Successfully Integrating the best Web 2.0 features with the VLE

Caroline RocheHolmesdale Technology College, Kent

Places you can find me on the web

• Twitter: www.twitter.com/carolineroche • Email: caroline.roche@holmesdale.kent.sch.uk• Personal blog: http://uulibrarian.wordpress.com• Slideshare: www.slideshare.net/carolineroche• Delicious bookmarking site:

http://delicious.com/carolineroche• Diigo bookmarking site:

www.diigo.com/user/carolineroche

Essential online sites for school librarians

• School Librarians Network – creator Elizabeth Bentley. A Yahoo Group

• SLN ning – site for online collaboration and discussion groups; http://slners.ning.com

• School Librarians wiki: an online collaboration for all school librarians: http://slners.pbwiki.com

Why bother?• Because our

students are already collaborating online with each other

• Because we need to be collaborating too to reach them in a way that is relevant to them

Blogs – how and when to use them

• Blogs are a powerful tool for expressing personal views as well as selling your library

• If you have a personal blog be very careful not to name your place of work in any derogatory way, as this is a disciplinary offence

• Think about your audience - who do you want to read your blog? Pupils, staff, fellow librarians or friends? Audience sets the tone of the blog

• An excellent tool for writing blogs offline is Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer

Blogs

• You can use a school blog to share news about the Library or the school

• You can use a school blog to share reading – as I do here - or to share new books when they come in

• You can use blogs as an alternative to the school VLE, to give you full control over content and editing rights

• There are some excellent free blog providers - two good educational ones are WordPress and Edublogs

Good school library blogs

• Visit these school library blogs which are good examples of using blogs as alternatives to VLE pages:

• Anne Robinson’s LibraryOnline blog• Hinde House school library blog• Joseph Chamberlain school ning• WebTools4u2use is an excellent wiki where

you can find lots of the latest tools written by, and for, school librarians

Blogs to follow yourself

• These are a couple of my personal recommendations of blogs I follow. They should give you some idea of styles, so that you can find your own ‘voice’

• School Library Association blog• Phil Bradley’s weblog• The Unquiet Librarian• Thoughts of a [wannabe] librarian• Microsoft UK schools blog• Learning Log

Why Twitter?

• Twitter is a collaborative tool which allows you to connect instantly to selected people to form a PLN (personal learning network)

• It will take time to find the best people for you to interact with, who will give you the sort of information which ‘feeds’ you

• Twitter needs to be used consistently to get the best value, but will soon become an indispensible tool for you to use

Online surveys

• Survey Monkey is the easiest tool to use for this purpose

• Use it to find out what your pupils are reading, what staff are reading, qualitative information for your end of year report

• Surveys are free, with options to upgrade for more detailed reporting or longer surveys

Other polling tools

• Twitter has its own polling system which you can use for your followers – Twtpoll

• Polling tool for your website – Vorbeo

• Chat box for your website which pupils can use to ask you questions and see when you are online to answer – Meebo

Why online bookmarking?

• Used to share bookmarks with staff and students• Can be accessed anywhere on any computer• You can create separate lists for pupils or staff to use• Two main tools used by school librarians in UK are

Diigo and Delicious• Can embed the lists on to your VLE for better

functionality

Tag bundles (groups of bookmarks) that I have created

My latest bookmarks, including tags I have given them

What a Delicious page looks like

A Diigo page

Lists of bookmarks created by me

Diigo bookmarking tool in my toolbars

Delicious bookmarking tool

Advantages of online bookmarks

• You can quickly and easily save the webpage you are looking at by clicking the bookmarklet tag

• You can then share the bookmarks with others

• You can link to friends and search their bookmarks

• You have a library of websites which are peer reviewed by people you trust

Sharing books worldwide

• Why not connect to an author via Skype instead of an author visit?

• Cost is an advantage – no travel expenses • Skype is free to download – all you need is a

computer with a microphone and a videocamera

• Skype will make it more economical for much smaller tutorials for students – consider this for AL English for example

Where and how to Skype?

• Download Skype and install it on your machine

• Ask authors if they are willing to Skype to you - and what it would cost

• Ask the authors you have connected to on Twitter if they will Skype with your class

• The author visit could last over several weeks, with group work being done in between

Further reading• How to use Web 2.0 in your library by Phil Bradley.

Facet Publishing ISBN:9781856046077• Blogs and Bytes: ICT and the Secondary School

Library by Marianne Bradnock. SLA Publishing ISBN: 9781903446416

• Veen, W and Vrakking, B (2006). Homo Zappiens: Growing up in a digital age. Network Continuum Education.

• Their Space: Education for a Digital Generation by Green and Hannon. Available online: http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/theirspace