For me I think 2012 will be a year focussed on communicating effectively and in imaginative ways. The first project I’m involved in is going to be our new school blog site which will hopefully be launched this term. I’ve been extremely impressed with all the established school blog sites which I’ve learnt about via Twitter (a lot of which are hosted by Creative Blogs) and how they are increasing pupil’s language and communication skills as well as boosting their confidence and motivation.

Our project could be massive with the potential of getting most pupils involved from all areas of the school. I can’t wait to get it going and I’m sure I will continue to learn so much more about our school in the process. I will probably be involved in at least partially writing at least two blogs on the site: the library blog and the e-Learning blog.

I also want us to get involved in @deputymitchell‘s quadblogging initiative, but first thing’s first…

Alongside the blog project, I intend to further develop our SharePoint site as the school intranet. I’ve re-styled the library site over Christmas so it now looks so much better and created a new staff only e-Learning site. I intend for SharePoint to provide information and resources intended solely for members of the school, which will help to distinguish between private and public information. The blog and the SharePoint intranet sites should give us a good framework with which to communicate with all stakeholders.

Lastly (but not at all least) will come the need to review and develop our school Virtual Learning Environment. At present we have two: neither of which are seemingly embedded across all areas of the school. Recent conferences and discussions have made me start to consider what a 2012 version of a school virtual learning environment actually is. I’m no longer convinced it is a single source of information, resources and activities as it was back in the days of Becta’s recommended VLEs, but am now starting to wonder whether the 2012 VLE is a cumulation of everything that’s out there on the internet delivered to pupils through either a front-end website or apps on a tablet.

So, yet more blogging, tweeting, web development and project planning coming up for me in 2012. I can’t wait!

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 52 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

I must admit that the idea of watching a 20 minute video on YouTube is not something that I relish undertaking, but this particular video caught my eye as something that could be very interesting.  I was right.  It was well worth the 20 minutes spent watching it and I found it extremely thought-provoking.   Just where is technology and the internet taking us?  How will our use of technology impact on our lives over the next 10 to 15 years?  What impact does this have on education?

I’m currently in the process of writing (yet again) the ICT and e-Learning strategy for our school.   It’s such a difficult task because of the ever-changing nature of ICT and technology.  I have written it at least three times now and find that now I’ve watched this video, I’m going to change it yet again.

Technology is ubiquitous and, undeniably will become even more so over the next few years. I personally believe the challenge for education now is not to provide the latest technology, but to provide the infrastructure and associated safe systems to make the technology work for every pupil regardless of how they prefer to learn.  Whilst I was growing up I was taught that the definition of “church” was not the building, but the collective congregation of people turning up to worship.  Could a school be defined in a similar manner?  If the pupils bring the technology and resources then it isn’t the building and its physical resources that define “school” it’s the people, the interactions and their dissemination of knowledge.  When we truly are using mobile technologies, then learning can take place anywhere and at any time either singularly or within groups.  (Let’s not forget the benefits face-to-face social learning will always provide).

Education may have a long way yet to go to meet this vision.  The frustration arises in the realisation that the technology is not far off already being there.

So my challenge now is; if this truly is the future of education, how do I write a strategy to meet and deliver it?

Our biggest problem is saving student work.  Just how do we so it so that they can collect their work whilst on a PC later?  We have not got the facilities to reset the iPads back to our standard build after every loan (we have too many libraries and would need a Mac Mini per library), therefore we are restricted in what we can provide.  Most apps insist on individual user details being saved within the actual settings of the iPad.  We really don’t want students to be having to set up the iPads every time they borrow them and we really don’t want to have to manually wipe the settings every time.  The ideal scenario is for a student to create something and click on a button that asks them to login and then sends the files to their own personal file storage accessible anywhere.

The share options provided within the productivity apps we are using (Pages, Keynote, Photos etc…) really limit what is possible.  We’re investigating whether we can save to the SharePoint MySite using WebDAV, but, although it can be done, each student will require their own individual URL and it still doesn’t look possible to upload a picture.  Even Outlook web access doesn’t work as it’s not possible to attach a file!

This is a real headscratcher this one.  Any ideas?

I have been talking about how QR codes can be useful for marketing within libraries for some time now but just how useful are they?

I recently asked one of my library staff for a list of all the print magazines to which we subscribe so that I could go through the list and identify those magazines for which we also have an online full-text version either directly from the publisher or through an aggregated collection such as Infotrac.

I wanted to create labels to put on the print journal with a short link directly to the online version of the magazine and a QR code.  This would provide two advantages: from looking at the print magazine it would be easy to spot that we also have it online and how to access it from a computer; and it would provide anyone with a mobile phone or tablet an easy way to access the online version.  But I then returned to my initial question: just how useful would the QR codes be?

The answer came via @CraigTaylor74.  http://delivr.com is a free website for creating QR codes and short URLs.  Delivr differs from other QR code creators because of its powerful reporting facilities.  Delivr gives me the ability to see how many times each link has been used along with the number of times that the QR code has been scanned and when.   It also reports the type of device that has been used and the geographical location from which it was scanned (which is not much use for my mini-project, but interesting nevertheless).

Delivr Dashboard

So now I have a dashboard that I can log into at any time to see whether the QR codes have been used.

Using this rich information in conjunction with the monthly usage statistics I receive for our resources should help me assess whether this form of promotion is worthwhile.

Its early days at the moment (we only put the labels on today) and as yet I haven’t trained the library team in how to use them.  I’ll keep you updated with how it all goes and how the stats are looking.

Firstly though, I was extremely impressed by how focussed and forward thinking the new Learning Technology team are at Aylesbury College.  They have migrated to Moodle 2 this Summer from Blackboard and have put in a programme to train all staff in its use.  They have recently undertaken some market research within Aylesbury to identify courses that they can deliver online and are starting to put these in place.  They have a Microsoft IT Academy and are part of Blackberry’s Academic Program.  Shibboleth will be in place soon for authentication to Moodle and their eBook collections, and they have been encouraging teaching staff to create videos for their Planet eStream. They have also visited Preston College in Lancashire to see how they manage and support technology and have adopted lots of their initiatives including the use of personal training plans.  Overall I think it’s a really exciting (and busy!) time for this college.

Now, getting back to Adam. We had such a wider ranging conversation which included using the same QR Code and varying the content whilst getting stats and geolocations from its use (check out http://p-qr.com) , RFID and Near Field Communication (NFC), and Augmented Reality and the innovative use of web cams (another website to check out is yawcam).  He also threw in for good measure information about how Abingdon and Witney College have created an award scheme based on RSC South East’s Hi5 awards to encourage teachers to use technology, and “the best ever” maths website, Khan Academy.

So, guess what I’ll be doing later…

I’ve also been doing some work for JISC TechDis on their TechDis Essentials project.  More details at: http://blog.jisctechdis.ac.uk/?p=670

Hang on in there and there’ll be a full blog post coming soon.

Providing a complete installation of Moodle on a USB stick can help to increase confidence and enables users to try things out for themselves without anyone knowing what they’re attempting to do! 

Administrators can use Moodle on a stick to test out new functionality and create new designs and content without going near their live installation.  I’ve been using it to compare Moodle 2.0 with Moodle 1.9 and to assess the impact that the changes will have on our site.

Users can create courses and materials and then when they are happy back it up to import it into the live Moodle site later.

There have been a number of organisations who have previously made Moodle available on a stick as a complete package: VLE Middleware used to distribute Moodle 1.9+ as “Sticky Moodle” and the RSCs distribute it (again at the time of writing, version 1.9+) as part of eduApps and Maxos (Moodle and Xerte on a stick). 

However, it is possible to create a Moodle 2 installation on a memory stick yourself using free software.  Creating a Moodle 2 on a stick is fairly painless and I would encourage anyone to try it. 

Take a look at: http://www.chsoftware.net/en/mowes/mowesportable/main.htm and, once you’ve read the instructions, start the Mixer.  You can then select Apache, MySQL and PHP5 along with the Moodle package.  Follow the next few screens through until you’ve got the zip file.  Unzip this file onto your chosen memory stick and follow the installation instructions. 

Once you’ve installed your Moodle on a stick and tried running it, you may encounter a couple of problems which look like it has failed.  If your browser has opened but Moodle hasn’t loaded, just refresh the browser page.  I suspect sometimes the server part of the stick loads slower than the browser.  Also if you are a Skype user, you need to ensure it isn’t running because it uses the same port.

I’m sure that you’ll find having such a portable Moodle really useful and glad you tried it.  Feel free to comment if you have any problems with your install.

Enjoy.

The first thing to get across is that they are not in any way difficult.  I gave a training session at one of the colleges here in the North West recently and realised that to get this part of the session longer than 10 mins I would really have to draw it out.  (We spent the rest of the time looking at Web Conferencing and the benefits this could bring to libraries which I may blog about later). 

Let’s start with a traditional barcode.  They usually represent (in a library context) either a reader number or an ISBN or other machine-readable information.  They have been used in libraries for a considerable number of years for use primarily with interacting with the library management system.  A scanner is held close to a barcode (or visa versa) and the information contained within the barcode is transmitted to the device attached to the barcode reader.  Over recent years mobile devices such as smart-phones and games consoles have introduced barcode readers and are being used more and more to scan barcodes.  (Think of the price checker apps available on smart-phones). 

So, what are QR codes?  QR stands for Quick Response.  Think of them as an “upmarket” barcode.  The beauty of a QR code though is the amount and type of information it can store.  QR codes can store images, text, URLs, email addresses; a variety of content.  They can be created freely and easily using any number of QR code generators available on the internet.  Each generator will create an image that you can download or print to use anywhere.

In the same way as a scanner or reader is required for a traditional barcode, a QR code also requires a reader or a scanner but these are available (free in the main) for smart-phones and mobile devices with cameras. Take a look at the video below for a good overview (although the speech is a little slow).

So what use are they to libraries?  They could be a really useful and important part of the library marketing strategy. Some libraries have already started adopting them for:

• reading lists within the library, the relevant classrooms and online on the Virtual Learning Environment
• links to individual eBooks positioned on the shelf or even stuck on the book
• ask a librarian service
• links to the library catalogue

How else could they be used in the library? Take a look at the following videos:

I also believe that IS Oxford have incorporated QR code support into their newer versions of the Heritage Online Library Management System.

Some QR code generators that I am aware of.  Just select your favourite.  Each one creates an image of a QR code that you can use anywhere you wish.

http://delivr.com/qr-code-generator
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/

Have a go and see what you can do.  It doesn’t take long and they could become a talking point in your library and increase your online resources usage at the same time!  Let me know if you have any novel ideas for using QR codes in your library.

I’ve just returned from visiting the Richard Rose Academy in Carlisle: a new purpose-built school which opened earlier this year.  The thinking that has gone into the planning for the building is obvious and is seemingly reaping rewards. 

Technology is all over the place but used appropriately. For example, when we arrived at the school we were greeted with a touch screen computer asking for our names and where we were from.  It then took a very bad picture, logged us as being on the premises and printed us a visitors pass.  Apparently if the fire alarm had gone off whilst we were in the building this system would automatically produce a list of who it thought was in the building presumably accompanied by said awful photograph!  Much more efficient than wading through piles of the traditional paper-based visitors pass books.

So, getting back to ID cards, just what can you link to the same ID card as the library system? Well, firstly the student attendance system.  When they get to the school, students and staff swipe in to register their presence in the building.  Students can then go into the main area of the building and add money to the card to use for their refreshments whilst they are on the premises (or they can add money online through the “Parent Pay” system or even Paypal!).  Those with “free” lunches get a credit on their account every day which is automatically debited if not used and cannot be accrued.  These cashless systems are all part of encouraging students to take responsibility for their economic wellbeing.  Parents can even see what their children have purchased through the system during the day to keep an eye on their junk food intake! 

So what else, well when they want to borrow a laptop they are available from the laptop lockers controlled by their (guess what!) ID cards!  When the ID card is swiped, the lockers open the door to the laptop that has the most charge in the battery.  Swiping the card again opens the same door for the student to return the laptop.  Printing is also monitored and controlled through the cards as is access to certain areas of the building using an Access Control system and the disabled lifts are also activated by the ID cards.

Without an ID card it would be extremely difficult to get anything done within this academy. 

There is still no guarantee that students will display their cards whilst they are on the premises though!