More zombie library games

Image from Matthew Stewart on flickr 

This is a paper that Ashley brought to my attention and I think it's totally awesome! ...

The Library is Undead: Information Seeking During the Zombie Apocalypse

Also, check out Zombie walks! (found this via the flickr image)

Short blog post cause I'm off to Sardinia tomorrow!

Online security and protecting our data

Should I be worried?

This morning I heard an interesting ABC Radio Program on Life Matters called Hacking: why we need to worry about online security. At first I thought it was a bit of a scare campaign on things like online banking, shopping and paying bills. But it got me thinking? How much do I really think before I go wacking my credit card details into an online form? Answer: probably not enough. I usually use PayPal where possible but so many times  if I'm buying tickets or accommodation or anything - I just put the details in without thinking about it too much! I guess I'm lucky so far? Has anyone been not so lucky? There was also alot of talk about how hackers are getting better at accessing data from your mobile phone when you use a wireless network for online banking, paying bills or online shopping. When I looked into it further it turns out the world of cloud computing puts our personal data at greater risk of being hacked than ever before! This is scary stuff! Do we really need to worry about this? Please share your opinions.

Here are some recent stories about online security:
Story from The Conversation on recent hacker attacks
Story from BBC news on cloud computing and protecting your data
A string of recent stories on hacking from ABC news
Stories on hacking from mashable.com

The importance of great leadership

While convalescing last week I was thinking about how important it is to have strong, supportive leadership in the workplace. As a newbie in any career, you rely on supervisors, managers and superiors to mentor, guide and lead. Under the right conditions you can flourish in your role and be rewarded. Under not so right conditions your self esteem and sense of purpose can plummet. In my worklife so far I've experienced both. I've worked in places where I didn't feel I could speak up and voice an opinion, where hard work is not acknowledged or rewarded, where new ideas are discouraged, where every move is scrutinised, or worse, where you are completely ignored and disregarded. Luckily those time are behind me because where I am now is the complete opposite. I am so grateful to be in an environment that is supportive, encouraging, innovative and engaging. I feel like I'm part of a team that includes all levels of staff with many different backgrounds, talents and interests. I've learned so much from all my supervisors and managers (and the whole team) about communicating, working together, planning, organising and teaching. I know I might not always be so lucky, but I hope I've learned enough from current and past experiences to realise when I'm not flourishing and to move on before my self esteem plummets. Of course there are good days and bad days in any workplace. But hopefully the good outweigh the bad. If they don't it could be an indication that it's time to spread your wings elsewhere.

Teaching and Learning Forum

Yesterday I attended and presented at a Teaching and Learning Forum which I really enjoyed. I gave a presentation on collaborative tools along with Ashley, Jane and Janet who presented on using treasure hunts for teaching information literacy to nursing students. In the afternoon, there was a talk and panel discussion on final year students and alumni experiences of the transition to employment. This led onto what employers want from graduates. It seems many students perceive their communication skills and other attributes as high when in fact employers often rate them lower. How can we improve this? Also needing improvement is the ability of students to market themselves in an interview. Alot of emphasis was also placed on extra curricular activities as a way of enhancing your experience and skillset to improve employability. The final session held three streams and the one I attended included:

• A presentation on U:PASS which is a fantastic program run by Student Services to assist students who are studying in subjects that are historically perceived as difficult, like physics and maths (there are many others). The service has seen most students attending go up a grade!
• Hunting for Treasure by Ashley, Jane and Janet. Talking about using game based learning to teach information literacy skills to first year nursing students. Students are having fun and learning by finding the answers for themselves, resulting in fewer visits to the Research Help Desk for assistance
• Collaborative tools by moi! I demonstrated Diigo and Google docs and talked about other tools in the prezi below. No need to zoom. It's meant to be like a poster. I shared a google doc with three people and demonstrated live editing! T'was fun!

Collaborate and connect on Prezi

Game based learning or how to make learning fun

Last Sunday I wrote a guest post for the ALIA Sydney blog on Game Based Learning. I got quite carried away and still felt I had more to write so I'll try to add more things here as I find them. Here's the post (below) for those who missed it...

Mobile games

Everyone knows the joy of playing a game whether you grew up with board games, marbles, soccer, arcade games, Atari, Gameboy, Playstation, Nintendo, Xbox or Wii. The fun and competitiveness of playing against yourself and others can be addictive! Regardless of whether these are real life or digital games, there are rules and expected outcomes that players must determine and achieve. While concentrating hard on the game, players don’t even realise they’re learning! Recently people of all ages have started gaming like crazy as mobile apps make it easier than ever to play cheaply, anywhere-anytime, alone or with people around the world (if you haven’t heard of Angry Birds you’ve been living under a rock). One of my favourites is Fruit Ninja where you chop fruit with a sword and at the end of every game you get a fruit fact! Games are usually considered a leisure activity but increasingly they’re being used in learning environments to encourage experiential, active learning. For some reason they’ve been more commonly used with younger learners but why should they have all the fun? Just because you’re at high school, Tafe, uni, work or the library doesn’t mean learning has to be boring! Right? In fact, the 2011 Horizon Reportpredicts Game Based Learning will impact education in the next 2 to 3 years.

According to Wikipedia, Game Based Learning is a branch of serious games, which are activities with defined learning outcomes. 10 years ago, people like Prensky started pushing the digital game based learning (DGBL) revolution because of the potential for learning to be fun and engaging for the students, the trainers, parents and administrators. In 2001 Prensky described a tipping point when he believes learners will demand game based learning. Considering the current ubiquity of games and the blurring of the lines between work and play, I think we might have finally reached that tipping point.

Game based learning is certainly not new. Just think about simulation activities and software used for many years with doctors (did anyone play Operation?), nurses, pilots, defence personnel and many, many more. These learning games prepare people for real life situations by allowing them to safely practice and complete expected outcomes. Second life has also been very popular as a learning environment for many years, particularly in tertiary education. It allows geographically dispersed groups to meet up, interact and complete tasks while in the game. It has been particularly useful for the areas of engineering, design and architecture because groups can design and build large scale projects, that in real life would only be scoped as models or prototypes. Check out the Horizon report for many more awesome examples.

So what are libraries doing? Quite a bit actually! With the rise of mobile apps there’s been a move away from entirely online games to a blend of online, mobile and real life. The State Library of Queensland is using a scavenger hunt app to create self guided library tours using geo-location technology. In fact it seems treasure hunts and scavenger hunts are all the rage in libraries at the moment. The University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and Charles Darwin University (CDU) libraries are doing treasure hunts with QR code clues to enhance information literacy instruction. These three projects were recently presented about at the 2011 m-libraries conference in Brisbane. The University of Sydney Library ran a scavenger hunt around all campus libraries during orientation this year and the New York Public Library invited 500 people to an overnight library scavenger hunt (particularly awesome) which they describe as an alternate reality app based game.

So what is all this hunting and gaming doing for us? Well, according to the 2011 Horizon report we’re learning by reaching for and achieving goals, problem-solving, collaborating and communicating. We can interact with content in more complex ways and build digital literacies. They also acknowledge that students are more engaged with game based learning because it’s fun! There are some great examples in the report and I think it’s interesting to consider how this links with other trends they predict such as Augmented Reality and Gesture-based Computing. Something to ponder.

Besides ‘hunts’ there are many other library games being developed like augmented reality apps using data mashups by the Bavarian State Library (among others) and a location based checkin and reward game by some people at the University of Huddersfield library (definitely want to know more about this one). There are Fun Days and Flash mobs, flash cards and quizzes, chases and Amazing Races (check out my Game based learning Diigo group for more examples). There is already quite a bit of game based learning going on but if trend predictions are correct it will soon be the norm rather than the interesting exception. How will libraries, museums and organisations rise to the challenge of providing game based learning opportunities? Some of the things I've described require tech skills and money to make possible but others only require a few people and some enthusiasm! It's time to get in the game but just remember it's not about winning it's about having fun!

Now I apologise if any serious gamers are reading this because I'm not one, and I probably haven't used the right lingo to describe things. But that's the point. You don't have to be an expert. You just have to have a go. For those interested, there is a lot of theory behind serious games, gamification and game based learning - if you want to get into that kind of thing. And if you're already into it please share your resources in the Game based learning Diigo group.

Sick Day cookies

This is what to do when you're home sick, have a hankering for choc chip cookies and just happen to have more than 2.5 kg of finest quality dark Belgian chocolate in the cupboard.



Cream 150g unsalted butter with 1 cup of brown sugar. Add a tsp of vanilla, pinch of salt and an egg and then fold in 1 1/2 cups of sifted plain flour, 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 cup of cocoa. Finally stir through 200g of white or dark chocolate roughly chopped. Roll dough into a thick log, wrap in plastic and chill for 30 mins. Then cut into 1cm slices using a serrated knife and place 4cm apart on a tray with baking paper. Bake at 180 for 10-15 mins. Cool on try for 5 and transfer to a rack for 5. Eat warm and eat often! You won't regret it! Yum!

Recipe from Delicious magazine April 2011 p.96.

5 books meme

Palenque, Mexico

1. The book I’m currently reading:
Then we came to the end by Joshua Ferris

2. The last book I finished:
Perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

3. The next book I want to read:
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall. I just read his second book The Lonely Polygamist and loved it!

4. The last book I bought:
Paper Cutting by Laura Heyenga. Absolutely amazing book on this timeless and delicate craft.

5. The last book I was given:
The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman. An amazing illustrated book given to me by the lovely Gin. <3

Adventures with Chocolate

I've always loved chocolate. If anyone ever offers to make, bring or buy a cake my preference is always chocolate. But my recent adventures with chocolate are worth noting because they began in April when Dave and I were given a 5kg block of finest quality dark Belgian chocolate as a wedding gift. This sizable block is quite daunting to behold. I hope this image gives you some indication of the quantity of chocolate I'm having adventures with! First of all carrying this gift when it was still wrapped, I had no idea what was inside. Then when we opened it I was astonished to discover it was all chocolate. Then the amazing moment of opening the packaging and smelling the deliciousness. The next step is what you can see in the flickr slideshow below. Since April I've made a chocolate fudge cake with chocolate ganache for Dave's birthday, chocolate truffles with my family for Easter, a flourless chocolate Chinese five spice cake (just because it required a large amount if chocolate!), a chocolate and coconut banana bread that I brought in to work and lastly black bottom cupcakes for a celebratory afternoon tea at work today. I've also experimented with hot chocolate and variations of chocolate and ice cream! So far this delicious adventure has resulted in using up less than half of the block. So I have about 2.5kg to go. It's only taken me 2 months to get through this much so we'll see how long it lasts!

Zombie Library Games

Because I'm into games, libraries and zombies (who isn't!), today I googled zombie library games and I discovered so many exciting things I thought I better share with you! Chandler library teens section has a link to many excellent zombie games that are however, not library related. There are in fact many libraries linking to non library related zombie games. There seems to be a lack of library related zombie games! There are also many libraries coming up with brilliant zombie related promotion campaigns.The University of Florida has come up with a clever library promotion disguised as a Zombie survival guide with videos and other support. As well as zombies, libraries and games I'm also into information literacy so I added that to my search. So next I looked for - zombie information literacy and you'd be amazed at what's out there! My favourite is this graphic novel by McPherson College's Miller Library that features students taking cover in the library while zombies run amok on campus, and they quickly learn how to use the library and outsmart the living dead! Please let me know of any other zombie-library related goodness out there! I'll leave you with this video about what makes libraries so great when the zombie apocalypse comes! 

Bildungsroman or the coming of age genre

Last night at bookclub we discussed This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This debut novel was published in 1920 and follows the wealthy, charismatic and good looking Amory Blaine from his boarding school days, to Princeton and life in New York City post WW1. We all really enjoyed it and like the book nerds we are read passages aloud, talked about the themes and issues emerging and then found similarities in the story with recent TV teen dramas we've been watching! We've actually never in 2 years discussed a book in as much detail! We loved the lyrical, poetic style of writing and the rise and fall of the main character from youth to adulthood. We thought besides the style of writing, it could easily have been written today - the story is timeless! We started describing the book as a coming of age novel and decided we'd read another coming of age novel this month. So I googled coming of age novels (of course) and came across this word - Bildungsroman. I was fascinated to discover that this is the fancy word for the coming of age genre and has certain key characteristics like: psychological and moral growth on the journey from youth to adulthood ending in some sort of personal growth! Aha my inner me screamed! I *heart* bildungsroman! I always love coming of age stories be they books, movies or TV! We settled on our next book - A Hero Aint Nothin but a Sandwich and I set out to think about all the other bildungsroman I'd experienced and loved! Here is a list of some I've read and watched that I think represent the genre - of course there are many, many more!
 Books

• Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
• Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
• Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
• Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
• Charlotte's Web - E. B. White
• Secret History - Donna Tartt
• Forever - Judy Blume
• Oranges are not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
• Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
• How I live now - Meg Rosoff
• Harry Potter - Series
• Hunger Games - Series

Movies

• Dead Poets Society
• Almost Famous
• Pump up the Volume
• Heathers
• Basketball Diaries
• Rushmore
• Donnie Darko
• Virgin Suicides
• Stand by Me
• My Girl
• Dirty Dancing

TV

• Friday Night Lights
• Vampire Diaries
• Skins
• Gossip Girl
• OC
• Dawsons Creek
• Degrassi
• Beverly Hills 90210
• Twin Peaks
• Buffy

Harry Potter fangirl outed

I'm sure I'm not the only one but I'm really excited about the final Harry Potter movie! I read all the books (many times) and it was torture waiting a whole year for the next one to come out! Then came the movies and again the painful 12 month wait for the next one. To ease these painful times I would reread the books and get together with friends to discuss the stories and characters and draw maps of Hogwarts. Yes, many a night over a cold beer we'd be caught drawing on napkins and coasters and arguing about where the Quidditch pitch was in relation to Hagrids house! And when I got home I'd dream about my adventures with Harry, Ron and Hermione! Yes, I reread all the books, many times and loved it. Before each new book came out I'd reread all the books. Before the next movie came out I'd reread all the books and rewatch the movies (yes, I am prone to extremes). Of course, as the books got longer and longer and the movies were coming out during the wait for the last 3 books - there was a lot of reading and watching to do so I slacked off a bit. Now I don't tend to reread every book before the new movie comes out but I always reread the book before and the book of the movie about to come out. And I watch the movie before the one about to come out. I did this last year before watching Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 1 at Gold Class and I'll do it again for part 2 coming out in July.

What has this 12 year journey of books and movies added to my life? So many things really. I feel like they're part of me. I feel connected and close to them. I feel like they're my friends. They taught me to have courage, believe in yourself and your friends, love owls, take chances and so much more. I feel quite emotional that this movie is the final installment. If there were more books and movies coming out I would read and watch them all with just as much enthusiasm. Is this kind of extreme commitment to something a form of escapism or something more?

What I need to do vs What I have time to do

Drawing by MissSophieMac

Last week I taught a workshop on finding images for presentations and research, that also explores digital image copyright, including creative commons licenses. It's hands-on and I showed people how to refine their google image or flickr search to things that can be reused (among other things). Part of this process is explaining how the licenses work in relation to educational use and how things should be used and attributed according to the license. Last week one of the students wanted to know the definitive answer on copyright - "what do I have to do" and the answer "that depends", did not please her. If anyone knows anything about copyright it's that there are no definitive answers. This frustrated the student who just wanted to know what they have to do! I said you should only use images according to their license and attribute any you use by the way of a link etc. somewhere in the presentation and she said "but is that what I have to do? Or just what I should do?" I was perplexed by this question and she continued "because it's going to take me much longer to attribute all the images I use and I don't have time". This was the crux of the situation. The right answer vs the right now answer. While we might aspire to be ethical digital citizens in reality we've all used images off the web that we didn't attribute when we were in a hurry. There is no way to stop this and saying 'because you really should' isn't going to cut it! Anyway, I told her to do her best and things ran smoothly after that but it did challenge me to think about how I explain the importance of copyright when the educational use clause makes it seem so vague. Something I didn't share with the students: one way I get around this if I can't find an image that adequately depicts what I'm trying to convey - draw it yourself. Always an option! I've seen many great conference presentations recently featuring hand drawn graphics! Maybe the next top trend?

Weekend reflection: trying new things

Animal leggings caught outside the Norfolk in Surry Hills

This weekend I had a barrage of family and friend related emotional crises to attend to so I didn't have time to #blogjune which is why I'm going to try and catch up today. I'm going to blog about these emotional crises because I so often find myself in the middle of them, exhausted and full of worry. Hopefully by blogging about it I can get some clarity. One of the crises this weekend resulted in my advice to try new things, don't be afraid, take a leap, start a hobby, make a new friend, open yourself up more, you only get back what you give and take rescue remedy. This usually happy person is just plain sad. How can you fix that? Tell them it will get better. How useless is that when you're sad? She's also bored and lonely which is why I gave the particular advice above. She's the kind of person who doesn't open up or give up alot about herself willingly which means she feels like no one really knows her at all. Hence my advice above. I think if she can start a hobby, be more open and make new friends she'll be less sad and bored and lonely. But who am I to say? I'm know how lucky I am not to be sad or bored or lonely. Why is that? Do I  take my own advice? Definitely not always. All I know is, on Saturday night I saw a girl wearing animal leggings and I loved them *hearts* so I went up to her and said:
me "Hi I love your animal leggings! Could I take a photo?"
her "Thanks, sure you can"
me "actually I was going to roll you for them and steal them but I thought a photo would do"
her laughs slightly disturbed
me "where did you get them from?" as I take several blurry photos 
her "a little shop in Melbourne"
me "oh! Melbourne! Of course!"
her "yeah! hahah"
me "thanks for the photo! bye!"
her "bye!"
I ran back to my friends who thought I was crazy for doing that but I just thought - why? I liked the leggings and really wanted them but thought a photo would be a good alternative. I wasn't afraid, took a leap, opened up and could have made a new friend if I wanted. I know it's not easy for everyone to do that kind of thing but I'm just saying if you're sad and bored and lonely - what are your options? You could stay in every night listening to the Dirty Three and reading vampire fiction (which can be quite satisfying) or you can get out there and get in it. I don't know what the remedy for sadness is but for me the recipe for happiness lies in the advice I gave this gorgeous girl.

What does this all have to do with libraries? Not that I really need to draw any connections but as I was writing this I saw some. My advice - be more open, give what you want to get back, try new things, take a leap, these are all things I would say to people working in libraries too. If you want your community to feel like they know you, like they are involved and a part of you ( as a library) - you need to reach out and open up. Something to ponder this Monday morning.

The future of education

Vivid Sydney Lights - Customs House

Last night I attended a Vivid Creative Sydney event with @malbooth @bella1609 and @jemimaeve at the Opera House on the future of education. I wasn't sure what to expect really but I found the panel to have some interesting perspectives and ideas to share. I'll try to relay some of them to you here.  Some of the buzzwords flying around were: co-creation, game-based, connected, collaborative, visual, interactive, fun, social, creative, open experiential, technology. All great words! The 4 speakers were all from different areas of supporting education and were all very passionate. Most of the discussion circled around how to engage students for better learning outcomes that take into consideration the 'whole self'. That is not just reading, writing and arithmetic but also creativity, social and cultural aspects and mental and physical health.

The first speaker Raju Varanasi, talked about how he's been involved with using game-based learning to achieve this with the game Murder Under the Microscope. He said kids are spending a lot more time on it than any other homework and can't wait to come to school to share what they found out. The next speaker Phillip Cronin, talked about connecting every classroom in Australia and how this will level the playing field for socially isolated students in remote areas and those in low SES areas making do with less. The next speaker Chris Nicholls, talked about a school music program that started in Venezuela by one man who wanted to try to get kids off the streets and out of a future in crime. He now has about 350,000 students attending his program for 4 hours a day after school in Venezuela. With strong evidence that the program led to better school attendance, lower rates of crime, higher self esteem and better learning outcomes. Chris is now starting a similar program at a disadvantaged school in Melbourne. The final speaker was Sharon Clarke from NAB Schools First and talked about the importance of throwing open the school gates and letting the community in. She says in this world of rapid change, schools can't know everything, but they can use the expertise around them in their community.

They made some recommendations for the future: First of all embrace change and understand our humanity and not just come up with technical solutions. Find different ways to measure learning. Quantitative literacy and numeracy tests do not measure someones self esteem, tolerance, interpersonal skills and cross cultural understanding. We need to stop dumbing everything down to the lowest common denominator and allow kids to strive for something. The education system should question itself and all its assumptions. What is a school? What is a classroom? If every classroom is connected virtually imagine what could be possible! We need to open up schools to collaborating with the community and bring subject matter experts in. Businesses have a responsibility to give back and a great amount of expertise to share. Why not leverage their social and human capital for the greater good?

To finish Raju suggested a vision of the school of the future as a social learning space that looks more like a cafe. Where the teacher doesn't know all the answers but creates shared meaning through collaboration. If that all sounds a bit out there for you - they were saying that although the students want that now, the system and many of the teachers are slow to change. Baby steps I guess. It was an interesting panel and I was glad I attended.

Rough guide to building digital literacies

In my post yesterday I alluded to being interested in building digital literacies. So here is my vague 'how to' guide. I think the first step is to think about your clients/community. Who are they and what are they doing?

Guide to building digital literacies

The who and what will depend on the library and even within one library it can vary wildly. Just remember there is no one size fits all library client. Whatever you decide to do needs to be flexible and modifiable. In an academic library our clients need to find, evaluate and use information for assignments, teaching and research, collaborate and work in groups, create and manage content like images, posters, models, presentations, video, animation, blogs and podcasts. They also like to share content via social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. Increasingly they like sharing where they are with Facebook and Foursquare checkins. When we figure out who they are and what they're doing we should try what they're doing so we can better understand how and why they're doing it. For example, having library Facebook, Twitter and Youtube sites to connect with your community, learn from them and share with them. The final step is helping them do things better and this is tricky. This might mean you have to try new things to come up with a solution. For example, developing new workshops on how to use collaborative tools to improve groupwork and dispersed communication. This is something many of our clients struggle with and there are many tools out there that can assist. One of our roles as librarians is to make connections (see awesome video by Kathryn Greenhill on librariansmatter) and this is an example where we can connect people with the right tools to help make groupwork more efficient and effective. Some of the tools are:

• Diigo for shared bookmarking
• Google docs for real-time shared editing of a wide range of document types
• Dropbox for file sharing
• Mendeley for sharing bibliographies
• Elluminate for online conferencing
• Skype for video calls and chatting
• there are many, many more...

This is just one example where we thought about who our clients are and what they're doing and by trying new things were able to come up with a way to support what they need to do and help them do it better. In this example we're building digital literacies in online collaboration, shared bookmarking and cloud based information management. There are many more things our clients need to do that we could support by building digital literacies. Most of all I believe you need to make it fun! How you try to do that is up to you. Some things are easier to make fun than others... but who wouldn't want to play reference list Bingo? Please feel free to share your ideas.

Mobile learning and the future of information literacy

To kick off 30 days of blogging with #blogjune I thought I'd share where I think the future of information literacy is headed. A couple of weeks ago I was in Brisbane for the m-libraries conference and the prezi below is kind of a Wordle of what I think were the major ideas coming out of the conference. Use autoplay for it to scroll through. The main things for me are building mobile and digital literacies, developing game-based learning, connecting/collaborating/co-creating with our clients, utilising geo-location technology and learning by doing. The future of mobile learning and information literacy is something I'm very passionate about and I'll be blogging about these things and more every day of June.