Week 12 – Browsers, toolbars, widgets and mashups

For week 12′s activities I watched the video on the LibX toolbar at Murdoch University and then set off to install the IC version. Unfortunately when I tried to install it in Internet Explorer it came up with a message: Download of necessary component failed so I forwarded this to the Learning 2.0 team who hopefully may be able to identify the problem.

However I had no problems installing the toolbar in Firefox so I was able to use it there. I already have the Pubmed toolbar installed in Firefox so had used something similar before. The LibX toolbar gave me the option of searching the Imperial OPAC, Pubmed, the e-journals A-Z, Wikipedia, Google Scholar and Amazon UK. I successfully searched these and looked in Amazon.co.uk for the link to the library catalogue for books. The link was not to the OPAC as in the Murdoch video, however, but to Pubmed, which didn’t provide any information or links as it covers articles only rather than books.

I was a bit disappointed that the LibX toolbar didn’t work within Amazon but in general it seemed really useful and I think it should be made available to students as soon as possible.

Week 11: web based office tools

I have used Google docs before for the word processing but had not used the spreadsheet feature. I got the answer 1821 to the question and I think the significance is that when added together these numbers make 12 = the number of weeks in the Learning 2.0 programme!

Week 10: Gaming and virtual worlds

I can’t make the virtual worlds workshop due to a meeting, but I have tried to use Second Life before (at an art gallery) and found it very difficult to navigate. I believe it also takes up a lot of computer space, so (I could be wrong!) I’m not sure it will stand the test of time.

I watched the video on gaming but was a little worried about whether everything (Beatles? Disney?) was copyright cleared! I checked one of the links given, to World of Warcraft Detox and found it more than a little disturbing! I hope as many as possible of the addicts can overcome their problem.

I read the article “The Effectiveness of a Web-based Board Game for Teaching Undergraduate Students Information Literacy Concepts and Skills”. I found it interesting that the students largely became interested in playing the information literacy game when higher grades (rather than cash prizes) were offered. It seemed as if the game experienced difficulties getting students into the library for activities and I am not sure that trying to make people do things “in real life” is a good idea for a game as it’s pretty much against the spirit of gaming! I would definitely consider using a game to teach information literacy skills having seen in our PRS session how successful introducing an element of game play (PRS being more like a game show!) to a session can be. It’s obvious how much our students love online games from the numbers you can spot on the PCs having a sneaky (or not so sneaky) gaming session so it would definitely get their interest.

However, I think the article highlighted that it isn’t a good way to teach about the physical library so you would have to run some kind of teaching session with real live librarians and books alongside the game to at least try to demonstrate to students the benefits of not relying solely on the internet for their information needs.

Week 8: Mobile technologies

Whereas most of the other weeks have involved technologies which I have had some familiarity with, I have had little experience of mobile technologies. I don’t use the internet on my phone because that can get expensive. I have read about medical applications for mobile phones, for example BMJ Best Practice is available on mobile phones, but haven’t actually used them on a mobile myself. However I think the future of diagnostic and point-of-care tools is definitely on mobile phones so that doctors can have portable, readily available evidence based resources always at hand.

Out of the library technologies listed the most useful looked like UEL’s project of sending text reminders for overdue books and for collecting holds. A significant number of students clearly are iPhone (etc) addicts and I am sure would happily use the catalogue on a mobile and other applications if they were aware of them but sending a text is something that will reach close to 100% of students.

While the success of mobile alerts obviously depends on students keeping their mobile details up to date it seems like a useful way to keep in touch with students. My own local library sends me texts when my holds are available so my own experience is that it is really helpful to receive texts since I always have my mobile phone handy and may be near the library when I hear from them. So from my experience, this is a technology that works.

Week 7: wikis

I had already used wikis as I had set one up with a colleague at my previous job. However some members of the team rebelled against using the wiki as they felt it was another thing to have to check, so we were unable to popularise its use. MILG also has a wiki on wetpaint so I didn’t have to register for the site, just to use the climate change site. The MILG site has been useful for storing information but now that the College has Sharepoint we are moving our documents onto this. Another wiki I’ve used is the Health Librarians wiki which has a lot of useful information. I think the wikipedia look (I believe it is open source) of this wiki is more successful than wetpaint’s layout which isn’t as professional looking.

Not a lot of people have joined in the discussion of climate change so far but I hope the rest of the group will join in for the last couple of days. However it seems wikis, other than wikipedia, maybe just aren’t the most popular web2.0 technology.

You tube classic

I should take the chance to post the Rector’s dancing video…

Week 6: multimedia – a round up

Week 6 was the most most challenging for me as I had not downloaded podcasts before. I had investigated medical podcasts for work purposes but while aware of what was available I had never tried listening to them before this week.

I had a listen to the Cochrane Library podcast which rounded up the new reviews in the latest issue but which didn’t contain a lot of information that wasn’t online, and the Lancet podcast which included an interview extract thus making better use of the podcast format than others which seemed to involve 1 or 2 individuals reading out loud information which could have been given in text format.

WordPress seem to make it difficult to upload audio files without upgrading your account so adding audio was a bit of a struggle but I managed to upload a link to a song from one of the copyright free music sites, Podsafe Audio. In comparison adding a youtube video was easy. I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to use possibly copyright material so I used one I filmed and uploaded to youtube myself.

I have used both the music services last.fm and Spotify before. I initially enjoyed last.fm but it is hard to log out of and causes problems when closing down my home computer so I am liking Spotify a lot more now, even though the adverts are annoying. I read today that streaming music sites like Spotify are replacing illegal downloads and I can believe this having seen how popular Spotify has become with friends. I also use streaming TV sites like iPlayer and C4 on demand a lot and encourage everyone to checkout C4 on demand for their huge backfile of comedy (though again they unfortunately have annoying ads).

Multimedia: adding video to my blog

Adding video is easier than audio! Here is a youtube clip which I filmed at the roller derby using the Flip video camera I won from jisclegal on completing a questionnaire (thanks Philippa for organising to watch their webcast!)

Multimedia: adding audio to my blog

Here is a copyright free song from podsafeaudio.com: Cat o’ Nine Tails: “snufkin or: i’m waiting for a postcard that you won’t send”. Enjoy!

Week 5: Social networking

For this week’s social networking exercise I have signed up for Twitter.  I skipped their suggestions of famous people to add (Britney Spears and Jimmy Eat World?!)  I’ve been told that most famous people tweet too often and are really boring but will try to follow some if just for this week’s exercise until I get bored of them.  I could only find Debbie on there so add me (kateperris) so I have some non celebrities to follow. 

I’ve used Ning before as I am a member of a community there called Savvy Librarian.  http://savvylibrarians.ning.com/ I recommend it!