Kylie's 23 Things

Thing 23 - Second Life

2009-01-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

Done, done, done. I thought the session on Second Life was rather fun and I even got the chance to speak to some other people from the other side of the world. It'll be interesting to see how it will aid the services we provide here at the library.

Thing 22 - Gaming: How might we adapt our instructional material to better engage digital natives?

2009-01-07T20:17:00.000-08:00

...Just because a child wants ice cream for dessert doesn’t mean it is the best meal for him or her.

I think the above sums up neatly how I felt after reading the article "When 'Digital Natives' Go to the Library". On one hand I can understand the importance of libraries and librarians keeping up to date with new technologies and incorporating these new ways of accessing and retrieving information where relevant and necessary. However, the notion of incorporating gaming like techniques in library services simply because our "customers" happen to spend a lot of their time playing games, I think, is perhaps going too far. So gamers tend to not read gaming manuals before playing their games, and they don't like to read long lists of instructions - does that mean we should simplify our instructions to cater for their ever shortening attention spans? If they can sit in front of a computer and game for hours on end, a little reading beforehand or during surely would not be too difficult?

I think overall, I'm somewhat cautious about Web 2.0, I think there are some very useful technologies out there that allow us to provide better libraries services, however, not all emerging technologies are relevant and all should not be incorporated for the sake of being up to date with what's out there. I think some discrimination is needed, and also I think this user/customer centric model of library services needs to be moderated. Users have to be accountable for their information retrieval also, they have to be accountable for their learning and *want* to acquire information retrieval skills. No matter how many fancy gadgets or programs or gaming nights a library has, a student without possession of the desire to develop their information retrieval skills will just not do so. There is only so much we can do and then its up to the user.

Thing 21 - U Stream

2009-01-07T00:09:00.001-08:00

My U Stream dashboard:

Thing 20 - Youtube.com

2009-01-06T23:01:00.000-08:00

For Thing 20 I decided to embed a library related video from Youtube titled "Library Limbo". It features 1920s style animation and is quite charming!

Thing 18-19 Tweet, tweet, Twitter

2008-12-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

So I joined Twitter today and initially had a bit of trouble figuring out who I was following and who was following me, but after a bit of a fiddle I got my head around it. I can see the uses of Twitter but I'm not sure if it's necessarily something I would use as I don't really need people to know what I'm up to all the time.

Thing 16-17 : Myface (aka Facebook)

2008-12-01T22:33:00.000-08:00

I started using Facebook a year or two ago and initially joined after a friend moved to Sydney. She invited me to sign up and so I did, not knowing at the time that it would grow into such a huge phenomenon. When I first joined I had 3 whole "friends" and gradually more and more people joined, skyrocketing my number of friends to nearly 200. Recently I decided to "cull" some of my so-called "friends' because a large number of them were not people I would even acknowledge in the real world. They included people from primary/highschool, friends of friends, friend's cousin's uncle's aunty's brother's niece's nephew's sons. It just got out of control, so I deleted about 50 people and am about to embark on another culling mission.

I have friends overseas who use this as their primary method of keeping in contact with friends and family so this is the main reason for staying on Facebook - the novelty of installing applications and so on died a long long time ago. I have also set my privacy settings rather high so people are not able to find me when they search my name and pretty much don't see me at all if they are not my "friend". I've found this to be the best way to beat the tirade of friend requests from those who just want to up their number of contacts - it's about quality, not quantity, people!

Rant aside, this is what my profile page looks like:

Thing 15 - Image Generators

2008-11-27T21:40:00.001-08:00

Thing 14 - Flickr

2008-11-27T21:26:00.001-08:00

I've posted some photos on my Flickr account...

Here's a taste:

Thing 13 - Upload an Image

2008-11-27T20:44:00.000-08:00

Thing 11 and 12: Social Tagging and Search, and Delicious.com

2008-11-23T16:31:00.000-08:00

Thing 11 - Social Tagging and Search

For Thing 11 I decided to search the terms "Film Making" and came up with the following:

Delicious.com - 2347 results.

The first few results included a website called "A Swarm of Angels" which is "a groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members" (sounds interesting), "Exposure Film Making" an Internet resource for low budget film makers and "Filmaka" a space for film makers to meet and take part in competitions.

Connotea - took forever to retrieve results and then produced a blank page

CiteULike - 501 results.

Results were divided into Users, Groups and Articles. The articles retrieved looked quite good/relevant.

Murdoch University Catalogue (subject search) - searching for "film making" gave me 0 results, tried "Motion Pictures -- Production and Direction" which gave me 109 results.

UQ Catalogue - 286 results

Google - 16,100,000 results - included some interesting websites on film making (a wikipedia entry on film making was third in the results)

Zuula - 15,500,000 results - included a large number of the websites retrieved by google

KartOO - 14,600,000 results - visually this was more interesting but also a little confusing. The first 14 results were essentially the same websites retrieved by Google and Zuula.

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Thing 12 - Delicious

I have heard a lot about Delicious in the past but never really knew what it was all about. It seems kind of handy but the fact that everyone can "tag" their bookmarks however they please means that there are going to be countless different ways to tag a bookmark on a particular subject. Perhaps a little consistency would make this a more effective tool?

Thing 9 and 10 - Google Docs and PBwiki

2008-11-13T20:58:00.000-08:00

GOOGLE DOCS

This week we were introduced to Google Docs, I have used Google Docs before and found it particularly handy because everything is located in the one place and editing is limited to one document - always handy for collaborative projects. I created a Google Doc and shared it with Pam. Thanks Pam!

PBWIKI

I'm a big fan of PBwiki and have created a few wikis in the past. The latest PBwiki I created was for a group assignment. I thought it would be handy to create one seeing as we were all studying the unit externally and couldn't meet up often to piece the assignment together. Creating a PBwiki was useful in that it allowed us to see and edit each other's work and creating a webpage for it meant that we could add it into our group report and show our unit coordinator how we had worked together and who contributed what.

Super handy indeed! Here is the assignment wiki

Thing 7 and 8 - Firefox Extensions, Zotero and LibX

2008-11-09T18:25:00.000-08:00

Thing 7 and 8 - FireFox Extensions, Zotero and Libx

I was looking forward to Thing 7 this week because I'm a bit of a Firefox fan and the idea of "pimping" my browser was nerdily exciting.

I have used Fx ever since I was introduced to it a few years ago by a technologically spiffy friend and often am unable to resist expressing my disappointment when certain computers do not have this particular browser (yes, I'm talking to you Curtin!).

23 Things Tool Bar

I added the 23 things tool bar a month or so ago and find it really handy, it's just like have shortcuts on your desktop except it's on your browser so you don't have to switch to the desktop to access websites that you need to.

Firefox Add ons/Extensions - Shopping Time!

I went a little crazy with the Fx extensions and added the following:

Colourful Tabs
Firefox Showcase
Fireshot
Foxy Tunes
Undo Closed Tab Buttons

as well as the theme: Qute.

I haven't had a chance to use all of them but do find the colourful tabs particularly handing, especially because I have the option of grouping them so I know what websites are open.

My all time favourite so far is Fireshot - which allows you to take screenshots AND edit them with ease. You can add text, arrows what ever you need. I use screenshots quite often and would often have to edit it in paint and cut and paste here and there, I just found it a real pain. But with Fireshot the process is SO MUCH EASIER.

Foxy Tunes is also handy because I can control what music I'm playing from my browser instead of switiching to the Media Player screen.

All in all, I'm pretty impressed with the available add ons and extensions and find the ones I have added particularly useful.

Thanks Firefox! :)

Note: After my rant about how great Firefox is, my browser crashed and now I can't seem to restart it. I'm using IE at the moment...

Thing 6 - RSS Feeds

2008-10-30T21:41:00.000-07:00

For Thing 6 I subscribed to the ABC TV programs feed and the SBS movies feed.

I chose both for (obviously) purely entertainment purposes. I always seem to miss good movies and documentaries so subscribing to the SBS movies feed means I can see what is coming up on TV - I think RSS feeds are handy in this sense.

Thing 2 - 7 1/2 Habits in Longlife Learning

2008-10-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

Lifelong Learning:

I think the concept of lifelong learning opens people up to more possibilities. We often close ourselves off from learning new things because we either possess the wrong attitude of "I can't do it" or "I'm not capable" or we feel that structures posed by past learning experiences limit us.

Easiest Habit: Play!

Hardest Habit: Begin with the end in mind - I often find it hard to stick to long term goals because I lose sight of what I want to reach.

Goal

To complete 23 Things all the way through

Toolbox:

Headphones
Internet Access
Time (!)

How will I achieve my goal?

By setting short term goals which are immediately acheivable and which motivate me reach my ultimate goal.

Time management