field of sprouts which look like an army of terracotta warriors with white helmets. Sprouts taste horrible! How people can eat them with their chicken, turkey, veggie roast is beyond me. A recently cropped field of sprouts up the road from here had a flock of sheep in it, munching away. I think that the sheep should go in first. I’m sure that those of you who are sprout lovers – and the farmers – would not agree.

Sprouts in the snow

Twurdy and Cathedral Cove

The blog is back after a 2 week break due to work pressure and then a short holiday. Some of my students this session have been using the search engine Twurdy with their students, as part of an assignment in which students develop a learning website, part of which is an e-pathfinder. Twurdy is powered by Google but its key distinguishing feature is its attempts to apply readability levels to the results it shows. The results are shaded differently and you can try to match the shading with the chart at the side of the results. One strange aspect is that Twurdy gives readability ratings in figures e.g. 529, but there is no explanation of what these figures actually mean. It has 3 different option including a Simple Twurdy for younger students. Anecdotally, the school students who have used Twurdy appear to like it. I think it needs a bit more sophistication in its presentation of readability.

On holiday last week in New Zealand’s North Island, I went to the Coromandel Peninsula and visited Cathedral Cove. There’s a walk of c30 minutes down to the cove and you have lovely views across the sea and out to a group of islands. the key feature of the cove is an open cave in the rock though which you can walk (if open) and through which you can see one of the large rock features near the cove which sit magnificently in the incoming tide. An idyllic spot and you can see photos of the cave on the link above. My photo of one of the large rocks is below. A must see if you’re in that area.

Cathedral Cove, NZ

Ivy’s search engine resources and (bigger) swans

My students this week are discussing effective strategies and they’ve been busy as the bees around the hebe in my garden this week. Some students have found unfamiliar  search engines such as Yippy and SurfWax and one student (Thanks Helen) alerted the class and me to a potentially worthwhile source – Ivy’s search engine resources which is a list of search engines and web guides for ‘kids’. The web guides is a collection of links which have brought together  sites on topics such as government websites, as well as more general collections aimed at school students. interestingly, KidsClick is described as ‘a web directory by a bunch of librarians’. This, of course, raises the issue of what a group of teacher/school librarians should be called. Suggestions please. 

I posted a photo of swans a wee while ago and the other day I was out with my camera to the same spot and came across the same family of swans, except that what were small cygnets are now quite large and maturing swanlets. One thing about  adult swans is that they are not particularly nervous when an inquisitive photographer approaches. The adult with the cygnets in the picture below – not sure if it was Maw or Paw – did give a half-hearted hiss when I got near, but remained seated as s/he and her young watched nonchalantly as I clicked away. In fact, two of the cygnets, as you’ll see in the picture, became bored and decided to be photographed headless. Playing with the paparazzi, I guess. 

Swans on the seaweedy rocks

Sweet Search and Le Tour

Reading Judy O’Connell’s excellent blog, and following a couple of links, I came across Sweet Search which is subtitled ‘A search engine for students’. The difference between Sweet Search and other search engines is that what you are searching is not the web but ’35,000 websites that our staff of research experts, librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved’. There is also a page for ‘School Librarians: content and tools’ which is definitively worth a look as it has some interesting features targeted at TLs, including a good guide for students searching the web. There is obviously a limited range of resources being searched here, both in terms of numbers and geographical coverage, but this looks like a good tool to add to your box.

This is the 3rd week of Le Tour de France, the annual cycling jamboree. For cyclists, this is a fascinating insight into the work of people who cycle up the terrifying slopes of the Pyrenees – for a living. The difference between me out on my bike (and I’m making yet another comeback) in the hills of East Lothian and the professionals on Le Tour, is like the difference between a pair of binoculars and the Hubble Telescope. For example, watching the cyclists haring down one of the mountain descents the other day at 90+kmph was amazing, given that when I reach 50 kmph on my bike, I’m starting to put the brakes on. Even if you’re not into cycling, check out the Guardian’s interactive guide for Le Tour for some brilliant scenery.

Web users, web learners and rocks

Looking at some material on teaching students how to be more effective searchers for and interpreters of information and ideas on the web, it struck me that what we as TLs and teachers are trying to develop, is not just better web users. We are trying to teach our students to become web learners. I think that too often, we as librarians in schools are seen to be teaching students about how to learn about the web, as opposed to learning from the web. So what are web learners? They are students who learn both about the web and from the web,and what we teach them is directed to learning from the web e.g. to increase their learning in a curricular area, and not just to gather more information for an assignment. This, of course, is a big ask, as we are asking students to be reflective web learners e.g. to think about how they use the web as well as what they learn when they use the web. Food for thought?

As I live by the sea here in Scotland for most of the year, I pass many rocks along the shoreline. One of the fascinating aspect of rocks is their colour, which is constantly changing depending on the time of day and the weather. The photo below shows rocks near my home and it was taken in the early evening when the sun was on the rocks. Walking past this particular set of rocks, many of which are in a jagged formation, is like looking down on mountain ranges from a plane. You can get a Lilliputian sense of walking past civilisations which exist partly under water when the tide is in. Now that would be clever.

Evening rocks

Research River and ships

My teaching colleague Lee Fitzgerald (thanks Lee) has alerted to me to an innovative way of getting students to think about information literacy, and in particular, about doing research for an assignment. As part of the scaffolding for students learning about using Kuhlthau’s ISP information literacy model, the analogy of a river is used to allow students to think about the various stages in the ISP and how they might be feeling e.g. uncertain or confident. Thus students are advised that they might do preliminary research for a topic in calm waters, but if they find that their topic has a great deal of information about it, they might be in more stormy waters. The Research River, designed by Di Laycock and Lee Fitzgerald. You may need permission but it’s certainly worth a look.

Living by the sea as I do for most of the year, there is a constantly flow of ships going up and down the Firth of Forth. These range from oil and gas tankers, to cruise ships, to fishery protection vessels, to navy ships. My ship’s captain/harbour master/pilot brother in law in New Zealand alerted me a while ago to a great website, on which you can track ships anywhere in the world. The AIS Map allows you to identify passing vessels and get details and photos. It sounds a bit nerdy but it tends to get a bit addictive, especially if, like me, you have a scope with 25 magnification. If you live inland and have no interest in passing ships, it’s not for you.

Workplace information and Nin

At the moment, I’m writing up some research I did recently on students going on work experience in year 10 of secondary school and what differences they might find between their school information environment and that of the workplace where they do their short placement. When I interviewed students before they went on work experience, they had very little concept of what difference they might find. Also, the guidance teachers interviewed were unsure of what exactly constituted a workplace information environment. The results show that students find the workplace to be a different environment in terms of information literacy practices because, firstly, they find that in the workplace, people do not use the web for all their information. students expressed surprise at how the employees they met used other people as the main source of information, either face to face, by phone or by email. if you are in a secondary school, check if the teachers organising work experience for students, get their students to study the workplace information environment.

Teh final visit at the LIDA conference was to the historic city of Nin. It is a city in that it was a bishopric in the Middle Ages and it has what it claims to be the world’s smallest cathedral. However, it is not a city in modern terms, as it is a small island with a very small population. It is a stunning place to visit, with more history packed into this small island than you’ll find in some modern towns and cities. The ‘cathedral’ is a small church which is bare inside and holds, standing up, perhaps 20 people. There are also Roman ruins from a temple which existed in Nin and some very ornate sections remain, as in the picture below. Put Nin on your list.

Section of Roman temple in Nin

iGeneration students’ learning and Uranquinty

From eSchool News, another article which raises questions about student learning and whether today’s students – called iGeneration students by Larry Rosen - learn differently because they have grown up with new technology and particularly have lived with the web being ubiquitous in their lives. Rosen argues that because todays students spend their days multitasking with different technologies and have a more individualised view of their education, then they learn differently. Mmm – does he mean that these students actually learn differently or does he mean that they might have a different approach to learning? Methinks the latter, given that learning in school is usually seen as gaining new knowledge through practice or experience. So, we have to be careful about generalised statements about today’s students. Interestingly, at the end of this article, Rosen is quoted as saying that today’s students ‘spend more  time gathering information in breadth, rather than depth’ and that teachers should focus on getting students to distinguish between retrieving information and understanding what they read. So they’re not that much different then.

Uranquinty is a village near Wagga Wagga and here you’ll find a small area which is dedicated to remembering the migrants who came out from Europe after the Second World War to increase Australia’s population and to provide cheap labour for government projects. The migrants suffered privations such as separation of families with the men working away from the migrant camp, but many went on to lead successful lives in Australia. You’ll also find the excellent Quinty Cake and Bakehouse, run by the very friendly and hard working Paul and Tania – try the delicious lemon or lime tarts. Uranquinty is also a place to stop and rest for a wee while – see picture below.

Resting at Uranquinty