Digital Pop-Up Book - Library Annual Report

Topeka and Shawnee County (Kansas) Public Library's Creative Staff created an online annual report, presented as a digital pop-up book. Very cool. See article by Mark Hall of CJOnline.

A how-to workshop and template would do well at any library conference! It is a great way to communicate what your library does, did, and is capable of doing. Very nice! Love the visualization. Are the Creative Staff from TSCPL.org going to share? What's next from Michael Perkins, the library's digital services supervisor?

PIVOT - Gary Flake

A "tweet" from Bill Gates alerted me to a 6 minute TED presentation by Microsoft Technical Fellow Gary Flake on PIVOT, a tool that looks for patterns in massive amounts of data to find information and possibly knowledge. See the video below:

2010 Horizon Report Preview

Horizon Report 2010 preview
The New Media Consortium released its list of six Horizon Report Topics for 2010 (PDF file) and the Horizon Report 2010 Preview (PDF file). It is "must reading" each year. Read it. Share it. Discuss it. The reports were originally for a higher education audience but now has a huge following.

• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
  • Mobile Computing
  • Open Content
    
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
  • Electronic Books
  • Simple Augmented Reality
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
  • Gesture-Based Computing
  • Visual Data Analysis

An example of Open Content by the California School Library Association is their free, online professional development tutorials: School Library Learning 2.0, Classroom Learning 2.0, and Discovering Assistive Technology. Also Learning 2.0 for Teens. These and all sorts of free online courses are available anywhere in the world via the Internet.

Personally, I think gesture-based computing will become more mainstream sooner than 4-5 years. The Nintendo wii technology has amazing potential, not just fun and games. Nintendo competitors seek to outshine the wii. Microsoft announced Project Natal , which simplifies use by eliminating the use of a controller. Sony has a motion controller in development that includes a handheld, wandlike device that pairs with a camera, splitting the difference between Wii and Natal.

Critical Challenges (4) - the third challenge resonates most with me: "Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key 21st century skill, but there is a widening training gap for faculty and teachers. Often not seen as a priority for faculty or teacher training, digital media literacy is nonetheless a critical skill not only for students but for those who work with them. Faculty and instructors are beginning to realize that they are limiting their students by not helping them to develop and use digital media literacy skills across the curriculum. This
challenge is exacerbated by the fact that it is not clear exactly how to codify the skills or set standards for their measurement."

The Horizon Report documents are also available the Horizon Report Wiki. They are the result of the rounds of discussions and voting by the advisory board members. The final report will be officially released on January 20. The preview version of the report includes a section called Critical Challenges as well as a section for Key Trends. - Buffy Hamilton, AASL Blog, Nov. 23

TimeSpace - Washington Post Visualization Tool

The Washington Post introduced a cool visualization tool for seeing where its articles take place in the world. TimeSpace: World is a "mashup" of click-able locations on a map where news items occur. The interactive map allows you to see articles, photos, video and commentary from around the world.

From a California perspective, it appears that the Washington Post doesn't think much is happening on the West Coast. If the San Francisco Chronicle doesn't fold, this might be a good addition to SFGate.