WEEK 13 : CONCLUSION

Feedback - 23 Things Online Learning Program:

The 23 things experience has broaden my perspective of communication and information delivery. This was a very engaging and inspiring experience, one that has given me the courage to embrace new technologies and inspired me to explore and investigate new discoveries without any apprehension. The 23 Things Learning Project has also galvanized the efforts of the staff members to unite and succeed as a group across all campuses. This learning program was a great asset to building team spirit among the library staff.

I envisage using many of these Social Software tools in my present and the future work environment as well as with leisure activities.

WEEK 12: SECOND LIFE AND LIBRARIES!

Read about Second Lief and how Libraries are using it:

Second Life is a Virtual World, built and owned by its users. According to the University Medical Centre Groningan, within this Virtual World, participants:

· Meet each other

· Interact, compete, collaborate, learn from and talk to each other

· Engage in Distant Learning

· Establish Virtual Communication

· Go anywhere and do anything

Second Life has established new frontiers for educators (including librarians) who are looking for ways of dissemination information and making learning a more engaging and interactive experience. However, these new frontiers come with new challenges and problems, and it is exciting to observe as these unfold.

In attempting to understand how Second Life operate and what challenges and problems may be encountered, I signed up and successfully downloaded the software but was unable to gain access. It appeared that access was no longer granted through Swinburne University’s server. I tried several times, but access was denied. I gave up trying, and just resorted to reading about the experiences of those who are current participants or thse who had previously shared in the Second Life experience.

Week 11 : Podcasts!

Find and Listen to a Podcast or two:
From Google I located a number of podcasts for conference papers from the VALA Conference held in Melbourne in 2006. I attended one day of this conference and enjoyed many interesting and informative presentations but would have liked to hear other presentations which were delivered simultaneously with the ones I had chosen. Now I am able to listen to the ones I missed. It is much easier to listen to the podcasts rather than to read the pdf version of these papers. You can check out these podcasts at the following address: http://www.vala.org.au/vala2006/auth2006.htm

Week 10 Wikis and Video Sharing

Put Photo of Your Pet on the Wiki:
This photo was put on the Wiki to represent my beloved Billy, a pet with whom I had a close bond many years ago in Jamaica, before he ended up on the dinner table for some unknown reason to me. Since then I learnt not to develop any close bond with any pets, but I still remember Billy with much fond memories!! Nanny and her baby in this photo are descendants of Billy. This photo was taken on a recent trip to Jamaica!

Watch YouTube Videos People Have Made About Libraries:
YouTube has a number of interesting and informative videos about libraries and among these, I found the following two videos most informative:

• The University of Southern California Library of the Future Awards Ceremony: This video shows the unveiling of the visions of students from USC during their 2007 parents weekend. The team of student presenters used slide presentations to give their creative visions of the form and function of the future of academic libraries. They included the architecture, the technology and how students will use the library to achieve their academic goals.
  

• Voices from Imagination to Transformation Mid- Atlantic Library Conference:

In this video a number of delegates from a Mid-Atlantic Library Conference expressed their views about libraries of the future. Some of the areas covered in their forecasts for future libraries included:

• Emerging trends
  
• Environmental sustainability of library buildings and landscapes
• Transformations caused by social networking
• New approach to content creation and
  
• Convenience of information access

It is reassuring to know that Swinburne University of Technology Library has already had in place or is currently implementing many of the suggestions given by the delegates as their forecasts for future libraries.

Weeks 8 & 9

iGoogle Home Page:
Having a personalized iGoogle Home Page is a good idea. This enables me to get a quick glance at a wide variety of information from Google and across the web at one go. Creating the iGoogle Home Page and organizing its contents was very easy and straightforward:


Play With Delicious:
Delicious is a very effective medium for keeping all your book marks in one place. I found it quite convenient using this social bookmarking website to access my bookmarks from any computer and in adding bookmarks form anywhere. Another advantage I found is the ability to see the links to my friends bookmarks and to be able to share mine with them:



Read about the Library 2.0 Movement:
My investigation of the Library 2.0 movement, has revealed that it represents a paradigm shift in the way library services are viewed today. The Library 2.0 movement seems to foster a seamless user experience by reaching out to the library communities via social networking (blogs, wikis, IM and screencasting etc.). Its about user participation, making their voice hear through blogs , wikis and making the library space (virtual and physical) more interactive, collaborative and driven by community needs.

Week 7 Google Tools

Play with Google Maps:

• I have used Google Maps to locate some of the places visited during my recent world trip. I was particularly interested in locating a satellite image of the Sansters International Airport In Montego Bay, and Google Maps was very helpful (image to the right). I found it quite fascinating to use the Satellite locater to find places.
  

Play with Google Docs:

• I have previously used Google Docs to produce a Spreadsheet that was shared among a group for a project.

Play with Google Book Search:

• I found Google Book Search quite fascinating, because it does not limit your search to the bibliographic contents of a book only, but rather it searches the contents of the book to find a match for your search term. Google Book Search also allows you to preview the contents of your search results or at times even the entire text of the book. There are other features available to make the acquisition of a book quite easy.

23 Things: Tasks 4 - 13 Completed

• Link to my flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/people/jamaican/

• Joining a flickr group gave me access to a variety of useful group photos from which I found some great photos of Melbourne and of Australia in general, that I used, with the permission of the owners, to creat a DVD about life in Australia, particularly about life in the city of Melbourne. I shared these photos with groups of family and friends as I travelled to various countries around the world. Flickr also served as a repository for many of the photos I had on my digital camara, enabling me to make room for photos taken on my world trip and more recent ones. I inted to keep using Flickr for personal use as well as for use in my work environment.

• I used Sign Generator.Org to create the sign above. After several trial and error, I was able to come to grip with the use of the sign genrator and I certainly enjoy using this tool. I envisage using this for various purposes in the future.

• Link to my LibraryThing account: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/clevec . I have used LibraryThing to compile a few selection of my favourite book, and I hope to continue this project as time permits.

• I have set up a feed reader using Google Reader and have so far subscribed to the BBC Front Page News feeds as well as to Michael Bubles top 10 tracks (my favourite album). I have also subscribe to Sign Generator's Blogs and Google Reader's Blog:

• I have joined and explored the following social softwares; Facebook, MySpace and Orkut. I wasn't inspired to go beyone signing up for a MySpace account. However I did signed up for, used and explored Facebook and Orkut, since many of my friends were already using these. I didn't find these social software very useful beyond the novelty of discovering old friends and acknowledging new ones.