Information Literate plans

Chatlogs edited and mounted: 1 (good); New Google calendars created: 1 (good); New wiki page created: 1 (good); Emails sent to important IL person: 1 (good); Anxieties about amount of work storing up for self: many (bad)


Have put online the transcript of the discussion on 10th June, which discussed the idea of a US Information Literacy month (see http://www.infolit.org/news/campaign.html) and the possibility of an Information Literacy Week in SL. The chatlog of our meeting is here: http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=437


Was a smallish meeting (boosted by a few observers to start with) but there were good ideas and people thought that an information Literacy Week in SL was feasible and worth pursuing. You can read more in the chatlog.


Have created a page on the Infolit iSchool wiki here http://infolitischool.pbworks.com/Information-Literacy-Week-in-Second-Life-2009 (please tell me if you have problems viewing it!).

Set up a calendar on Google here, which obviously doesn't have much on it at present, though there is a meeting on 9 July at noon SL time to update people - plus obviously the week istelf is already on the calendar.

Sent an email to the Vice Presidents of the National Forum on Information Literacy (which is behind the Info Literacy month initiative) and it looks like they will be supportive. Yay.

So, only oodles and oodles of work to be done to plan it .... am already getting distracted by planning the freebies, to start with, an Information Literacy calendar (using the IntelliCalendar factory ... this, of course, involved buying the factory. Will explain its working when have published the calendar).

Retreat, Mirror, Sheep

Retreats attended: 1 (v. good); Mirror presets discovered: 1 (amazing); Hours spent taking pictures with mirror presets: 2 (at least) (bad); Information Literate sheep created: 1 (ok, could do better)

Today was Educators Coop retreat. We gathered at the Mesa on the Educators Coop, and then were told to teleport to sparkly new Educators Coop 5, which will be official HQ with breakout areas, auditorium etc. Agenda can be seen in the picture. After brainstorming ideas of what we would like to see, went off to breakout groups.

Inevitably tp-ed initially to WRONG breakout group but then had useful chat with North, Larry and Pirate on cool palm shaded island. These palms are by same person as made the new treehouse on Infolit iSchool. Have in fact just invested in palm trees by this person (Tobias Novi) myself, since are only 2 prims for clump of 4 trees plus you get animated palm tree shadows. Not cheap but is copiable.

I had ideas about creating individual exhibitions for each coop member, and also mentioned the Swine Flu project. We also talked about pooling our induction stuff, having area with freebies, and doing an Educators Coop conference.

After this went back to plenary and chewed over ideas some more. Finally had individual time in which to take picture and make notecard about self. I created a poster (which have now also put up on Infolit) and also a notecard. Rx, who is ace builder etc., put the textures from us all into a slideshow and I show mine being displayed. We talked about research collaboration and Lorri and Mummer both expressed interest in working on virtual/digital/information literacy. So all good stuff.

Yesterday followed up SLED post to discover blog entry which explains how to make the Linden water reflect like a mirror: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/
guides/mirror-water/. Was immediately bewitched since Infolit island looks v.v. cool, with all the trees, bays, hills etc. Will have post just on that, but can see effect in pic of Educators Coop 5 at the top of this blog entry.

So on to the sheep. Spent very end of day (or should I say early morning) adapting a sheep I had received as a carrier for a notecard for some event or other. It was full perms, so retextured its coat back to wool, lowered sound and frequency of baa-ing (since baa-ing is only really cute for the first 5 mins you hear it) and created a notecard with some information literacy definitions.

Sheep now stands outside Centre for Information Literacy Research and will either give notecard on touch or (I hope, must test it with Dimitrova) you can buy sheep/notecard for zero Linden.

Plan whole flock of these with different notecards in. I am calling it Woolley the Information Literate Sheep.

Swinish

Meetings held: 2 (good); Weeks taken to put up chatlog of 1st one: 3 (bad); Hours spent on pasting up chatlogs, making wiki pages, revising notecard etc: 3 (bad)

Am trying to catch up on backlog of recording info on discussions, amidst all the backlog about everything else. Life is just one long backlog.

Firstly was Adra Letov's meeting, The Information Environment is Affect-Driven held on 21st May. Adra (Diane Nahl in RL) spoke in Voice but helpfully provided notecards with text and refernces, and the rest of us spoke in chat. Have put texts on wiki here http://infolitischool.pbworks.com/IB-and-emotion%3A-Dr-Diane-Nahl-21st-May-2009 and chatlog is here http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=418
Was v. pleased that had persuaded colleague Nigl (who is information behaviour researcher) to come along, and Jackie, Ishbel, Maggie (& various others) were there too. Lot of interest and things to follow up. Humorous moment when Nigl sat accidentally on my head. Lol.

Last Thursday was the Swine Flu Information Literacy event. Graham blogged the meeting rather faster than I have at http://tidalblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/seven-pillars.html and managed to capture the Humorous Event of this meeting, namely point where I had dropped people a surgical mask and we had all donned them as if for strange ritual. Maggie added to this by wearing mask on head, which was, frankly, more becoming than wearing it on face.
Have put up chatlog (this was all in chat) at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=417 and also have started up wiki page with some summary notes & explanation at http://infolitischool.pbworks.com/Information+Literacy+builds+-+Swine+flu where people are encouraged to comment. Or do visit the build at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20%iSchool/169/189/21/

When going through chatlog was disturbed to notice several occurances of:
"[2009/06/04 12:37] Pig poster: Unable to give inventory: 'No item named 'Bird flu - the exercise'.'."

Feared this meant that Swine Flu Notecard, that had cheerfully told everyone to take, did not work, but everyone was too polite to say. Turned out (when tried clicking stuff just now) to be in poster that wasn't meant to have notecard, so all well. Apart from fact that some people probably thought they were MEANT to have a notecard. All water under bridge now, anyway. And is charming that Pig Poster was able to take part in Chat, even if contribution was on repetitive side.
After session was clearing up when Spotted Dousa on Regent Plaza. She ran an idea about student journalism interns past me - could be interesting. Graham also was showing a colleague the build, so island felt pleasantly busy.

And after this stayed up far too late and ended up taking advantage of the open hours on the University of Washington sim (last pic), where there was a Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs build. You had to do a lot of climbing up and down, and there was some interactive element.

Was enjoyable, but am now wondering: did I learn anything about the hierarchy? Probably only clicked the bits and did the bits that looked amusing, rather than the parts which were most informative. On one hand, was frivolous academic v.v. late at night - on other hand gnat-like attention span probably means am rather like these millennial students everyone talks about.

And now think Sleep has come to top of my Needs hierarchy, so will stop.

By the Centre for Information Literacy Research I Sat Down And Wept

Emo animations bought: 1 (hypnotic); Swine flu builds started: 1 (good)
Today was a busy SL day. In the evening was the New Media Literacy discussion with Marty Snowpaw. Link to chatlog is in previous blog entry. Was good discussion, with a few people (I think) who hadn't been to Infolit ischool before and afterwards chatted to Kali.
Before that had spent some time altering the "Bird flu" 7 Pillars of Information Literacy build, to make it a "Swine flu" info literacy build. Idea is that people will be able to contribute own swine flu example questions, and plan an "infolit idea & build" session for 4th June.

Build certainly isn't complete, but have got enough there to be worth visiting (I think). Altered some of the examples of sources to compare & as had noticed that Graham had mentioned flu-related molecules asked him if he had a LM to one. He came up trumps and rezzed a molecule for an anti-flu drug [corrected from "vaccine", see comment]- you can see me standing with it.

Currently people can buy Bird Flu build for 0 Linden (perhaps shoudl advertise this more) and idea is that people will also be able to get hold of this one free too, though obviously it needs both space and spare prims to rez. At the moment it is on ground for easier access, but once is built, intention is to float it into sky.
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Was in fact day when comparatively few Linden were spent but whilst in Schadenfreude (I forget why - oh yes, I was considering getting some ties as a gift) I bought an Emo animation. You go through some weeping motions and then sit looking self consciously bereft before starting all over again. I have now managed to place this in a pose ball on the planter in front of the Centre for Information Literacy Research (thus the title, referring to the classic by Elizabeth Smart) for those who come over all emotional at the sight of so much information literacy.

LILAC time

Discussions held on Infolit iSchool: 1 (v. good)

Have finally resumed Infolit iSchool discussion series. Kicked off last Thursday with Pancha, Ishbel and I giving our picks from the LILAC (information literacy) conference. With due modesty none of us talked about our own session. Which - now I come to think of it - haven't actually blogged here, so will mention at the end.

Ishbel talked about Andrew Walsh's session on using mobiles (that is cell phones to American readers and Handys to German ones), Pancha talked about Peter Godwin's, which also focused on mobiles, and I talked about Sally Patalong's account of 2 modules (credit bearing) that she runs. Those are the speakers RL names, of course. Was mix of UK and North Americans at this discussion, and a couple of non-information/library people, and it was actually a good number for a good discussion. The chatlog is posted at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=397

After it was over, was taking down LILAC-y stuff (well, in fact was doing a little celebratory dance in front of poster - see right) when Togashi turned up, and we had a chat. Then I wondered off and bought hair, harpsichord, and tented platform, as discussed in last post.
So, in a previous post I talked about preparing for the session that Pancha, Ishbel, Maggie and Lulu and I did at LILAC. Things went roughly to plan, except that of course we had too much to talk about and so had to abbreviate things a little. The main technical glitch was on sound. Idea had been that Pancha, Ishbel and I (in RL) would use a microphone so that Lulu and Maggie (in SL) could tell what was going on. However we hadn't practiced this bit enough and it soon became obvious that what went in the microphone was feeding out into the speakers in the room, only a few seconds later. Was no way we could turn speakers off, so abandoned microphone.

Do you know it is only as I am typing this now that I realise that all could possibly have been saved by plugging the microphone into MY laptop (which was operating slowly but steadily with my 3G mobile stick), rather than into Pancha's laptop (which was the one plugged into the data projector). Oh well.

Main thing was that SL stuff projected fine to screen, Ishbel showed off the management school at St Andrews' island, I showed the 7 Pillars model, Pancha showed her intellectual property stuff and Maggie types in her contribution.

We didn't use a ppt as PowerPoint, but we did do a handout, which is linked below. We also created a delicious account, namely http://delicious.com/LILACSL

Aspects of information literacy in virtual worlds

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