catapult

Thing 23 - Second Life

2008-12-18T17:25:00.000-08:00

Completed the last Thing. Where's a good bar on Second Life??

Thing 22 - Gaming

2008-12-17T22:39:00.001-08:00

Even digital natives have different learning styles. I particularly liked reading the comments on the article When "digital natives" go to the Library, e.g.

"There should be a distinction here that was not explicitly made. Gaming technology is what needs to be emphasized, not the playing of games with respect to library services.

The digital native and immigrant alike enjoy getting to what they are looking for quickly and reliably.

The authors suggestion that librarians should play more games is best taken lightly, and maybe better stated as librarians should support game technology for providing library services.

Technologies like artificial intelligence and drop down menus can enhance on-line research and browsing of library records.

At issue is the role of the librarian which as the article suggests is changing from a stoic oracle to an enabler for its customers"

and this one:

"But I also think the analogy of game playing can only go so far. Just because I could beat 90% of people on “Madden 2007,” does not mean that I could cut it in NFL training camp. Sometimes, even with information access, the user must take some initiative and not expect to have a virtual information world just handed to them. The virtual world and the real world may look alike, but they are often very different"

and this one:

"This is the current power struggle where the gamer community is trying to wrestle the role of expert from the professional community. It seems like this is a symptom of the gaming culture; kids can play games and manipulate the virtual world, but don’t know crap about the real world. To them, everything is mouse-clicks and flashing lights and anyone who doesn’t get that is a n00b or artard. Did you ever notice that game guides are huge bestsellers? That’s because the game culture is not about discovery, it’s about being given the answer. They’ll say it’s about discovery, but how many people bypass the hard work of discovery and buy game booty with real money? Lots. It’s a real world, virtual world problem. We (librarians) live in the real world whose relevence is diminishing every day. We don’t need to help it along.

Remember that fake Kurt Vonnegut speech about wearing sunscreen? It goes, “Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.” Great advice. Too bad the digital natives blew that tidbit off. And fyi, video games are damn hard; I haven’t come across one yet that let me advance to the next level without finding the right key or opening the right door—video games are proof that there often is only one way to solve a problem"

Thing 21 - Ustreaming

2008-12-10T18:54:00.000-08:00

Flash 10 was a problem so not able to complete on own, but have a fair idea of what it can do.

Thing 20 - Slideshare.net and youtube.com

2008-12-10T17:41:00.000-08:00

How to Play Rock Viola, Part 2. The violist is not Alex!

Thing 18 & 19 - Twitter & Tweeting

2008-12-02T21:49:00.001-08:00

Have joined Twitter and started Tweeting. Still waiting for the critical mass of twitterers to join me.

Thing 16 & 17 - Join Facebook, Add Friends

2008-12-01T22:04:00.000-08:00

Thing 16 & 17 done.

Thing 15 - Image Generator

2008-11-24T23:08:00.000-08:00

Wordle

Thing 14 - Flickr

2008-11-21T23:22:00.000-08:00

Created an account and uploaded some pics from UC Berkeley Library. All very easy. I'm looking forward to seeing photos from my daughter's travels in Japan over the next couple of months, so for me Flickr will be especially relevant.

Thing 13 - Upload an Image

2008-11-21T21:37:00.000-08:00

This is not a photograph of compactus shelving at Murdoch. Instead I've uploaded one taken at UC Berkeley Library. Pretty impressive stuff. They have kilometres of it.

Thing 12 - Del.icio.us

2008-11-18T23:33:00.000-08:00

I already have a Del.icio.us drop down menu on my Firefox browser complete with downloaded Favourites so I guess I must have strayed from my goal into divergent pathways over the last few weeks and hence got ahead of the program (is that what happened?). It's all becoming a blur! I don't feel any compelling need to add tags or share with others but can see their value. I'll probably stick to my current bookmarks unless I'm unable to remote desktop and have to access bookmarks from elsewhere.

Thing 11 - Social Tagging & Search

2008-11-18T22:49:00.000-08:00

My medical search terms certainly produced wildly varying hits.
Del.icio.us found 17 hits with 2 terms. Tags used were appropriate but results were newsy and lightweight not medical enough. Some of the advanced search suggestions were useful.
Connotea Gave up on connecting to this - too slow.
CiteULike was good, retrieving 119 relevant hits - not too overwhelming with a medical focus. I would use this again.
Murdoch catalogue subject search provided only 2 hits which is to be expected for this topic.
UQs catalogue was much better at getting to relevant content within books dealing with broader medical conditions. Included ways to quickly refine your search.
Google, well 98,000 hits! Needless to say I didn't proceed beyond the first couple of pages! I found myself becoming strangely less interested in my topic. My librarian ways were beginning to emerge - give me some controlled headings and focused searching techniques!
Google Scholar would be a better way to go than Google but still 633 hits albeit more scholarly.
Zuula This was new to me as were all the search engines on it except for Google and Yahoo. Varying results in each. Too much information on my topic.
Kartoo Maybe I am a visual learner. I liked this very much. I hope to remember to go here again.

Thing 10 - PBWiki

2008-11-13T22:13:00.000-08:00

This Thing hasn't been so straightforward. I don't find it particularly intuitive and am not altogether sure that I have the 'hang of it'. A working screencast would have been helpful (and the demo didn't show you how to do it just how it could be used in a school environment). At this stage I don't have anyone to share my wiki with (if you would like to then click here - it's about planning for a walking holiday in France) but am prepared to believe that it will allow me to do the following:

Easily share files with users
Set access controls for pages and folders
Monitor who’s changed each page
Email notifications keep everyone up to date
Quickly add others to the project

I'm going to keep experimenting and will ask questions of those 'in the know'(calling all experts out there!).

Postscript: I've now spent more time on my wiki and know a lot more about it. Still waiting to share with others though (have invited several - you know who you are!!). Have a look here if you'd like to share your knowledge on walking holidays, even if not in France.

Thing 9 Google Docs & iGoogle

2008-11-12T22:41:00.000-08:00

Google Docs does what it promises and it's FREE.

Upload from and save to your desktop
Edit anytime, from anywhere
Pick who can access your documents
Share changes in real time
Files are stored securely online

It would be particularly useful if working on a document with collaborators from other institutions.

After Sue's demo on Friday I had fun creating an iGoogle page. Since I seem to need to log in to gmail for so many things now I will probably look at iGoogle more than I would otherwise have done.

Thing 8 - Zotero & LibX

2008-11-06T22:46:00.000-08:00

Helen's demo of the LibX Toolbar showed me that there is more to LibX (on the right hand side of the long toolbar) than had met my eye. I feel a bit like a LibX evangelist now!. Dragging highlighted text onto Scholar produces amazing results. I hope I don't forget that this is possible!

I've experimented with Zotero over the past few days and like it very much. I've always found EndNote rather clunky whereas Zotero immediately appealed, although I understand it has limitations. Hopefully further refinement will overcome these. Definitely worth a closer look.

Thing 7 - Firefox customisation

2008-11-06T22:21:00.000-08:00

After some intital confusion Thing 7 turned out to be fun, although I did install far too many add ons until I decided to go with some of Aarons recommendations - IE Tab, FireShot, PDF Download, Bookmark Duplicate Detector. Then I added Colourful Tabs which are far too rainbowy for my liking! Themes led me into another distraction, eventually settling on Foxscape (which was described as a full featured retro theme, whatever that is) but I'm sure I'll change when the mood takes me.

Thing 6 - Subscribing to Feeds

2008-10-29T22:56:00.000-07:00

I'm really quite familiar with RSS feeds so it was a relief to be able to quickly revise this and record my progress. I've subscribed to a number of feeds and have also publicised this with my academics and have demonstrated how to subscribe and use. Having feeds set up within the Google Reader is not so convenient if you have to log in each time to see them, unless you regularly access your gmail account anyway. The layout in Google Reader is preferable to RSS in Outlook but having access to Outlook most of the time makes it more convenient. Either way you do still have to remember to look at it.

The feed I've set up for 23 Things is to ABC News:Business just because it's topical given the global meltdown but it is depressing and I really should find an uplifting feed :) It is quicker for me to look at the ABC news website though, rather than logging in to the google reader. When RSS feeds sit within a webpage they are of more use. I've put a couple in my LibGuides and they work very well because you cut out the extra step of having to log into a reader.

Thing 4

2008-10-29T21:08:00.000-07:00

One benefit from system failures (i.e. Outlook, H drive etc) is that time becomes available to allocate to other things - 23 Things in particular.

Re the 7 & 1/2 Habits for me there is probably no standout easiest habit, though possibly I like to begin with the end in mind. I'm the sort of person who likes to know where I'm headed. The hardest would probably be a tendency not to view problems as challenges. I'm assuming this is not uncommon especially when work load is high.

As far as goals for 23 Things I want to get past Thing 7 (where I got up to last time). I would like to know where I'm headed and what use I can make of the Things in my work. I'm looking forward to learning more about Flickr and would quite like to create a presence on Facebook just for the heck of it. Looks as though my learning toolkit will mainly comprise a computer, a digital camera, perseverence and help from contacts when necessary.