Opening up the world with open reading

Richard Elliott has some peaches in his eLearning Watchfor May. A couple that I was particulary taken with are The Open Library and The Open Academic Textbook Catalogue.
The Open Library

This amazing resource offers a searchable (editable) database, with, once you find a book you want oppoprtunties to read, borrow, and/or buy. Some books only have the buy option, but many have a download option in a wide range of file types (or you send to your Kindle - which I didn't try as I don't have a Kindle :-)).

Richard described the library as follows: "The Open Library. Is an ever-growing repository of books of all types and subject. It is an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open, and contributions are welcome. Already the site claims to have over 1,000,000 free e-book titles. Plenty you will recognize and maybe read or direct your students to."

The Open Textbook Catalogue

If you are studying, or just interested in learning this is the place to go. The easily searchable site offers textbooks to print (at a cost, but way less than it would cost to buy from a shop), as well as in the following formats .PDF, audiobook, EPUB, mobi, and 'read online' (usually free). As Richard says, "Always good to see efforts being made to ensure educational resources can be obtained freely and with minimum cost or no cost at all. This initiative is great and is open to any faculty world wide".

get excited and change things: How the library is engaging with Unitec's new eLearning strategy - a case study (Fran Skilton and Penny Dugmore)

Fran Skilton started by giving some of the driver around strategy at Unitec in general and in the Library in particular. The two key points made were the Living Curriculum and Innovation in Teaching. Complementary to this are the principles of learning and teaching (recently improved).

The library has been involved with the new eLearning strategy and have been providing, for example, environments that embed literacies. Two of the librarians joined the  seventy-eight community elearning coordinators on campus.


E-resources seen as equal partners to paper-based resources, and often preferred by some students. The library have deliberated decided to purchase other formats as well. The lending stats are decreasing, but their door stats are increasing. There is demand for the library to remain open longer. There is a shift towards being a learning commons.




The librarians are changing as well and technology is no longer seen purely as the domain as geeks. The instant messaging version has been upgraded, and there has been a large number of queries from students. Several teachers have also asked to have the chat widget for the library to be installed on their Moodle sites as well. People's attitudes to student communication online are changing. Library Guides are being updated and have become quite organic. The look and feel are sometimes a controversial subject of discussion.

The training in the library needs to change as well. With the introduction of the elearning strategy the library has started collaborating with other institutional partners. These are all seen as exciting, positive breakthroughs, and the future will include further investigations into the potential still to be explored. 

ePortfolios: showcasing student voice and choice (ACEC 2010)

Image by hazelowendmc via Flickr

Christine Haynes - ePortfolios: showcasing student voice and choice

Christine showcased some of the work that students (reception to year 6) are doing with multmodal texts, digital storytelling, and ePortfolios. She shared some rich examples of student work and comments. Students used either their own photos or images from places such as the "Australian photo library". In addition, the class created the podcasts using their own voices as well as others from interviews.

Visual explanations were used a lot to encourage oral literacy. Students themselves created much of the resources and explanations too. Data was translated into graphs and charts, which were shared with and commented on by peers. Awareness was raised of audience and appropriacy as well as creation of resources for authentic audiences. As such the students created artefacts and images around concepts such as, for example, peace. Animation, and other hands-on creation were seen as really important.

Reflection was encouraged, and students were assisted in reflective practice. For instance, commenting on book chapters as they read them. Students were also asked to explain choices around images, colours and backgrounds. Parents could also visit the resources, and leave comments.

The link with Alan November's keynote was strong, with ePortfolios being populated by student created resources, which were then shared. The primary years examples shared were indicative of the creativity and engagement of learners once they are given the choice and forum to share.

Librarians and the changing education landscape...

After much discussion and research with Fran Skilton and Donna Salmon, on Wednesday May 13th a group of groundbreaking librarians met at Unitec NZ to delve more into what the learners of today could potentially be using for their research.

We started with an overview and introduction to the Moodle site that had been developed, and then moved into an icebreaker which included discussion around favourite food types (given that we were heading toward lunchtime) - there seemed to be a majority vote for chocolate!

After discussing Web 2.0 and what it is, we moved into the scenario of Susie, and then heard an excerpt from David Lankes "You are the Future of Libraries: No Pressure" who speaks about the future of libraries and the changing 'shape' of information literacy.

After some discussion about Susie and the video, the participants then organised themselves into groups of between 2 and 4, with a laptop per group and logged into Mindmeister. The remit was to mindmap issues, concerns, opportunities, potentials, required support around the library and meeting the needs of students such as Susie. After some initial hiccups with setting up Mindmeister accounts, everyone got up and running, and soon the mindmap started to take shape on the screen in front of us as people edited synchronously. It was superb to walk around and listen to the discussions that were happening around the mindmapping exercise, and also see what happened as people gained confidence – both in skills with the tools and communication within their group.

After a quick overview of the minmap, each group logged into the Libraries of the Future Ning community.

Summarising some of the key themes from the mindmap, people summarised their thoughts and added discussions, and then went on to add to other people’s discussions and started to answer some of the questions that had been posed. Hopefully, some of the other people in the international Ning community will also add to the discussions.

There are now discussions around a day-long retreat (with chocolate on tap) to explore the Web 2.0 tools, and to discuss potential initiatives for Unitec NZ library.