According to the report, Four in ten seniors go online, as of December 2009, 38% of U.S. adults age 65 and older go online, a significantly lower rate of internet adoption than the general population (74%) and even the next-oldest group (70% of adults age 50-64 years old go online).

Research on Seniors about one year later revealed that Americans age 65+ are among the least likely groups to go online, but once online, they are enthusiastic emailers, gamers, and information searchers.

I absolutely love this video.  I have to report that I gave my mother (in her late 70′s) an iPad for Christmas and I’m glad she hasn’t done this!

The Research on Seniors report continues to state:

“While social media use has grown dramatically across all age groups, older
users have been especially enthusiastic over the past year about embracing new networking tools. Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older nearly doubled—from 22% in April 2009 to 42% in May 2010.

• Between April 2009 and May 2010, social networking use among internet users ages 50-64 grew by 88%–from 25% to 47%.
• During the same period, use among those ages 65 and older grew 100%– from 13% to 26%.
• By comparison, social networking use among users ages 18-29 grew by 13%—from 76% to 86%.

“Young adults continue to be the heaviest users of social media, but their
growth pales in comparison with recent gains made by older users,” explains
Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and author of the report. “Email is
still the primary way that older users maintain contact with friends, families
and colleagues, but many older users now rely on social network platforms to
help manage their daily communications.”

My Mum isn’t into social networking, but certainly has a good grasp of email, navigating her way around for her information searches and loves her iPad for reading her favourite books.

What an absolute delight and honour to be included in this international list of teacher librarian leaders.

Bowie, MD—April 17—The winners of the first annual Teacher Librarian Leadership Awards for significant contributions to the field have been announced by the editors of Teacher Librarian: The Journal for School Library Professionals. Dr. David Loertscher, co-editor of the journal, said these individuals “have shown visionary leadership in the Learning Commons concept and innovation in 21st –century learning.”

“Librarianship and education are changing to meet the needs of students in a complex, information-rich, technology-intensive environment,” according to Loertscher, and “our honorees understand this and are working to innovate and create new models of learning and teaching, where technology plays a growing role not only in finding and using information but also by facilitating new social structures which promote collaboration, sharing, and real learning.”

The award recipients will be featured in the April 2012 issue of Teacher Librarian. They are:  Robin Cicchetti, LMS at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School, Concord, MA; Sydnye Cohen, LMS at Brookfield(CT) High School; Valerie Diggs, teacher librarian,  Chelmsford (MA) High School; Vi (Violet) Harada, professor,  Dept. of Information & Computer Sciences, Library and Information Science Program, University of Hawaii , Honolulu; Gwyneth Jones, “Daring Librarian”, Murray Hill Middle School, Howard County, MD;  Sue Kowalski, teacher librarian, Pine Grove Middle School, Syracuse, NY; Michelle Luhtala, library department chair, at the New Canaan (CT) High School Library;   Dawn Nelson, Instructional Media and Technology Coordinator,  Osseo (MN) Area Schools; Mark Ray, teacher librarian, Skyview Senior High School, Vancouver, WA; Ross Todd, associate professor, School of Communication & Information at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and director, Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL), Rutgers University; Joyce Valenza, teacher librarian, Springfield (PA) Township High School; Linda Waskow, library  media technology specialist, Beaufort (SC) Elementary School; and Tim Wilson Chief Technology Officer,  Osseo (MN)Area Schools;  Carol Koechlin, educator and author, Canada;  Karen Bonanno, educational consultant, Australia; Lyn Hay, lecturer, teacher librarianship, School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia;  and Andrew Churches, head of faculty art & technology, Kristin School, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand.

Teacher Librarian: The Journal for School Library Professionals is one of the leading publications in it field. Co-edited by Dr. David Loertscher and Dr. Elizabeth “Betty” Marcoux, the journal is published five time per year and is available in print and digital editions. It is owned and published by E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC which also published Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) magazine. For additional information see www.teacherlibrarian.com and kurdylapublishing.com

A PLN can be a great addition to your online portfolio to support your resume or your performance review. Your PLN is personal, portable and easy to maintain. It also demonstrates your understanding and recognition of the importance of having a professional online presence as well as the technical skills required to build and maintain this online environment.

In this short video I share 7 easy ways to get started. You can choose to use one of the tools or a combination. Remember, everyone’s network will look and function differently.

If you want to find out more about learning and leading through your PLN, then join me on 25 April or 26 April. I’ve set up three difference times, so you should be able to find a time that suits you to connect in for the one hour webinar.

I came across this term in the report on Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

In a traditional setting for the provision and management of information, the common term with which most would be familiar is an intermediary…someone who acts as a gatekeeper and/or a “middleman”.

With a greater use of mobile technologies and the always-connected user, the digital context heralds a change – instead of intermediaries we have the apomediaries who “stand by” as guides whose advice, direction and intervention is optional.

So what is an apomediary?

Interesting that it is the health industry that provided me with an answer.

“Both Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0 have given rise to yet another term, apomediation. Apo comes from the Latin for “stand by,” and mediate comes from the Latin mediare to “be in the middle.” Apomediation describes the fact that when you access information on the Internet, you cut out the gatekeepers or any middlemen (like your own doctor or an insurance salesman), and allows you to go directly to the source of information, even if it is not a (previously considered) “expert” source. The expert “stands by” you. The information may come from a professional, or it may come from someone considered to be more of a peer. The expert source is an apomediary (or apomediator), someone who stands by, offering you the Internet information you seek.”
http://patients.about.com/od/glossary/g/apomediation.htm

In a school context, I firmly believe it is the teacher librarian/school librarian who fits comfortably into this role, not only to “stand by” the students, but also the teaching staff and school administrators.

As we move more towards principal/school autonomy where decisions are being made at the local level, the teacher librarian can contribute content from the digital context to help inform the decisions being made.

For example, the Executive Summary in the original report that I referred to at the beginning of this post would be a useful document to discuss with school decision makers.

The move to have the students bring their own technology (BYOT) into the classroom is largely inevitable. The BYOT tsunami is fast coming over the horizon, with the pathfinders already having made the move.

In researching the new book on BYOT, Mal Lee has identified the implications of the development for schooling, teaching, the choice of personal technology in schools, school resourcing and your own operations.

BYOT is most assuredly not simply a technical development.

In a one hour webinar, BYOT: Understanding the inevitable and its implications, Mal will examine what is and is not BYOT, why all schools will eventually use a model of BYOT, the plethora of educational, social, organisational and economic opportunities opened by the development and the very considerable implications for your situation.

The Lewisville Independent School District video provides some insight into how BYOT has brought about change for schools in that district.

Join Mal Lee on Wednesday, 14 March 2012 for a one hour webinar, BYOT: Understanding the inevitable and its implications.

Mal is an author and educational consultant who has written a series of books for ACER Press and a myriad of articles on the impact of digital technology on the evolution of schooling, teaching and the school library.  Mal currently writes the education and technology columns for The Australian Educational Leader and Education Technology Solutions.

He will build on the international research he has undertaken in preparing for the new ACER Press publication he is writing with Martin Levins on Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT).

Mal is a former school principal, director of schools and technology company director. He brings a unique holistic
perspective to educational development.

Mobile apps and tablet computing are identified as the immediate rollout of technology likely to have an impact in higher education.  I’m sure we will see similar (if not the same) technologies identified when the 2012 K-12 Horizon Report is released later this year.

The NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition — The annual findings from the report, a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education.

“Six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning”.

Take this as a ‘heads up’ for where the leadership needs to be in the school library sector.

As identified in the Horizon report: 2011 K-12 edition, there are three major factors driving role changes for all educators:

• The increasing amount of resources and social networks available for learning;
• The increasing ubiquitous nature of mobile devices; and
• The increasing need for digital media literacy so that students can utilise the above resources and mobile access for learning and knowledge creation.

“The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators” (Johnson, et al 2011, p. 4. ) This key trend highlights the importance of why school libraries need to function effectively in the school community.

The abundance of resources adds to the complexity of the information environment in which students work. It highlights the need to continue the highly effective practice of collection development undertaken by teacher librarians to support the curriculum across different platforms on which resources are available. As an example, in an always-connected world, the recent announcement by Apple to introduce iBooks 2, iBooks Author and New iTunes U (Apple Events 2012 ) identified that there are already 20K education iPad apps and 1.5 million iPads in education institutions. Teacher librarians know which apps are free and trustworthy and can then recommend these to staff and students. The same collection development skills used to evaluate “traditional” resources to determine which are current, relevant, authentic and authoritative, are also applied to online databases and web sites.

The mobile devices students use to access these resources are multi-functional and make it easily accessible via the Internet. As indicated in the Horizon report: 2011 K-12 edition, “mobiles have moved to the near-term horizon because of the rise of a new class of devices, led by the category-defining blockbuster that is the Apple iPad” (Johnson, et al 2011, p. 14 ). The multi-functionality of tablet devices heralds the convergence of several technologies that lend themselves to educational use. With always-on Internet it is imperative that the skills required to assess the relevancy and credibility of information, and to then make sense of this information, is paramount.

“Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession” (Johnston, et al 2011, p. 5). Digital media literacy can be defined as the ability to locate, access, organise, understand, evaluate, analyse and create content using digital media (Wikipedia ; Australian Communications & Media Authority ). Even though this level of literacy involves knowing how to use technology it is “less about tools and more about thinking” (Johnston, et al 2011, p 5.)

The general capabilities in the Australian national curriculum, especially “critical and creative thinking”, provide a vehicle for teacher librarians to be active in the delivery of digital media literacy skills through inquiry based programs. For example, research pathfinders encourage active engagement in the interactive information seeking process. Pathfinders provide a starting point for the generation of questions, discussions and identification of suitable and relevant resources. Collaborative knowledge building environments such as wikis can facilitate the inquiry based activities that allow students to engage in collaboration, construction, knowledge sharing and creation. The school library is an ideal environment to engage in conversations about digital citizenship, the impact of a student’s digital footprint, ethical use of information and social responsibility in an always-connected world.

The vision is to go beyond school libraries being perceived as repositories of information artefacts to being flexible, dynamic learning environments; “centres of inquiry, discovery, creativity, critical engagement and innovative pedagogy” (Hay & Todd 2010a, p. 40 ). To make this vision a reality is a challenge for school leadership so that the best learning environment, resources and learning is available for all Australian students.

Libraries have existed for millennia. Their purpose has always been focussed on knowledge acquisition and sharing for the development of society. In the 21st century, school libraries are re-engineering themselves to focus on learning, curriculum and the skills needed for 21st century learning.

The evolution of school libraries into flexible, dynamic, high-tech learning centres designed to prepare students as responsible digital citizens to function effectively in a complex information landscape is dependent on visionary leadership and strategic planning to reach this level of functionality.

The concept of a knowledge commons or learning commons becomes the physical and virtual catalyst for inquiry, imagination, discovery, creativity and innovation.  The school library becomes the hub for networking, information access, digital literacy instruction, learning and knowledge creation – a shared space for all students and the school community.

The advantage of a ‘commons’ approach is it provides an opportunity to re-engineer the school library into a place/space that brings together the library, information technology and a qualified team of information, technology and learning staff whose combined knowledge, skills and expertise collectively support the integration of 21st century learning into the curriculum.

The new mission of teacher librarians is a return to the original purpose of libraries, that is “to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities” (Lankes, R. D.)

In The Atlas of New Librarianship, R. David Lankes offers a guide to this new landscape for practitioners. He describes a new librarianship based not on books and artifacts but on knowledge and learning.

Check out The atlas of new librarianship: companion website.

On January 18, a news article, Apple Is Said to Plan Digital-Textbook Push to Bolster IPad Use in Schools, heralded that Apple would be announcing a set of tools that make it easier to publish interactive textbooks and other digital educational content.

The announcement happened in New York on January 19. The following infographic helps to explain the announcement…..

Via: OnlineEducation.net

Can Apple really save education?

It looks like becoming a “flipper” will be the catch cry for 2012.

This short video provides a very practical overview for why you would flip your classroom.

Two teachers share how their flipped classroom was born.

Then there is The Flipped Classroom Network, which focuses on vodcasting in the classroom.

Wondering what a flipped classroom is all about…where would I be without an infographic

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