Having written a post about what it was like to present at LILAC I wanted to write up the conference itself (well the bits I attended).
Keynote 2 – Lord Puttnam of Queensgate, C.B.E.
Playing Games and growing trees Andrew Walsh Huddersfield @andywalsh999
Overview
I got a lot from attending. It was great to meet other librarians from across the world (there were lots of international delegates) and meet many faces from Twitter. I am really lucky to work somewhere that encourages us to attend conferences. It is such a positive experience and one I think is vital for us and our institution to evolve and stay ahead of the game. LILAC is a big conference (by UK standards), but not so big that it feels overwhelming. Each day there was a keynote and then parallel sessions which meant there were a lot of things to choose from.
Glasgow was a nice place to visit and we did appreciate the free Caramel Log in our goody bags.
All the presentations that are available are here.
Keynote 1 – Megan Oakleaf
Play the ace: assessing, communicating and expanding the institutional impact of information literacy.
Megan’s impressive keynote looked at how it is important to demonstrate the value of the academic library to universities and how IL can be used to do this. She is the author of a US report: Value of Academic Libraries
Some points she made included:
- Everyone loves library but don’t want to pay for it.
- Focus on what collection enables people to do.
- It is a good idea to define outcomes (learning outcomes) of what institution needs and wants. Could include employability, student retention.
- What leads students to come to an institution? In US library second most impactful building. (learning spaces are first).
- At Minnesota library instruction increases chance of re-enrolment year on year.
- Acrl information literacy competency standards in higher education.
- Importance of IL to work and careers. (This I felt linked well to the work we have been doing at Cass)
- Library website design … What part communicates impact on institutional focus areas.
We did a great exercise where we used a grid called the Instruction Impact Map with Campus Needs, Goals and outcomes down one side and a list of things we do int he library along the top i.e. Tutorials, reference service etc. We then took one of the columns and rated how well it impacted on the campus need. This really made us think how we could connect the two things and really demonstrate how important what we do is.
Megan then suggested collecting evidence to back up our claims on the impact of our work making two important points:
- Authentic, integrated performance assessments.
- Not surveys etc
Libguides tips and tricks: thinking outside the box – Eleanora Dubicki, Susan Gardner & Louise Gordon (@louiselib)
The workshop delivered on Libguides was really useful. The major thing I took from it was the use of Libguides Polls.
An example of which was used at the start of the session to see how many people in the session were using it and what we wanted out of the workshop.
The session was run round a guide: http://libguides.lmu.edu/lilac2012
We already use them at City but I hadn’t really thought of using them to base a whole session around but by using things like the polling and wallwasher they could be really interactive tools in our teaching as well as great support tools.
I have to confess to having a bit of a fan girl moment when I saw Lord Puttnam as with my film-lover hat on I think he is an incredibly important figure in the British film industry. I now realise he is also an powerful voice in the world of Education two examples of his work are:
- Founded future lab.
- Sits on house communications committe.
The overarching theme of his speech was that what may seem radical to us now will not be in the future that People expect new form of relationship with world around them now. He gave several examples:
- Uni of Sunderland 24/7 opening radical in 1997. As was drinking coffee in library – keyboards so cheap irrelevant.
- Www is just a click away.
- Importance of libraries and schools.
- Refreshing to see how quickly racists etc are brought to order on twitter.
- Librarians help people steer towards right information.
- Talked about unpredictability of what is to come I.e. Facebook buying instagram
- Talked about the fact his parents would have thought 3 careers was bizarre but he can imagine his grandchildren having 6.
- Huge levels of competition and complexity – unique challenges for us as educators.
The point that most people were buzzing about afterwards was:
Many currently in education will work with voice activated technology in working lives.
This means we will need a pedagogy to work with voice activated tech … Importance of voice and thinking. Keyboard skills will still be useful but not as important. Research and development is not put into keyboards. Money is in voice recognition both spending on research and in profit.
Apple, google and amazon all using this technology so children born today will think it is the norm. Essentially we will be working differently. Oracy (?) will be important. Teachers will have to be better at listening and students better at talking
and so strong spoken language skills will need to be developed. He said this isn’t that new, Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric is still a best seller but we will need to structure thought differently it requires students talk more but teachers less. 1975 Bullock report suggested teachers were so long winded pupils had 20 secs each to talk.
Currently there is disparity between how people behave with tech at home and how it is used in classroom. For example a surgeon from 1912 couldn’t work today. A teacher could because we aren’t using enough technology in classroom.
Need to understand students world, how they relate to it and we need to be aware of problems surrounding adopting technology i.e. digitising old practices isn’t the way forward. We need to consider what advances an entire digital pedagogy could be like. It is about digital not digitising.
He discussed the need for an undisputed education of women. World class education system underpins world class health and social system. Will not work other way round.
He ended with a quote from Stuart Brand “We are gods so we better start getting good at it”
There was then a great Q&A session:
Q: French children don’t learn to read and write until later. They develop oral and reasoning skills first. – what about it?
A: Need to look at other countries. If you find yourself saying “this is the way we do it” stop doing it that way.
Q: Exam system doesn’t reflect digital technology. IB allows it more than A levels with large piece of work.
A: most useful thing medical world could do is clone librarians as they have 19th century assessment process. It is out of step with technology and teaching. Lord Puttnam thinks International Baccalaureate is the way forward.
He then talked about the role of librarians:
- Not what we do but branding is a problem.
- Breadth width and importance of what we do needs to be promoted by us and others.
- We aren’t gatekeepers.
- Make sure title librarian isn’t trapped.
- British library has done it brilliantly. It is vital and important.
Q: Cost question of technology.
A: Things you can’t afford not to have. If you are seriously concerned about child’s future you will forgo things to get them. Cost of slates in 19th century was crippling for a family but they did it. Education can’t be allowed to become unaffordable. TES – cheaper for them to buy £100 tablet and send it to all subscribers than the print copy as print costs £100 a year. Got to make tech vital so saying not do it because of cost is not relevant. IPad is as important as slate David Lloyd George learnt to write his name on.
Q: Issue around accent etc for google voice (and all voice technology)
A: technology will improve and be more forgiving. Recalling dictation from work in advertising. He learnt how to dictate a letter. You have to think in a particular way to dictate a letter.
Matrix of literacies
Being articulate is a life skill.
Q: Distance …
A: Cisco telepresence system on west coast of Ireland. He does lectures from home. 5 universities. Notion of distance is not relevant any more.
Playing Games and growing trees Andrew Walsh Huddersfield @andywalsh999
This session really appealed to me as I am interested in the gamification of learning. Huddersfield have done a lot of work on the connection between library use and student achievement. One of their findings was that the physical library didn’t make a difference. This meant they wanted more serious use from students who came in for social reasons by putting a game over top of library usage.
You can view the game here
There is also more information here.
The game connects with Facebook and a lot of the social interaction is in Facebook. Once registered you don’t have to go on to lemon tree you can see what you are doing in Facebook.
As always data protection is an issue so they make sure people are happy to share data I.e. what books you borrow and under settings you can turn off what information is shared.
One of the key benefits appeared to be that it can be used to see what other people from courses found useful.
As is often the case as interesting as the game looks the thing that stuck with me (as I doubt we would be going down the game line) was the promotion suggestions:
- Little cards including things like “playing the library”
- No big worthy things
- Low key and fun
- One poster
- Messages that appear on plasma screens
- Has to be fun and inviting
- Cards are being scattered
- Put it in high demand books
- Also put codes to reward in low use books.
Details of the presentation are here:
Http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/13125/
Mobile technology and information literacy instruction: the McGill Library Experience. Maria Savova, Robin Canuel and Chad Crichton
McGill library from the palm of your hand – delivered to librarians as wells as students and faculty
There were several good points made to be aware of when looking at the use and implementation of mobile technologies.
- Have to establish what is possible on different ereaders etc (wifi or 3G or not)
- Ezproxy helps use on mobile devices
- Challenges – it isn’t clear from the catalogue if book can be downloaded
- Also availability – can’t tell if someone has downloaded it already (some limits to number of downloads)
- Ebsco – need to download PDF for use offline.
- Problem PDF is a picture not text. Doesn’t work well on ereaders.
- Reflowable text – ePub, amazon azw kindle format, mobipocket reader format – universal eBook Reader for PDAs
- Science direct allows you to convert into ePub /Mobipocket
- Calibre allows you to change formats (as long as not protected by digital rights)
- Different devices have different structures i.e. file structure in Android is different to Apple.
New ways of searching for information
- Voice search –
Most mobile devices have voice connectivityShazam / soundhound technology – biologists use it by capturing birdsong and identifying birds
- Visual search – Google goggles – can not only identify things in images but also if you take pic of an image it will find other references to the image (for example a picture of a painting)
- Context specific – Location aware search results – world cat mobile use it. Computer finder.
- Barcodes/QR codes -QR codes – super easy to implement.
- Augmented reality – point camera at reality around you, brings information in around you. Layar app – information about our campus, direct where,how to get to library.
This presentation was probably the unexpected highlight of the conference. Unfortunately I was so gripped I forgot to make notes. This is the presentation:
Information literacy through inquiry: using problem-based learning in information literacy instruction
View more presentations from Alan Carbery
I have used PBL a lot in my previous work but not so much recently. Alan’s presentation inspired me to think about how I could use it in the future again.
Related articles
- Presenting at LILAC 2012 (melonthelibrarian.wordpress.com)
Melon The Librarian 