I’m incubating again…
This time I’m wondering about the possibility of social OPAC’s in school libraries. As social networks allow users to customize their space in the cloud, couldn’t school libraries at least provide similar services for students to manage their own personal learning & access to information in their library?
A glance at some of the modules being offered in the 2.1ver. of the SOPAC software leaves me wondering why this can’t be offered/achieved at the school level.
Consider:
My commentary is italicized…
- RSS everything- Would allow students to subscribe to lists of materials, anything new, etc…
- Wish list- Would allow a streamlined way for students to request new materials for purchase, take more of ownership over the collection.
- Saved searches as a separate module- Great for teaching users to become more masterful searchers, great to track a students “searching progress” at the elementary level.
- Summer Reading module- A place to communicate & differentiate literature lists for multiple grade-level & content areas.
- Checkout History- Would allow students to manage and reflect on their reading history. Would allow librarians and teachers to better track and make recommendations for readers.
- Recommendation engine- Virtual recommendations. Think of something like iTunes Genius playlists but rather than it customizing your music, it would do so for your literature.
- “Recommend to a friend”- A potential tool to increase student motivation on the peer to peer level.
For a good working model of what the SOPAC software looks like in action, head over to the Darien Public Library.
8/14/2009
I’m learning….
about Moblin, Open Source Linux based Netbook software sponsored by Intel.
