Thing 23-------yipppeeeeee

How could you draw on what you have learned in 23 Things to help you in your work?
I now have at least some understanding of a range of new "things" . I'll also use Google Books now as an extra bibliographic tool.
How could the library use the technologies featured in 23 Things to improve its service?
I hope that we'll soon get a library blog or a wiki up and running.
Do you think you’ll keep blogging or keep using any of the other tools you learned about?
I'd like to keep blogging and maybe use the blog as away of letting teachers know about new stuff that I've ordered. I hope to keep up with the RSS feeds as there's some really useful information out there.
Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
Take-aways? Do we get chips with that??
What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I think it was great. If the program is going to be offered to other Chisholm staff, perhaps some extra instructions might be useful so people won't have to keep bugging Jason with questions (like I did).
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?
Sure would!

Thing 22

From 2005
Library 2.0 Movement Sees Benefits in Collaboration with Patrons. Jason Boog
In
http://www.librarycrunch.com/2005/11/dont_forget_the_need_for_const.html
"They hope that the Library 2.0 "movement" will break librarians out of brick-and-mortar establishments and get them to interact with patrons through blog comments, IM and Wiki entries".
So why hasn't this happened by 2008?
American college students don't seem to think libraries need a social networking presence http://www.oclc.org/reports/sharing/default.htm
and I wonder if ours would be any different. I think the blog and wiki things would be a great tool for us to use internally but, if usage of "Ask a Librarian" is any guide, students may not want to interact with us this way. But I guess if we waited for students to tell us what they want before doing anything we'd never do anything much.
So how do we get the balance right between jumping in to use new technology just because it's new (or really not so new in this case) and providing something that students will really engage with because they've asked us for it? There are so many social networking options out there that a library one might not be something that's really high on our students' list of priorities. We'd need to make our blog/wiki/Facebook page something really spectacular to compete - so there's our challenge!

Thing 21 - iGoogle

I can't believe I've nearly finished! iGoogle is great - I've now got lots of options all in one place. Mostly they're things I've currently got as Favourites like the currency converter and weather so it'll be interesting to see whether or not I'll get into the habit of using this page instead of working in my usual way.

Google Docs and Google Book Search

Google Docs
I guess that internally we don't need this tool so much as we all have access to the S drive docs and can share, edit and track changes that way. The revisions function on Google is really good though as you can instantly see who edited the doc and when. I imported an orientation slideshow and played around with it and although it went slowly at first and the functions will take a bit of getting used to, I thought it worked well. I haven't tried loading the file back into the S drive so I'm not sure how that works.
For anyone who wanted to work on a document off-campus it could very useful. And it is a free service - well, apart from your internet access costs.
Google Book Search
I LOVE THIS! don't know why I've never used it before. A great alternative to Bookfind or Amazon when looking for hard to find materials and it links straight through to Libraries Australia or WorldCat when you click on the "Find this book in a library" link.

Google Maps

View Larger Map
I've used this site quite a bit. Great for daydreaming and armchair travel as well as the practicalities of getting from one place to another.

MySpace and Facebook

Wow! Some of those teen library sites on Myspace are really jazzy! Facebook seems much quieter. I now have a Facebook page and have looked at the VATL LIT group page http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20435683973 and the SouthWest TAFE page. Once again, these resources look useful but would need to be continually updated to remain relevant.

More and more frequently I'm finding that the "Accessed to site denied. It is categorised as streaming media" message is coming up. While I realise that lack of bandwidth is a problem I think that we are going to be missing out on really useful information by having these restrictions.

YouTube

There's some really interesting stuff here ( and some really dumb). I tried to load a video into my blog but got so confused trying to work out which login I was using that I've given up. I'd really like to get this thing - and all the other things- finished by the end of the break so I'm not going to waste any more time on it right now.
One interesting video is a tour of Information Island on Second Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTQkzfz5osQ&feature=related

Flickr Thing

I wish I'd taken this picture

http://www.flickr.com/photos/missmerv/2588683993/in/pool-denaliphotos

(unfortunately copyright protected so I can't upload)


Instead of this one

but at least I know I saw a bear in there!

Flickr's great and one day (probably yet another retirement project) I'm sure I'll spend many hours in there. There are some fabulous photos!!

Delicious and Technorati

I'm now a Del.icio.us fan! I've been meaning to look into this site for ages and have now imported all my favourites from Internet Explorer into Del.icio.us. It should be a great tool for us all.
Technorati I'm not so sure about. I searched in the posts for “Learning 2.0” and got only 14 hits - none in the blogs or tags but heaps from the directory. Obviously their search function isn't too great.
Hopefully I'll have a little more time now to forge ahead with the rest of the 23 things but every time I look at my RSS feeds I find some really interesting stuff that I just HAVE to look at and there goes another 20 minutes!
e.g
Twitter for Librarians: The Ultimate Guide
http://www.lisnews.org/node/30372

Google Earth Maps Walt Disney World Resort in 3D
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080605-100557

Things 11 and 12

I really haven't been inspired enough by these to persevere much. Tried to create something with the image generator but I kept getting messages that the jpeg file I wanted to import didn't exist so gave up, as it was all taking up too much time that I didn't have. Hopefully I'll have better luck with the next "things".

Things 9 and 10

Finally! I've had a look at a few wikis and am still getting my head around it all. After not having touched any of this for a while I'm finding that it all runs away from you if you don't keep your skills up. I've just spent about half and hour trying to remember my password!!
Wikis might be a good way for us all to keep "in the loop" with what's going on - perhaps the weekly diary could come out in this form rather than an email?
I've added a page to the wiki - with Jason's help to add the link so that you could actually see the new page - Favourite Places - and put in a couple of photos. Hope you like them. Someone's written a tantalising story about the Daintree. Who are you???

Falling behind............

Don't know about anyone else, but I'm starting to fall way behind with my "things". I started to look at the wikis, couldn't get into the site and then other tasks took over. I've been to a whole day seminar in the city on "Second Life" and had 2 trips to Bass Coast in the last 2 weeks.
The "Second Life" day was run by Kathryn Greenhill from Murdoch University . You may have seen some of her stuff on the Librarians Matter blog.
I wanted to find out if we could have a "Second Life" presence but I've come to the conclusion that it would have to be a whole of TAFE sector project - not just VATL but a bit like the TAFEVC. So far I can't even log in at Chisholm - I believe that we don't have sufficiently high end video cards in our PCs.
It was a very interesting day even if the system did keep dropping out until we cut the bandwidth back significantly - it requires lots to run at full strength. another reason why we couldn't use it here at the moment.

dig

I've now signed up for the "dig" podcast from the ABC. figured I might as well listen to something different - we'll see how it goes.
http://www.abc.net.au/dig/podcast/dig_rss.xml

I'm trying to keep up with all the information (well a little bit of it) that comes into my Bloglines feeds - some really interesting and some just to zip past. It's amazing how you can spend 10 minutes scrolling through stuff only to find new feeds there when you're ready to log out!!

Top 10 Tools for Learning 2008

Top 10 Tools for Learning 2008

Timeshift

IT'S NOT REALLY 11.45 PM ON WEDNESDAY

5,6 and 7

I'm enjoying the "things", although how I'm going to keep up with the huge mountain of RSS feeds that arrive every day I don't know. I can skim over most of them but some really need to be read. I've had a look at other people's blogs - aren't you all a creative bunch! I'm going to have to find some way of making this a bit more interesting.
On a "referency" note: I found an interesting extension for Firefox. It's called Zotero and helps you keep track of books, documents, websites as you esearch. You can add notes as you go. Great tool for compiling a bibliography.

Blogging

Well, I was much happier with this week's effort and managed to create my blog pretty quickly. Now I just have to think of things to say.

Thing One and Thing Two

How very Dr Seuss!
Well, much to my dismay I found Thing One really difficult. Must have watched the demo about a dozen times before I finally completed the task of adding plugins. I think my inexperience with Firefox probably contributed and it wasn't until I made Firefox the default search engine that things started to fall into place. Until then every time I opened a new window it would open in Explorer and I'd get lost.
It would have been useful to have opened up the link that Jason had created to the unofficial Library tools page first. I finally figured this all out and now I actually know what I'm doing. Hooray!!
The plugins task was easier although I don't think it's something I'll use much. But at least I know they're available. I'm still happier using Explorer but will continue to experiment with Firefox and may become a convert.