This was a very weird week for me. My husband, Dave, had to leave last Saturday for a business trip to Sweden. All week long I was able to eat when I want (what I wanted ;-0) keep the TV channel on whatever channel I wanted! and work into the wee hours of the morning if I wanted! Sounds good, right? No, I missed him! But I did get a lot of homework done, and for that I am relieved.
So, when I was not working on our technical projects or reading another book for my Political Science class (or building a new beehive!) I was learning to appreciate the job of a web designer. There are so many more things to consider when creating a website, and I for one, am glad that is not my job. It is a never-ending job, because there is always room for improvement. I worked a lot on my wiki this week, and I've decided that even working on that gets my OCD in overdrive because there is always a way to "do this better" and "make this more interesting." At least with a wiki the job is shared, not so with a website. Unless you have content management....but then the issue of design and format still falls on the webmaster.
Team Audrey-Joanna-Melanie part 2 met this week via Pronto to report on our library interviews. One of us was poorly treated by the librarian, and that reminds me that the most basic usability feature of a library is its staff's demeanor and attitude toward patrons! You can have all the latest high tech equipment and software and best looking website in town, but if you have rude staff, you have failed to be a truly usable library!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Picasa Project - Activity 2 - Public Library (2nd Web 2.0 project part 2)
Filename: isaac2006-12-13.jpg
This was the second part of the Picasa assignment, where I needed to find a picture on Picasa after using the search terms "Public Library." I thought this picture was a perfect image of what I see as a public library. I limited the choices to pictures with CC and found this one, of little Isaac. I hope you enjoy it!
A-Twitter over Twitter - "hoosiervess" (1st Web 2.0 project)
The first thing I did before I set up a Twitter account was to look up the meaning of the word. "Twitter" is defined by Merriam-Webster online dictionary as "to utter successive chirping noises" or "to talk in a chattering fashion." This definition seemed to be consistent with the use of the bird-like term "tweet" for each successive message. With a limit of 140 characters for each message, one must be concise and to the point, or risk becoming prolific with your number of tweets. I decided the name Twitter was an apt name for this rapid, quick and concise exchange of information. So, why my play on words in the title? Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines "a-twitter" as being nervously concerned. That expressed perfectly my initial approach to Twitter. Why in the world would anyone want to "tweet" information about themselves, and more importantly, why would anyone else want to read it! Well, I quickly learned that Twitter is like any other social networking site - it has its share of narcissistic "tweeters" but there are also many more who are genuinely using it as a quick source of "spreading the news." Here are some of the things I learned while I used Twitter:
- Whereas I assumed Twitter was full of people sharing what they had for breakfast and where they were going, I quickly learned that if you don't want to read minutia, you can definitely be more selective in who you follow. I tended to navigate towards like-minded organizations and groups - such as Focus on the Family, our local Tea Party, the Heritage Foundation, and of course Janet Evanovich. ;-) I followed a lot of political and professional groups, including the Librarian in Black (she was a riot) a library in Hinsdale, Illinois (where I have family) the Smithsonian and the ALA. I really only followed 5 individuals, and never did I sense they were boring me to death with their tweets. (or I would have "unfollowed" them.)
- I was fascinated with the way people were able to abbreviate their message into 140 characters or less and still make a point. One person I followed was Michelle Malkin, an author and commentator on the news, and she gave a lot of tweets about her cousin who went missing. It was days before I heard anything about it on the mainstream media, but I was following the progress, or lack of progress of the search by her tweets. Unfortunately, her cousin is still missing.
- One thing that I noticed about monitoring Twitter sites is that the news is very quick. I read somewhere that people were tweeting about the earthquake in Japan before it even made it on the news here, and I believe it. For news and personal perspectives I think it is an invaluable tool. I found I was more interested reading tweets than I was Facebook posts, because usually people were more selective with what they said when they had fewer characters to use.
- The library sites I monitored impressed me because they used their tweets to introduce new employees to the public, and to advertise upcoming programs. I was fascinated with a program the Hinsdale Library offered about learning what to do for your pet in an emergency. They called it "No Pet Left Behind." Clever. Their tweets "tweaked" my interest, and I thought they were effective. The Librarian in Black allowed us to experience through her tweets a "Computers in Libraries" conference she went to in Washington D.C. Truly, her tweets made me laugh outloud as she commented on everything from her pat-down at the airport, to the absence of the key-note speaker. To get to the meat of that conference you need to check out her blogs - but her tweets enticed me to LOOK to her blog for more information.
- I was pretty amazed at the variety of people who were on Twitter. My daughter casually mentioned a cookbook by "the Pioneer Woman" and I innocently looked her up on Twitter, and voila! She tweets! And she's pretty funny, too. Sulu from Star Trek is amusingly sarcastic, although I don't follow him. He just tends to show up whenever I do topic searches.
- I was interested in the number of people who started to "follow" me on Twitter. I didn't solicit anyone (ok, well, the two friends I sought out live in California, and she has a food blog I like, and he works for The Simpsons, so I got a kick out of his tweets to his Hollywood friends!) Anyway, local businesses in Kokomo became my followers, as did someone with "sexy" in their username. I quickly blocked them from my account, but thought it was interesting that even on Twitter, you are a potential client, or, God forbid, partner. You need to be careful who you open up to, even on Twitter!
- OK, so one of the things I expected to see on Twitter was a bunch of conservative or liberal thinkers flocking to like-minded people (I was right on that one!) as well as groupies who would hang on to every tweet from every celebrity, both present, past and has been. (not so right about that one!) I suppose there was some of that, but I will confess to following my new TV obsession - Chuck. What I found was pretty hilarious. If you don't watch Chuck - he's a nerd who becomes a spy. Anyway, with hesitation I became a "follower" of Zachary Levi, AKA Chuck, for the sole purpose of seeing what kind of groupies frequent a celebrity - and how a celebrity treats his groupies! I found him to be just as funny as his character on Chuck! Apart from his tweet links to hilarious YouTube videos, he also encouraged support for Japan after the earthquake and generally seemed not at all what I expected of a celebrity who "uses Twitter." Ok - so I confess, I became the groupie, and in this case, was pretty much pleased with the process. I'm sure there are plenty of other not so normal celebrity exchanges.....just try doing a search for Charlie Sheen! Ugh!!!!
- Speaking of funny tweets...if you are a Janet Evanovich fan, she tweets quotes from her books. Really funny stuff!
- By the way - Twitter can be a quick source of information! I learned Butler lost on Twitter yesterday a few minutes after it happened!
- Our library has a teen Twitter account, and I'm a bit discouraged that I was one of only 288 followers. However, I must commend our teen librarian for the way she constantly gives updates and reviews of books on Twitter. Eventually, I think it will pay off.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Team Audrey-Joanna-Melanie
Well after much help from my fellow team-mates I was able to meet with them on Pronto this afternoon so that we could formulate our plan of attack on this technology review assignment. I am blessed with such capable teammates, and so thankful that they know how to use Pronto, because it was a first for me! We have identified our plan and prepared our questions, so I look forward to a field trip this week to our academic library choice.
I was very interested in the concept of universal design, and determined that my library is not nearly as up-to-date as I had thought we were. The one thing I learned that I had not realized before was that disabilities come in much broader categories than just physical. Mental, intellectual and verbal are all areas where people may be at a disadvantage, and it is important that libraries and areas of learning consider the needs of people who are lacking in these additional areas. Perhaps if our public library was part of a more metropolitan city, we would have more assistive and adaptive technologies. I am interested in learning what the larger libraries offer. It would seem in a larger area you would have more patrons with needs.
My husband is in Sweden for the week on business, so I hope to be able to tackle my homework without distraction. I just finished constructing a second beehive for my sweet hobbee.....I am looking forward to setting it up this weekend, and can't wait to get my next batch of bees! I'm down to my last gallon of honey!
I wish you all a wonderful first week of April!
I was very interested in the concept of universal design, and determined that my library is not nearly as up-to-date as I had thought we were. The one thing I learned that I had not realized before was that disabilities come in much broader categories than just physical. Mental, intellectual and verbal are all areas where people may be at a disadvantage, and it is important that libraries and areas of learning consider the needs of people who are lacking in these additional areas. Perhaps if our public library was part of a more metropolitan city, we would have more assistive and adaptive technologies. I am interested in learning what the larger libraries offer. It would seem in a larger area you would have more patrons with needs.
My husband is in Sweden for the week on business, so I hope to be able to tackle my homework without distraction. I just finished constructing a second beehive for my sweet hobbee.....I am looking forward to setting it up this weekend, and can't wait to get my next batch of bees! I'm down to my last gallon of honey!
I wish you all a wonderful first week of April!
Creating Online Tutorials
Our wise teacher suggested I check out an online webinar on "Creating Online Tutorials" put on by Webjunction this week. I was fortunate to have my boss allow me time off the Reference Desk so I could participate in the office. Here are some of the main points I got out of the presentation (once again, "technical difficulties caused the audio to cut off every 7 minutes....):
1. First look at other libraries that have done tutorials to learn from their successes and challenges. They gave examples from Carmel-Clay in Indiana, San Francisco Public Library, William Paterson University and St Louis Community College.
2. Practice making tutorials by "writing out a script" after you answer a question for the umpteenth time. While it is fresh in your mind, write out the script and practice.
3. The key is the script - should be no more than 3 minutes and should be entertaining.
4. Tip sheets can be used as scripts for developing online tutorials.
5. Do not discard anything! Maintain an inventory of of all "screen shots" taken -you never know when you can use it for a tutorial.
6, The most likely people to use the tutorials are those who are comfortable using computers, so do not make the tutorial too elementary.
7. Some of the suggestions for software starts at the beginning level of still screen captures - (nag-It, Word and Powerpoint) to the next level which is screencasting (Screenr & Jing) to screen recording (Camtasia) and finally the highest level of time and financial investment is e-learning (Captivate and Articulate are both software for this level)
8. Make sure tutorials are promoted by the library - placement on the website is key, so that they are easy to find, in multiple places. Have some sort of "branding" that makes the production easily recognizable and familiar (I thought of those YouTube "in plain english" with the hands and papercutouts as a good example)
9. The audience for these tutorials can turn over quite a bit, so they do last a long time. The key is, if after viewing the tutorial it raises more questions than answers, then that is the time to redo them. (or if the interface or methods change.)
Part of the fun of these webinars is reading people's reactions to the material. There is an ongoing instant messaging bar going on with technical problems (I was on that one for a while! ;-)) and then offering questions and solutions. The main ingredient of the chat was the offering of other links to websites that have experience with producing online tutorials. All in all, I think it was worth the hour I invested, and it may be something our library may do in the future. Right now we do not have any of the software mentioned, and our webmaster told me she did not see a need for us to invest in it right now.
1. First look at other libraries that have done tutorials to learn from their successes and challenges. They gave examples from Carmel-Clay in Indiana, San Francisco Public Library, William Paterson University and St Louis Community College.
2. Practice making tutorials by "writing out a script" after you answer a question for the umpteenth time. While it is fresh in your mind, write out the script and practice.
3. The key is the script - should be no more than 3 minutes and should be entertaining.
4. Tip sheets can be used as scripts for developing online tutorials.
5. Do not discard anything! Maintain an inventory of of all "screen shots" taken -you never know when you can use it for a tutorial.
6, The most likely people to use the tutorials are those who are comfortable using computers, so do not make the tutorial too elementary.
7. Some of the suggestions for software starts at the beginning level of still screen captures - (nag-It, Word and Powerpoint) to the next level which is screencasting (Screenr & Jing) to screen recording (Camtasia) and finally the highest level of time and financial investment is e-learning (Captivate and Articulate are both software for this level)
8. Make sure tutorials are promoted by the library - placement on the website is key, so that they are easy to find, in multiple places. Have some sort of "branding" that makes the production easily recognizable and familiar (I thought of those YouTube "in plain english" with the hands and papercutouts as a good example)
9. The audience for these tutorials can turn over quite a bit, so they do last a long time. The key is, if after viewing the tutorial it raises more questions than answers, then that is the time to redo them. (or if the interface or methods change.)
Part of the fun of these webinars is reading people's reactions to the material. There is an ongoing instant messaging bar going on with technical problems (I was on that one for a while! ;-)) and then offering questions and solutions. The main ingredient of the chat was the offering of other links to websites that have experience with producing online tutorials. All in all, I think it was worth the hour I invested, and it may be something our library may do in the future. Right now we do not have any of the software mentioned, and our webmaster told me she did not see a need for us to invest in it right now.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Lambert Wedding
I just spent the afternoon playing with Animoto - what a blast! Would this video slide show I just made count for the video Web 2.0 assignment? If so, I would rather submit this than Picasa - I've enjoyed that, but this is really cool!
Oh - this is a brief (very brief - the free version is only 30 seconds long) collage of some pictures from my daughter's wedding last August. The song is Caedmon's Call's "Lead of Love" because that was sung at her wedding! Enjoy! This picture was on their "Save the Date" cards!
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
Lambert Wedding
Oh - this is a brief (very brief - the free version is only 30 seconds long) collage of some pictures from my daughter's wedding last August. The song is Caedmon's Call's "Lead of Love" because that was sung at her wedding! Enjoy! This picture was on their "Save the Date" cards!
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
Lambert Wedding
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