6th September, Spirit of Tasmania the ship had an open day by invitation only. My father, mys sister and I went to check it out. There was food sampling, tourist activity promotion, and accommodations plus resorts. The ship was enormous and glamorous on the inside. The rooms look like a decent hotel room. En suite included as well. The fresh air on the upper deck was sea salty slightly chilly cold but refreshing. After months of work on the land, some sea side break away is nice.
The neighbour without permission drilled and bolted a 2m iron gate against my property and yes, it swings open against my wall. You can feel the earthquake when it slams. Mom and the neighbour negotiated to move the gate against the bordering wooden fence for good measure. What else would the neighbour do behind our backs, eh? Damage to property is unlawful!
13th September, 7:45am Sha Sha our family pet guinea pig died of a heart attack. A sad time for us all, especially mom and my sister, they took it pretty bad.
FYI.See most world monuments in miniuate style
http://www.tobuws.co.jp/en/exhibit/world_1_1.html
26th September, Unconfence web 2.0 "Learn through play".
Upon entry is registration of name and sign permission to have your picture taken during this conference. In the foyer you can see Wii Sports was setup for use and so was Wii fit in another section of the foyer. We all congregated in the community room, here we were introduced to the concept of unconference and the general principles.
We had to sort our selves into a group of 10 people and everyone in that group must not know each other. Then we told to allocate a person from our group to be the pilot. hee hee. in my group there was only 1 guy and we all instant named him our pilot. Each group was given paper, elastic bands, and sticky tape. The goal was make a missile and see which one flew the most furthest. The group that made the big paper ball flew the furthest. Our group got noted for looking most anaesthetic of all missiles. hee hee. While those who threw the sticky tape was ingenious but was disqualified. After that butcher paper (big white post it notes) was laid on the ground with colour markers. We are all asked to write down topics of interest which is related to Internet and library. Bold and not knowingly I wrote down "information overload and that we need to keep it simple for staff and patron" in this modernity. Once all the topics are hung up in the window and being rearranged, they were allocated into time slots, and you who wrote the topic was to mediate the session. Quite the shock. I have not prepared anything nor was i ready to wing it. Luckily for me I had Zoe help me out and we co-host mediated the session.
The session opened with too much online products, Internet progression drives the change of services, then organisational change is bound to follow suit. But we are more or less not prepared for the change of our traditional roles. Just because patrons have expectation of us should we bow down or should we be more diplomatic and be selective of what we should be expected to skilled in. Many patrons seem to treat us like computer technicians than librarians when it comes to Internet and computer problems. Many of the queries are not about the library website or online services. Also other organisations such as Tax Office and Immigration Office has pointed citizens to their local library to download or fill out forms online. However, library staff are not trained to do that due to privacy reasons and out of library services scope. Also people see the library not as the place to ask reference questions but a recreational place or Internet cafe.
Morning tea break with cookies and Wii.
I chose to attend MLC Skoolaborate session conducted by Mr. Westly (my bad spelling). Schools from all over the world come together online in Second Life environment yet Skoolaborate's portal to learn from each other or undertake educational units or explore or collaborate on projects or create online teams. Second Life uses PDT time (pacific daylight time). Skoolaborate aim to collaborate globally with other schools. He also showed us the potential future ways interaction in education and beyond.
QR code used in UK, Japan, and Telstra. Allows mobile customers to use their camera phones as barcode readers. Check out these websites for information:
Tactile Google Earth. 3D image if combined with touch screen screen it becomes interactive. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLconRxEyzc
mybusuu.com language garden website where students from overseas can teach local aussie students their language and we teach them English in return.
Teachers still have a role in class, they act as mentors, guiding students at the beginning and assisting where necessary but ultimately students in class are expected to self educate and have initiative to google and search for more materials online while in class.
Lunch break.
PLCMC now Charlotte Mecklenburg library showed us how public library operated in the USA, in their state anyway. 24+ branches, 1.5 million floating collection, partnership with high schools and companies in the area. Lots of community support and donation to the library. Not too far from the library is Imagine On library only for children and no adults. Here kids and teens can explore reading material, computers, gaming zone, make their own stories or music videos, etc. Also two theatres dedicated to showing plays for children. All round full on interaction for the young ones.
Afternoon tea.
Mp3 and mobile computing session. More and more people are owning a mobile phone or a mp3 player, we question how can libraries supply to these audiences and communicate with them. Audio book is one, Overdrive the American company supplies plenty of titles but not many Australian titled books. We question about patrons copying these mp3s (against copyright regulations) and also that we cannot bookmark them as we can easily do with a printed version of the book. We talked of the Daisy format which VisionAustralia is currently using which requires a Dairy reader device. Sms overdue notices especially for teenagers. Cable issues with mp3 players and itune required for ipods, bluetooth enabled computers for mobile phone which can read mp3 files. Should library be considering these technical problems with gadgets when targeting younger patrons who are gadget obsessed? To what extent should a library commit to these formats and gadgets when they phase our in quick successions?
A sea of faces, only recall a few names, I'd like to thank Linda [MPri], Margie[VU], Dence[EGipp] for nice chats we had. The conference was very engaging and I learnt a lot about library doing their best be relevant in the modern society.
Sorry for any spelling mistakes on the blog.
