Free program certificate -- Teaching and Learning in MultiUser Virtual Enviroments

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The European funded MUVEnation project has just launched ‘Teaching and learning with MUVEs’. This is a one year postgraduate programme, delivered online, for future and in-service teachers who want to use innovative methods and tools to address learners motivation and participation issues in compulsory education. What impact can 3D virtual worlds, such as Second Life, really have on our learning and teaching settings?

The course is free, but there are only 80 places. Participants will receive a formal letter or certificate of completion from their assigned institution For a full overview of the programme description and objectives please visit. We have four levels of participation - from the full course to those who are more experienced and would like simply to observe and participate in discussions
http://muvenation.org/about/programme-description/

The programme will be taking place in Italy, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Belgium and France. If you are interested in participating then please see the registration details here on the site, the closing days for applications is the last week in October.
http://muvenation.org/about/programme-description/
We look forward to hearing from you,
The MUVEnation team

Reference in transition (interesting Stephen Abram article)

Although a good portion of what I read in terms of change in libraries is cataloging/metadata/systems related (metadata for electronic & digital objects, nex-gen catalogs, rda, opensource ILS, products to enhance user experience that work with the existing catalog (e.g., vufind, etc.), changes in LC policy, etc.), occasionally an article which is more reference oriented wanders across my desk. I've certainly read alot of articles and case studies about specific libraries using specific new technologies (IM, twitter, myspace, secondlife, etc.) to reach out to users.

Stephen Abrahm's Reference in Transition examines some common (and less common) reference scenarios: "traditional" aka status quo, information commons, learning commons, embedded librarians, partners in action, the remote librarian, team players, the retail librarian, shoulder to shoulder (teaching & training), avatar based/virtual worlds, virtual librarian (no onsite f2f presence), emergency/on-demand librarian, aggregation of user experience, aka crowdsourcing, and finally, the mandatory -- all of these.

I think for the VL/avatar based librarian to become a viable choice, those platforms are going to have get easier to use. SecondLife is very computer resource intensive, and it's not easy to learn to navigate the SL world. Smallworlds seems like it may be a viable option (flash based with no software to download), but really can anything take down SL at this point?

I definitely have to disagree with this statement, though:

For instance, the OPAC and ILS systems don’t suck for library workers. They were built to meet our specific needs — library management, transaction processing, inventory systems, etc. When we moved an internally oriented tool out of the backroom to make it accessible to the “public,” we did a good thing. The unintended consequence of public OPACs, however, has been to teach us that end users have different needs and processes for discovery and navigation than library workers — especially in the virtual digital world.

I haven't met an ILS (and its OPAC) that didn't "suck" in some way. None of them are perfect -- as anyone who has actually done work in one knows -- as anyone who has done a search knows. Just because you might know more about how the ILS works, doesn't always ensure success nor a good experience. Ugly? Poorly designed? Lack of functionality? You betcha. I usually cringe when I go poking around in a library's OPAC. I also don't think our needs are so different from library users -- because after all, we are library users, too.

Collaborating in the Cloud (or maybe stuck in the quicksand...) [video]

Collaborating In The Cloud

view presentation (tags: collaboration library2.0)

Nice overview of distributed information, collaboration (Wired recently also has a great graphic about the hivemind vs. the individual brain, too) and web2.0 -- lots of the usual candidates (google products, del.icio.us, etc. etc.) but nicely organized.

One thing I am wondering though: What are the emerging technologies in libraries -- not the same ol' same old we've seen in presentation after presentation? Surely there are new things are the horizon (and drupal is not new, people...) Koha? Vufind? Endeca? Evergreen? Penntags? MTags? Those are all catalog or catalog related and some of those projects have been around for a while, too.

Second Life? Virtual worlds?
I don't know, are libraries really going to go there? 3D/Virtual worlds would seem to be the next evolution but considering the sheer computer power to run most of those, budget cuts, staff reductions, etc. I could see where staffing a 'real' reference desk would take priority.

Google maps mashups? Geo services?

Finally, am I just cranky or is lolcats on the way out? (please, let it be so... the cute factor is long gone....)