IT'S OVER!
It feel as if we just barely started doing this and already we're moving beyond it. Yeah, if we had another program like this on a topic I was even vaguely interested in I would defintely want to participate. It's educational and it can be nice to break up the work day with something outside of your usual duties.
I feel strongly that there are things I've been reticent to explore on my own (more from my considerable entropy regarding certain things and fear that they were a waste of time than anything else) that I benefitted from learning about during these exercises.
I really liked finding the "...in Plain English" series of vidoes and have subscribe to his youtube videocasts so I'm looking forward to more of those. Del.icio.us should keep me up to date on webcomics and dooce's cute pics of Chuck. There were lots of fun and useful activities, and even the ones I wasn't particularly interested in I am glad that I know more about, such as ZoHo and Bloglines.
The things I think will be stickiest for me (i.e. that I am most likely to stick with) are the idea of collaborative wikis built by librarians/library associates, the concept of blogging (which I had sort of taken up again anyway), and the overarching notion of Library 2.0, a place we build *with* the patrons rather than for the patrons. It just makes sense. Who knows what patrons want and need? Patrons.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
I'm so over OverDrive
Considering that I taught a class on how to use OverDrive and got an ERA for doing it, I'm going to give myself a pass on learning to do this again. :)
Oh, screw it. I can't come up with a witty title...
...about Podcasting. Although I did find a podcast I'm super excited about! The Poetry Foundation has a podcast of poets reading their poetry and discussing them. Hopefully Matthew is reading this because this might be good for his Poetry Discussion Group at Wellington.
I added it to bloglines, because the exercise said to, but honestly bloglines is not for me. I will be adding it to my iTunes at home though.
I added it to bloglines, because the exercise said to, but honestly bloglines is not for me. I will be adding it to my iTunes at home though.
The Tube of You
This is one of my favorite all time YouTube vidoes. I love music covers.
I also love poetry. There are tons of excellent poems you can hear on YouTube, which could make a really cool library program. There is a fantastic series of videos created by JWTNY. Check this one out.
Other videos that might be fun to have on our library site include clips of programs as publicity. Also I can see having small edutainment videos such as, How to videos related to recent programs (for people that couldn't make it to the program), and videos of librarians reading stories (for people that couldn't make it to storytime).
I also love poetry. There are tons of excellent poems you can hear on YouTube, which could make a really cool library program. There is a fantastic series of videos created by JWTNY. Check this one out.
Other videos that might be fun to have on our library site include clips of programs as publicity. Also I can see having small edutainment videos such as, How to videos related to recent programs (for people that couldn't make it to the program), and videos of librarians reading stories (for people that couldn't make it to storytime).
Friday, June 27, 2008
The Web 2.0 Winnowing
So I was researching a potential program I want to do on Science Projects and Graphing and came across an excellent site that makes it fairly easy for anyone to make a graph (it's much easier than Excel, but still requires a minimal understanding of how graphs work).
I was multitasking to see whether the last few of the 23 Things had been published while also looking for data to test the graphing software with. I decided it might be fun to graph participation in the 23 Things activities over the course of the nine weeks, using the numbers from the now updated 23 Things Progress Reports.
Below is the graph. We don't have any data (at least that a cursory exam could find) for Weeks 1 and 2 and Week 5 is absent because it was a Play week, so no data was collected. I did expect a downtrend just based on anecdotal evidence here at the branch, but I didn't expect the great purge. We've lost almost 3/4 of the participants! The steady downtrend makes me wonder whether it was something about the program itself, the way it was administered, or the difficulty of trying to squeeze this in to our daily schedules that lead to the decline. The big drop that occured presumably during week 5 also begs the question, What the heck happened there? Again from anecdotal evidence I am hearing that it was a combination of those factors along with simple information overload. People with next to no computer knowledge were overwhelmed by the number of things they felt expected to learn in such a short period of time.
I was multitasking to see whether the last few of the 23 Things had been published while also looking for data to test the graphing software with. I decided it might be fun to graph participation in the 23 Things activities over the course of the nine weeks, using the numbers from the now updated 23 Things Progress Reports.
Below is the graph. We don't have any data (at least that a cursory exam could find) for Weeks 1 and 2 and Week 5 is absent because it was a Play week, so no data was collected. I did expect a downtrend just based on anecdotal evidence here at the branch, but I didn't expect the great purge. We've lost almost 3/4 of the participants! The steady downtrend makes me wonder whether it was something about the program itself, the way it was administered, or the difficulty of trying to squeeze this in to our daily schedules that lead to the decline. The big drop that occured presumably during week 5 also begs the question, What the heck happened there? Again from anecdotal evidence I am hearing that it was a combination of those factors along with simple information overload. People with next to no computer knowledge were overwhelmed by the number of things they felt expected to learn in such a short period of time.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Currently Reading: Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero, and Goblin War
Just a quick note about Jig. Jig is an accidentally brave little (okay runtish) goblin who over the course of his three books so far has had to deal with dragons, necromancers, pixies (multiple times!), and multiple gods! This is a smart, funny fantasy series that still feels fresh three books in. Highly recommended for snarky teens, adults, and fantasy aficionados throughout the kingdom.
Goblin Quest, by Jim C. Hines
Goblin Hero, by Jim C. Hines
Goblin War, by Jim C. Hines
Goblin Quest, by Jim C. Hines
Goblin Hero, by Jim C. Hines
Goblin War, by Jim C. Hines
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Web 2.0 Award winners
This was a fun list to look through. Two special favorites are imcooked and guess-the-google.
Guess the Google is a game built on a google image aggregator. It presents a montage of google image results and asks you to guess what the search term was that led to them. It's a good brain exercise if nothing else and highlights some of the fun "unintended" results of Web 2.0 technology and its evolution.
Im cooked is a subject specific content collection of user made cooking shows! This is so great for someone like me who sometimes doesn't quite "get" the instructions in a recipe and could benefit from seeing exactly what poaching an egg looks like. In addition to simple cooking processes like these there are lots of entire recipes demonstrated, in cooking show style, with youtube-ish production values. It's fun to poke around in if you're a foodie.
Sara also had a super cool idea while doing her 23 things assignment this week. She suggested the library have a contest to make a song and a video promoting the library to appear on our myspace page! I love it. I suggested she pitch it to Nicole, who seems to really be looking for people's feedback and ideas on how to improve things.
Guess the Google is a game built on a google image aggregator. It presents a montage of google image results and asks you to guess what the search term was that led to them. It's a good brain exercise if nothing else and highlights some of the fun "unintended" results of Web 2.0 technology and its evolution.
Im cooked is a subject specific content collection of user made cooking shows! This is so great for someone like me who sometimes doesn't quite "get" the instructions in a recipe and could benefit from seeing exactly what poaching an egg looks like. In addition to simple cooking processes like these there are lots of entire recipes demonstrated, in cooking show style, with youtube-ish production values. It's fun to poke around in if you're a foodie.
Sara also had a super cool idea while doing her 23 things assignment this week. She suggested the library have a contest to make a song and a video promoting the library to appear on our myspace page! I love it. I suggested she pitch it to Nicole, who seems to really be looking for people's feedback and ideas on how to improve things.
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