The 23rd thing!

I definitely have a sense of achievement at making it to the 23rd thing. And tackling the projects one at a time is less overwhelming. Great format, the discovery projects pointed in the right direction, but still let you do your own thing at your own pace. Thanks Robyn!

Discovering tags and their many uses: delicious bookmarks, flickr, LibraryThing etc was great. As a Library person, I love the idea of cross-referencing, and tags do it in a constantly evolving way: keeping up with current jargon and reflecting user needs and points of view.

I'll take with me the RSS feeds I've subscribed to, groups I've joined, and I am using delicious to make my own trail of crumbs through the Online Forest. My vantage point to the world of information is now that bit higher: I can see more!

Can't wait to do the next 23!

Online Communities

I joined the TAFE Qld Library group at Edna. I found it easy to join, and loaded my avatar from an earlier 23Things session as my photo. I suppose like most interactions of a social nature, it will take time to develop a network of online 'friends'. While I see that online communities are extremely popular for those with shared interests, for keeping up with people over long distances and time zones, and for professional networking, it is not a process that I find easy or will jump into enthusiastically. For me, there are many issues relating to personal privacy that I don't feel are adequately protected in online communication.

But I can certainly see the uses for an organisation like TAFE with institutes over the entire state, not to mention branches of the individual institute. A fresh way to network and share information with colleagues.

Podcasts

I really thought the application of podcasts to the educational environment was excellent. People have different learning styles, so audio may be a preferred option for some. Podcasts are also a useful application for people with a visual impairment, or with a lower literacy level. Plus, when learning a new language, isn't it better to HEAR someone pronounce words?

Check it out yourself:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LearnFrenchWithDailyfrenchpod

Dailymotion

I looked at the Dailymotion Great Britain site. Lots of advertising, and content I would not choose to view: but what's the difference between Dailymotion and TV? Only another form of media.

Has a lot in common with other web2.0 sites: tagging, interactivity, cross-pollination from other sources (RSS feeds, blogs etc).

The user profiles I looked at were interesting: well presented, lots of room for self-expression.

I selected the following video:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1u563_thehours_creation

I enjoyed the book and the movie: The Hours. I liked the clips in this movie, especially the ones of Virginia Woolf, and the repetitive theme of the book cover.

Applying this format to the TAFE library: teachers could put up short movies of lectures or even practical demonstrations. How many students would prefer to SEE how to find a motor part / mix a sauce / connect electrical cable etc than to read how to do it?

Listdump

I had a look at Listdump, a community generated list site:
http://www.listdump.com/
I'll let Listdump describe itself for you:
Listdump is a community list generator based on the simple fact that everybody loves a good list. Create a list of the best how-to sites, or download sites ... Hey, you can even create a list of your personal life goals and let others help you prioritize them by voting. Anyone who's a registered member can contribute to a list, tag, comment or vote on a list. The top rated lists show up on the front page. There is also a page for new lists.
Create Lists
Create a list of the best how-to sites
Create a list of the top 10 best movies in 1987
Create a customized list
Add links to any item within any list
Put in your 2 cents and help tag a list
Keep track of your favorite lists

I liked the front page design: you can see what is most popular, most recent at a glance. There is also a tag cloud on this page, a useful browsing point. Each entry is also well-defined. You have an image (for aesthetics), title, and vital statistics. Listdump was easy to use.

What could a library do with this?
So much. Users can compile their own lists of resources. Others can rate these lists. An informal way of keeping track on what is being used, what is most popular, what information resources need developing.
The social aspects could also make it appealing to students: they could also rate other things on campus: the cafeteria, parking spaces etc.

Online word processing

What is the word about online word processing?

A useful tool. Has many nice features: little emotion buttons, can insert and edit images, use different fonts. You can also tag documents and add comments to them - great to help group items and also to find items. There are also some personal touches as well - can change the colour scheme etc.

Of course, there aren't as many types of font or format styles as a standard word processer. But I'm sure that these tools will continue to develop as their popularity increases.

Being able to share documents is great as well, saves all that e-mailing back and forth, and forgetting which version you've saved where.

However, it is still a brand new program and as such will take you a while to learn how to use it effectively. I suppose that because it looks like Word, we think that it will operate the same way. It doesn't. And that is because it is a different program. So you'll have to set aside some time to go through tutorials and learn how to do what you want.

The following is a document I created in Zoho word processor. I posted it directly to my blog. The only thing is, the document I created in Zoho did not fit my blog page, so I had to edit the post in Blogger. Something else to think about.

CHILD

STUDIES

Childcare / Children's Services Course Info. 3817 3020

Childcare Centre 3816 3296

Teachers:

/

Kylie Horrsfall / Angela Jones

/ /

Pam Joseph / Anne Taylor / Alison Underwood

Wiki-d!

Working my way through the 23 things, here come the wikis. Having already been a fan of Wikipedia for some time, this was a fairly easy task.

I looked at a few different wikis:
St. Joseph County Public Library system - I really liked their set-up. Lots of information, well organised and the main pages in each subject area were great. You had the list of articles, links to further resources, searching etc.... The pages are only able to be edited by staff, understandable, especially about things like class times etc. Could be more user involvement however: book reviews etc.
Book Lovers Wiki - summer reading program at Princeton Library. A small wiki, but one which serves its purpose, for a group of people involved in a summer reading program. These people were the only ones allowed to edit, but fair enough, it was for a specific event. Great test drive for bigger projects!
Library Success: a best practices wiki - Lots of interesting stuff for library people. Have addressed the vandalism problem by only allowing editing by users who create a login (must have e-mail address).

What could we do with wikis?
Why not a staff wiki: events coming up, things happening today, popular resources, how-to-fix that problem, circ. desk information sharing.
Even the staff intranet could go wiki: how many times have you noticed a staff phone number is no longer correct or contact details need updating?

Something to think about.