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Another interesting piece about makerspaces. This time how one teacher librarian (librarian and English teacher) in the US used robotics kits in her library to respond to their reading. Her students to created characters from the stories they read and then brought them to life. Innovative and engaging hands-on learning - what's not to like. Other examples are discussed as well.

Unquestioning reliance on automation can, and has, led to disasters. This is one of the major reasons why teacher-librarians, librarians and other information professionals need to very diligently to ensure digital information literacy skills are learnt by everyone in the community. We all need to be in control of our technologies, not allow our technologies dictate to us.

"Students, teachers and the public turn to their librarians for help researching everything from technology to genealogy to homework help and lesson plans. Even if your library is equipped with subscriptions and memberships to top of the line databases and online journals, you've probably had to get creative during a patron's requested search for something unfamiliar."

Great article by Joyce Valenza on the importance of teacher librarians and content curation

" The ability for classrooms to beam in authors, subject experts, and fellow students from around the world has been one of the great advantages afforded by Skype. Commonly used by librarians and other K-12 educators to provide real-time engagement for their students, the service just got better. As of today, existing members of Skype in the classroom or new registrants can use Skype's Group Video Calling free of charge."

"An assistive technology: a technology used by an individual with a disability to perform a function that might otherwise be difficult or impossible." Samantha Thomas, a student, future librarian, and educator at Kutztown University, created this handy collection of assistive technologies that you may find helpful. Some are commonly used with special needs individuals, such as augmentative & alternative communication apps and others are general consumer apps. Listed alongside each app is her assessment of its value as an assistive technology."

"Aerbook Maker may be of interest to librarians and other educators who want to go beyond a read-only experience and enable their students to easily create, share-and even market-their  own slick, tablet-ready graphical ebooks and mobile apps"

Post fron Richard Byrne "Both Diigo and Jing have been written about on numerous occasions here at the Free Technology for Teachers blog, but I wanted to share my experiences using both tools when grading assignments. I teach an information literacy course for the college where I work as a librarian"

"Digital Information Fluency (DIF) is the ability to find, evaluate and use digital information effectively, efficiently and ethically. DIF involves Internet search skills that start with understanding how digital information is different from print information, knowing how to use specialized tools for finding digital information and strengthening the dispositions needed in the digital information environment. As teachers and librarians develop these skills and teach them to students, students will become better equipped to achieve their information needs."

Some intersting ideas here that examine how to use specialised tools for finding digital information.

Interesting article commenting on the results of the annual "PBS Digitally Inclined" report indicating '76 percent of K-12 educators said they use digital media in the classroom, up from 69 percent in 2008. Of those teachers, 80 percent are frequent or regular users'. This type of data is of value to teacher librarians when reviewing their role within schools. If you don't have a focus on multimedia, here is proof that it's time to have a closer look.

The mobile apps you need to know. Spotlight Session at the SLA 2012 conference updates the wildly successful session from 2011

"I've been reading snippets of Eli Pariser's book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You. He leads off the book with a discussion of the effect of Google's "personalization" feature on the ranking of search results. This feature uses 54 signals (what browser version you're using, your prior searches, geographic location, and so on) to customize search results for each user. Pariser was concerned about this and tested it by asking two friends to run the same search at the same time and comparing the results. He found that the results were disturbingly different, and concluded that search engines are "increasingly biased to share our own views. More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click.""

Interesting thoughts on a backchannel experience