Second Life and Education

Initially dubious about Second Life, I was excited about the use of a virtual environment used by Northern Beaches Christian School.  All of a sudden it made sense.  The immersion in the virtual world, the art gallery, and in particular the English class.

This is something I would like to pursue, because this is exciting.  From my observation of my own children, these are environments that they love.  It made me think of that pithy, but over used observation about discovering what you love and never having to work another day in your life.  The ultimate in learning through play.  Awesome.  I want to go to NBSC and spend time immersed in their worlds, learning about what they are doing, and working out how I can do it too.

The participation gap and online privacy

The Participation Gap

I was interested to read in the Jenkins whitepaper about US cities that plan to provide free wifi access to internet.  Free!  The reasoning is, that it will give families, who are at the limit of their financial resources access to connection, because if children in these families aren’t given the same access as their wealthier peers, then they will inevitably fall further behind.
I had an interesting conversation at the end of the term with a deputy at a school on the outskirts of Sydney.   The school is quite isolated (not of course in the same sense as a school in the far west of the state), and they will have to pay for connection to Ethernet cabling to cater for the students.  It will be expensive, but as they are planning to be a Bring Your Own Device school in the future, the correct hardware is essential.  It is not something that can be skimped on.  Other schools have tried to do it cheaply, and the result is that only a handful of students at a time can connect, the network slows to a crawl, and everyone is frustrated.  In my own home the cries of “stop downloading, your hogging all the bandwidth” are frequent, and that’s with only 6 of us, a whole school worth of users trying for access with an inadequate connection is unthinkable.

Access is not the end of the conversation though.  Getting connected has to be inextricably tied to education in the use of the available tools.  In fact, it is even more important.  Which makes sense.  So in our teaching, once our children are connected, they must be equipped to use the available tools.  We must be purposeful in our instruction, because, digital natives or not, these children need more than the device and the connection.  Just as most of them would not learn to read without explicit instruction, so they won’t automatically know how to access creative commons items to embed in their work, or why it is important that they do.


Thoughts on Online Privacy

We seem to be moving towards more transparency online, Facebook is intended to be conducted under your own name, and while there are those who do have multiple accounts, or use a pseudonym, I think they are in the minority.  Pearson says this is a good thing.  That anonymity loosens our restraint, and we are more likely to behave badly, when we think it won’t have a consequence in our real lives.  

I’ve seen that on forums.  There is a pack mentality sometimes, and it can be brutal.  One forum I belong to has 233 000 members.  Of course we won’t all think the same thing about every issue that is discussed.  For me, that’s ok, and if I see something that I don’t necessarily agree with, I won’t dive in and tell the person they are an idiot (I might, and sometimes do think it).  There are those however who call their unkindness honesty - and honesty is a good thing, right?  Hiding behind the screen, I have watched different posters pulverized by others.  And they are real people, vulnerable and deeply wounded by what are essentially attacks on them.  Just because you can’t see the crazies doesn’t make their criticism less hurtful.  I think that if we were forced to use our real names, a lot of this kind of thing would stop, that users would think twice, and not go on the attack. Anonymity confers a degree of false bravado, and opinions can be wielded with less restraint.

On the other hand, there have been so many dire warnings about not giving too much away online, not allowing some predatory type to “find” you in real life, it’s hard to know what the right course of action is.

The issue of facebook and privacy is apparently very important to young people, Raynes-Goldie says it ranks higher than acts of terrorism.  Which seems an extreme kind of comparison, but perhaps Facebook privacy is a more relatable issue, and one more likely to have an impact on them than a potential act of terror.

The relative newness of the technologies, and the social media sites means that as a society we haven’t developed the same kinds of rules of etiquette that constrain other behaviours, we are still finding out where the limits are.  Getting our students to consider these things is important.  Probably as time goes on, the expectations will become more defined, but now, when someone poses a “what do you think?” kind of question online, be it on a forum, a youtube video or a Facebook post, is it rude to say what you think?  Even if you don’t agree? Even if what you think is unfavourable and you can't express your opinion without being offensive?   Can we in text make our meaning clear enough, that we can respectfully disagree without being perceived as unkind? 

I had thought prior to reading the article on teachers befriending students on Facebook that the boundary had been well defined. Looking at NSW DEC policy, the recommendation is no, don’t befriend students.  Reading some of the policy in the article however, I can see how this line blurs, both when the wording becomes unclear, and when schools start adopting Facebook as a method of communication.  

The solution seems to be, while a student is at school, they shouldn’t be on your friend list.  Liking a school page however, is an acceptable compromise.


Pearson, J. (2009). Life as a dog: Personal identity and the internet. Meanjin, 68(2), 67-77. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=200906244;res=APAFT
Raynes-Goldie, K. (2010). Aliases, creeping, and wall cleaning: Understanding privacy in the age of Facebook, First Monday, 15(1), 4 January. Available http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2775/2432  
Harris, C. (2010). Friend me?: School policy may address friending students online, School Library Journal, 1 April. Available http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6724235.html
 

INF 506 - The Changing Digital World

Five Examples of shifts and how they impact on us as digital citizens

1. 

Newspaper circulation is down 7 million over the last 25 years.

But in the last 5 years, unique readers of online newspapers are up 30 million.

2.

abc, nbc and cbs get ten million unique visitors every month collectively and have been around collectively for 200 years.

Myspace, Youtube and Facebook get 250 million unique visitors every month, and didn’t exist 9 years ago (the video says 6, but it was made in 2009).

3.

95% of all music downloaded last year wasn’t paid for.

4.

93% of US adults own a mobile phone.

1/3 of them don’t feel safe using it for purchanses.

5.

In February 2008, John McCain raised 11 million dollars for his presidential campaign. 

Barack Obama attended no fundraisers, instead he used social media to raise 55 million dollars in that month.

Copyright Issues

I started thinking about copyright issues, and was interested to read in Dearney and Feather, that intellectual copyright exists both to protect the innovator, but also to encourage innovation.  When it is so easy to access newspapers and music and books and articles, are we going to lose our motivation to create unique works, to think our own thoughts?  When it is so easy to find out what other people think, when there is so much to read that has already been written, will we have time to think deeply enough to create new great things, or are we doomed to intellectual mediocrity now?  I’m thinking (in despair) of works like Fifty Shades of Grey - a badly written piece of fan fiction with a mass audience who are just lapping it up (if I can use the word lapping at this point without it seeming deliberately distasteful).

Policy needs to address issues of copyright, for all media platforms, words, music and photos/pictures.

Initially I was shocked by the claim that 95% of music downloaded wasn’t paid for.  Then I started thinking about how I got my own music in the 80’s – by borrowing and recording my own copy of friends tapes, which may or may not have been originals.  By recording music from the television or the radio.  The biggest difference is probably one of quality of recording.  The illegal mp3 is invariably going to be of higher quality than when you hoped the radio announcer wouldn’t talk too long over the beginning or end of your favourite track.

Digital Literacy

Social media has changed the way the world has until now operated.  The presidential campaign demonstrates that eloquently.  Those who refuse to engage in these technologies simply will not succeed over those who can harness them.  I know people who don’t use social media, who see it as irrelevant, who refuse to engage, some of them are only in their 30’s, and I wonder what will happen to them as the world keeps changing.  I’ve been dragged along in the wake of my husband, who is probably one of the worlds oldest digital natives, having grown up in a university environment with some of the earliest computers. I am constantly out of my depth, because he changes stuff all the time.

Mobile devices are where we are headed, and already the percentage of adults who have a phone is very very high.  I expect that as time goes on, and there are more adults who have grown up in this connected world, the ease with online purchasing will also increase.  It is going to become more and more essential that library websites have mobile versions, because this is how our users will be accessing our sites.

Online Safety

Online behavior will follow you in a way that the mistakes you made in high school don’t.  Helping students to realize that Facebook is not their diary, that online bullying is not acceptable, that posting photos of yourself in compromising situations is not good practice needs to be part of what we do.

There are so many ways you can put yourself online (youtbe, Facebook, MySpace etc), and there is a vulnerability in this.  The Jenkins whitepaper observed that young people often found that in putting content online for their friends, they sometimes attracted unwelcome attention from strangers.

When you can hide your identity, is there less restraint from behaving in an antisocial way?

Content Regulation

We must look at questions of responsibility for use, filters of content which may be inappropriate.  The internet is difficult to police, because of it’s vastness, and because it is an international entity, it allows access to unsavoury content, and whose responsibility is that? 

When there isn’t a set of ethical guidelines that contributors are expected to adhere to, how do we deal with that?

Blue Mountains City Library

Effective Library Website Criteria

1.     Up to date and regular postings.

2.     Easy to navigate

3.     Search bars on every page

4.     Relevant photos

5.     Mobile Friendly

6.     Feedback

7.     Ability to view catalogue and reserve items

8.     Contact information/online librarian service

Most of my criteria were selected after reading the Matthews article which was comprehensive.  I added a few of my own, and left out some of his.  The library website I intend to review is not a children’s library, so I didn’t use anything from Lazaris.  I was interested to note the difference between what works when marketing to children, and how different it is to targeting adults.

 Blue Mountains City Library

This is my local library, there are 6 different locations through the Blue Mountains (Blaxland, Springwood, Lawson, Wentworth Falls, Katoomba and Blackheath).  It is possible to get books from any of the other branches if what you want isn’t at your local branch.

I use the library infrequently.  I have a kindle, and do most of my fiction reading on that.  My children use their school libraries, though we have used the local branch for additional material for projects.  I had fairly low expectations about them using any Web 2.0 tools to be honest, so I was pleasantly surprised by their blog Readers in the mist.  It’s called a book review blog, but also has announcements of events and lots of information about the library, arranged under tabs. 

As far as the above criteria are concerned:

1.  The homepage was updated yesterday.  Other pages have not been touched for some time however, some of them for a couple years.   There are a few comments made, and one has not been responded to at all.  Lots of links to other sites, 12 broken (checked with Website Goodies).

The Facebook link only took me to my own Facebook homepage, and Twitter has not been updated since June. Further exploration, and I discovered that the council have a website, and the library posts on that wall.

Social media presence is definitely an area that needs to be improved.

2.  Both the blog, and the council site are easy to navigate.

3.  Search bars are on every page.

4.  Relevant photos (books and The three Sisters).  There are no attributions for the photos.  After making an electronic pathfinder for ETL501, I did go looking for this, and couldn’t find anything.  I was a little disappointed by this, as I know how simple it is to do the right thing as far as copyright goes.  There are also pictures of book covers, and I am dubious about whether permission has been sought to publish them, remembering the hoops some people jumped through last semester, getting permission to put photos of book jackets on their sites.

5.  The blog is mobile friendly.

6.  Feedback is possible on the blog.  Comments are moderated, and there is a list of what is and is not considered acceptable, all very common sense things like not being abusive or using bad language.

7.  On the council site, the catalogue is available to search, and you can see where the book you want is located, and can request that it is held for you, and at which branch you would like to pick it up. There is no charge for this service.

8.  The contact point is very clear, and has it’s own tab, where all the addresses and phone numbers for each branch are listed.  There is no facility for talking to a librarian online, but during business hours, I know they are happy to talk on the phone and help you, because I’ve rung them before.

Arizona State University

The library minute videos at the ASU website are really engaging.  As a user of these kind of services, I am as a rule unenthusiastic about the time commitment of a ten minute video, but I happily watched ten of those little snippets.  It made me want to be an undergraduate, studying on campus again.  At ASU.  I wonder if the students there know how lucky they are.  Coffee shops, exhibitions, printing from your own laptop, group study rooms available ,wifi, whiteboards (regular and electronic). Such a wonderful variety of really useful stuff.  When I was an undergraduate living on campus, we shared one phone between 50 of us, and it had a cord so we were tethered to the cold under the stairs walk through passage.  We used pens, and paper.  We typed our assignments on type writers.  I even hand wrote some of them.  I feel like such a dinosaur.

But I digress.

The time frame of the one minute library spot is excellent.  I think people are far more likely to engage with them, than a longer piece.


The Four C's – collaboration, conversation, community, content criteria.

In addition to the one minute videos, I looked at the Facebook page and Twitter feed for ASU.

Collaboration 

One of the videos asked for feedback.  ASU want to know what it is their users are interested in.  They want to give them what they want, they’ve already thought of a lot of cool stuff, but it is clear that they are happy to hear about more ideas.    


Conversation  

The Facebook page and Twitter are obviously well tended.
At the top of the Facebook page there is a complaint.  It is from November 3, and I don't know if it has been left there strategically, to show how good they are responding to comments on their page, but that is what it does.  A user complains about the wifi service in the library dropping out.  The librarian responds within four hours.  There is then some back and forth establishing what the issue is, and a promise is given to look into it.  There is follow up a week later.  The page is also updated regularly with special events.
There are also several tweets every day, with reminders of services, opening and closing times, and even reassurance for intimidated patrons. 


Community

Because Facebook and Twitter are regularly updated, there is a sense of community in those pages.    These are librarians who want to build relationships with their community.  The responses are unfailingly professional and polite.  They want to problem solve and serve and engage their community.


Content  

There are regular links on the twitter feed about what is available and what is new or coming up. 

INF 506 - Second Life and Virtual Reality

I signed up for Second Life last night, but haven't really looked around yet.  I asked my son if he had heard of it - he's 16, and plays a lot of those first person games, and does a lot of map building.  He creates beautiful, seamless maps, that other players can use, I'm actually amazed at what he can do.  But he doesn't like Second Life.  Pressing him, he said he didn't like the interface, the building tools he deemed inadequate, and knowing the somewhat nefarious uses some inhabitants of the metaverse put it to, he refuses to consider it.  His objections are both technical and moral.  He is an interesting 16 year old.

Reading the articles for module two about Second Life, I felt a growing sense of anxiety, that in ten or fifteen years, people my age will be obsolete in the classroom, and concern that I should have left this subject till I was further through my library studies, simply because I am worried that things will realign to be something different before I am finished studying, and I will need to relearn something new.  I am an overthinker.

I was interested in the idea that virtual learning environments are so effective at engagement and achievement.  I have heard so many people say (nurses, teachers, doctors, lawyers and so on) that they learned more in their first year on the job than they did in all the time they spent in university lectures.  My mother is a nurse, and did her training when it was still a hospital based system, and I remember her concern when it switched to university training, that new nurses would have a lot of head knowledge that wasn't necessarily practical.  Virtual learning could be the answer that we need.  Giving people "real" experience, but in an environment that provides a safety net in case of error.

As far as Second Life goes, while I admit it looks interesting, I feel a degree of ambivalence about the time required to "learn" the world, and master the experience.  Four hours is the time it apparently takes to orient oneself to the world, and four hours at the end of term four in a busy household seems like a big time commitment.  And then one of the readings insisted that four hours will orient you, but four weeks is more realistic as a time frame for becoming comfortable.  Four weeks!!  Convince me it's worth it.

INF 506 RSS Feeds

I started subscribing to RSS feeds a few years ago when I got my ipod nano.  I would download episodes of Doctor Karl to listen to, or religious debates, or radio programs and listen to them while I went running.  It was a change from listening to music.

Now, I have google reader set up on my laptop, and the blogs I follow are delivered there.  It might take me a while to catch up with everything I'm interested in, but I like to have it all in one place.

Looking through the abc link, I noticed that one of the RSS feeds is for a reading of a book.  A book!  Chapter by chapter, a whole book.  Now, this excites me.  I love to read aloud, and I love to listen to audio books, when my hands are busy doing something, and I need my eyes to concentrate, but still want my mind entertained.  And I have been the voice for chapters in a published audio book (a one off, funny little episode in my life that I really enjoyed).  I wonder how plausible it is to have a feed that publishes a chapter a week of a book.  A whole book.  Would people listen and be interested I wonder?

In the library situation, and bear in mind, I don't have a library situation as such yet, but in a library situation, I think it could kick off for book week perhaps.  And perhaps in the lead up, students could vote for which book from a list they would like to turn into an audio book.  The winner unveiled at the Book Week parade.  And then, to make it more interesting, students could audition to be readers!  How does copyright work in this situation?  And the audio book, voiced by their peers, is the hook, to get them involved in my library website, because once they are there, hopefully they will look around and find even more interesting treasures, treasures that draw them in, that give them tools, and empower them.

Now this isn't completely answering questions about meeting users information needs, it's a bit of a tangent, but it's also an idea I don't want to lose because I forget that I've had it.

INF 506 - module 2

After a frustrating day of computer issues, which had I thought about it properly, I could have resolved hours earlier than I did, I am in the midst of the module 2 readings, which are vast.  I am drowning in information.

I confess, I am flicking between my dictionary widget, and the readings with great regularity.  It isn't enough to have heard a word, I need to be sure of its meaning, so I'm not confused.

So metadata, is data about data.

Folksonomies - a user-generated system of classifying and organizing online content into different categories by the use of metadata such as electronic tags.  Thank you dictionary.





I find tagging quite hard, and have a fairly low opinion of my ability to do it well.  I think this course is going to be enormously helpful, not just in my work life, but also in life outside work, allowing me to keep up with and participate knowledgeably.  At the moment, I tend to blunder around, like there isn't enough light in the room, and I know that I could be better.

I need to go and do the drop box tutorial.  I will come back with more thoughts, once I've thought them.

INF 506 - First assignment, thoughts on Social Media

Assignment One INF506 

What is social networking?

Social networking is all about participation.  The internet has changed to become a place where everyone can share ideas, news, photographs and creative interests.  Networks are not limited to your geographical location, and you don’t even have to have met in person.  Sharing similar interests is enough to connect people no matter where in the world they live (as long as they have a computer).


My current social networking sites:

Currently I have a Facebook account, which I use to keep in touch with family and friends, and now for uni.  Some of my friends are people I’ve met online on other sites, some of these I have met, but some not.
I have a twitter account, which until this course I have used sporadically, ineffectively, and resentfully, because I feel out of my depth.  I’m not sure what I should tweet, and how it is different to my status update on Facebook.
I am a member of a parenting forum (Essential Baby), and contribute to discussion on a semi regular basis.
I have contributed to youtube, and use it a lot for teaching, as well as entertainment and information
I subscribe to a number of blogs:
- Jamie the Very Worst Missionary
- Head versus Desk
- Making it Funky
- Down to earth
I now have a Flickr account, but have previously had a photobucket account which I primarily used to make memes.
I write a blog of my own about things I’ve read that interest me.
I am a member of Goodreads, Pinterest and Instagram.
I play online games (Words with Friends, Scramble with Friends, Gems, Bejewelled Blitz, Matching with Friends).


With all these computer activities, I’m starting to realise why I feel time poor.

What do I expect to learn from INF506?

 I want to learn how to harness social media in a meaningful way for teaching/library.  Although I don’t have a permanent position as yet, I want to be ready, and as current in my knowledge as possible. 
I have reservations about using Facebook as a platform for keeping parents informed about school excursions/activities, and want to explore other options that may be safer.

Wiki vs Weebly

Valenza states that she prefers wikis for their collaborative nature.  And while I love her work, and think she’s a library goddess and all, I’m just not convinced with the whole wiki thing.  I like the look of a website over a wiki.  I can’t even say why, it’s probably nothing more than a personal preference.  Wiki’s just seem  messy looking.  And a weebly can be collaborative, and it looks pretty.

 

Web 2.0

So after a long break and think about career changes and other life stuff, and frankly getting scared by a subject called Resourcing the Curriculum, which sounded as dry as old chips, and hard to boot, I am back to my Masters course, and excited about the journey afresh.

This semester I am studying The Information Environment, which is enormously interesting so far.  And practical.  I want so much to either have a library of my own, or a class of my own to try out some of this cool stuff.  And also so I can justify buying myself an iPad.  At the moment, my laptop does everything I need it to, so really, an iPad is a luxury that I simply don't need, apart from wanting one because it's so cool.

Today I have been looking at Topic 5, which is all about Web 2.0.  Exciting stuff.  My own children's teachers aren't harnessing all the new tools and exciting options, they don't even have electronic whiteboards in their classrooms.  Which is a shame, and a bit of a personal grumble from me.

Students are already using web 2.0.  They already share ideas/photos/links and so on with social media.  If we don't use this in the classroom, we will be left behind, and to use them makes so much practical sense.  Research has already confirmed that learning is more meaningful when you are actively engaged in the discovery process rather than being spoon fed every bit of information.  And Web 2.0 means that you aren't limited to the exchange of ideas within a class or school group, classrooms of students worldwide can connect and share.  Exciting stuff.

I read Mrs Cassidy's Classroom Blog, a year one blog from a class in Georgia.  These children had connected with other classes around the world and made an ebook about how they celebrated occasions like birthdays in their country.  This was available from Here, a site I have used already to download books for my Kindle.  So, parents in Georgia can look at the book, but so can the parents of the Chinese students.  Amazing.

The opportunities this gives us as Teacher Librarians are exciting.  Not only can we run library wikis and blogs for our own lessons and classes, for school book reviews and reports, for newsletters, we can help the other staff set up meaningful learning spaces for their classes too.  My own response to something I don't know but want to, is to find the answer on the internet.  This can take time, and specific answers aren't always there, like "what is year 5's homework this week?" A wiki or blog could be a place to store all those kinds of answers.

ETL 501 - Search Engines

I started this course last year, but got overwhelmed by the workload and dropped back to one subject a semester, so I read all this information before I dropped the course.  Before that it was all fairly new to me though.  I do try to use Google Advanced when I’m searching, and I have used google books and google scholar when I’ve been researching essays.  I’ve never used Google news before though.

Having had a break from study, I know I slipped back into my slovenly research habits, relying on google to give me the answers to everything.  Occasionally I would use the advanced function.  I’ve now got all my bookmarks organized properly, and I’ve bookmarked a lot of things from this particular topic so I can find them again.  I have good intentions to be a more effective information searcher.

This week we had to try out different search engines, and see if it made a difference to our search results.  Sometimes looking for things online is like blundering around in the dark, you feel like the answers you want are there, but they are somehow out of reach, maybe because you aren't asking the question in the right way. 

This was an interesting activity, mostly because I helped one of my teenagers research volcanoes a few months ago, and we had trouble finding relevant material that wasn’t horribly technical.  I had much more success with the first search engine I used.  Yahoo kids on the other hand was a disaster, 5 of the first ten links were broken, three others were far too basic for grade seven (though one would have been great for younger students), and the first two were to the same site, which had lovely photos but not much information.

ETL 501Topic 2 - Wikipedia, Atlases, Dictionaries

Should the term reference material be abandoned or kept for non borrowable print resources?

I had a look at the university of Santo Tomas library (that came up in my google search, and a university library seemed a good place to start).  Their definition stated that reference materials were sources of information used for answering enquiries in a library, not normally lent, but consulted on the premises.  The list of resources was extensive and included the usual dictionaries, encylcopaedias and atlases, but also almanacs, guide books, year books,  handbooks, manuals, pamphlets, journals, phone directories (and directories of all kinds), biographies, genealogies, pathography (which I’d never encountered before) and world globes.  So much that I hadn’t considered, but on reflection did belong in the reference category.  (http://library.ust.edu.ph/pages/reference.html).

So this library has stayed with a definition that describes hard copy.  Nonprint/online/digital resources have a separate section, which looks equally comprehensive.

I quite liked that idea.  Especially now I have a greater understanding of how huge the reference material part of a library could potentially be.  To me it seems that it deserves a category of its own.  Or perhaps digital resources, accessible from multiple locations could be a sub category of some kind.

Everytime I think I have this sorted out in my head, I have a new thought which makes me uncomfortable again.  There are some resources which have both hard copy versions and digital.  Are they both reference material?  Is it ok to call them Reference materials and Online/Digital Reference materials?  I hope so, that’s what I want to do.

WIKIPEDIA

I actually really like Wikipedia, and I think it’s important to have discussions about it in the classroom, if only so students know it is not “the last word on a subject”, so that they understand that it is a community endeavour, with many contributors, who may or may not be either authoritative, or accurate. 

I’ve often used it to start a search of my own on something (something non academic, that I wasn’t submitting for a university assignment), and I have a voice in the back of my head warning me against believing everything I read there.

I have edited a page or two of my own on Wikipedia, for my own amusement, and my contribution was edited out again within 12 hours.  I have other friends who have made contributions of a more serious nature, which were also edited out, despite their veracity.  So although it is a community project, it is not a free for all. 

DICTIONARIES

My main reason for wanting print versions of dictionaries, is so students can maintain the skill of searching for something alphabetically.  I was assisting an ESL student last week, and showed her that the words at the top of the pages of the dictionary were significant (being the first and last words on the particular page).  Some of her peers overheard this, and were amazed by it, they hadn’t been told or made that connection before, and it made a difference to the efficiency of their searches.

As far as specialized dictionaries go, I was interested to discover that there are dictionaries that can be used by those whose first language isn’t English – dictionaries of phrasal verbs (Oxford), and Macmillans Collocation Disctionary.  I imagine that they would be very useful for some students.  English can be a strange, twisty, turny kind of language, with many inexplicable things in it, not covered by a regular dictionary.

A thesaurus is a specialized dictionary of synonyms, and I love my thesaurus, very useful in the classroom.

Additionally for the classroom:

-       dictionary of maths terms, there are print versions of this, but I found this online one which also looked helpful http://mathcentral.uregina.ca/RR/glossary/middle/glossaryab.html

-       I would like a dictionary of grammar terms, and I found this which I think would be useful - http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary.html

-       Science dictionary - http://www.science-dictionary.com/

ATLASES

Australian Online Atlas

Owl and Mouse is a nice looking site, and it is great for American resources, with printable maps, and puzzles.  Sadly, Australia and New Zealand are largely ignored, with the Australian map not even marking the states on the large map.

http://www.yourchildlearns.com/online-atlas-oceania.htm

I started looking at atlapedia, but it crashed.  There was a lot of clicking involved in finding what you wanted, which was frustrating, and although I think the maps might have been better than Owl and Mouse, and there was a lot of additional information (general) about each country, it was clunky to use.  And it crashed and wouldn’t load, so I moved on to something else.

http://www.atlapedia.com/

World Atlas looks great, but it isn’t free, the fee is not prohibitive though.

http://www.worldatlas.com/

The Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century is fascinating reading.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/20centry.htm