Library 2.0

Thanks to Carolyn Foote over on library20.ning.com for sharing this info about the upcoming K12 Online Conference 2007. The conference will focus on web 2.0 tools and their role in learning. Presentations will be posted online. Several “live events” will take place online as well. Love that the theme is “Playing with Boundaries” – this certainly plays with the boundaries of how to attend a conference. Looking forward to this ‘happening’! (ok, happenings were so 1960′s or was it 70′s?)

Welcome to the K-12 Online Conference!

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from all educators from around the world who are interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This is a FREE conference run by volunteers and open to everyone, no registration is required. The conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries”. The 2007 conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.

It’s been a few months since Linda Fox (Capital Region BOCES School Library System) and Dee Portzer (Questar III School Library System) sponsored Library 2.0 tech camps for 30 or so school librarians.

I’m looking back on the blogs that were started during the sessions and am so pleased to see so many of the blogs that were used to record ideas and reflections during tech camp have been turned into really useful communication tools!

Jan Tunison at Scotia Glenville CSD used her blog as a jumping off point for a technology update session for colleagues in her school district. I just love her observation on the “us” in delicious

“In the spirit of collaboration and the us in de.licio.us, teachers working on similar topics can easily share weblinks related to the topic of interest.” Rumor has it that the technology session was very successful!

Way to go Jan. http://jtunison.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/delicious/

At least two blogs have morphed into reading recommendation journals – The Librarian Soul and Library Crazy. I know I’ll be checking these for interesting and compelling titles to read. (apologies – I don’t recall whose blogs these are!)

The Libby Scene blog is being used to record issues, thoughts and ideas discussed as they work on updating the school’s Unified Research Model.

” ..one of the important skills that students should learn, especially in the era of Web 2.0, is that there are many ways to demonstrate learning or findings. Whenever possible, students should be given the opportunity to choose to share information in the form of a product that best demonstrates learning …. and be able to explain why they chose to create the product in a certain way.”

I believe some of the tech campers have started new blogs and wikis for various projects in their school libraries. I hope I’ll hear about what they’ve gone on to do as a result of tech camp.

In the meantime, another session of “tech camp” is scheduled for October. Looking forward to another 2 days of exploring how these tools help students, staff and teachers in a learning environment.