MLA homework, week 8:
I tried several mashups; the quick ones on which to comment are one that gave weather/airport/etc. info for various cities, good for travelers. I used it to check on Chicago for the MLA meeting. I'm a Sudoku afficianado, so I also took a quick look at a Sudoku site that uses Flickr pictures. Cute.
For the rollups, I tried the suggested exercises, with minimal success; I don't think I'm searching correctly in the right places. I am very pleased to know that there is this "index" of web sites, (peer-reviewed, as it were), and this will be useful for further explorations.
Interesting!
Friday, May 16, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
MLA homework week 6 (note: out of order; posted after week-7 entry)
Photoshariing through Flickr. Here's the photo I'm trying to share.... these are two lambs from several years ago, from our friends in the country. I don't think they were more than a day or two old at this point.
I had a lot of trouble with this exercise, but not because of Flickr. Well, first I tried to register at a time when it wasn't happy, so that delayed me a bit. But the main problem was figuring out how to work within the software that came with my digital camera, to pluck out just one photo and park it someplace where I could find it to use with Flickr. This probably shows you how little i've actually done with the digital photos I take.... not unlike how little I usually did with the film photos I took. Anyway, once I got past that, adding the photo to Facebook took some fussing, but adding it here was easy.
In my library? Adding photos to a library blog would be an easy way to highlight new services, new staff members, etc. -- even new books, by taking a photo of the cover,though there are probably easier ways to do that. Any sort of museum would find this useful too.
GH
MLA week 7 homework, part 2:
Working from home (with a DSL connection), on a Tuesday morning, I didn't have trouble viewing videos. I think this is an interesting and "natural progression" from the available technology -- videocamera cell phones, social networking, etc. As I'm not a TV watcher and rarely even go to movies (yeah, I know, Dark Ages for sure), I don't naturally gravitate to YouTube, but it's an interesting option.
Podcasting is more useful for me. I listen to podcasts directly online (though I can no longer listen to internet classical radio at work since streaming audio/video is now blocked), and I'm hunting for the time to get really set up with podcast subscriptions. I think these could have great interest/usefulness for our library patrons: the straight audio lectures (such as those History of Medicine lectures in the example) would be easy. So many of our library-resource leaning sessions really need video plus audio (or at least screenshots, PPT, etc.), and that'll be good to work on.
Users (of every age) have different learning styles, and don't the educational gurus remind us to present the same information in several different ways (by sight and by sound, for instance)? This "Modern Generation" (whatever that means) is certainly often more likely to use this sort of technology first. Whether or not we use it personally, or even in our libraries, we certainly need to be very conversant with it.
GH
Working from home (with a DSL connection), on a Tuesday morning, I didn't have trouble viewing videos. I think this is an interesting and "natural progression" from the available technology -- videocamera cell phones, social networking, etc. As I'm not a TV watcher and rarely even go to movies (yeah, I know, Dark Ages for sure), I don't naturally gravitate to YouTube, but it's an interesting option.
Podcasting is more useful for me. I listen to podcasts directly online (though I can no longer listen to internet classical radio at work since streaming audio/video is now blocked), and I'm hunting for the time to get really set up with podcast subscriptions. I think these could have great interest/usefulness for our library patrons: the straight audio lectures (such as those History of Medicine lectures in the example) would be easy. So many of our library-resource leaning sessions really need video plus audio (or at least screenshots, PPT, etc.), and that'll be good to work on.
Users (of every age) have different learning styles, and don't the educational gurus remind us to present the same information in several different ways (by sight and by sound, for instance)? This "Modern Generation" (whatever that means) is certainly often more likely to use this sort of technology first. Whether or not we use it personally, or even in our libraries, we certainly need to be very conversant with it.
GH
MLA Week 7 homework -- part one:
Here's the video I'm sharing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJlkplvYdgA. It's a classic Sesame Street clip about Cookie Monster in the library. (I'd give him cookies if he came to MY library....)
GH
Here's the video I'm sharing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJlkplvYdgA. It's a classic Sesame Street clip about Cookie Monster in the library. (I'd give him cookies if he came to MY library....)
GH
MLA CE: Week 5 homework
I'm way behind, hoping to catch up today WITHOUT scrimping on the homework assignments. This was the "web office tools" week, and the "homework question" was "Is this the future of all software products?"
This will probably be a very important option for future software, and will likely become the "plan A" for many people and projects. Especially for personal use, the lower costs and non-hassle with buying/installing upgrades will be welcome. Access to files stored elsewhere will be easy, and will make everything from travel (home-to-work or home-to-Tahiti) to changing hardward easier. But security of the files will be a consideration, and that may be the primary consideration for corporations and businesses -- as would simple preservation of the files themselves. (If they're stored on a corporate network, the corporation has these issues covered.) One of the reviewers mentioned keeping personal backups in case the web software company suddenly ceased to exist, and that's the issue.
The other wrinkle is that if web-based software requires a web connection for all use, it's obviously not available where the web isn't.And as ubiquitous as web access is becoming (WiFi in airports, etc.), it isn't everywhere.... if I want to work on a document in the car while my husband is driving us to visit relatives on the weekend, I'd better have document-software I can use on my laptop. Some sorts of "work offline" options could (and probably already) exist, and that may well be part of what's in the paid products.
I also don't know if there will be compatibility issues that will be a factor in sharing. As long as there are free online versions of the software, or the ability for anyone to register for a free account and thus share documents, this problem would be minimized. If the products differ much in capabilities or interfaces, we'll have to learn several in order to communicate with colleagues in various spheres.
All told, there are obvious pros and cons, and no one answer for all situations. Having the options is always good, however, and we all need to explore them to find out what's best for a particular situation.
GH
I'm way behind, hoping to catch up today WITHOUT scrimping on the homework assignments. This was the "web office tools" week, and the "homework question" was "Is this the future of all software products?"
This will probably be a very important option for future software, and will likely become the "plan A" for many people and projects. Especially for personal use, the lower costs and non-hassle with buying/installing upgrades will be welcome. Access to files stored elsewhere will be easy, and will make everything from travel (home-to-work or home-to-Tahiti) to changing hardward easier. But security of the files will be a consideration, and that may be the primary consideration for corporations and businesses -- as would simple preservation of the files themselves. (If they're stored on a corporate network, the corporation has these issues covered.) One of the reviewers mentioned keeping personal backups in case the web software company suddenly ceased to exist, and that's the issue.
The other wrinkle is that if web-based software requires a web connection for all use, it's obviously not available where the web isn't.And as ubiquitous as web access is becoming (WiFi in airports, etc.), it isn't everywhere.... if I want to work on a document in the car while my husband is driving us to visit relatives on the weekend, I'd better have document-software I can use on my laptop. Some sorts of "work offline" options could (and probably already) exist, and that may well be part of what's in the paid products.
I also don't know if there will be compatibility issues that will be a factor in sharing. As long as there are free online versions of the software, or the ability for anyone to register for a free account and thus share documents, this problem would be minimized. If the products differ much in capabilities or interfaces, we'll have to learn several in order to communicate with colleagues in various spheres.
All told, there are obvious pros and cons, and no one answer for all situations. Having the options is always good, however, and we all need to explore them to find out what's best for a particular situation.
GH
Sunday, April 6, 2008
MLA Week 4 homework
Oh, I love this, and I'm definitely going to use it. I'm also going to show this to my husband, whose list of "favorites" goes on for yards.... I put a post on the course blog about the differences/similarities between tagging things myself and using a "controlled language" subject list; it's fun (and helpful) to be able to be quite specific for my own use, but I'll need to remember about using lots of synonyms when looking for sites other folks have tagged.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
MLA: Week 3 homework
Delayed, because Facebook is blocked at our hospital (understandably!) and I had no time at home last week. Home is at least a DSL connection, but still this takes a lot of time...
At my stage of life (personally, at least) I feel I'm well connected, and I'm happy using "traditional" methods (including email, of course) to maintain these connections. I'm pretty sure I'll delete at least my Facebook account once this course is done; we'll see about LinkedIn. Thanks to the MLANet/directory and other professional organizations, that arena has seemed OK for me so far; we'll see.
As Facebook and MySpace are blocked at our hospital, we won't be using this at work. I'm also happy sharing my personal information only at my own choosing, and while I understand that I can leave all those areas blank on my profiles, if I'm not doing that I don't see the point. But I'm glad to have this guided experience to explore these sites.
At my stage of life (personally, at least) I feel I'm well connected, and I'm happy using "traditional" methods (including email, of course) to maintain these connections. I'm pretty sure I'll delete at least my Facebook account once this course is done; we'll see about LinkedIn. Thanks to the MLANet/directory and other professional organizations, that arena has seemed OK for me so far; we'll see.
As Facebook and MySpace are blocked at our hospital, we won't be using this at work. I'm also happy sharing my personal information only at my own choosing, and while I understand that I can leave all those areas blank on my profiles, if I'm not doing that I don't see the point. But I'm glad to have this guided experience to explore these sites.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Second class assignment
Are things getting easier? Maybe.... it's always so instructive to learn something new, down a whole new path -- besides what I learn, I'm also reminded how tricky it can be to learn something new. Useful for when I teach!
Blogs vs. Wikis? Blogs seem more "I post, you respond", while Wikis seem more "we create collaboratively". Also, if one is posting material for other people to actually use, a Wiki seems much better for organizing the information. I like the demo Wiki (I think it was the OU one) that used this as a format for showing users/patrons how to find and choose good sources for particular types of questions; we've been talking about that in our library, and this could be a good method.
Blogs vs. Wikis? Blogs seem more "I post, you respond", while Wikis seem more "we create collaboratively". Also, if one is posting material for other people to actually use, a Wiki seems much better for organizing the information. I like the demo Wiki (I think it was the OU one) that used this as a format for showing users/patrons how to find and choose good sources for particular types of questions; we've been talking about that in our library, and this could be a good method.
Friday, March 14, 2008
First post for MLA CE
I'd say I felt so "adult" finally learning these things, but I think my "adultness" has been the issue! Anyway, I'm delighted that MLA is leading us "oldies" into the new world.
We're to post comments about how I might use RSS feeds, for myself and for our patrons. It's always easier to keep up with things that come to me automatically, as opposed to the things I need to go hunt for, and I know our patrons are no different. I'll use these to keep up with ought-to-be-favorite journals, library blogs, and current goings-on in medical librarianship and uses of our skills and resources in our healthcare environment. We'll teach our patrons these skills -- or we'll show them that we can use these skills to provide what they need to stay current, even if they don't want to use them themselves. Hooray!
We're to post comments about how I might use RSS feeds, for myself and for our patrons. It's always easier to keep up with things that come to me automatically, as opposed to the things I need to go hunt for, and I know our patrons are no different. I'll use these to keep up with ought-to-be-favorite journals, library blogs, and current goings-on in medical librarianship and uses of our skills and resources in our healthcare environment. We'll teach our patrons these skills -- or we'll show them that we can use these skills to provide what they need to stay current, even if they don't want to use them themselves. Hooray!
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