Technology Trends

Librarian in Black, Sarah Houghton-Jan, summarises her contribution to ALA 2008 in Sarah’s Top Technology Trends – virtual presentation for ALA 2008. I would like to draw attention to point #3 in the hope that the comments may filter through to the bureaucracy running our organisation.
I really like the way so much of the technology trends that are buzzed in Library circles were used in this presentation.

Web Taming Ringmaster

Michael Stevens’ blog, Tame the Web, has two articles this week that I find particularly thought provoking.

1. Keys to a Successful Self Check-Out Project (linked from Michael’s blog)
Our new library is under construction (it’s exciting to see progress with the new building across the road) and it would be good to consider implementing a changeover to a fully automated checkout policy. Please don’t argue until you have read the report and its answers to possible objections.

2. Brian Kelly: What if We’re Right? & Libpunk’d
Brian poses questions aimed at the detractors of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 and proposes that there are more risks involved by not accepting such things as social networking and open source technology than by adopting them whole-heartedly.

Web 2.0 Tutorials

As anyone who reads this blog regularly will have guessed I am a great fan of using Web 2.0, particularly its potential for making libraries more “with it”. This list of 100 Free Library 2.0 Webinars and Tutorials from the College@Home blog will help anyone who wants to find out more or give instructors ideas for spreading the word amongst unbelievers. I’m sure that library staff have already been converted but part of my mission is to get others to understand. Any library that hasn’t yet run a variation of the 23 Learning 2.0 Things programme should consider implementing it as soon as they are able.

Wordle Cloud

This is fun. I Used Wordle to create a web cloud of my tags in del.icio.us (see how interested I am in web 2.0 and Second Life). Similar clouds can be created for any body of text you choose.

Thanks to Phil Bradley’s Weblog for giving me this idea.

7 Things You Should Know About

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI’s) 7 Things You Should Know About… series provides concise information on emerging learning technologies and related practices. If you have ever struggled to explain why various Web 2.0 tools are useful in the library or teaching environments here is a most useful series of explanations about technologies that may demonstrate positive learning impacts.

Currently there are 37 applications in the series which should give you all you need to stay up-to-date on emerging technologies.

Open Source and Web 2.0

iLibrarian directed me to an article about open source software in online learning in the April-June 2008 issue of Educause Quarterly. After defining it and giving the history of open source software the authors go into detail about it’s impact on learning and describe some of the applications that are used by education institutions around the world.

For me the most significant segment was a description of web 2.0 enabling students to participate in information sharing and combining that with open-source software(How can I persuade my director to reconsider attitude towards web 2.0?).

With Web 2.0, the concept of student-centered learning has acquired a new dimension. Previously, the greatest critique of student-centered learning was the lack of resources and the isolation of each student from other learners. Web 2.0 has provided a means through which both collective and individual intelligence can be harnessed, while students bond in stronger, redefined ways.

These concepts all have the potential to change distance education but still need more focussed developers to produce reliable, quality online education.

Web 2.0 distractions

I was asked to do my standard presentation on Wikis and Blogs yesterday but “to make it fun”. Well, these workshops are always fun but I thought that I could provide a new slant on this one by running through a few Web 2.0 applications and letting participants make whatever use of them they could.

I gave everyone the following handout and we worked together through each of the activities, referring along the way to what other people (myself included) had done with the tools available.

What are we doing here?
1	Create a Google account www.google.com
2	Create an iGoogle page www.google.com/ig
3	Add elements to your iGoogle page
4	Create a Blogger account www.blogger.com Write about what you hope to achieve today
5	Create an avatar — a representation of yourself. Go to http://avatars.yahoo.com/ ; design an avatar with a funky background. (You will have to set up an account if you don’t use Yahoo!) Save your avatar and export to your blog.
6	Create a reader and add some RSS feeds http://www.google.com/reader
7	Facebook http://facebook.com Create an account, find some friends and send them a message.
8	Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/
9	LibraryThing http://librarything.com
10	Picasa – organise your pictures http://picasa.google.com/

Participants were fully absorbed throughout and I had to get stroppy to get them to stand up after a couple of hours to help themselves to coffee and biscuits.

These are only some of the activities that we do in the 23 Things programme. I’m still thinking of rolling it out to the whole college but also struggling against lack of support for such “distractions”.

Bored? Never!

What does one do when stuck at home recovering from minor foot surgery? I caught up with some reading and finished the Life of Pi, spent many hours in Second Life and also played with StumbleUpon and discovered many fascinating new sites. If you haven’t used StumbleUpon you are denying yourself hours of entertainment and finding sites that other people have considered noteworthy (yes, it’s one of these new-fangled Web 2.0 tools again).

Some of the pages I discovered are listed below:

15 Handy Google Search Tricks
Most of us use Google but here are several built in functions within Google which make searching even easier. Learn how to use Google as a calculator, a dictionary, a currency converter and for several other useful field searches.

Maximize Firefox Without Extensions Using about:config If you type about:config in your address bar, Firefox opens the master directory of user-defined preferences and built-in settings. The ultimate arena for performance tampering, the about:config settings are the foundation for programming Firefox extensions.

The caffeine click test where I found out that my caffeine level for the day was High – Well Caffeinated & Easily Excitable.

This May Help Your Firefox Memory Leak is an excellent blog post that details how to reduce Firefox’s high memory use.

The search engine list is a list of umpteen search engines sorted by genre. I must admit that I have never heard of most of them but one day it will be fun to play around and see how they compare. There are special search engines for news, medical, maps, legal, jobs, games, enterprise, blogs – and many more.

5 Ways to copy music OFF your iPod. I have moved office to one with a new computer and my music folder was not transferred with me. I have all these tunes on my iPod and want to be able to edit and re-organise them, so what am I to do? It’s easy enough to copy music (or videos) from computer to iPod, but not the other way. Luckily this site has come to my rescue.

Getting ready for the New World

I am forever shouting the praises of Second Life in which I can learn, create, socialise and play. I joined a year ago today and my avatar took her first steps inworld when we studied a course in Virtual World Librarianship. This was so rewarding that I then went on to do the Intermediate course and have registered for Working with a Class in Second Life next month.

If you don’t know what all the hype is about read Second Life – what is the hype? a new post in the makeuseof.com blog. The writer claims that Education is one of the most progressive fields in SL and while I am still hoping that one day my college will see the light, I am preparing to offer training to our lecturers to get them ready for the new wave.

Web2.0 in a nutshell

eLearn Magazine has this feature article Ten Web 2.0 Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes to Be a More Successful E-learning Professional. It could be valuable for all “23 Thingers” or anyone interested in learning about or maintaining their Web2.0 skills.