Week 8: Reflection, reflection

So web 2.0 eh? What do I think?

Mixed reactions to the content, rubbish reactions to the course! Being so old, most of the links are broken and replacements haven't been uploaded so our librarian has tried to give us substitutes which only works if we're all working at the same speed.

I enjoyed looking into areas that I previously hadn't such as Flickr, seeing other ways to download/upload podcasts, other video streaming sites (apart from YouTube) and widgets.

Widgets was fun because the sheer volume of ready made widgets ready to add to your blog was immense and although some were useful, most were just little bits of fun  :)

The aspects I enjoyed least were: RSS feeds because it took me ages to get them to work! Wikis, because although I understand the benefit in user-uploaded information, I can see that from a research point of view, the information is only trustworthy to a certain degree.

The social networking week was interesting mainly because we couldn't access half of the sites due to the college pc restrictions! luckily, having used some of the sites on personal basis, I had enough experience to help me through that part of the course.

On the whole, there is a lot more to the information available on the internet than I thought, well, a lot more interactive and usable information. The course has taught me a lot about different ways to express yourself online.

Week 7: Virtual worlds

Virtual worlds are a bit strange really! I've seen it on programs like CSI where people's characters kill other people's characters and end up dead in real life and where people get married to other characters... seems it can be a bit all-consuming if not self regulated but i'm intrigued to see how this can fit in with the library side of life...

Ok the links from this course seem to focus on Second Life mainly which I've heard of but never been particularly interested in. It says that there is an Information Archipelago which contains 12 libraries although in the game, there are over 500 librarians and over 60 colleges have appearances in the game. I can see why it is useful to have a presence since some people spend a lot of time in these virtual environments so all ammenities are covered.

However... our college is a small, local, mostly vocational college and apart from the IT students, I can't imagine that many of our students have heard of second life or any of the other virtual worlds.

I quite like what the BBC has to say about it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8367957.stm

Youtube has some decent tutorials...
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/b72CvvMuD6Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The Time article is pretty funny really:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570827-2,00.html


The tutorial says it may be worth us siging up for a free basic account but my interest for Second Life stops at actually joining.

Virtual worlds may be the way that social intereaction is heading but for me, for now, no thnaks!

Week 7: Do games and libraries mix?

Lets start with games shall we? For starters, we don't allow games in our learning centre. Unless the students can prove it's to do with their work they'll get booted out (it is part of the student code of conduct that they use the PCs for educational purposes only). I can see that some educational sites have games in order to engage the students to enable them to enjoy learning something new (such as BBC Skillswise etc).

I was quite surprised to find that the American Library Association has so much interest in gaming although the website wasn't very user friendly with regard to finding out information. Having a look at some of the titles and talks, they seem to be more focused on using the library as a venue for game tournaments rather than looking at the educational benefits of games and whether or not they should be allowed.

I found the link to the Library Games website quite informative and the game it links to from there is hilarious! Like a training game for new staff in the library! I can see how ammending a game like this could be useful but it seems to be more of a test than a game :s

Week 6: Podcasts

Podcasts are something I know very well from personal use and enjoy regularly from different sources. I download podcasts to my phone by using iTunes and use a different program called Stitcher to search for and stream podcasts. I know how to search for different subjects based and have looked through the podcast directories to see what else is available out there. Some of the links on the original course site have broken so while waiting for new suitable ones to be found, I've had a look at a few other sites for example, a friend of mine runs a podcast site at http://allofwhineandspace.blogspot.com and seen him and his friend record a podcast so have seen the technology available. I think if our learning centre was split over multiple sites, then yes, weekly podcasts would be a good idea to keep staff informed of changes or developments with a more friendly voice than emails or memos. It's also convenient because it means that all staff would not have to be present in the same place for information to be passed on. I admit though, my interest in podcasting is minimal and as such, I don't find the concept of recording one myself to be very tempting.

Week 6. YouTube and Video sharing sites

The first and most important thing I can find in the tutorial for YouTube is the following phrase "Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching". Isn't that the true essense of YouTube? The whole point of it being a site where you are encouraged to upload your own videos means that some of the content will be pap. and yes, i said pap. its the most socially acceptable way of saying what I want without offending people.

Exploring YouTube is simple enough, type in what youre after and various versions of it appear! From music videos to tv show clips to home videos.

****WIDGET SUCCESS!!!****

Ok so after speaking to the resident IT Buff (I'm writing this knowing he's one of the two people in the world that reads this blog), as you can see from my previous post, I have succeeded in embedding a widget into my blog. WHOOP!

Right, onto Mashups now... So Mashups: I get the concept, I kinda like it but... I'm unable to access anything that is vaguely related to social networking on the college PCs so i'm limited in which ones I can look at.
Mappr looks good and I like the concept but since it's now 4 years out of date it doesn't feel like a very appropriate one to spend much time on.
Fizzboost, I can't access.
Montager is very pretty and a nice idea but nothing that I don't think decent photo software couldn't do for you. I like the way the pics enlarge themselves when the mouse goes over them... pretty! yeah pretty!
Flickr colour picker is... weird... I'm not sure I can think of a time in my life where i've ever thought "I wonder if there's a website where I can find loads of pictures in the same colour all on one website". I know I'm not interior designer but still...
The mashup directory is a good place to browse through but it's kinda like the app store. you can look under different categories to find different mashups that interest you and combine two or more of your favourite aspects of websites. There's shopping mashups, ones that help with utility prices and all kindsa things!

Widgets and mashups

The web widgets tutorial was pretty interesting and touched on an area we have covered previously in one of the other websites we have researched when looking at RSS feeds. I like the idea that parts of websites can be shuffled and changed around so that the parts of the websites that interest you the most are at the top, or in easily accessible places. For example, I have a dashboard filled with widgets on my home pc so that as soon as I load up my PC, I have the local weather, time and email inbox access.

After watching the tutorial and feeling pretty confident about attaching a widget to this blog, i tried.


And failed.

As you can see from below, I went to WidgetBox and followed their instructions to put a weather widget onto this blog however it hasn't worked. I'm not entirely sure why because I was super confident that I knew what I was doing. I tried a couple more different widgets with the same outcome. I think this may be the time when I ask for help...

Flickr

Ok so I've had a look at Flickr, uploaded a picture to my blog and had a play around with uploading pictures to both Twitter and Flickr to see the connections there.

I like the idea of there being an online photo gallery like Flickr. Picking and choosing who can and can't see your pictures is a nice touch and having albums that say, your whole family can add to is pretty nice too. It means that if, for example, you and a friend go on holiday, only one of you need to set up the photo album but you can both upload to it. Much better than adding them to facebook for example.

I also like the way that you can use Flickr to add a little slideshow to your other websites. You can see this being done on professional websites all the time so being able to add something similar to my own is pretty sweet :)

As with most photo sharing technology, Flickr has an app for mobile phones which means that pictures can be uploaded within seconds of them being taken which is pretty handy: you can share things with people almost as theyre happening.

On a non-personal use basis, I also like the way that certain internation bodies have got albums and accounts with Flickr that show you what they're doing. For example, the NASA Goddard Photo Stream contains some beautiful photos that I otherwise wouldn't have seen.

The last aspect of Flickr that I was quite taken by was the community forums/App Garden where users are able to share apps that they have developed to work in conjunction with Flickr. This is a very nice approach for Flickr to take with user submitted ideas.

Flickr

technorati eh?

"The answer to the first question is that you’re blog is probably already being captured by Technorati due to the fact that your already using Blogger, the most popular blogging tool."
That's a scary thought! Well, I suppose everything you put online is going to end up somewhere being viewed by someone but being told about it makes it all very real.

Tagging things in Technorati isn't as easy as I would have hoped: HTML is not my strong point. I like the apple way of thinking: make it obvious and clickable! Code is beyond me!

It's pretty entertaining in it's own way to see what is listed as popular on the site: the alphabetised lists defo come in handy and allow you to browse different areas too :) I also liked the State of the Blogosphere blog which "chronicles the rise and evolution of the Blogosphere as we know it. Since 2004 we've seen explosive growth and maturing of this new arm of the fourth estate"

Delicious or just a bit tasty?

Ok so in my allotted time for this course I've gone thru quite a bit today so I figured I'd go onto the next section which looks at Del.icio.us and tagging.

I've watched a tutorial video (although not the one linked on the site) and logged on using the generic account. I'm surprised by how much I like the site and the idea of creating quick and easy bookmarks/tags.

I had a look at some of the frequently visited bookmarks through the generic account and have had a look through other areas that interest me on a personal level.

It seems overall like a pretty clever way of linking up different aspects and things you like and are interested in to put them all in the same place. Clever :)

Message boards

Ok so as part of week three of this course I have set up a profile and submitted some comments on Sheffield Forum which is a local message board. I have read about the Abe message board and am fully aware of what they are for etc but decided to actually submit an spend time navigating my way around the Sheffield Forum because it was of more interest to me.

It's pretty good really! You can find out all kinds of crazy things about Sheffield and the surrounding area as well as promote your business, buy and sell things, ask for opinions and read reviews... there's quite a lot going on! Here is a link to the message board: http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/

The course recoemmnded starting a MySpace account but the PCs in our library don't allow access to social networking. However, I have a Facebook account which I use in my own time so am aware of what they are and how they work. I can however, understand why access to these sites is restricted in libraries and schools. The majority of students at my place of work are 16+ and use these sites to interact with friends/family etc about social events. Before these sites were banned, students would come into the library, log on to facebook and stay on there for as long as possible meaning that the Pcs were in use but not being used for work. BAD TIMES.

Since banning social networking, we have fewer problems with patrolling and policing what the students are doing: games are instantly banned but occurances of students playing these reduces dramatically as the academic year goes on.