The future of learning: starting now

The journal and the book, suggests Professor Timothy O'Shea, will not die but will inevitably mutate as we find new modes of knowledge sharing and use - and ownership (individuals up to open collectives).

Technology is changing learning and research in universities - centralised systems, e.g. for authentication or records management; distributed software that's installed and used by random academics regardless of whether they are supposed to or not. All sorts of innovative uses of technologies for students e.g. audience-participation style clickers for lecturers to take quick polls during lectures (does this add much value over the old hands-up method?).

Dead horse of the week
Students are very at ease with technology and "view ICT in education positively and confidently". Interesting applications in veterinary sciences - virtual sick cats, dogs, cows - virtual "dead horse of the week" (first big audience chuckle of the day). Vet students also construct their own virtual subjects ("imaginary sick dogs") to support their own studies. Virtual sick animals are archived and can be reviewed in later years.

Vicarious learning
Vicarious learning happens by watching other students in action - even when the student is not actively participating in a discussion. YouTube is a great mechanism for organising vicarious learning and has been used for example in computing science lessons. Elearning students use Edinburgh's "best of breed" platform for elearning (Virtual University of Edinburgh - VUE) - they use Wikis, Second Life (constructing exhibitions within it) and "assess co-created artefacts". VUE is used by all sorts - staff, students, alumni - for awareness, e-learning, PhD projects etc. The people using it may never meet but share virtual spaces - often in hybrid form (real people in real offices connecting in a virtual shared space).

Speckled computing
Speckled computing is also changing research; it's based on specks: "miniature programmable semiconductor devices which can sense, compute and network wirelessly". These are e.g. placed all over a person to track their movement and reflect it in an avatar - enables a person to teach a robot how to dance. Tim also gave a good example of using specks in capturing movements of shy, nocturnal creatures like badgers - place the speck and it will wake up and start to monitor activity when it senses some movement.

Collaboration
Through collaborative activities like SAGES, we're seeing academics across a range of institutions (with different computing sources and sources of money) engaging in research which could not be done without the computational facilities their technical collaboration enables - intensive and large-scale data analysis that requires massive computing power. This is akin to the Large Hadron Collider, the data from which could not have been analysed prior to the super-computing era.

Innovation
Procurement is increasingly innovative and driven by the needs of learners. Scholarly communication is also evolving with Open Access presenting challenges as well as benefits - how do you motive researchers to engage, control versions, respect copyright - etc. Libraries are evolving as universities around the world invest in library spaces and move away from "librarians roaming the corridors shouting 'silence in the library'!" - Seriously, the library is a good place to remind students they are in the university; even if they're not using the resources they like to come in and soak up the atmosphere (particularly non-science students, who don't get to hang out in labs, and those not living in halls of residence). Edinburgh keeps its library open till midnight and still has to hustle out a few hundred students at that point - recognises the importance of "not having silly signs stuck up" and pointless legacy rules; using zones to allow for different work styles from vibrant to quiet. "Obviously, one has to support mobile computing" and recognise how many people will want to bring their own laptops - allow for enough workstations.

Conclusions
Student learning has changed - group work and digital assets. Research has changed, using technology to drive achievements that would not have been possible in the past. Technology's not just changing how people produce things but how people own things (more collective ownership). Libraries have changed and are continuing to change - mostly for the positive. More social learning - and considerable social benefits from learning and teaching with computers. Computers have not dehumanised learning just as email has not dehumanised communications. We'll see more research-led learning - because research is expressed in digital form and students have very easy access to the research output of the academics around them; research is published on websites, conference supp data etc - don't need to wait for it to be published in a journal now.

And the next 10 years will see even more dramatic change than the last 10. Eeeep.

Breakout Session B (30): Implementing Library Learning 2.0 - Bobbi Newman, Robin Hastings, Missourri River Regional Library

Bobbi and Robin began by explaining the background to an innovative training scheme undertaken at Missourri River Regional Library based on the 23 Things programme created by Helene Blower for Charlotte-Mecklenburg County libraries. Missourri were the first in US, and only the second in the world to implement 23 Things (though they actually did 29 things!)

Tools used were:

• gmail (entire staff got one to get blogger access)
• blogger
• bloglines (this was pre google reader)
• del.icio.us (all links from all classes and bundled by class no.)
• Odeo (website that allows production of podcasts)
• Email (staff were not completely technologically savvy)

Added:

• Myspace (it was clear that users were there)
• Gmail
• Map of Visited States (from Steven Abrahams 42 things)
• Search Engines (remind folks that Google isn't the only player!)
• Google Labs (some things in Google Labs

Subtracted:

• Life time Learners (just went ahead and skipped that part - that was probably a mistake!)

How the programme worked for them
Lessons went out on the blog, weekly emails sent to staff (fit with normal use of email) and added incentives. Everyone who completed the original programme got an MP3 player and they would give candy, certificates etc as they went. Incentives included public acknowledgement at staff meetings, little candy, oranges, toys, pens etc. on desks - peer pressure in a nice way! And a little mp3 player was given at close of course.

Staff demands
We took the ideas from Charlotte Meklanberg and applied directly but that just didn't work for them. It took staff longer to complete (4-5 hours/week) so divided out lessons a little. The proximity of peers and distractions tricky so a dedicated computer space was set up by Bobbi's office so they could ask questions (though suppossed to be self-sufficient programme). The team are also running advanced workshops (e.g. Flickr, MySpace and tagging).

Staff reactions
Good responses, helpful for keeping up with users and the method and self-led style worked well for some. Meanwhile Bobbi and Robin thought it worked amazingly and wondered why they hadn't thought of it themselves!

Lessons Learned

• Be flexible (so depending on your library, workload, other issues etc you need to flex to make it work)
• Incentives work (the mp3 players were great but even the silly incentives still entertained and pleased people - even cheesy cards etc!)
• Don't reinvent the wheel, steal away:
• http://mrrllearning.blogspot.com
• http://del.icio.us/hblowers/learning2.0Libraries

• Find out what works for you
• Find out what works for your staff

Now what?

• Library Learning 2.1 next - didn't want to just be done with this programme. In fact Charlotte Meklanberg did the same thing too. We have taken what we learned from round . Each lesson goes up one at a time, and all are 1 hour micro lessons. All about interesting things if not all 100% work focused.
• Public classes - Facebook class at end of April
• The library goes 2.0 - library now on facebook, flicr and myspace etc. and also manage the blog (now a pool of writers though). So now we continue with it.

Demo:

Library Learning 2.0
Week by week lessons (which look super!) which staff had to blog on each week.

Library Learning 2.1
Is similar but each week is a new tool - staff only have to comment on each lesson to show participation

del.icio.us shown - wide variety of libraries doing this programme and many many libraries are involved (as shown on the originating website: http://plcmclearning.blogspot.com/)

Q&A

Q: In Library Learning 2.1 do you intend to encourage choice in other blogging software for instance
A: We encourage staff to ask what they want to learn. Sort of wish we'd done Wordpress this time. But we use same platforms to track use for Incentives again - mp3 player again and a prize draw for a digital camera. Doing step by step instruction is harder across multiple platforms. Our staff weren't very tech savvy so telling them to go get a blog would not have worked well. Most of our staff were probably around 1 on a scale to 1 to 10 on a tech-savvy scale. Most had not heard about what they were teaching about. Some attitudes about MySpace dangers etc. changed when they actually learned about tools. Patrons were coming up and asking questions about how to, for example, block someone on MySpace but the staff in the computing centre could not answer those questions so the staff really need to know what's going on.

Library 2.1 is going really really well. Incentives from the dollar store are still appreciatted and it's working really well!

Q: you are doing technical training, what about cultural training?
A: yup we're talking about personal identity safety, instant messaging etc. We talk about it a lot face to face as well. In the original programme al lot of the younger staff didn't take part, some of the older ladies jumped on and adapted really well and went for it. Online privacy is the second lesson in Library Learning 2.1 - including ad that gives a good idea of the risks. Once somethings online its there. The ad sparked some fascinating discussions online about this.

Q: In terms of mobile the first reaction is to ban and shut out of our systems. Younger people adopt regardless of that approach but as adults we should facilitate new environments anf you must take risks and learn to use tools and environments.

A: We spent a lot of time talking with someone whose library had blocked Myspace (in us myspace scare stories all over the place). Robin's son wanted a myspace page and she took him through a compromise set up - they set up a cat page for a neighbours cat and chatted through privacy etc. in the process of creating. Bobbi has had a personal and professional Flickr account - when she put a foot picture up though all kinds of weird types appeared out the woodback

Q: Increasingly our identity is online so management of that will have to be really important. Child identity issues etc. can be raised.
A (Bobbie): I really want to teach a class on that but its hard to know where to go with that as its all very very new. And you can't teach your kids/users about online safety without knowing about it yourself

Q: we have an it department to pick a single platform so one blogging software for instance, very difficult.
A: we're very lucky that our director buys into this and Robin is our IT manager so we are in a good position. You may just have to pick one and start with something. \

Q: we get students complaining about other students using Facebook etc on institutional PCs and we have to say that they may be doing work
A: you do hear about places where VLEs have worked badly so moving to Facebook, Ning, Myspace etc. Loads of really creative work going on that are definitely educational - eg math equation son myspace. The more staff that know and understand this stuff, the easier it is to build defence.


This slideshow on Google Docs:
http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dgfkzkp5_267mznj5rdd