I used to say, “What is the faster way to learn new skills? Find a person aged between 14 and 20!” Now I am amazed at the way even younger people are using ICT skill. Ask an 8 yo? I learned how to lighten and crop photos from a 10 yo. My 13 yo niece showed me how to blog, but I showed her how to ignore the inappropriate comments from others.

(I have just realised how much I depend on my spell checker as I typed this and it did not initially correct my errors. My laptop has an auto correct function and now i obviously rely heavily upon it. Will the machines of the future be able to understand incomprehensible typing and convert to more conventional forms? Or will we all learn to read the spelling and grammar errors of others? )

I work several hours a week in a university library and the rest of the time in a high school. At the Information Desk in the uni library, I rarely have an “information search” related question, but spend most time teaching IT related functions. (“How do I print? What is my password? My USB won’t open. “) Much of the uni related courses ask for on-line work with links attached. Post grads are interested in accessing journals, and find the various data bases confronting after years of googling. Much of the high school research begins and ends with wikipedia. (Could make an interesting action research project?)

If school continue to block wikis, Facebook, Twitter etc, who will miss out? Not those who can use Mum or Dad’s broadband at home. One YR 12 English Communications student has put an assessed assignment on Facebook using the quiz function. A TV program last week referred to “Lord of the Flies” as being similar to “Lost”. When the TV parent checked the reading progress of his son, the young person replied, “I am up to the bit where the fat boy gets voted off.” Not a part of LOTF that I remember and the point was that the boy was not reading it at all – despite being given the Cliff Notes by his less PC uncle!

How well do we relate to this thinking? Secondly, what do we want to keep while making room for the sparkly new technologies? Reading was a good rainy day activity, but have computer games taken over? I am off to play on-line soldiers with the teenagers at home, but not sure that I want this played at school. Why?

How many schools ensure that all groups have equal access to info? And to the excellent hand to eye coordination skills I have achieved by playing Call to Duty?(Recent newspaper articles have suggested that early years should not include positive discrimination but allow equal access to all. Which games will we get?)

Considering that the 23 Things programme has been around for a number of years now, I was a little bewildered as to the low degree of understanding shown by some delegates.
It didn’t indicate what we like to believe, that librarians are the fast uptakers of new technologies. Is this a lack on the part of some of our educators or, as indicated in one post, that we don’t have enough time to concentrate on the normal tasks in our work day.

The idea that some new techologies help releive staff from mundane tasks can pan out in certain libraries, in particular the use of SelfCheckout machines in academic libraries, and the introduction of RFID in all libraries. Once installed the benefits are tangible.

With web 2.0 technologies we are dependant upon the correct choice of various social networking tools. Choose one, hopefully the right one, and you still need to get your customers to engage with you through that medium, its their choice. It becomes a time consuming process encouraging them, and then keeping track of them if they move from twitter to facebook etc.

I do believe it will eventually be time well spent, but time it will take. Maybe we need to make it part of our enrolment process, “do you want to twitter with us”?