You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2008.
This link to an online video was sent to me by the teacher of a course I am currently studying.
http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/63302/high-wire-act
This clip made me realise the value of online video hosting as a way of sharing creativity and resources. Walter Lewin’s video lectures were very expensive to produce, but the generosity of putting them on the Web allows them to be viewed by a large number of people across the world. Nobody has to buy a copy, there are no storage issues (although links may be ephemeral), no licences to negotiate, and no registrations. MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) includes video content, such as Walter Lewin’s lectures, on its Open Courseware website. http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/about/about/index.htm
It is nice to see people sharing!!
Well, I read the instructions (link below) for embedding video clips into WordPress and it looks like I’d need an IT degree and administrator rights for my work PC.
http://www.teachertube.com/wordpress.php
I’ve opted for just including the link to my chosen video:
American Idle : Information Resources
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=2f8a334937ff0fcdc0d8
It’s a parody of American Idol singing competition, but applied to information resources. It gave me a laugh and would probably appeal to our younger students (TPC etc). Very creative!
I’m using Teacher Tube because I only have a dial up connection at home and my laptop currently takes 20 minutes to open my email, let alone anything more complex. If I get a chance, I’ll try the public library to access YouTube.
Now this is fun! It’s so fast! And you don’t have to do all that pesky, time consuming, cataloguing. (My apologies to all librarians who love to catalogue the traditional way).
I really like having images of the book covers included in the Library Thing catalogue. I know that there are Libraries out there in the real world who do this too. I wish we had this function on TAFEcat. So many library users identify the items they need by what they look like, leading to requests for “the small red book” etc.
I’ve added a widget to my blog sidebar that links to my Library Thing catalog (only a few titles in there so far). In WordPress you have to go into Design, then widgets and add as text widget. Here is the link, http://www.librarything.com/catalog/gipsylibrarian
One thing I am a bit concerned about is that the link to my catalog would give editing rights to anyone who accessed it. Perhaps there is a way to prevent this. I have no objection to people viewing and searching my book collection, but I’d prefer to keep control of the editing rights (adding, deleting titles, ratings etc). Otherwise, why bother having a secure login and password?
Library Thing for Libraries may be worth further exploration, but I don’t really understand the technical side of setting up library catalogues and websites. I don’t know if these options would be useful, or even possible, or not….. Perhaps tag browsing??
I finally got a chance to create a del.icio.us account to bookmark the myriad of links that I am gathering as part of the 23 Things course. http://del.icio.us/gipsylibrarian
Benefits
- Easy to set up an account
- Bookmarks don’t get deleted when computers crash or get rebuilt
- Access to favourites from anywhere that has internet access
Thoughts on tagging
Social Tagging (where tags link to tags used by other users) is really very similar to cross referencing – Librarians have been doing this forever!
- Del.icio.us is not as disorganised as I first thought
- I think it is better to limit the number of tags to make things more manageable
- The quality of the tags (and the tagger’s ability) does vary greatly. Perhaps some people have training in filing and indexing (or even library training!) or are just naturally logical, methodical types!
Google docs and zoho writer sound like they could be really useful for collaborating on work-related documents. Too bad we can’t access them at work – of course they are BLOCKED!!! Looks like we will continue to send documents back and forth by email, or store things in T:Drive to work on (we currently track changes by using methods such as typing in different colours – very high tech!).
I might look at these tools at home sometime, although then I would have to teach the people I know how to use them too. (Most of them don’t use or don’t like technology, or are too busy to learn about new tools).
Question: Is there an Institute option for collaborating on documents? Perhaps there is and I just don’t know about it.
I’m already a fan of Wikipedia. It’s a useful resource for librarians.
As for contributing to wikis, I’ve used a wiki when I was involved in a Learnscope project a couple of years ago. The main problem was finding time to work on the project and also add updates to the wiki. Time pressures won and I only added the bare minimum of project details to the wiki. Still, I like the idea of a shared web page that can be edited and updated by a group of users.
I’ve had a look at some of the wikis listed (those that weren’t blocked!). I’m a bit concerned about the number of these wikis that have been abandonned and the content moved elsewhere. Some contributors state that they had too many problems with spam. Other wikis were just created for a specific project though, and ended at the project’s conclusion. If privacy and spam issues can be resolved, I think wikis have potential for the following:
Potential Library Uses
- project management
- library subject guides with RSS feeds e.g. http://champlaincollegelibrary.pbwiki.com/Accounting
- reading lists with RSS feeds
Education Uses
Here’s an interesting idea – wikis as textbooks! http://lrr.cli.det.nsw.edu.au/Lrr2Tale/Tale/ResourceInfo.aspx?resID=6927
Potential Challenges:
- controlling authority of content
- deciding who can edit the wiki and setting up restrictions without missing out on potentially valuable contributions
- finding time to maintain the wiki as regular checks and updates would be required
Copyright is a minefield and keeping up with what you can and can’t do is a big challenge. Creative Commons Licences are a great idea – I support any initiatives that facilitate sharing of resources, while acknowledging authors and owners.
As for Web 2.0, Library 2.0, (TAFE 2.0?) it is another challenge that we are all currently facing. I welcome the idea of more interaction with and participation from Library users. I know it is needed, or we will become obsolete. One of the challenges here is finding effective ways to encourage Library users to respond and engage. In theory it all sounds so great - reach out and support users in new ways, meet them in “their” world and customise services to support users in the way they want to be supported. The hard part is putting this into practice. We can set up blogs, wikis, create podcasts, videos etc etc, but how do we get users to respond ? Many Library users are so pressed for time that all they want is to grab the relevant text for the latest assignment, without having to search the catalogue, let alone engage with us online. Also, how do we find out what users want in the first place? It is easy to make false assumptions and spend a lot of time on something that nobody needs or wants… On the other hand, sometimes it is worth just having a go and seeing what the response is. Perhaps if new methods and tools were introduced, people would welcome them.
OK – I’ll try putting in some html code and see if the tag will be recognised on Technorati. Cross fingers and toes!
<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/test" rel="tag">test</a><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/week+6" rel="tag">week+6</a>No success - I'm giving up now.
I really have to speed up and stop writing such long posts. Otherwise I’ll never finish this course. Problem is, there is so much interesting stuff out there. It’s a whole other world…
Technorati is another site full of interesting links. It’s blog searching capability is useful. As for tagging, I’m trying to get my head around the instructions before giving it a go. I might try tagging an earlier post and see what happens…..
OK. I don’t understand how Technorati tags work. I can add tags to my posts and I’ve read the tagging instructions on Technorati…. I’ve even followed directions and “pinged” my blog to Technorati and got a messasge saying this was successful…..According to the Technorati tagging instructions, WordPress categories should automatically be read as tags and I don’t need to insert HTML code into my posts. (Just as well, because HTML makes no sense to me). Maybe the problem is that my posts are tagged by week # and I am searching Technorati Tags by the tags I created on my posts. I DON’T KNOW! I GIVE UP!!!!
