iPads in the Library: Interim Observations

This is my article written for the college Staff Bulletin.

Last spring, the college library, supported by the College’s innovation fund, started a project of introducing tablet devices for supporting classroom-based and independent learning in the college. Tablets are a new kind of technology and it is not yet clear what are the best ways of using them in education. The purpose of the project is to learn what tutors and learners will do with the tablets; then evaluate their appropriateness for teaching and learning, as well as to identify the barriers and problems related to their use.

The six iPads purchased for the project have become the most used resource offered by the library. Within the first two months alone they had been borrowed 170 times, with 85% of overall loans by students and 15% by tutors.

The iPads are mostly used in classrooms for research where learning involves a lot of interaction and change of activities. For example, Performing Arts students very quickly switched from laptops to iPads for use in their studio. Students have been using tablets for taking photos, making videos, editing photo and video content, and taking interviews for their research projects.

Staff have discovered how convenient iPads are for video recording the evidence of students’ work in a classroom; how easy is transferring those videos to Dropbox, sharing them with the whole group, linking to Moodle and embedding them into PowerPoint documents.

Also, staff from support areas use tablets in their work. Kelly C. promotes the Job Shop to learners who enquire about the career development opportunities (on the photo).

John T., Engineering, has been using tablets with his level 1 learners for four days every week. In his opinion, tablets allow more flexibility and enhanced interaction in the classroom: they can be easily shared, passed around or placed in the centre of a group of students working on the same project.

His students reported that they preferred working with tablets to textbooks: they liked an easy access to a lot of information and the whole experience of using a physical touch. For the majority of learners this was the only occasion when they used iPads; in spite of that, they quickly learned the basics and showed each other their discoveries.

Among the difficulties, learners mentioned occasionally unstable wi-fi in their classroom and inability to easily transfer their writings over to their personal computers. This should be rectified when Microsoft apps for iPad are released next year. Surprisingly few tutors requested apps to be downloaded to the devices; it seems the concept of apps is more complex than the devices themselves.

The library has already had to deal with the first e-safety incident taken place when a learner was using one of the iPads.

These are only interim observations; they are encouraging – there is incredible buzz about iPads in the library: learners love using tablets in the classroom and outside. As this technology and our experience of using it develops, tablets will successfully compete with PCs for the place in education; and it will happen very soon.

Blogging Journey (A Possible Representation)

This year my colleague, Lin Armstrong, and her new students on 2+2 Childhood Studies programme are to start blogging – as their predecessors did in previous years. When I spoke to them at our first blogging session, it occurred to me that the journey these students would have to make could be expressed in terms of transition from collector to curator to creator.

My usual advice to blogging newbies is to start with cutting and pasting the weblinks and YouTube videos, perhaps adding the titles of those pieces of content as well. This should be easy enough.

The next step is to provide a short description of what’s there, behind the weblink. Then another step – to provide also a short response to the viewed/read: I like it because…, I disagree because… Eventually we should reach the stage where the original reflection prevails; it well may be inspired by another piece of content, of course – an article read, TV programme watched, conversation heard etc. On the whole, the blog becomes a reflection of the author’s interests and abilities.

Blogs are not only a tool for reflective practice; they are also portfolios and depositories of useful materials. Therefore, it is quite appropriate to approach blogging as a collector would: to regard it as a huge box for storing all kinds of useful stuff for the future. In that aspect, a blog will provide evidence of the breadth of reading and other forms of content discovery. It seems to me that majority of people on Facebook stay forever in the collector’s slippers: they bubble away about what they see.

Curation starts with first strategic decisions: my blog will be about this and that, only materials on specific topics will be of interest to me and my audience, I would like to be perceived as someone knowledgeable on certain topics and adhering to certain values. Of course, every student has a manifold of interests and the blog should reflect that. At this stage paying attention to the blog’s audience is important: What would I like my readers to discover, get inspired by? The author is likely to move away from the collector’s excitement of “Wow, that’s interesting! I should keep it” to conscious researching decisions: “I need to pay attention to certain fields of academic (or any other suitable) discourse to build my knowledge and my own story and arguments”. Curation involves not only arranging and pointing out, but “collection development” too, using the librarians’ language.

Becoming a creator is exciting. It involves developing one’s own voice and – developing further – interests and passions. Does everyone has to be(come) a creator? – I think it’s a wrong question as everyone is a creator in one or another aspect. Life and learning are processes: we move from one experience to another, being changed for better or worse, feeling more inspired or less so. When we feel frustrated or discouraged, or just lazy sometimes to write anything longish, we should move back to cutting and pasting, and just commenting in few words, and so to starting all again – from collector to curator to creator. The ideal is being all three at the same time.

Skills v. resources

For last few years I have been including elements of searching techniques (applicable to any search tools, and those techniques which are specific to Google) into my information skills sessions. I also sometimes run Google Inside-Out sessions for students and staff and the response was positive. Recently I started having doubts whether I wasn't wasting time and should have concentrated instead completely on quality resources offered by the library, especially as often I have only one chance to see learners. An article on university students' online research behaviour didn't resolve my doubts, but made me to think that the dilemma is not going to go away and that perhaps there is no easy answer to it. If we, FE librarians, positioned ourselves as those whose main role is developing traditional and digital literacies - and were perceived as such by our employers - then the answer would be easy: sure, Google should also be one of our main concerns. My colleague teaching on HE programme is adamant: HE curriculum implicitly requires librarian's input into teaching, as the expected outcomes of any course include being able to find and use relevant and appropriate information. This is not so clear with vocational programmes. I think, a distinction between an induction and information skills session is helpful: the first assumes showing available resources and services, the second - developing competencies. However, when a librarian has only one chance of seeing students, particularly FE students, what should be the priority? I am tempted to say skills, but I think the reality is not so straightforward in our sector.

In the article mentioned above I loved the point on students disguising their readings from tutors. Bring Turitin! - perhaps, would be my answer. And seminars as book clubs - it works.

And another point - students and researchers being not aware of using libraries while accessing databases, e-journals etc. The article's recipe for that: seamless access requires branding.

Traditional and emerging media for marketing library

Added on 13.03.2012: I have slightly amended/shortened the notes to the slides on SlideShare and here is my first ever slidecast (Screenr is very easy to use, but I wish it had as much functionality as the MS Power Point's voice-over presentation tool) - http://www.screenr.com/user/iharivanou. And more fun, this time with Hello Slide, an automatic voice-over online generator - http://www.helloslide.com/presentations/1891/marketing-library-ihar-ivanou-12-march-2012 Surreal!

My presentation (which did not take place due to technical problems) for a JISC's webinar on use of technology for promoting library services, 5 March 2012.  Notes to the the slides are available at http://www.slideshare.net/nieszczarda/marketing-fe-library.

Marketing FE Library

View more PowerPoint from nieszczarda

Blogging and WordPress for Librarians

Yesterday I offered a session on blogging and specifically WordPress to my collegues from a neighbour college. It was a great experience, a pretty intensive, 2-hour-long hands-on session.
My notes/worksheet/helpsheet (pdf, five pages)

Library for marketing the college

Recently, I spoke to a colleague who, with her daughter, went to see all the schools and colleges offering A-Levels in the neighbourhood. Working in a library, she paid attention to what information/academic skills support learners get there – in addition to classroom activities. She was shocked that only our college and another one next door had a proper library service and all that comes with that – learning resources, support and guidance.
This made me to think that FE colleges should exploit libraries marketing and recruitment. Universities are critical about the quality of academic skills that schools offer, they invest a lot into remedial support in the first year. Our college is unique for Nuneaton in that sense: we offer full scale library, information and academic skills training and support. All that is done by staff experienced in working with HE students; no one else in our town could offer that. On top of everything, we are the only learning provider in Nuneaton actively and purposefully developing an e-book collection – it’s bigger than all public libraries of the county have on offer right now. This may be especially attractive to prospective A Level and Access students as when they go to university, they will have to start using library's digital content straight away.

From what I know, no schools and colleges in Nuneaton use their libraries in their marketing. Shame.

Two articles to share: on importance of digital literacy and Facebook for user engagement

Digital literacy can boost employability and improve student experience - the title of the Guardian sounds dull, but it's full of goodness. How about that:

A recent NUS/Hefce survey found that students were concerned about the ICT competency of academic staff, with 21% thinking that their lecturers needed additional training. Some students also expressed dissatisfaction with perceived outdated technology in use in HE, and a lack of staff engagement with the institution's virtual learning environment.

From now on, digital literacy development must be on FE library menu cards alongside academic skills support.

Study Raises Doubts About Effectiveness of Facebook as Outreach Tool for Academic Libraries - this is a quick review of a piece of research from the United States. A conclusion is clear:

“If we consider how easily students ‘like’ a page, add a group, post personal information, or simply interact with Facebook pages, then we must face the fact that library pages are amongst the least attractive to students.”

After almost two years, my library's Facebook page has acquired about 100 friends. It generates very little of interaction, but functions well as one of the gateways for the library blog where the bulk of all support content is generated.

Resistance to blogging (guest post)

My colleague, Fiona Casserly, an Early Years teacher, has shared her thoughts after the Blog of the Term award for her students.

The concept of informal and formal learning and preference for a particular kind of pedagogy seem fundamental to whether a student blogs or not. 

In my observations today I can see that the students who find blogging an addition to their course are predominantly the students that - it seems to me - have high self-efficacy and are high achievers.  This idea about their abilities to perform academically may lead them with feelings that they can achieve highly awarded assessments or learning gains without the help of blogs. Their stimuli response to handing in work has always (or mostly) been one that is positive. Combined with this high self-efficacy, students may have a more behaviourist attitude towards teaching and learning. They may see that formal learning only takes place in the classroom whereby the teacher can ‘pour’ in knowledge and that less learning takes place outside of the classroom arena. If learning activities outside of the classroom are viewed as informal this may then be seen as an add-on to their already loaded studies, rather than being an integral part of their course. 

Students which may have low self-efficacy may feel that they need more guidance and support and therefore are more inclined to view the work of others to create feelings of security, for example that they are on the right tracks.  This does relate to their level of performance, as in terms of formal assessment they fall in the mid to lower brackets on the marking scale.

My immidiate reaction is that there can be another explanation why high-achieving learmers may be reluctant to engage into blogging for learning: they spend their time studying differently. This is not a judgement on blogging: it will be interesting to see the outcomes in two years time when that group leaves the college to continue their last two years of the course at university. 

I was a celebrity (it was fun)

Last Friday I was invited to a session with 2+2 Childhood Studies students. It is a HE course; students do two years at our college and then continue for another two at Warwick. I had seen them already, we did an information skills session– library catalogue, Google, e-books, reliability of information sources. They also had a session on blogging with a colleague of mine, our graduate trainee.

On this occasion, I was invited as a local celebrity (their tutor, Lin Armstrong, and I couldn’t stop laughing when planned all that) to present an award for the Best Blog of the Term. It was an important event as, according to Lin, this year she could observe a real break-through with her students: most of them used a variety of online tools, including personal blogs, to support their learning and did it in a collaborative way. Lin is a great believer in connectivism – a comparatively new learning theory for the digital age – and was very excited when found that her students had started discovering and generating knowledge as a network/community of learning. To celebrate their achievements and encourage further, the ceremony was put together.

On marketing the library service

Two years ago my colleague at that time, Peter Barr, and I started a project: to develop marketing of the college library in the way which would embrace both traditional and emerging media; all should have connected and worked together. Before that, the library produced a lot of helpsheets, guides and leaflets; it also had a well developed presence on Moodle and the college website. It was first in the college to set up a Facebook page even though Facebook was banned on the college network PCs. However, our marketing activities were disjoint: content for each media was prepared separately, often – occasionally and by different people.

My thinking was broadly prompted by the Guardian which was the first major newspaper in Britain to move away from publishing online the texts that as the rule had already appeared in the paper edition. Very early the Guardian adopted a multi-platform approach: as soon as the content is ready it is pushed to all available media, edited and re-packaged respectively.