Zak Mensah and Gavin Brockis from JISC Digital Media gave a good introduction to what screencasting is, how to plan a screencast and some useful tools and techniques.  As well as an introduction to the software available Zak and Gavin gave an introduction to the hardware involved including a useful guide to various microphones.

I used Jing a few months back to create short screen casts on how to subscribe to RSS feeds for Paul Richardsons’ Lunchtime Byte “Its Out There Somewhere!”.   However “A Beginners’ Guide to Screencasting” gave me lots of practical tips and links to other screencasting software to try out.

During the session Zak and Gavin gave an overview of how screencasts could be used.  Being quite familiar for screencasts for instructional use I was quite surprised to find you could use them for student feedback too.

Have you created a screencast?  Any advice you would give to others?  If you are feeling brave post a link to your screencast in the comments section below.

Image CC from Andrew Mason, Flickr

Last week I went along to the CyMAL E-books discussion day at the National Library of Wales Aberystwyth.  Their was a great mix of delegates from HE, FE and public libraries and masters students from the nearby Department of Information Studies at Aberystwyth University.

It was a very interesting day with presentations from Welsh libraries taking part in E-bok pilot project, as well as the RNIB and Libraries Northern Ireland. Alyson Tyler has written an excellent blog post on the day and links to presentations, documents and more!

If you want to know even more (and trust me Alysons’ post covers a lot) I was “Tweeting”  during the day using #ebooksdaywales or you can view the Tweets on my Twitter profile @sharon_crossan.  Or you can always get in touch with me via the usual channels.

At the beginning of November I attended the JISC Developing Digital Literacies workshop, a series of national workshops on developing learners and learning organisations for the 21st Century, in Aberystwyth.  This particular workshop was run across three sites via video conference including Swansea University, Aberystwyth University and Deeside College.  The Developing Digital Literacies workshop series runs from May to October 2011. Further details and registration are available on the JISC web site.

As with all good training days we started with defining digital literacy, I found this to be an interesting introductory activity as so often it is thought of as just IT skills but for the group it covered much more, including what the library world traditionally would term as information literacy.  We then looked at how personal, professional and academic practices are changing.

We then looked at defining graduate attributes and who are your learners and what do you know about them.  Interestingly, it was brought up in a presentation later in the day, we assume that all our learners have, and know how to use, various technologies like smart phones but without asking our learners we truly don’t know.  We had much discussion around what we know about our learners and how we know these i.e. are we guessing, have we conducted a survey? Then we discussed the attributes of a digitally literate graduate.  Following from this we practiced assessing learner needs and created a model for learner development.  Using that model we discussed what kinds of experiences move learners on.

After a delightful lunch at Aberystwyth University we then had three guest speakers across the three sites, including Aberystwyth University , Cardiff University and the PADDLE project  and what their institutions are doing to support the development of learners for a digital age.

I found this to be a really interesting workshop and especially liked the presentation from Aberystwyth University as it made me think about what technology learners use and how often the case is that we assume learners know how to use this technology, or we assume they know already how to take advantage of it to support their learning.

Visit the JISC developing digital literacies web page for more about JISC’s work in this area, and you can also follow the hash tag #jiscdiglit on Twitter/blogs.

Resources from the series can be found on the JISC Design Studio wiki here.

Some other interesting blog posts on Digital Literacy are Scott Hiberson (RSC Yorkshire and Humber) and Justin Spooners’ post on Social Networking and Education.

Presentation skills by o5com, via Flickr's Creative Commons License

At the CILIP Wales Conference in May I watched a presentation in a different style – it was a Prezi presentation.  I liked the style of the presentation, instead of following a series of slides the presenter instead had an image of the topic which they zoomed in and out of.  For me it meant that I could see what the presentation was about at a glance, but zooming into different areas meant the presenter could go into detail on certain subjects.  I found I wasn’t writing down notes from the screen I was actually following what the presenter had to say.

As I was searching for more information on Prezi I came across a link to the Prezi online webinar series.  So I signed up, and with a little help created my first Prezi presentation.  The webinars are held almost every Thursday and are completely free. You do need a phone or Skype to call in to the audio though.

There are excellent screencasts and videos here explaining how to create presentations and another useful part of the site is the help manual which is available here. However I felt the webinar was a great way to learn how to use Prezi, my fellow participants and I followed our hosts instructions to the letter and created a Prezi during the session.  If you would like to see what I created you can view it here.

As with many web 2.0 tools the sign up process is relatively straight forward and the interface is user friendly. To the top left of the screen is a bubble menu, as opposed to the usual drop down menu that goes across the screen, hover over the words with your cursor for the menu to appear.  Add text, images, videos and sound to the canvas (rotate/resize however you like) and then create your path, which is essentially the order in which you want your text/images/videos to appear.  A small feature that I liked was that you don’t have to embed a video into the Prezi, you can simply copy the URL from You Tube and add it from that.

Any content created using the basic Prezi service is fully discoverable on the web.  I’m not sure I like this feature and would prefer the option of making them either public or private but that option is only available in the paid services. Also with the free service you are limited in the amount of formatting you can do, however I don’t see it as a major issue and doesn’t sway me towards the premium service.

The biggest barrier I could find to using Prezi for all my presentations is access.  Getting access to web 2.0 tools can be tricky from local government buildings, Universities and colleges and as Prezi presentation are hosted on the web you may not be able to access your presentation on the day.  CyMAL (Museums, Archives and Libraries Wales) undertook a survey of access and views of web 2.0 in Welsh libraries, the report is available here.  You can download a copy of your Prezi but you are unable to edit it.  It downloads in a .zip folder and opens in Flash, but you are then reliant on using the most up to date version of Flash.

I think Prezi can be a useful alternative to Powerpoint and I’m looking forward to trying it out more.  If you have tried Prezi, or have any questions, please feel free to use the comments below or contact me in the usual way.

The rather spectacular Gregynog Hall

This week I attended three days of the Welsh Higher Education Libraries Forum (WHELF) Gregynog Colloquium.  Although the focus was on HE libraries there were several sessions that I thought would be useful for other sectors too.

Being innovative with information literacy training was apparent in several of the sessions, including a very high energy session from Samuel Nikoi, Joy Cadwallader and Karl Drinkwater (of RSC Wales fame) from Aberystwyth University in collaboration with Katrina Dalziel from Swansea University talking about how to make information skills interesting.   This included a variety of innovative ways to conduct inductions and information skills sessions including beanbags, congas (yes congas!) and a Love Your Library day.  The aim was to make these sessions relaxed and informal, all very well received by students and greatly enjoyed by staff too!   On the technology side of things I was most impressed by Peter Godwin (University of Bedforshire) who discussed their experience of using mobile devices for information literacy.  Including one minute videos and details of their Android App for mobile devices. This got me thinking about the use of QR codes and Augmented Reality for library use and although I’ve seen examples of the use of QR codes, the use of augmented reality seems to be more of an issue.

On the subject of being innovative I attended a presentation by Cath Wright-Jones (University of Glamorgan) on Graphic Design for everyday use: some simple principles.  Cath had a fantastic eye for design and shared some of her best tips.  This made me think about the diverse nature of library work, from information skills to design, librarians really do a variety of things and have a variety of skills.  But this also sparked a bit of a debate on Twitter (#gregynog11), are librarians trying to be Jack of all trades? Should we leave non library work to the specialists?  Or should we be getting involved and creating our own material? I think this a debate that could go on and on but the general consensus was that usually it’s not the librarian’s choice, or how often have other departments put your priorities to the bottom of theirs?

Another key theme was partnership working/collaborative working and shared services, both internally and externally.  Paul Jeorrett looked at this externally, working in partnership with a variety of institutions (and sectors) across North Wales.  Rebecca Davies took an internal view, giving a presentation on the shared services with IT at Aberystwyth University, and Paul Riley discussed WHEEL: a collaborative approach to electronic resource procurement.

The presentations from the event should be available on the website soon, however if you would like to discuss any of themes don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Survive and Thrive - Red Kites are the experts

A new CILIP
Annie Mauger

Annie Mauger was appointed Chief Executive at CILIP in October 2010.  Annie was strong on using the various networks and networking opportunities across CILIP to keep in touch with the profession.  The recurrent theme of difficult times across the country means that we should be pulling together for support and using CILIP as a high profile voice for advocacy for the profession.

CILIP as an organisation is facing big issues too; financial stability and relevance to members.  How can CILIP be affordable but also give members value for money?  Also what CILIP does has to be relevant to all sectors, cross national and tackle local issues too.  “We’re not a trade union we are a charity and professional body…it is a UK partnership…one body for 4 countries.”

Annie talked about CILIP responding to crisis and that their needs to be a move to it being a campaigning body.  Libraries underpin an organization and we need to be more vocal about what libraries do.  Several campaigns will be taking place shortly, including a campaign to work closely with the WI.

For more information on CILIP, including its vision, take at look at the CILIP website . You can also follow Annie Mauger on Twitter.

“If you want to get laid, go to college…”

Measuring the impact of the Library Service at Huddersfield
Dave Pattern

A copy of the presentation and related links are available at Dave’s blog.

This presentation looked at defining usage data, and talked about how libraries are not that good at doing interesting stuff with the usage data.  The main point was to get the data out there for people/students/staff to play with it. Although remember to anonomise the data!  Playing around with usage data means that you can create word clouds, graphs, charts and so on allowing you to visually see any emerging trends.
Can 2 become 1?  Lessons from the coal face of library mergers in Wales
Sally Wilkinson

Sally talked about the experience of the merger between Trinity St Davids and Lampeter University.  Historically Lampeter University is research based and  Trinity St Davids is learning and teaching based, which proved an interesting for the merger. Sally looked at five key areas when merging library services: staff, customer/learners focus, developing and maintaining service, efficiency, and time.

Staff

• Are you a team or a group?
• Regular two way communication is key
• Create opportunities for small groups to work together (task groups)
• Be prepared to make this an opportunity for change
• Learn from what you do to make it better for the future.
• It’s lonely at the top!

Customer/learner focus

• Parity of experience
• Branding the new service – using web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook and Twitter
• Personalisation
• Bringing the web pages and library management systems together

Developing and maintaining services

• Keeping the day job going as well as changing and developing.  E.g fines/loan periods, right through to cataloguing.
• Taking best practice from each site and ensuring each site feel equally valued.
• Change something e.g. bought new sofa for the library and used it as a physical representation of a different kind of service.

Efficiency

• Current economic climate
• Managing institutional expectation
• Overlap and duplication – What can be cut? What can change to save staff time

Time

• Takes a lot of time but also need to keep service going
• Challenges are mainly staff – keep staff onboard and communicate to keep them comfortable.
• Manage the customer expectation

Sally’s top tips for merging library services:

• Look for the gems and celebrate them e.g. The Roderic Bowen Library and Archives
• Make time for regular communication
• Promote benefits to staff and students
• Learn from what you’re doing

Shared Services and systems in Wales, where we are and where we go next
Mark Hughes

A copy of this presentation is available on Slideshare.

Mark defined shared services as two or organisations using a shared system or providing a single service.  But why shared services?  There is a need to because of economic climate.  Sharing is a method of survival and makes better use of resources and enables greater co-operation, which in turn can improve services.  There are lots of benefits to shared services:

Avoids duplication of effort e.g public libraries can learn from the FE/HE sector with regards to e-books

Greater use of distributed knowledge.

Economies of scale – maximum benefit going in as a big group as you can drive down costs.
There are small groupings of shared LMSs but you don’t see the full benefit from that, and there are varied degree’s of co-operation.  Why be sector specific when libraries have so many commonalities with other sectors.  A big issue can be governance, something not really experienced in the UK.  There is also a rise of Open Source options, e.g. Koha and Evergreen, ExLibris Alma as an example of cloud solutions.

Worldwide context – Australia, we’re not too big to do this stuff as Australia consortia been doing it for years and on a much larger scale!

Consortia effect  = wider patron choice of what they can access, that leads to increase in use.  Open source and libraries are about accessibility and sharing expertise and knowledge, working together and building a community base.  Evergreen (Open Source)LMS, fastest growing LMS in the USA.

So what is the future? Libraries Inspire strategy with key phrases and a local, national and regional context.  WHELF have also submitted a funding bid to look at pilot for shared LMSs.  To keep up to date with WHELF have a look at the blog.

Mark told us to expect shared services to be high on agenda and pilot projects starting up, and that those projects will be cross sectoral.

Voices for the Library: Speaking beyond the library community
Bethan Ruddock

A copy of Bethans’ presentation is available on her blog.

Voices for the Library are a campaign group.  Their aim is to provide a balanced view of public library services in the UK and to discuss ideas for the way forward.
“We don’t want to lose our libraries, and we aim to ensure future generations continue to enjoy access to free unbiased public libraries and librarians.”

Starting out on Twitter under the discussion #pling! (Public Libraries in Need Group) Voices for the Library campaign for people to share their experiences about libraries. At conferences we only talk amongst ourselves about how great we are and how we can communicate that outside of that bubble.  The Newsnight report on public libraries got the figures on book loans wrong 314million not 314 thousand but no correction was made by Newsnight.  These types of misconceptions can do real damage to the profession.

Much of the content on the site comes from library users.  Celebrity stories are also on the site as well as from library staff, showing the range of ‘stuff’ library staff do.  How do we hear these voices? From social media (such as Twitter) for dissemination and collaboration.
The challenges have been staff geographical spread, no budget – ( not a small budget but NO budget)  which makes travel and attending events difficult so have to rely of free, often social media, solutions, and time – most working on the site work full time and there are only two public libraries on the team in a team of ten.

The tools used to communicate are: email, wiki, doodle, chat scene, website, facebook,  and twitter

Library and information workers are going through tough times, we need to advocate for all not just our bit of the profession.

Screen from the Coleg Llandrillo Cymru video

RSC Wales has been involved with CyMAL’s FE reader development/information literacy grants for a number of years now. Our involvement eases the administrative burden on providers, and is an excellent way to work with and support colleges. We have posted about previous grants in this blog (2008/9 grant and 2009-10). Now the latest projects as part of the 2010/11 grant are finished, and I like to think that it has been another successful collaboration, from the start when we held an online meeting to discuss the options up to the actual hosting of the completed learning objects and a final email sent to FE-LRC-WALES today.

All the learning objects created as part of the CyMAL FE information literacy grant are now available in Welsh and English, and packaged up as convenient zip files for downloading, whilst also offering samples to view. The learning objects are all available from our Moodle here, and full details of the project can be found here. Our evaluation of the project is also available.

The materials may also be hosted on the library.wales.org staff toolkit, NGfL Cymru and other places. Feel free to promote them far and wide so as to benefit LRCs and their learners. The objects are being released into the public domain for the benefit of FE on a ‘no attribution’ basis so they can be re-purposed as necessary.

Finally, here is a summary of the five learning objects / groups of materials.

Coleg Llandrillo covered e-safety, aiming to help students to understand and engage in learning about staying safe online via a short tutorial. The content is made up of videos, a Powerpoint presentation, and Word documents.

Coleg Powys created a Moodle course on e-awareness, attempting to help students to become e-aware and to give them the skills to maintain their safety online.

Gower College Swansea created material on using journals and e-journals to help tutors gain a deeper understanding of how learners can be encouraged to use them, and how sessions with learners can be more effectively planned, delivered and evaluated. This includes Powerpoint presentations, Word documents (such as lesson plans and worksheets), and videos.

Pembrokeshire College covered Harvard referencing, though the materials could be adapted for any referencing system. Their resources aim to demonstrate the need for referencing in coursework and to show students how to reference their sources correctly. It is comprised on Powerpoint presentations which are also available in web page formats.

Yale College’s entry won a prize for their involvement of students. It aims to engage students and tutors in discussions about Internet safety issues. The college has produced a video and quiz plus PDFs of banners and leaflets so that services can run their own awareness events about Internet safety. The material can be embedded into the induction process or used at appropriate points during the year.

This is my final blog post for RSC Wales, tomorrow being my last day. It has been lovely working with everyone in FE LRCs and RSC Wales, and I am sure that I will meet many of you at learning resources events in the future. If anybody wants to keep in touch then I will still be on Twitter, have a new personal blog, and contribute to an Aberystwyth University blog which I set up (English / Welsh). Hwyl fawr!

Keep information literacy on the agenda!

Image by verbeeldingskr8

A librarian recently asked me about online courses and information sources to improve library staff skills in teaching and understanding information literacy, so I thought I would mention some options here.

• Cardiff University’s Handbook for Information Literacy Teaching (HILT) is a good starting point.
• The Information Literacy website has a wealth of material. Pay particular attention to the ‘Developing your teaching’ sections.
• Get the staff to sign up to the JISCMail LIS-INFOLITERACY list. You can lurk and follow the practitioner discussions, or use it as a tool for getting peer support. The list description is: “Lis-infoliteracy will provide a discussion forum for librarians and information professionals involved in information literacy and information skills teaching across all sectors. It will cover all delivery methods and issues concerning user education and explore the sharing of resources at a national level.”
• You could also consider encouraging your staff to get new qualifications. For example they could study for the PDA in Applications of ICT in Libraries or Foundation Degree at Coleg Llandrillo Cymru, or a Foundation Degree at Glyndwr University. All of these cover teaching information literacy from a library point of view, and there are often grants available from CyMAL to cover some of the course costs (I’ve been told that current Workforce Development grant information will be going up on the CyMAL site in a few weeks, in the meantime contact CyMAL for current information).
• In the past there was a lot of talk about the online tutorials aimed at librarians who wished to gain teaching skills for delivering information literacy sessions. Sir Learnalot and Lollipop were mentioned regularly. For example, West Cheshire College staff Leo Appleton and Anthony Beal spoke at events we ran in the past about how they used Lollipop as a way of bringing their staff in a newly converged service up to speed with information literacy (you can see a version of their presentation here). SirLearnaLot is available here (the guest account username is guest1, the password is guest). Sadly the server holding LolliPop crashed and the developers are currently trying to restore the data. Hopefully they will have something back in the next week or so and you will be able to find it here.
• You could also look at the public information other institutions make available. Trying to point out all the options would require a huge blog post just on that topic, but a good example is the Open University’s Safari. There are other useful links in the RSC Wales Delicious account, e.g. under the information literacy tag.

Image from Manchester Central Library by ricardo266

Libraries are particularly topical at the moment: fantastic repositories of free learning (and in some cases, entertainment) materials. I often work with HE and FE librarians and LRC staff, however public libraries and the National Library of Wales also provide physical and online resources to everyone in Wales, benefiting people whether they are FE or HE students, or involved with adult and community education, schools or work-based learning.

CyMAL has just started a consultation on their proposed new strategic development framework for Welsh libraries 2012-15, called ‘Libraries Inspire’. The consultation can be found here. If you want to potentially have a say in the future of libraries and free learning resources in Wales then I recommend having a look, especially with the potentially grim future for public libraries. Full instructions for the consultation are on the site, and the consultation is open until 31 March 2011. There are also consultation events in Neath Port Talbot and Denbighshire on 8th-9th March.