Wise Kids Feedback

I thoroughly enjoyed the three day course. I especially found the practical elements very useful, learning how to set up a blog and how to add things to improve the blog, twitter feeds and pages etc. I learnt many new things that I can hopefully implement in the near future.

The third day, concentrating on Information Security was an eye opener to me as I hadn’t previously thought about facebook issues such as if you “check-in” somewhere other than your home that you’re broadcasting the fact that you aren’t at home etc. As a suggestion I would say that I would have liked to have done a few more practical exercises on the third day, looking at further social media tools.

The break between the three days was good as after the second day I was suffering with information overload. It was good to take a breather from it and put what I had learnt into practice with the project and writing blog posts on this blog. I’m really grateful to Sangeet for offering her help and advice to us in the future as I’m sure I will need it!  

Feedback

Hi

Before entering my feedback I would just like to thank Sangeet for 3 very enjoyable and informative days.

1.       I enjoyed each of the days and learned a great deal about social websites etc. However the most important thing i will take from this course is that it has clarified my thinking with regard libraries and their use of social networking sites. Before this course if you had asked me if libraries should make use of such sites i would have said yes definitely but with very little idea of how this could be done successfully. This course has shown how the different sites can be brought together to form a cohesive and professional looking product that places your library in the virtual world.

2.       Not really sure about what support we need except to say that as the focus of the course has been very much on practical applications of the learning it should very much encourage this. I think yearly update courses would be beneficial to provide training on recent innovations in the field and provide an opportunity for different library services to highlight and discuss the work they have done.

Day 3 feedback from Catherine

I felt I got a lot out of the course and it has open my eyes to how social media can be used as a tool to engage and communicate with our students and staff.  The course was well run and Sangeet was a good teacher, who clearly explained digital literacy and used interesting and relevant examples to illustrate this. 

I did feel that for academic librarians, the final day of the course was quite wordy and spent too long focussing on issues that are more important for children rather than students.  I would have like more practical experience exploring how to use other social media - like prezi, wiki and wordpress, maybe some examples illustrating how how teachers use it to engage with their students. However, I do understand that the issue is of huge importance for other types of libraries and it was right that so much time was devoted to it that day. 

As a suggestion, future courses could be run for different types of library, i.e. academic, public and commercial?  And then the content could be tailored to meet needs and interests of those particular institutions.

All in all, it was a great course and I hope that WISE KIDS and Cymal continue to provide more of them in the future.

Powys School Libraries - Cybersavvy Plans

Looking at ways of integrating elements of social media use and focussing on security, awareness and critical knowledge. Imbedding this as part of information literacy standards and education inclusion. Raising awareness for staff and end users - eg school pupils, public, targetted user groups. embedding and strengthening Information Literacy skills.

Mindmap: CyberSavvy

Front line library staff - often in part-time, single staffed libraries - are often expected to be IT experts by library users. Increasingly public access computers in Powys are used by young people for social networking. In this environment staff need to be more aware of cyber safety issues.

Cybersavvy plan Cardiff Libraries

This mindmap is a draft for presenting a workshop to highlight the highs and lows of using social media with young people.

Digital Inclusion

I've tried to incorporate everything i have learned on day 3 and so this mind map may be a bit ambitious but it tries to show a service wide plan for improving our interactions with new media. Basically it identifies key workers who will work with 3 groups to both create clearer guidelines for staff and training activities/sessions for  different user groups. The one thing i have not included is closer links with IT to discuss our needs and actually discover what is possible.