Here is a quick summary from my feeback sheet:
Comment on overall time given for pilot:
I think that no matter how much time you give people it will never be enough. Although I was pressed for time (having been on holidays for 2 weeks at the beginning) I would still be as rushed if I had more time. so the time was just about right. I always get more motivated when I have a deadline.
Comment on relevance of tools:
Some of the tools I know that I will probably never look at again - ie. twitter, technorati. I can see the relevance for work of using RSS feeds, Wikis, Bloglines - the other tools were probably more of a personal nature.
Comment on specific difficulties:
Some of the links from the library link http://uqlibrary.blogspot.com/ didn't work - to get the instructions for some activities I had to go back to a previous activity and use the sidebar links (which usually worked)
Most Useful: RSS feeds, although I will be forever grateful to Del.icio.us. where I found the site www.seeqpod.com and now every member of the family can have their own saveable playlist playing when they are on the computer.
Most fun: librivox, youtube
Most difficult to use: Twitter, Second Life
MOST ANNOYING (HENCE THE CAPITALS):
The most annoying thing was having to create accounts and logins with google and yahoo and every other program - I realise that if you want to participate and store info you need to login but sometimes it would be nice to just browse without joining.
Overall View of the Program
I thought this was a very worthwhile experience - great to be given time to play around and familiarise myself with these new tools. As with anything it was just the tip of the iceberg and we will need to keep using some of these tools to keep our knowledge fresh. As much as we (I) might complain that I don't have much time and that the training impinges on my workload, the reality is that working in a library - this is our workload. The kids coming into this university will be very familiar with a lot of this technology and we can't really claim to be "cutting edge" if we can't talk on their terms. At least we won't look completely out of touch if we know the vocabulary. I will probably go back and revisit a lot of the tools here now that I have had a basic introduction.
I really enjoyed reading other the blogs from the other pilot members - shows what a diverse group we have working here.
Suggestions:
Look at Picasa (I prefer to Flickr) and Facebook or Myspace
Friday, October 31, 2008
Task 22: Second Life
Need I say I've hardly time to do what I want to do in my first life (enough of my rant). Seriously, the Star Wars application that the 6 year old narrator of one of the discovery resources mentioned looked interesting if I felt like escaping to a galaxy far, far away. I am sure that for the creative types out there it offers a whole range of applications. I'm just wondering what sort of Avatar I'd give myself - mind boggles really.
I read the article that rockchicklibrarian mentioned (thanks!) and you really have to wonder what people are doing spending 6 hours a night pretending to be someone that they are not - is it a way of hiding from the mundane aspect of real life - but who am I to criticise - some people would probably think that escaping into fiction and living vicariously through other people's lives (ie. fiction) is a form of escapism as well. I have to ask the question though from that article - if you are married in second life and married in real life - are you a bigamist?
From a university point of view, I have heard people bandying around ideas about this for quite a while but have yet to see anything fabulous. Perhaps there will be great potential. When I read this article in UQ News and read that it cost (gulp!) $30 000 to set this up I had to wonder. I honestly believe that in a cosmopolitan city like Brisbane it is not an expensive trip to see a Taoist temple - many schools who teach Study of Religion in years 11 and 12 have been taking their students to visit mosques, churches, temples etc for years without great expense or disruption to the worshippers. I can see it could be useful for remote students but you're not going to get to smell the incense via your computer (unless of course it comes with smellevision!)
I read the article that rockchicklibrarian mentioned (thanks!) and you really have to wonder what people are doing spending 6 hours a night pretending to be someone that they are not - is it a way of hiding from the mundane aspect of real life - but who am I to criticise - some people would probably think that escaping into fiction and living vicariously through other people's lives (ie. fiction) is a form of escapism as well. I have to ask the question though from that article - if you are married in second life and married in real life - are you a bigamist?
From a university point of view, I have heard people bandying around ideas about this for quite a while but have yet to see anything fabulous. Perhaps there will be great potential. When I read this article in UQ News and read that it cost (gulp!) $30 000 to set this up I had to wonder. I honestly believe that in a cosmopolitan city like Brisbane it is not an expensive trip to see a Taoist temple - many schools who teach Study of Religion in years 11 and 12 have been taking their students to visit mosques, churches, temples etc for years without great expense or disruption to the worshippers. I can see it could be useful for remote students but you're not going to get to smell the incense via your computer (unless of course it comes with smellevision!)
Task 21: Twitter - why oh, why
One of the minor frustrations of this 23 things is having to join up for all these applications - why do you need to be a member to search blogs? When it asked me if I wanted to check my friends and I clicked skip - it got irritated with me. I also didn't want to give it my mobile number and I couldn't go any further. When I tried to search by name or locations I received this message "This feature is temporarily disabled. Thanks for your patience while we work to restore it." Sorry, all out of patience so will come back and look another day!
Task 20: Podcasts, Smodcasts
This was a relatively easy task as I had already set up a podcast as an RSS feed into my bloglines account (which by the way I keep forgetting to look at)in task 8. The podcast I have chosen to listen to is The Conversation Hour with Richard Fidler. When I am driving around in my car, if I'm not at work, I usually try to listen to this program. I find it very useful to look over the guests for the week and find out to whom I want to listen and listen to their stories at my leisure. My brother-in-law downloads this podcast onto his ipod and listens to these on the way to work on the train (exciting fellow!).
On a work note, I think it has great applications when running conferences for interstate or regional attendees - they can look at a slide presentation etc whilst listening to the podcast (means that rural/regional clients are not disadvantaged) - lots of good applications for what we do for our clients in the part of the library that I work in.
On a work note, I think it has great applications when running conferences for interstate or regional attendees - they can look at a slide presentation etc whilst listening to the podcast (means that rural/regional clients are not disadvantaged) - lots of good applications for what we do for our clients in the part of the library that I work in.
Task 19: YouTube to take over the world
I love YouTube - I think that it is amazing that I can revisit many shows from my youth. Who would have thought that you can find original video clips of David Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy, Bay City Rollers, Leif Garret, Andy Gibb, David Essex - hours of laughter ahead! What is also interesting is the quality of the transmission. For example, sometime I like to look at movie trailers - often the quality through the hosted trailer site eg universal, warner bros, summit or apple.com is dubious - jilted, sound out of sync with the picture but usually quality is pretty good with YouTube. I know that YouTube is the scourge of schools - lots of great stuff but only teachers have access to it as the kids just chew through the bandwidth.
I selected two of my favourite examples - the first is very sobering but should be compulsory viewing for Australians (IMHO) - it is called Teenage Affluenza and is a promotion for 40 hour famine in 2007
And now for something more humorous. One of my favourite shows growing up (okay, I lived in the country and we only had two channels) was Sunday afternoon "Banana Splits" and now I feel terribly clever that I have learnt to embed these!
I selected two of my favourite examples - the first is very sobering but should be compulsory viewing for Australians (IMHO) - it is called Teenage Affluenza and is a promotion for 40 hour famine in 2007
And now for something more humorous. One of my favourite shows growing up (okay, I lived in the country and we only had two channels) was Sunday afternoon "Banana Splits" and now I feel terribly clever that I have learnt to embed these!
Task 18: iGoogle - I do!
This was an easy task for me because I have had iGoogle set up at home for quite a long time - I have a link to the asx and associated companies with updated daily prices (just so I can be depressed each time I open up my home page). I have also customised it to show time and weather for Brisbane, Vancouver, Boston and Amsterdam, quote of the day, my individual starsign and news headlines. I find this to be a very useful homepage. I have used other homepages such as msn and optusnet but find them to be too cluttered - even when you customise them. I like the simplicity of the layout of iGoogle but agree with some of the other bloggers that it can be a bit basic and would not work for everyone's needs. I did have a look at Pageflakes and Netvibe as suggested but won't bother changing as I am all set up now.
Task 17: Google Maps
I really like Google Maps. I used to use Whereis.com until recently it keeps telling me that my address doesn't exist (at first I was perplexed, I tried changing my suburb as I live near the border of two suburbs but no matter how often I try to tweak it, it keeps telling me that I am delusional and that there is no such address. Funnily enough, I can see my street on the map but it will not give directions from my house!) Google maps on the other hand - works every time.
It does show a picture of my house but I wonder how old the images are. It shows that my nextdoor neighbour has a very large watertank on their front footpath - so I am assuming that this photo is nearly 12 months old. The very large watertank is now under their new pool that was completed in January of this year - interesting!!!
Google docs would have many applications - I hadn't used it before but would be great for people who need to work whilst travelling but do not have access to their documents.
It does show a picture of my house but I wonder how old the images are. It shows that my nextdoor neighbour has a very large watertank on their front footpath - so I am assuming that this photo is nearly 12 months old. The very large watertank is now under their new pool that was completed in January of this year - interesting!!!
Google docs would have many applications - I hadn't used it before but would be great for people who need to work whilst travelling but do not have access to their documents.
Task 16: Wiki Wiki, Wiki ...
Well I added my thoughts (or should I say - someone else's!) to the page:
Even though I went to the training I had been using it for quite a while so have found wikis to be fairly easy to navigate.
Even though I went to the training I had been using it for quite a while so have found wikis to be fairly easy to navigate.
Task 15: Wikis
I find using the Library wiki very helpful - since August our little workgroup has been using it everyday to write our daily report. It is great for us because we have 3 people who do the 1 job - this way everyday the first thing we do is look and see where the others left off the day before. I like the way that it is searchable. Prior to this we used to communicate by daily emails - the problem with that was, although it was searchable, it was more difficult to access from home. This way, if you have forgotten something you can quickly log in remotely and add it. The downside though, as we have learnt from experience (grrr) is that two people can't work on the same page at the same time - it will overwrite the other's edits if you try to put it up without saving beforehand. - minor problem and now if we just tell each other when we are writing up.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Task 14: Getting not-so-technical with Technorati
1. Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for “Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?
Well first of all I thought I'd search without forcing a phrase - a search on plain learning 2.0 was useless -6,510 posts, 942 blogs, 1 683 tags.
Searching for "learning 2.0" gave me 1 615 posts, 351 blogs and 651 tags.
2. Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
I looked around at a few popular sites - lots of mildly interesting commentary about the American election but frankly it doesn't really do it for me. A lot of people are chatting about things that I'm not interested in. Still seems to me (self included now) that there are a lot of people writing comments that no one is going to read.
I'd much rather go for a walk, read a novel, listen to music, watch movies and talk face-2-face than read other people's blogs.
Well first of all I thought I'd search without forcing a phrase - a search on plain learning 2.0 was useless -6,510 posts, 942 blogs, 1 683 tags.
Searching for "learning 2.0" gave me 1 615 posts, 351 blogs and 651 tags.
2. Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
I looked around at a few popular sites - lots of mildly interesting commentary about the American election but frankly it doesn't really do it for me. A lot of people are chatting about things that I'm not interested in. Still seems to me (self included now) that there are a lot of people writing comments that no one is going to read.
I'd much rather go for a walk, read a novel, listen to music, watch movies and talk face-2-face than read other people's blogs.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Thought for the day!
If you ever think you are too small to be effective, you have never spent time in a dark room with a mosquito - Anonymous
Task 13 - Del.icio.us.
"“Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?”" (Bill Watterson)
When I read other people's blogs and posts I'm starting to think that I don't spend much time on the computer. I don't really need anywhere to store my bookmarks because I don't have that many. For a work point of view I can see it could be used for sharing information.
I do have a Furl account that I set up at an inservice I went to in March but haven't looked at since. I think that Furl is a cleaner look than del.icio.us - but that's my personal preference.
I had a search around under Education to see what I could find. Nothing too inspiring. Saw some interesting music sites. Will need to investigate later.
When I read other people's blogs and posts I'm starting to think that I don't spend much time on the computer. I don't really need anywhere to store my bookmarks because I don't have that many. For a work point of view I can see it could be used for sharing information.
I do have a Furl account that I set up at an inservice I went to in March but haven't looked at since. I think that Furl is a cleaner look than del.icio.us - but that's my personal preference.
I had a search around under Education to see what I could find. Nothing too inspiring. Saw some interesting music sites. Will need to investigate later.
Task 12 - LibriVox
Well I have thrown myself into LibriVox. At this stage I probably wouldn't use it on my mp3 player or ipod, at the risk of sounding like an outdated old fogey (or an early gen x'er) - I really don't like using earplugs or earphones (I must be one of the last people on the planet resisting this) - I just hate having things in my ears, and I have tried noise cancelling ones - it's a head thing! I find I get headaches if I listen through earphones for too long.
Anway, I digress, what a great service though. I would like to download some and listen in my car - great for those long car trips and also good for kid's books - we have lots on cd's but free copies are even nicer - although the Tumblebooks audio books from the local council library is also a good service.
I thought I would listen to "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott as that is one that I have read aloud myself. What was a little disconcerting was the overt American accents (suited this title though as set in America). I liked listening to the different readers, however, didn't think it suited having a man read this text and I was a little worried when I saw that one of the readers was called "Wina Hathaway" - I was hoping that it wasn't "like voice like name". She did turn out to be a lovely lady with a strong Spanish accent - when I clicked on her name it turns out that she is originally from the Philippines.
Hmm listening to "A Child's History of English" by Charles Dickens was quite soporific! The first reader, whilst having a very appropriate English accent, reading Ancient England and the Romans nearly put me to sleep - maybe it was the content. The reader of the chapter England Under Athlestan and the Six Boy-Kings had a very strong American accent - fussy aren't I.
Moving on, I've had great success. I listened to some of "What Katy Did At School" by Susan Coolidge (one of my personal childhood favourites) and it was ready by a very fluent reader called Karen Savage from Waco Texas (don't let the location put you off!). The web, being what it is, when I clicked on her name I was taken to her blog called "gypsygirl - Where I talk about knitting, audiobook recording and other stuff" and I saw pictures of her new house and learnt that she is an actor - which explains why she can read so well. The point of all this is to show how quickly we can get sidetracked on the web and yes, now after listening for a while with headphones my ears hurt and so does my head!
Anway, I digress, what a great service though. I would like to download some and listen in my car - great for those long car trips and also good for kid's books - we have lots on cd's but free copies are even nicer - although the Tumblebooks audio books from the local council library is also a good service.
I thought I would listen to "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott as that is one that I have read aloud myself. What was a little disconcerting was the overt American accents (suited this title though as set in America). I liked listening to the different readers, however, didn't think it suited having a man read this text and I was a little worried when I saw that one of the readers was called "Wina Hathaway" - I was hoping that it wasn't "like voice like name". She did turn out to be a lovely lady with a strong Spanish accent - when I clicked on her name it turns out that she is originally from the Philippines.
Hmm listening to "A Child's History of English" by Charles Dickens was quite soporific! The first reader, whilst having a very appropriate English accent, reading Ancient England and the Romans nearly put me to sleep - maybe it was the content. The reader of the chapter England Under Athlestan and the Six Boy-Kings had a very strong American accent - fussy aren't I.
Moving on, I've had great success. I listened to some of "What Katy Did At School" by Susan Coolidge (one of my personal childhood favourites) and it was ready by a very fluent reader called Karen Savage from Waco Texas (don't let the location put you off!). The web, being what it is, when I clicked on her name I was taken to her blog called "gypsygirl - Where I talk about knitting, audiobook recording and other stuff" and I saw pictures of her new house and learnt that she is an actor - which explains why she can read so well. The point of all this is to show how quickly we can get sidetracked on the web and yes, now after listening for a while with headphones my ears hurt and so does my head!
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Task 11 - Google Books
I think the concept of Google Books is great. I haven't found any personal applications for it but I recommend it to students all the time and when I'm teaching a topic I always demonstrate how to find "full-text" examples. The link to "find this in a library" is useful - especially as it can be frustrating to search and only find snippets or citations. I quickly created my library and will have to go back and look at it in greater depth.
Task 10 - My LibraryThing
I have had quite a play with LibraryThing and can see that you could spend a great deal of time on this site. I just decided to add the names of books that have either been my favourites over the years or that I have read in bookclub over the past 8 years. I didn't bother with the tagging - I found that to be really time consuming. I also signed up to the Early Reviewer page but will probably never get any books sent to me as there are also 1000s of people who have the same idea. I put a feed to librarything on my blog and it will be interesting to see what others say in the Early Reviewers about books soon to be published. I've put in a link to mylibrary catalogue on the right as well.
Will I use this site often? Probably not. I subscribe to a "Good Reading" magazine every month and I am even way behind on reading these so can't see that outside of this pilot I would devote the time to this site. As much as I love the magazines I find I only get to catch up on all my back issues in the holidays. Usually if I see something I like I keep a record so perhaps I will transfer that list of "books to be read" over to LibraryThing and store them there. I can see how addictive this could become.
Will I use this site often? Probably not. I subscribe to a "Good Reading" magazine every month and I am even way behind on reading these so can't see that outside of this pilot I would devote the time to this site. As much as I love the magazines I find I only get to catch up on all my back issues in the holidays. Usually if I see something I like I keep a record so perhaps I will transfer that list of "books to be read" over to LibraryThing and store them there. I can see how addictive this could become.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Task 9 - Library RSS Feeds
I think that when I am searching for feeds I experience what I term the "video store dilemma"; it is the same feeling that I get when I am at Video Ezy. I read reviews of movies, I have a list of movies that I would like to see but once I get to the video store and start browsing, every thought that I have had in my head disappears and I cannot remember what I am interested in looking at! I find searching the net and searching for feeds was the same - I look blankly at the screen and think "what am I interested in?" Maybe this is just telling me that I don't have many interests.
Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?
As mentioned the browsing option was interesting but you need to go through an awful lot of info to find something appealing. I read lots of "human interest" stories but nothing that I have a burning need to know about.
It is also pretty easy to type into bloglines and let it find the feed for you.
Which Search tool was the easiest for you?
I liked Technorati the best.
I also just used the feed locator on some of the websites that I go to and linked to them via bloglines.
Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?
As mentioned the browsing option was interesting but you need to go through an awful lot of info to find something appealing. I read lots of "human interest" stories but nothing that I have a burning need to know about.
It is also pretty easy to type into bloglines and let it find the feed for you.
Which Search tool was the easiest for you?
I liked Technorati the best.
I also just used the feed locator on some of the websites that I go to and linked to them via bloglines.
Task 8 - Bringing the news to you
I had forgotten that I had set up a bloglines account earlier in the year after I had been to an inservice on Web 2 technologies.
Some of the feeds I have selected are:
librarian.net
The Conversation Hour with Richard Fidler
EW - movie reviews
Publishers Weekly
NY Times Book Reviews
Books: guardian.co
Library Stuff
Resource Shelf
Comingsoon.net
BBC News
I know others who rave about RSS feeds and use them all the time. Not sure if this is a part of the technology that I will embrace wholeheartedly. I can see there are lots of applications but I find the notifications quite annoying. It might just be more my mindset but I'm a need to know researcher. When I want the information I like to go look for it - would probably be a different situation entirely if I was studying.
This is my public url:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/Pollyblog
Some of the feeds I have selected are:
librarian.net
The Conversation Hour with Richard Fidler
EW - movie reviews
Publishers Weekly
NY Times Book Reviews
Books: guardian.co
Library Stuff
Resource Shelf
Comingsoon.net
BBC News
I know others who rave about RSS feeds and use them all the time. Not sure if this is a part of the technology that I will embrace wholeheartedly. I can see there are lots of applications but I find the notifications quite annoying. It might just be more my mindset but I'm a need to know researcher. When I want the information I like to go look for it - would probably be a different situation entirely if I was studying.
This is my public url:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/Pollyblog
My blog list
Seems there were two options on my blog list - the second one worked for me so I can now see what everyone else is up to - thanks for all the good ideas.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Task 7 - Comment on posts
I've gone through the other 23 things member's blogs and made a few comments. Have tried to put my own list up, however, under page layout when I choose add a gadget, and then try to make a list it doesn't give me the same options that it says it will on the help screen - hmmm may have to do some more investigation when I come back to this.
Task 6 - Flickr Color Pickr - Deep Red
I've been looking at the colours in Flickr and thought it was quite interesting and can see where you would have useful applications for that especially when looking for specific graphics/images.
The Montagr didn't appeal to me that much.
I love red and I love roses so this was a predictable choice for me.
The Montagr didn't appeal to me that much.
I love red and I love roses so this was a predictable choice for me.
Task 5 - COLLAGE- Mother's Prayer
I really love mother/child, Madonna/child (as in Mary, not the rock star) paintings, sculptures and Russian religious art. Not for any real religious reasons I just love the painting techniques employed by the Russians (even though the majority of the population were starving they did produce some beautiful art works!)
I've been collecting little mother/child paintings from wherever I go when I travel and have some images from Alaska, Canada, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and a Picasso pencil sketch that I love. I particularly love the images from the First Nations in Canada - some are quite touching.
I thought this was a lovely interpretation - very fresh and modern.
I've been collecting little mother/child paintings from wherever I go when I travel and have some images from Alaska, Canada, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and a Picasso pencil sketch that I love. I particularly love the images from the First Nations in Canada - some are quite touching.
I thought this was a lovely interpretation - very fresh and modern.
23 things in one day
Is it cheating to try and achieve 23 things in a very short time - does this defeat the purpose of self-paced learning? Okay, it is at my pace but it is a very rushed pace - seems very typical of my entire life.
Blog 1 - 23 things UQ Library
This is my first blog for 23 things.
So far I've done"
Task 1 - Let's get started
Task 2 - Lifelong Learning
Task 3 - Set up your own blog
Obviously this is going to take some time - probably should have started earlier but time always gets away.
My thoughts about life-long learning. Much of it we have heard before in different formats. The easiest habit for me to do is: begin with the end in mind - I find it is easy enough to think about what I want to do and do the plan but the hardest habit for me to do is: accept responsibility - carry the plan to fruition.
So far I've done"
Task 1 - Let's get started
Task 2 - Lifelong Learning
Task 3 - Set up your own blog
Obviously this is going to take some time - probably should have started earlier but time always gets away.
My thoughts about life-long learning. Much of it we have heard before in different formats. The easiest habit for me to do is: begin with the end in mind - I find it is easy enough to think about what I want to do and do the plan but the hardest habit for me to do is: accept responsibility - carry the plan to fruition.
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