Course Wrap Up

I have learned that Library 2.0 tools are big. It means utilizing social networks and participatory service. I have become convinced that these services have much value, and are a proactive means to meet the user’s needs. I took this class so that I was better informed, but I previously I did have the attitude that I all I needed was just to know what it was, not how to use it because I would be letting others incorporate this in a library. Once I discovered more through this class and the material I read, I realized I needed to know all about the Library 2.0 movement and know how to operate these tools since I am a librarian.

I had started a work blog last October, but did not keep it going. Most of my college student workers were not familiar with using a blog, so I needed to do some coaxing. Getting busy with other responsibilities at work, I left the communication idea with the blog just sit there. Learning to design a blog in wordpress then helped me to transfer that knowledge to my blogspot blog software. As soon as we learned to customize our wordpress blog, I put my work blog in action. That work blog has been a life saver and exponentially increased the communication for all.

This was well worth my time. One of the best classes I have taken. Thank you.

Academic Search Premier Tutorial YouTube Video

Paper Abstract & Definition

Jane Bethel

Paper title: Podcasting Power

Abstract:
The power of podcasting can come from its characteristics as key points of specific topics , as audio explanatory material, and as an easy-to-use experience. More characteristics describe podcasts as a learning aide offered at the user’s point of need, appropriate for the average human being’s attention span, and as a reinforcement of knowledge learned through the dimension of conversation. Pure podcasts still do exist, but much broadcasting today adds the video element. This paper is geared to mainly a discussion of academic-centered audio-only podcasts.
Successful libraries of the future will incorporate participatory network service such as hosting educational podcasts or providing the tools to make them. Podcasts along with other library 2.0 services will keep patrons using the library and serve established user-centered patrons already listening to podcasts of their own personal choosing. The power of personal choice is satisfying and remains viable because it is the people’s choice.
The effectiveness and usefulness of educational or informational podcasts need to be measured for qualitative analysis in order to know if the production effort is worth the time and money, no matter how short or simple. Just because you make a podcast does not mean that the people will come to hear it. It must be powerful enough to fill the needs of the information seeker. Always evaluate by survey and/or through user interviews.

Definition:
My paper will take a peak at the history of podcasting, its natural symbiosis with video or still images, stay focused on informational or educational podcast themes for library involvement in patrons’ lives, and validate simple yet effective teaching components. Podcasting is just one part of the library 2.0 experience and the greater web 2.0 experience. Libraries who incorporate participatory services send a message to the user that the library invites participatory conversations. Conversational pieces are brought to you by participating and socially networked libraries.

Spring Break

The University of Wisconsin Madison started spring break this week. Edgewood College has spring break next week. The College of St. Catherine has spring break (for MLIS grad students) next week. St. Olaf College has spring break the week after next. When is break from Dominican University? Which week do you choose to vacation?

I have been writing emails to libraries asking for feedback on podcasting ventures they have done or are doing right now. One response was called a failure! Looking for articles on databases has also taken some of my time. Web site references have been placed in del.icio.us for easy retrieval. My plan is to use Web EndNote for this paper since I just received a tutorial on the bibliographic software. I’ve got a stash of articles printed out, awaiting my examination. I am ready to read.

Vodcasts and Audioblogging

Just checking out some articles for my paper in google scholar and I came across the two new terms “vodcasts” and “audioblogging.” Hence I have learned that audioblogging came before podcasting. Wikipedia has some basic information; so does Encyclopedia Britannica. I was surprised to find out that podcasting became stabilized less than four years ago, around 2004, with mp3 format and RSS. At least that is what I think I remember about the data I gathered.

Computers & Education
Volume 50, Issue 2, February 2008, Pages 491-498
DEVELOPMENT, DISRUPTION & DEBATE – Selected Contributions from the CAL 07 Conference

The effectiveness of m-learning in the form of podcast revision lectures in higher education

Chris Evans^{, a,
a}Centre for Educational Multimedia, Brunel Business School, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, UK
Received 30 April 2007; revised 21 September 2007; accepted 25 September 2007. Available online 7 November 2007.

I wonder how long podcasting has been used at schools for the blind? Have blind students had the  opportunity to learn about more subjects and hear more information because of this medium, podcasting?

I am so accustomed to an audio feed that when I recently started a tutorial, I was having a fit when I could not get any sound. My friend had to tell me that there probably wasn’t any sound. I could not believe it. I cannot remember only “watching”  a tutorial. There are probably a great many video clips without sound that I just don’t know about. Doesn’t sound very inviting, though. No pun intended.

Changes, as I have seen it

So, here i sit, on the first March 2008 Sunday morning in the rec room, feet up, privileged to have a husband who is cleaning the kitchen, with my laptop, devouring information from Michael’s ‘podcasting readings’ for LIS:7680, using a Google Docs BETA Doc.html file. I am typing my thoughts directly into a document for my blog entry, trying to find the clearest of words so I don’t need to edit (a most time consuming process when typically too many words are used). Saving a document by attaching it to an email to yourself is one of the safest ways to preserve in 2008. In 2006 a fellow graduate student was shocked when I told her that I saved the document in cyberspace. It was safe, but not for years, techies spread the word not to rely on saving documents outside of CD, in the C drive or flash drive. I did not type out the Eash article method, but instead am reading it online having been able to see it every time I have looked at it. The website has always displayed since class started.

It is cool! I am pleased! My benefit, my motive, my reason for doing it, ‘on purpose’, is to SAVE TIME! Yes, I like that. I have too many other things I wish to find time for today. Maybe this will establish the electronic access habits and uses that I can put into practice now. Staying in step with technology means exposure to and operating in that new technology. Right, left, right.

[Diversion]Wow, I just figured out how to stop the stuck “italics” problem I have had before but didn’t know how to correct in this Doc.html document. I used the “Remove formatting” feature in this editor. Google automatically saves changes every 60 seconds. This open source software has some kinks to work out.[/diversion]

The article by Ester Eash, Podcasting 101 for K–12 Librarians, is very informative. Already I know I need more information about RSS feeds. I remember when streaming media was choppy, unrelaible, would freeze and lock up the computer back in the 1900s. I see it has come out of its youth and is established as a reliable adult in the technological hierarchy.

Social Networking

24FEB2008

I read some of the articles and the video Michael made available to us. Melber’s About Facebook is scary and bizarre. I value my privacy and still am not that interested in plastering my image in cyberspace. Look at how easily you can be captured on video by someone’s phone camera? One image on Flickr may be enough for me. Yet I do really appreciate being able to find images through Google Images. I have known people whose fancy was mightily tickled to see themselves on a web page. Much struttin’ was going on. I like standing out from the crowd in quieter, more erudite ways.

I especially enjoyed the Common Craft video “Social Networking in Plain English”. Word-of-mouth marketing is the hands down the best way to sell “anything”. That is why the phenomenon of social networking via the Internet is here to stay. It is a winner in its own right. People can trust it because they hear it from “someone like themselves”. People know it is not a salesman giving you a line to decode the truth or falseness.

Real world interview tips are hopefully seen by people who don’t have a clue. Everybody should attend etiquette dining sessions before graduating from college or learn about etiquette before they turn 20 years of age.

Rutkoff’s article Social Networking for Bookworms who discusses Tim Spalding and his LibraryThing.com praises Spalding and so do I. This is a fabulous site. The user-created catalog zips past the heads of copy catalogers from ‘back in the day’. I like the tagging movement here. Who says we think in LOC catalog headings. Phooey. Plain old English works even better.

travel, video, health

So I’m becoming infected. Infected with the MacBook transportability, reading/writing more online. Infected with the Web 2.0 tools. Infected with understanding the personal perks for people like me. Infected with making my social world more enjoyable because I have the power to select a social realm of my own design.

The portability of a laptop lets me multitask. Do my homework and watch David Letterman, see/hear musical groups good enough to get invited to New York city. All college students have an opinion about popular musical groups and if I become familiar with these groups, it provides me with conversation starters. I work with 7 college students and I like to have a personal relationship with them besides the business relationship I have being their boss.

My student workers starting posting to my cleaned-up work blog this week at the end of their shifts. Yeah! Celebrate! My work blog was born in October, last year, but I found it cumbersome and less intuitive than wordpress to setup and manage. Receiving some guidance in this class about setting up a wordpress account was a big bonus. I could transfer setup and management skills to the “other” publishing system. Students come to work for an hour or two a day. I might see 5 workers throughout any workday. Trying to delegate work, remember a work assignment’s stopping point, or transfer lines of communication when we do not all work together all the time was a big time eater. The blog lets us tell one another where the workflow is, what bumps have been encountered, and a hint, some shop talk, of what it is that ‘another person’ does. It is working. Celebrate!
I am paying attention to the social networks I have dived into. I’m really paying attention and not just paying “continuous partial attention” (Roush 2005). I noticed on a wordpress’s page the “Write your tag” feature with a list of tags in alphabetical order until: travel, video, health. Who can tell me why this is so? These tags are sometimes like those in subject catagories at the Library of Congress and sometimes in a category us ’social creatures’ use all the time, like “random”. Gotta love it! Yup, I’m catching the fever, becoming infected with Web 2.0. I thought I should know about these tools for professional sake but wouldn’t find them of much value at my personal level.  I was wrong.

my reaction….

I still struggle with spending my time reading from a computer’s monitor compared to holding print in my hands. I have been able to print most of my reading assignments in library school so that I didn’t have to sit in front of a computer and read. This class will be a catalyst for me to begin to change that habit for I know that information today is interactive. I can print out reading assignments but I lose the online reading advantages of the embedded link, the “deeper information” coded into online text. Embedded hot links are instant detailing of a sentence’s word or concept. It may be an index entry, a reference to word definition, a richer resource, an image, a video, or readers’ contributions.

Lib 2.0 & Participatory Service

I finally get it. I understand how I can benefit by using Web 2.0 tools described “like a collection of programs that talk to one another” according to Wade Roush in 2005 in his article titled “Social Machines: Computing means connecting.” That article has peaked my interest and described the latest Web 2.0 tools in a clean and clear manner. I giggled at the term continuous partial attention. I have learned the knack of paying continuous partial attention and it is a useful behavior to acquire for those long unproductive, meaningless meetings. Roush describes a scene at the very young third annual “All Things Digital” conference where the techies and conference goers were head down checking email. On the third day of the third annual conference, the conference hosts cut the Internet connection that had “ruined too many tech conferences” in the past.

Wikis are now in the workplace, frustrating the daylight out of some who don’t find technology easy to operate. Wikis do allow freedom to “read it later” and not have to print out a copy of those meeting minutes [so that you can delete the message from your inbox keeping your MB limit on the low side].

Web 2.0 is everywhere. The concept is to narrow our world, to bring commonalities together, to share things by word of mouth. The best marketing technique is word-of-mouth. Web 2.0 personalizes the electronic environment.