Today I looked a UCD Library 2 Go blog and saw how they are trying to tell their students about Web 2.0 tools that might be helpful to them. It was interesting to see how another institution approaches some of the same tools that we have been learning about. It was also great to learn about some other tools that I had not heard about.
As teaching faculty continue to add problem-based and active learning to their classes, whether the class meets physically and virtually, I see great potential for many of these tools to help students complete group work. Tools like Google Documents, with new presentation features, I think especially hold promise as they will allow students to work collaboratively without the limits of meeting times, time zones, etc.
I am currently on the planning committee for a regional conference and have been amazed by variety of costly web tools my colleagues from different institutions are using to make collaborative work possible. I know internally we have something as well. Thanks to the tools we've been learning about here at my library, I know that there are free web tools out there that will complete just about all of these tasks too!
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Maybe it's the moisturizer? Or the hair?
On Friday, I wore jeans and a t-shirt with my employing university's emblem to work because I spent four sweaty hours shifting bound periodicals. Even though I am a librarian, this isn't something I have to do too often.
The great student employee I worked with all afternoon thought I was a student employee at first. Clearing that up, after a little bit, she finally came out and asked, "So, just HOW old are you?"
The husband and I met up for dinner at a restaurant. When the waiter came by, here's what happened:
Waiter: "So, you go to XXU? So do I."
Husband: (trying hard to suppress hysterical laughter)
Me: "Um, well, I work there."
Two hours later we get a milk shake craving despite the fact we're both suppose to be dieting now. So, we take a seat at the counter of another restaurant:
Waiter: "So, how's school going?"
Husband: (having an even harder time suppressing the laughter)
Me: "Um, well, I work there."
You know, at 22 this would have really bugged me. But, I gotta say, at 32 it totally made my day!
The great student employee I worked with all afternoon thought I was a student employee at first. Clearing that up, after a little bit, she finally came out and asked, "So, just HOW old are you?"
The husband and I met up for dinner at a restaurant. When the waiter came by, here's what happened:
Waiter: "So, you go to XXU? So do I."
Husband: (trying hard to suppress hysterical laughter)
Me: "Um, well, I work there."
Two hours later we get a milk shake craving despite the fact we're both suppose to be dieting now. So, we take a seat at the counter of another restaurant:
Waiter: "So, how's school going?"
Husband: (having an even harder time suppressing the laughter)
Me: "Um, well, I work there."
You know, at 22 this would have really bugged me. But, I gotta say, at 32 it totally made my day!
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Learning 2.0: Wiki Wiki Woo
As part of our Learning 2.0 project at my library, we both created and used a wiki as well as learned about wikis. What's a wiki? Simply, a wiki is a collaborative website. Once more and more professionals learn about wikis, I think they have great potential for collaborative work, planning presentations, long-term projects, etc.
Within the library or academia, I see great potential for wikis. I easily see potential because, unfortunately, I am physically separated from my colleagues but work on several projects with them. A wiki could be a great way to work on a long (or short) term project together, create and edit and paper, etc. Of course, our internal software SharePoint holds all of that same potential as well. But a wiki could be a great option for libraries or organizations unable to invest in a product like SharePoint.
I personally think they have great potential in our personal lives, too. This summer I started a family wiki for my husband's large extended family. It proved a great place to plan a beach trip. I also think it could be a great place to share birthday and Christmas gift wish lists, schedules, family photos, etc.
I tried to get my husband to start using a wiki for him and I. I'm still trying.
In terms of libraries, this was a great opportunity for me to finally take a look at several library wikis that I have been meaning to look at for a while. The BizWiki was quite impressive and I definitely plan on bookmarking that one for myself. It was also interesting to see the Minnesota staff wiki; pretty much exactly what we are doing with SharePoint here at my library.
Within the library or academia, I see great potential for wikis. I easily see potential because, unfortunately, I am physically separated from my colleagues but work on several projects with them. A wiki could be a great way to work on a long (or short) term project together, create and edit and paper, etc. Of course, our internal software SharePoint holds all of that same potential as well. But a wiki could be a great option for libraries or organizations unable to invest in a product like SharePoint.
I personally think they have great potential in our personal lives, too. This summer I started a family wiki for my husband's large extended family. It proved a great place to plan a beach trip. I also think it could be a great place to share birthday and Christmas gift wish lists, schedules, family photos, etc.
I tried to get my husband to start using a wiki for him and I. I'm still trying.
In terms of libraries, this was a great opportunity for me to finally take a look at several library wikis that I have been meaning to look at for a while. The BizWiki was quite impressive and I definitely plan on bookmarking that one for myself. It was also interesting to see the Minnesota staff wiki; pretty much exactly what we are doing with SharePoint here at my library.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Learning 2.0: Tagging Two
The next lesson in our web 2.0 program at my library asked us to look at more specific uses of tagging. In particular, something class "folksonomy" which is really just a fancy name for tagging if you ask me.
One of the first things we were asked to do was look at a library using a new software called Encore. Encore is suppose to help make online library catalogs better and more user friendly. One of the elements of Encore is that when you search for a topic, to the right of your results you see a "tag cloud" on your topic. You can refine your search by looking at and clicking on a term in the cloud.
One of the first things I noticed is that Encore, at least in this particular library's catalog, definitely slows things down. It takes your results a few extra seconds to load and it takes that tag cloud even longer to load. That actually raises some concerns for me in terms of our off-campus and online learners using our resources from dial-up and slower connections. But, to move on since that's not the point of this assignment .....
I wonder about tag clouds and how useful they will be to a normal user. I particularly wonder if they'll even realize what they are.
Next we looked at del.icio.us. I absolutely do think tools like del.icio.us and netvouz (which I use) can be very helpful to people on a personal level in terms of keeping up with your web bookmarks. But I confess that I moved away from del.icio.us (with all of it's tagging ) to netvouz which allows me to create folders and put my bookmarks in folders. Del.icio.us just seemed to overwhelming for me and I never seemed to tag some things the same way. Maybe it's the librarian in me, but being able to put bookmarks in folders has been much more productive for me personally.
One of the first things we were asked to do was look at a library using a new software called Encore. Encore is suppose to help make online library catalogs better and more user friendly. One of the elements of Encore is that when you search for a topic, to the right of your results you see a "tag cloud" on your topic. You can refine your search by looking at and clicking on a term in the cloud.
One of the first things I noticed is that Encore, at least in this particular library's catalog, definitely slows things down. It takes your results a few extra seconds to load and it takes that tag cloud even longer to load. That actually raises some concerns for me in terms of our off-campus and online learners using our resources from dial-up and slower connections. But, to move on since that's not the point of this assignment .....
I wonder about tag clouds and how useful they will be to a normal user. I particularly wonder if they'll even realize what they are.
Next we looked at del.icio.us. I absolutely do think tools like del.icio.us and netvouz (which I use) can be very helpful to people on a personal level in terms of keeping up with your web bookmarks. But I confess that I moved away from del.icio.us (with all of it's tagging ) to netvouz which allows me to create folders and put my bookmarks in folders. Del.icio.us just seemed to overwhelming for me and I never seemed to tag some things the same way. Maybe it's the librarian in me, but being able to put bookmarks in folders has been much more productive for me personally.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Learning 2.0: It's All about Tagging
I finally tackled the first tagging exercise in our library learning 2.0 program.
I am very likely "tagging" along with the husband later this year on a work trip to Europe. The plan is to catch a train or rent a car and go to Italy. So, of course, I decided to look at Italy in my searching.
When I searched "Italy" in Google, I retrieved 413,000,000 hits. Quite nicely, the Italian Tourism Board was the first result.
Then I moved over to eQuest, the Libraries' online catalog, and conducted a keyword search for Italy. I retrieved 3,211 results.
Then I moved over to searching for Italy as a subject in eQuest. As I remember from my "cataloging" class with Dr. Chan, LOC really lets you look at very specific aspects of a subject. Take a look:
And that's just the first screen!
It's interesting to me how much tagging and library classification systems have in common. People seem to have a strong need to classify and organize things. To place them into categories. And it's pretty clear to me that Web 2.0 tagging is just the newest application of this. I am hopeful and think that tagging might actually draw attention to libraries and library classification again.
Exercise 2:
Now that my professional life has slowed a little -- well, not really slowed, the work flow has just changed -- I have been able to look at this blog, Flickr, and several other Web 2.0 tools I use personally and professionally and see that I have not been very good at tagging! Sometimes it was hard and timeconsuming enough to just get the blog post, or the beach photos, or whatever up there without being expected to actually add tags too! No more! I am going to try to take a moment and add tags.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Learning 2.0: Rollyo
Today I explored Rollyo and created my own personal Rollyo roll funnycats. In my defense, I couldn't think of anything else.
What Rollyo does is let you create an individual type of search engine. Have a few sites that you like to search? You can create a Rollyo roll that will search all of those sites at once.
I can see uses in such a tool, actually. Might be a nice way to help students conduct web searches of the free web. Particularly for very specific assignments. If, for example, a class is working on an assignment where they are researching terrorism and have to look at the web. I could use Rollyo to identify the "good" websites for them and they could save time and use Rollyo to search. But, honestly, I don't think they would ; )
It will be interesting to see where Rollyo goes and if it becomes a frequently used tool or not.
However, I still don't "get" bookmarklets. I might have to do some further exploring on that one on my own when I get some free time. Ha! LOL. Free time! ; )
What Rollyo does is let you create an individual type of search engine. Have a few sites that you like to search? You can create a Rollyo roll that will search all of those sites at once.
I can see uses in such a tool, actually. Might be a nice way to help students conduct web searches of the free web. Particularly for very specific assignments. If, for example, a class is working on an assignment where they are researching terrorism and have to look at the web. I could use Rollyo to identify the "good" websites for them and they could save time and use Rollyo to search. But, honestly, I don't think they would ; )
It will be interesting to see where Rollyo goes and if it becomes a frequently used tool or not.
However, I still don't "get" bookmarklets. I might have to do some further exploring on that one on my own when I get some free time. Ha! LOL. Free time! ; )
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Learning 2.0: LibraryThing
Today I finally had a chance to catch up a little on our Web 2.0 learning project at my library. For lesson # 10 we were suppose to set up and account in LibraryThing and explore. I was excited about this lesson because I've been wanting an excuse to play around in LibraryThing for a while!
LibraryThing is a web tool that lets anyone catalog their personal book collection! You can catalog up to 200 titles for free and endless titles for a very reasonable cost.
It was very easy to add books to LibraryThing. To be honest, I did so without even reading any directions. But then I was like, now what? Quickly I learned, like all of our other Web 2.0 tools, LibraryThing is all about being social. I could click on one of my books and see how many other people had the book in their collection. Very cool. There are also reviews, author pages, etc. And you can be as open or as private as you want with LibraryThing, which is always nice.
For the second exercise, we were suppose to go to the Web2List and check out the massive list of Web 2.0 applications listed there. Whoa! That list was really overwhelming. But, I was quite pleased to see that Amazon was on the list! I use Amazon in my personal and professional lives all the time. Personally, it has become a great source for Christmas and birthday presents for our ever expanding extended family. Professionally, and maybe this is a bad thing for a librarian to admit, I use it in collection development all the time. When I am trying to evaluate a book, and whether or not it is good for our collection, I always go to Amazon and it gives me a much better description (usually) then Blackwell's. It also helps me identify textbooks (which I try not to buy) easier than Blackwell's.
LibraryThing is a web tool that lets anyone catalog their personal book collection! You can catalog up to 200 titles for free and endless titles for a very reasonable cost.
It was very easy to add books to LibraryThing. To be honest, I did so without even reading any directions. But then I was like, now what? Quickly I learned, like all of our other Web 2.0 tools, LibraryThing is all about being social. I could click on one of my books and see how many other people had the book in their collection. Very cool. There are also reviews, author pages, etc. And you can be as open or as private as you want with LibraryThing, which is always nice.
For the second exercise, we were suppose to go to the Web2List and check out the massive list of Web 2.0 applications listed there. Whoa! That list was really overwhelming. But, I was quite pleased to see that Amazon was on the list! I use Amazon in my personal and professional lives all the time. Personally, it has become a great source for Christmas and birthday presents for our ever expanding extended family. Professionally, and maybe this is a bad thing for a librarian to admit, I use it in collection development all the time. When I am trying to evaluate a book, and whether or not it is good for our collection, I always go to Amazon and it gives me a much better description (usually) then Blackwell's. It also helps me identify textbooks (which I try not to buy) easier than Blackwell's.
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