Information Literacy meets Web 2.0 Ways to engage the internet generation Peter Godwin University of Bedfordshire

 The educational background  The Web generation  Google and beyond  Web 2.0 tools  New approaches and content  The future

Future of Higher Education Technological change Competition Population change Student expectations Learning & teaching methods Funding Web generation Lifelong learning Innovation Branding

Our buildings and services say “I am to be admired, not used!” They want to carve out their own information landscapes Zarin flickr

It’s no longer a world of information scarcity!  Electronic books  Institutional repositories  Google and search engines  Decline of scholarly monographs  Open access journals  Decline of reading lists?

Web generation  Wants single search boxes like Google and Amazon which give instant satisfaction  Find our databases too hard to use and not where they want to work i.e. in their VLE  Boolean logic – no thanks!  Won’t bother to ask a librarian!

Web generation  Likes collaboration, teamwork and social networking  Navigates the Web by trial and error and won’t use manuals or help sheets  Research is a self-directed process, which is likely to be non-linear  Has grown up with PCs and video games  Used to multitasking  What is written down must be correct  Will cut and paste rather than read and digest

Image: 'The Items I carry' Items I carry

How do we respond?  Accept that they will use search engines  Teach Google and Google Scholar as legitimate sources where appropriate  Watch and recommend Google Print as a source of full text

 Become Information Gurus and recommend other search engines as alternatives

“We need to concentrate on how to improve the quality of the question” (Stephen Abram)

Web 2.0 RSS feeds Wikis Blogs Mashups Podcasting Tagging Vodcasting flickr del.icio.us MySpace YouTube Instant messaging Bleu celt flickr

Blogs

Wikis  “With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” (Eric Raymond)

Wikipedia

Social networks : MySpace

Social bookmarking

Tagging and Folksonomies

YouTube

Image: 'Looking for trouble' for trouble

Mashup  A website or web application which uses content from more than one source to create a completely new service

Podcasts  A form of broadcasting allowing individuals to record, publish, find, subscribe and listen to audio over the internet on a portable player  Has been described as the new “tranny”  Use RSS feeds which enable your subscriptions to bring you up to date stuff which you can then move to your mp3 player when you are ready

Instant messaging  Communication using text in real- time between two persons e.g. via web

What it means for us New skill sets to develop FUN Webchicken flickr New ways of working

Web 2.0 and our opportunity  How can we reach them?  How does it affect the content of our IL teaching?

McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario  Blogs  Wikis  Games  Second Life

Blogs & Wikis  Blogs encourage community and reflection, and help writing skills  Create a blog for a course who receive IL teaching and allow comments, and link to subject guides  Wikis encourage group work and peer review  Can be used in our teaching and could collect student content into the teacher’s aggregator

Blogs  The “blogosphere” is becoming like a global brain and is a vital part of online culture  Blogs are very current and becoming a valid information source to get the latest ideas about a subject

 Need to teach best sources for searching blogs e.g.Technorati  Need to teach how to evaluate a blog e.g. Kathy Schrock

Wikipedia  Use Wikipedia as a legitimate starting point measured against other reference sources, understanding its strengths and weaknesses

Wikis : Ohio University Biz Wiki

RSS  RSS feeds allow researchers to subscribe to regular content from news services and relevant content from databases

Podcasts : Curtin University of Technology, Australia

Nursing podcasts at Fullerton Library California State University

Vodcasts: University of Aberdeen Library

YouTube

YouTube : DMU Induction video

L-Team from Williams College Library, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Library Channel at Arizona State University Libraries

New approaches – instant messaging

Contacting the library Advert for RefWorks Link to subject guides New books New databases 36 Friends Chat Search the Catalogue Suggestions Blog University of Miami Library on MySpace

Facebook : access COPAC

Facebook LibGuides

New approaches - flickr  Flickr for storage of our photos and for presentations

.. Use tagging as part of critical thinking, making links which involve evaluation, categorising, and formulating keywords

Del.icio.us Del.icio.us as a research tool  helps students to organise what is found with easy storage of bookmarks, accessible anywhere…  assists referencing  encourages tagging of subjects by users which is central to the linking of ideas, and aids sharing of resources.

LibraryThing at Delany Library

New approaches - games Use of gaming e.g. Ohio State University gave out interactive game using Captivate to all new students

New approaches – Second Life Virtual Enquiry Desk for the shy FL person Best for enquiry-based and problem-based learning Good for virtual conferences and distance learning SL Librarians Dancing flickr slg8 Offers community and connectivity in an electronic world Makes the user leave her seat!

Image: 'We do not know what lies ahead...' 49We do not know what lies ahead...

The future ?

Kindle from Amazon

Effects on Information Literacy  The current IL models will survive but teaching will be less linear, less prescriptive, using more active learning techniques  Authority will not be so clear-cut as new metrics for assessing it are developed  Understanding the context will be crucial to information found on the web  Ethical use issues will be more significant  The participatory culture of Web 2.0 is here to stay

And finally It’s a world of perpetual beta so let’s experiment! Using these tools we need only be constrained by our imaginations to engage our users as never before!