Fist of all, let me say that I have never taken a more interesting course as this one and the Two-Steppin' course that proceeded it. My eyes are open to Web 2.0 like never before. Everything in Beyond Two Steppin', was a revolation to me and I loved it all, especially Smilebox, Prezi, Goodreads and Google Maps.
I think all this new knowledge will help me make better choices for our patrons. I would like to make them aware of some of the resources covered. Using Prezi would be a fun alternative to Powerpoint for the students. Some of our jobseeker patrons are aware of the Texas Workforce Sites but not the Goodwill site and I'm sure none of them are aware of Visual CV Resumes. We have many patrons who would love Goodreads or Library Thing. This would be useful for a library bookclub for those who cannot get to the library for the meetings. I would like to make our website reflect all this new knowledge, maybe using Netvibes, screencasting or maybe a podcast. We could use Google Maps to show where we are which would improve our visibility and online surveys to improve our programming.
The unexpected take-away was that while watching several youtube videos I discovered many other related videos describing other free websites that our patrons would enjoy. For the young children, Storybird.com provides an easy venue for children to create their own stories. This could lead to a contest at the library for best, or most imaginative story or we could have a contest for young adults using Smilebox.
The web is always changing. I feel that this is an ongoing learning experience and I would definitely take any course on this subject that you would offer. I like the formatting of the course and can offer no improvement for it.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Beyond Method 11
I used Polldaddy.com and found it very easy to use. Typically, we have polled our patrons using the paper and pencil method but I think the time has come to poll them digitally on our website. I believe that the people who do our surveys feel that it is easier to just give someone a piece of paper when they come in but when we do this we are only getting the response of tried and true library patrons who are there practically every day,not the greater population of library users who more and more are using our website to see if books are available and putting them on hold as opposed to coming to the library and browsing our shelves. That is probably why we are decreasing our book stacks by half.
I can't see using Polleverywhere in our library because what seems to make it different from tools like Polldaddy is that you can text in your response on your mobile devise. That kind of technology hasn't become cheap enough for most of our patrons in our small town.
Beyond Method 10
I have participated in Webinars but have not used any of the tools listed to set one up for anyone. The ones that I have participated in usually had their own challanges in the set up. I have to contact IT for every webinar as there always seem to be something that has to be disabled. The last webinar I participated in was learning to use BIB II, a website by Brodart. I used the telephone for the audio. The program was either Go to Meeting or something similar. We have had remote tech support for city employees for some time and the tech folks find that it saves a lot of time running around to various city agencies to fix minor computer problems.
Libraries like Seattle Public and New York Public have so many tools available to them such as Facebook and other social media. We have social media, youtube, etc. blocked, not on our patron computers, but on our staff computers. This takes all of the joy out of creating a library Facebook page with staff not being able to see it or participate. Looking at what these larger libraries are doing with Facebook or other social media is inspiring especially the Senior and Readers Advisory webinars. The ageless project is a wonderful tool to keep Seniors from all walks of life connected. Living history blogs could be created by seniors and enjoyed by everyone. Youth could participate as well. Maybe even a adopt a grandparent program could be set up. Coming from a small library with a large senior population, I would like to think that someday we will be using these tools.
Skype seems to be something that we could use now. Many of our patrons have military and relatives in other countries who would appreciate being able to connect computer to computer without charge.
I love the idea of conferencing or book clubbing with authors. This is something that we will have to look into to see what interest we have amongst our patrons and what authors are willing to participate. At the present time we do not have any audio or visual hardware that would make this possible but I'm sure that we could get the money to buy what we need if the possible conferencing were investigated.
So we have a lot of challanges to overcome but as we are to be the "Technology Library" when we re-open in January, I think we will be able to make a case for the use of these tools sometime soon.
Libraries like Seattle Public and New York Public have so many tools available to them such as Facebook and other social media. We have social media, youtube, etc. blocked, not on our patron computers, but on our staff computers. This takes all of the joy out of creating a library Facebook page with staff not being able to see it or participate. Looking at what these larger libraries are doing with Facebook or other social media is inspiring especially the Senior and Readers Advisory webinars. The ageless project is a wonderful tool to keep Seniors from all walks of life connected. Living history blogs could be created by seniors and enjoyed by everyone. Youth could participate as well. Maybe even a adopt a grandparent program could be set up. Coming from a small library with a large senior population, I would like to think that someday we will be using these tools.
Skype seems to be something that we could use now. Many of our patrons have military and relatives in other countries who would appreciate being able to connect computer to computer without charge.
I love the idea of conferencing or book clubbing with authors. This is something that we will have to look into to see what interest we have amongst our patrons and what authors are willing to participate. At the present time we do not have any audio or visual hardware that would make this possible but I'm sure that we could get the money to buy what we need if the possible conferencing were investigated.
So we have a lot of challanges to overcome but as we are to be the "Technology Library" when we re-open in January, I think we will be able to make a case for the use of these tools sometime soon.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Beyond Method 9
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| Photo slideshow made with Smilebox |
I used the Scapebooking technique to tell a little story with Smilebox. I thought that this would be something that I could use easily to create something about the library when it reopens. The little story, told from the animals perspective, is about the wildlife that can be seen in one or two days in Victoria, Australia. I took some of the pictures but I also took some from the web (the blurry ones.) This took me some time as I was unfamiliar with how to transfer the pictures into Smilebox but I finally did it.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Beyond Method 8
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cXjnr0rTw
I unfortuately do not have a working microphone on my computer but I did do the exercise and had a good time doing it. I was showing how to look up a DVD in our catalog as you can probably tell. It's very easy to put their templete on top of the page that you are going to screencast about and everything is very clean cut for just a basic screencast. I can see using this to provide instruction for just about anything, such as how to use the catalog and how to do basic computer functions for classes in computing. Being so easy to use, I can see getting carried away and screencasting everything. Of course, if we did this, we might be out of a job!
I unfortuately do not have a working microphone on my computer but I did do the exercise and had a good time doing it. I was showing how to look up a DVD in our catalog as you can probably tell. It's very easy to put their templete on top of the page that you are going to screencast about and everything is very clean cut for just a basic screencast. I can see using this to provide instruction for just about anything, such as how to use the catalog and how to do basic computer functions for classes in computing. Being so easy to use, I can see getting carried away and screencasting everything. Of course, if we did this, we might be out of a job!
Monday, August 1, 2011
Beyond Method 7
I chose to use Prezi because it looked so radically different from Power Point. I used Power Point in graduate school and found it very easy to use but there was a sameness to it no matter what subject you chose. I love using Prezi. It was fun. Although I only added a few fields to my presentation, I felt that I learned the basics. I really liked the simplicity of Prezi; one page to arrange your presentation on and multi use tools like the transformation zebra to change the text or graphics. I can see when doing a presentation with a lot of information that you would have to be very careful in how you arrange your information and limit the number of zooms so that the audience doesn't get motion sickness. Before this course, I was not aware of any of the other presentation tools except the one in Google Docs. Google Docs is very effective for presentations dealing with charts and graphs as they can all be created in the google suite.
The other presentation tools presented, except Slideshare look like various versions of a super power point with the advantage of being in the cloud and accessible wherever there is Internet.
I can see using these tools especially Prezi and Sliderocket on the library website. I feel that I could help someone coming into the library and looking for an alternative presentation tool.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Beyond Method 6
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4276
I had no idea that there were so many formats and accessibility issues with e-readers. In helping out patrons (who are already asking about ebooks when we closed our library for renovation) there is a definite learning curve that we as librarians have to master as nothing is standardised. As we know, e-readers like Kindle and Nook were not developed for libraries but for purchases off of Amazon and Barnes and Noble so standardization is probably not in the future. I find Project Gutenberg very easy to use if you are going to download it to a computer, however, downloading to the various devises is something else. Here, in this time of transition, librarians are needed to be media techs. After our library re-opens in January, we will be purchasing several kinds of e-readers so that we can serve as teachers to our patrons especially those retirees that just received an e-reader from a younger relatives. After practicing, I'm sure we will be up to the task of helping them download from Project Gutenberg when the owner of Kindles, Nooks, and other devises come in asking for help.
I had no idea that there were so many formats and accessibility issues with e-readers. In helping out patrons (who are already asking about ebooks when we closed our library for renovation) there is a definite learning curve that we as librarians have to master as nothing is standardised. As we know, e-readers like Kindle and Nook were not developed for libraries but for purchases off of Amazon and Barnes and Noble so standardization is probably not in the future. I find Project Gutenberg very easy to use if you are going to download it to a computer, however, downloading to the various devises is something else. Here, in this time of transition, librarians are needed to be media techs. After our library re-opens in January, we will be purchasing several kinds of e-readers so that we can serve as teachers to our patrons especially those retirees that just received an e-reader from a younger relatives. After practicing, I'm sure we will be up to the task of helping them download from Project Gutenberg when the owner of Kindles, Nooks, and other devises come in asking for help.
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