Take Action to Join Big6!

Posted on March 12th, 2007 by Rob Darrow

For the past several months, I have attended the following conferences: School Library Journal Summit (Chicago), MacWorld (San Francisco), the Consumer Electronics Show (Las Vegas), the ALA mid-winter meeting (Seattle), National School Boards Association (Washington, D.C.) and the Technology, Reading Learning Diversity (San Francisco) –without leaving my school! This is the beauty of the “new” Web 2.0 landscape – commonly known as the “read-write” web. I now subscribe to the blogs of people who have blogged about the sessions at these conferences and to the podcasts of people who have recorded and/or presented at these conferences. I’ve listened to a number of these presentations on my iPod while jogging on the treadmill at the gym. (You can have the same experience by clicking on the links at the bottom of this article).

What does the term “Big 6 – 2.0” mean?
Web 2.0 is characterized by descriptors such as these: collaborative, shareable, participatory, timely, and responsive. Whether a person is authoring a blog, a podcast, a wiki, or a web page, they are contributing to ongoing educational knowledge-sharing. Because the Big6 is a flexible information literacy problem-solving system, it fits with any Web 2.0 application. Let’s look at some Web 2.0 applications in the Big6 context:

TASK DEFINITION

  • 43 Things – Goal setting.
  • Linked In – Network with other people with common interests.

INFORMATION SEEKING STRATEGIES

  • Google Reader – A customized RSS “aggregator” for receiving information from blog postings, news and other RSS feeds/information sources.
  • Bloglines – Another customized RSS aggregator for receiving information from a variety of sources.

LOCATION AND ACCESS

USE OF INFORMATION

  • Google Docs – Place to write down ideas which may be shared with others
  • Slideshare – Place to share PowerPoint slides and ideas
  • DIGG – Place to identify, share and save the most popular news stories

SYNTHESIS

EVALUATION

  • Commenting on a blog posting, podcast or other posting.
  • Voting for an article or book or presentation.
  • Viewing an article, presentation or book resulting in this item being the most popular.

Big6 has recently initiated a blog and a wiki.
See the Big6 blog at: www.big6.com/blog/
See the wiki at: big6.wikispaces.com/

Please do comment on the blog and subscribe to it after setting up a Google reader account. On the wiki, please add other related Big6 links so we have these listed in one place.

I’d like to encourage you to jump into the Web 2.0 world by becoming a consumer – start a blog aggregator, read blog postings, listen to podcasts (can be done on any computer) and view the latest Youtube videos related to school and libraries. If you’d like to become a contributor, then it is time to comment on blog postings, start your blog and begin to think about what a Big6 podcast might include. Welcome to Big6 – 2.0!

Note: The conference links below are either links to the conference website, a conference wiki, a blog post or as part of a podcast.

Conference Information Links