School Libraries around the world

Principal Tricia Kelleher on the role of the school library in the digital age. Great example for other principals to rethink the school library

With the advent of Web 2.0 and related technologies, Social Computing has become a new paradigm for the ways we communicate, learn, and educate. Social Media, including Social Networking Web sites, Wikis, blogs, tweets, online groups and forums, podcasts, Web mashups, virtual worlds, MOOC, recommender/evaluation systems, social tagging/bookmarking, and other related technologies, are enabling innovative behaviors that enable the acquisition, access, manipulation, processing, retrieval, presentation, and visualization of information within a teaching/learning space. Social Media for education has become dynamic, ubiquitous, distributed, real-time, collaborative, bottom-up, manyto-many, value-based, and personalized. This conference and book volumes seek original research with respect to the use of Social Media and related technologies for education; the emerging applications of Web 2.0 as an educational platform; and policy issues including: privacy, risk, and security, that drive, what might be referred to as, “Social Computing for Education 2.0.”. The seminal conference and publication will provide an important reference of current unique, innovative, and effective uses of Social Media in education for teaching and learning. More specifically, the conference will provide an in-depth analysis of the tools and platforms that are currently being used, or may potentially be used, in a learning environment. It will highlight the future cutting-edge systems that enhance learning spaces.

The conference and publication will follow a coherent theme in the use of Social Media in the teaching/learning context, with each chapter exploring in greater detail a different approach or methodology within that theme.

The relevant and important questions addressed include: • How do Social Media enrich learning and teaching experiences? • What can be learned from current case studies of state-of-the-art Social Computing/media systems or platforms being used in the learning/teaching setting? • What are the necessary policies to balance security, privacy, and risk issues in using Social Media for education? • How can learning be integrated in a distributed and ubiquitous Social Computing environment? • What methods can be used to assess and evaluate learning and teaching through Social Media?

Topics: • Web 2.0 techniques and Social Computing for learning (media sharing, media manipulation,conversational arenas, online games, virtual worlds/spaces,socialnetworking,blogging, micro-blogging, podcasts, social bookmarking,recommender systems, collaborative editing, Wikis, RSS, mash-ups) • Theory and modeling of Social Computing in education • Social Computing Technology and software for educational application • Social educational system design and architectures • Case studies, best practices, and demonstrations of Social Media in educational contexts • Assessment and evaluation of Social Computing in education • Benchmarks and experiments on in education • Social Computing quality and reliability • Software for social and collaborative learning • Mobile learning applications for Social Computing • Semantic Web applications for d-learning, e-learning, and m-learning • Virtual worlds/spaces for learning communities • Ubiquitous, mobile, distributed, and collaborative learning • Integration of social learning spaces • Social gaming/human computation within education environments • Social media policy issues (privacy, risk, security, and so on) within educational contexts • Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)

Joint post-conference (IFLA school libraries section and IASL) on advocacy for school libraries, August 24, Kuala Lumpur

2013 Australian school library survey now open