Before I started the Learning 2.0 program I had no idea of the number of amazing programs available on the web, or that a lot of them are free. My favourite discoveries were things like the image generators/tools which enabled you to be creative and do things with photos etc. I could see great potential there for people with hobbies such as scrapbooking. I also liked exploring wikis and the web based office tools such for word processing. I think that things like Google docs could be used to improve our rostering system and provide a central place to update our staff roster and enable staff to view it easily.
Staff that have completed the course are using what they have learned. Yesterday when a customer came into one of our branches that doesn't have wordprocessing PCs and there was an internet PC free they suggested that the customer use Zoho writer. This meant a happy and satisfied customer. I think staff are also a bit more confident about playing with new technology after doing the course.
While doing the program I could see certain tools that would be useful for particular departments so my aim now is to see if I can talk to some of the teams and show them these tools in the hope of making their jobs easier and improving our service to customers.
The biggest thing I have learnt is the need to explore the web and have a look at what is out there. Often in our jobs we get swamped by our day to day tasks and don't take the time to try new things. This means that we can miss out on valuable opportunities to improve our work technology or the chance to offer new services to our customers. My plan from now on is to try and set aside a little time every day to try new things.
Friday, November 30, 2007
# 22 Audio books
I hadn't realized there are so many audio books available on the internet. The price for a year's subscription to WorldeBookFair isn't that costly either so it would be worthwhile for people who use audio books a lot.
There were quite a few free ebooks available in the Gutenberg audio ebook collection. I downloaded the Little Match Girl and found it enjoyable listening. I randomly chose something else to download and picked the "mowersong" but didn't like it particularly much as the person reading the poem was doing so in a very monotone and annoying voice.
The free ebooks could be quite useful in libraries as I imagine you could download them onto a PC and then let customers listen to them at leisure.
There were quite a few free ebooks available in the Gutenberg audio ebook collection. I downloaded the Little Match Girl and found it enjoyable listening. I randomly chose something else to download and picked the "mowersong" but didn't like it particularly much as the person reading the poem was doing so in a very monotone and annoying voice.
The free ebooks could be quite useful in libraries as I imagine you could download them onto a PC and then let customers listen to them at leisure.
# 21 Podcats, Smodcasts!
I initially started looking at Podcast.net. Before I could view any podcasts I had to download Quicktunes. Then it was fairly straight forward to use. I liked the categories search feature and I had look at the ability to browse by tags in the podcast.
PodcastAlley.com did not have as good a layout as Podcast.net - the searching options were a little less obvious.
YahooPodcasts seemed to be quite good for things such as listening to new songs by artists (just a short snippet but probably enough to decide if you liked the song or not).
I selected to add a podcast to Bloglines from PodcastAlley and it was very easy to do, just like RSS feeds were.
I think that podcasts could be quite useful in a library situation for instructional information/how to do things.
PodcastAlley.com did not have as good a layout as Podcast.net - the searching options were a little less obvious.
YahooPodcasts seemed to be quite good for things such as listening to new songs by artists (just a short snippet but probably enough to decide if you liked the song or not).
I selected to add a podcast to Bloglines from PodcastAlley and it was very easy to do, just like RSS feeds were.
I think that podcasts could be quite useful in a library situation for instructional information/how to do things.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
#20 You too can YouTube
There are so many videos on YouTube and as with most things there are good and bad ones amongst them. I initially tried searching for videos on "information technology" to try and get something funny about the IT industry but after looking at some bad taste videos, some boring ones and numerous descriptions of IT courses I decided to change topics. I checked out The Categories link and found it quite useful and selected the "Travel and events" category. I initially narrowed my search to Broome and then Cable Beach as I have recently holidayed there but didn't really like the ones I saw. Then I decided to browse the list of featured travel videos that had been put together by the editors (figuring they were bound to be good quality). It's quite amazing what is actually on YouTube - by accident I found a video clip of the Bandaid song "Do they know it's Christmas" from the 1980s. YouTube looks like a good resource for old music and music clips.
The video of "Winter lights on Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland" caught my eye because I have always wanted to visit Disney land. Snow on the castle is also quite magical and very appropriate when you think of the fact that we are approaching Christmas.
# 19 Discovering Web 2.0 tools
There were such a lot of categories and so many amazing things to look at that I ended up exploring a few different sites. Ones that I thought could be useful for libraries are http://www.campfirenow.com , http://clipmarks.com and http://www.biblio.com.
Campfire - The ability to create your own chatroom and set up member lists and discuss issues and post documents is great. This site is good for communication on projects when people can't get to the same physical place. I could see library services in the country that have their branches quite a distance apart benefitting greatly from a site like this. The ability to invite guests temporarily is also useful if you need to consult people outside the organisation.
Biblio - I could see this site being really useful if we needed to obtain out of print or hard to get items. The ability to browse by category/topic as well as standard ISBN etc is good.
Clipmarks - The ability to save only part of a web page is really great. I could see this site being useful for when you only want to print a particular section of a page. It would also be helpful for grouping together design ideas for things such as web pages or a new website.
Campfire - The ability to create your own chatroom and set up member lists and discuss issues and post documents is great. This site is good for communication on projects when people can't get to the same physical place. I could see library services in the country that have their branches quite a distance apart benefitting greatly from a site like this. The ability to invite guests temporarily is also useful if you need to consult people outside the organisation.
Biblio - I could see this site being really useful if we needed to obtain out of print or hard to get items. The ability to browse by category/topic as well as standard ISBN etc is good.
Clipmarks - The ability to save only part of a web page is really great. I could see this site being useful for when you only want to print a particular section of a page. It would also be helpful for grouping together design ideas for things such as web pages or a new website.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
# 18 Online productivity
Zoho writer is quite easy to use and has similar icons to what people are used to in Microsoft office products. The ability to share documents is great because it means that you could have one master document that several people at different locations could alter. I can see this being useful for staff rosters etc. The export facility is also great because it means you could quickly change a document to HTML for a website etc.
My only concern with the product is security. I had logged into Zoho writer earlier in the morning and started a document but got called away from my desk. When I went back to use it the screen had frozen/timed out. I tried to log out properly and somehow ended up in the account of another person - not quite sure how that happened but the fact that it happened so easily was a bit disturbing.
I like the look of Google docs - realized how useful it could be when I attended a talk about how to set up a Learning 2.0 program and was told that it was used for staff progress tracking. When I have more time I will test it out and see if our rostering group is interested in using it to publish roster details.
My only concern with the product is security. I had logged into Zoho writer earlier in the morning and started a document but got called away from my desk. When I went back to use it the screen had frozen/timed out. I tried to log out properly and somehow ended up in the account of another person - not quite sure how that happened but the fact that it happened so easily was a bit disturbing.
I like the look of Google docs - realized how useful it could be when I attended a talk about how to set up a Learning 2.0 program and was told that it was used for staff progress tracking. When I have more time I will test it out and see if our rostering group is interested in using it to publish roster details.
Friday, October 26, 2007
# 17 Playing around with PBwiki
It was quite simple to add my blog to PBwiki, although I didn't do it with the brackets as described. I'm not sure if there are different templates for PBwiki but having the edit and save button at the bottom of a long page was not ideal because it involved a lot of scrolling.
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