Conclusion

If I was to say anything about this journey it would be that it made me look at things that I would probably not looked at normally, in all honesty I had not even looked at YouTube until I did this.  It is hard to say if I have a favourite discovery I looked over the list and in one way or another I knew about most the things I just had no inclination to look at them.

Having said that I am now far more aware of a lot more sources of information that could be useful to me and I have since looked at YouTube a couple of times so I guess it has left its mark.  If there is one thing that was hard it was finding the time, I know some of my latter post have not been my best but I had to do them in bits and pieces where I had a few moments.

 Would I do another one, maybe; I did like the format all of the things and they were nicely laid out with good instructions and the best thing was the examples to look at.

LinkedIn

It is hard to describe something that I do not have, you may have picked up through my previous blogs that all of these social media things are not really me.  My PLN would consist of the people I work with and I could not say that I developed it as much as it formed by proximity.  I did look at LinkedIn and was disappointed with it from the perspective that you really cannot explore it without joining but I see its’ potential.  If I was looking to advance myself in my career this is definitely something I would use, however I am happy where I am.

 After looking at the ACU LinkedIn page it basically has the same information as the home page and Facebook just shown a different way.  Not that I am saying that is a bad thing, different people like different things so the more coverage you have the more people you reach.

Mobile, QR, AR

You don’t make this easy on me because I spend very little time on mobile devises, I barely ever use my Ipad. Having said that I do find Flipboard to be a good site, I like the way you move around.

QR codes are a very useful basic tool for providing information, there are a number of the dotted around the library and we used them on the shuttle busses as well.

 Augmented reality I do find interesting, it has great potential as a learning tool especially taking into account advances in holographic technology.  I can imagine the two combining or blending together in some form in the future.  When I first heard about AR last year I did find an article on SixthSense. There are similarities with Google Glass and given that this article was written in 2009 I think it shows the speed at which some of these technologies are advancing.

I would also like to mention Leap Motion and ZeroN, they are both technologies that create real time interaction with hand gestures and computer generated images or in ZeroN’ s case direct human-computer interaction with physical objects.

 The potential is mind boggling

 

 

 

MOOC's

This thing is about online learning, at present I am doing a course online and although having access to everything at any time is handy I personally like to have a class to go to and talk to people face to face.  I think it is clear however that online courses will have an important place in the future of education and I point to this excerpt from one of the articles;

{ Nicholas Negroponte, the founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child foundation, asked in a September article for the MIT Technology Review: If kids in Ethiopia learn to read without school, what does that say about kids in New York City who do not learn even with school?” }

 I think this shows that if operating MOOC’s is more cost effective than tradition schools that they are a better option for areas of the world that are very poor.  For me I thought that the point being made in the excerpt does not necessarily reflect on traditional institutions as much as I think it relates to attitude, it is sometimes easy to take things that you have easy access to for granted.  But MOOC’s or any form of online learning could benefit students that do not do well in traditional schools, I think this is where online learning could be at its most effective as an alternative.

 As for where online learning is going that is always difficult to say about anything, but generally speaking where it goes will depend on money and profit.  As for the negative

I think that providing the infrastructure and the maintenance required on it could be a problem and given that I haven’t done one of these the provision of help if you start a course and are struggling.

Twitter

This week is about twitter, now I am unlikely to ever use twitter but I looked at our ACU library account and I clicked on the prayforBoston link in the Worldwide trends and I understand the purpose for hashtags.

For this thing we were asked to reflect on what you have read – has it changed your mind about the possible value of Twitter?.  I have never given Twitter a lot of thought because social media does not interest me, but as an information tool I can see its value.  There were quite a few useful things on the ACU site and the NLA site had a lot of interesting things on it to, I also had a look at the SLQ site and there is a striking resemblance to the ACU site, I wonder who followed who.

I also found the what are the risks section on the microblogging site was a good read especially the voicing personal opinions part.

Reflection Week

The thing with these things is that they primarily to do with social media and that is something that is of little interest to me and being a library assistant there is little if no use for using the tools in my work.  However the information given for each thing was very good, there was always examples to look at which saved me from harassing a lot of people.

My experiences with the tools that I did look at has definitely improved my understanding of how these things work and I feel that I am better able to navigate myself around anything that I may try in the future.  Reflecting on what I have done so far I won’t approach the last few things any differently, I will plough through them the best I can when I can fit them in.  As for recommending something to a colleague, that flow of knowledge definitely flows in my direction and not the other way.

Create content and content curation

For the first part of this thing I wanted to talk about Flipboard, although I have it on my Ipad I don’t look at it a lot but I do like it and the way that it is designed.  From a professional point of view it is not useful but like TED if you were involved in research or you are a librarian it could be a good tool for learning about new technologies.

For the second part I looked at Storybird and Extranormal, I looked at both because you could not explore Storybird to much without signing up but I do think that it is a great idea and would be a great tool for teachers.  As mention in my last post I have seen Extranormal before and even though there speech patterns are not perfect I found them good to watch and the technology behind it will get better over time.

YouTube

The question for this thing is how could you/do you use YouTube in your work, as a library assistant there has not been any need for me to use YouTube.  I looked at a few clips and at our website and the advantages are obvious especially to people like me who prefer to watch demonstrational videos about how to use tools. A good example of this is the extranormal clip for leap into learning for ACU.

I chose the video below because it is a bit different and not your traditional form of information delivery for a library.

 The video below is by   Athenasbanquet (2011)

Students and faculty from the University of Washington's Information School get their groove on.
Directed, edited, and produced by Sarah Wachter. 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/a_uzUh1VT98" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 

Even thought I had heard of ted I don’t think I looked at it yet but I found a couple of interesting talks.  TED could be a good research tool, I have an interest in science and I looked at a couple of the new releases.  One of the ones I watched was  Skylar Tibbits talk on 4D printing.  During the talk he mentioned Cadnano which is a tool for designing three-dimensional DNA origami nanostructures.  He also mentioned Project Cyborg and although these are not library related I think it is a good example of the potential to discover and learn about new technologies.

SlideShare and Prezi

For this thing we have Slideshare and Prezi.

Slideshare was interesting to look at because you have access to many different types of presentations.  Most of my working life has not involved the kind of work that might require me to use tools like this, so having others to look at is beneficial.

Prezi is a great tool that I used to do a small presentation when it first came out but I have not used since.  It looks like it has improved since then and I like their homepage, there are multiple short videos on how to Prezi and the explore tab allow you to see other presentation.  I like Prezi’s ability to zoom in and out allowing you to focus the viewer’s attention during a presentation.  If I ever need to do a presentation in the future I would definitely use Prezi.

Collaboration Tools

This thing is on collaboration tools, I choose to look at Mind Meister and Conceptboard.

The first one I looked at was Mind Meister, I accessed the live demo and spent a bit of time trying to figure out how to use it but I found it difficult and not very intuitive.  The tutorial was not very useful either it seems not to allow for the complete novice, but I like the concept which is why I looked at it.

 Conceptboard was more interesting I like there video even though it was a bit quick it showed what was possible, I can see how useful this tool would be for people to collaborate on something when they are at different locations.  It is much easier to work on something in real time than it is to work on a project through an email chain.

Facebook

Facebook, I have never signed up and I can’t imagine that I ever will but from a work point of view I can see the potential.  I looked at the ACU library page and the National Library page and I can its potential for the promotion of collections, I particularly liked the picture of the Queensland fire fighters from 1972 who saved their pub.

I think that it would be a great tool for special events and if your library had any special collections.  A nice example of this was the pictures on the State Library page from the John Oxley Library collection of the 120 anniversary of the destruction of the Victoria Bridge in the 1893 flood.  Overall I feel that Facebook is a tool worthwhile embracing for any library.

Tablets and mobile apps

For me personally tablets are not going to affect my work too much.  I have never had a smartphone so I cannot comment on them.  As a library assistant my use of mobile devices is limited to handing out IPads at the loans desk, I do realise however that the Librarians use them a lot I know that for example they use their IPads to access tools like Prezi.

 

 I did pick 2 comments from the report that I thought were good indicators of the effect of Tablets in relation to education.  That was The University of Adelaide replacing textbooks with Apple IPads for first year students in its Science program and Penn State Universities developing a mobile video app for video ethnographers to record and annotate video in the field.  This is a long way from how things were done when I was in school and reflects the flexibility of today’s technology and the expanding access to resources.

Productivity Tool

The first tool that I looked at is Dropbox, reading through the getting started pdf and the help pages I can see how this would be useful.  However I cannot figure out how to sync my Ipad and my work computer, I am obviously missing something but I just don’t have the time to figure it out right now, maybe later.

The second tool I looked at was Doodle, it is interesting the things that are available now.  Although I probably might not use Doodle it is a great idea especially if you are in a large organisation.

Diigo

For thing 10 I looked at Diigo, for me it is not something that i would ever need.  Outside of work I do not use the Internet that much and I think it would mostly be a waste from a personnel point of view.  From a work point of view I can see the benefit particularly from a research point of view to share information.

At present i keep track of any regularly visited websites the way that i have always done (through my web browser), given that there isn't that many of them I don't even have to do much organising and i don't tag or share them.

On the Diigo homepage there are feature tools for Ipad, Iphone, Android and web browsers but i did not see any on Delicious, not to say that they are not there but I could see them straight away on Diigo. ( whose website i preferred)

Pinterest

I chose Pinterest for this thing as it seemed to be the the one i would most likely find Pinteresting (lame i know).  I have to say that i found it a little difficult, you click on a picture and i takes you to another picture and at first i got somewhat lost.  I am a bit more comfortable with it now but it is something that would take some time for me. 


I finished my exploring by looking at Sarah & Jo’s “Pin Your Library” board and i found that this was a really good example of how Pinterest could be used for a library.  It think it is a good mix of providing library information and some fun topics, i particlarly liked Pinterest humour board where i got the picture below and the Augmented reality board.

 

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds, I haven't had a lot of time to explore them but i can see that they could be useful for skimming article titles for potentially useful information.  Setting them up wasn't to bad but it did take me some time to figure out what i was doing and i had a lot of trouble setting up the librarybiz feed.  I used google reader and i find that it is quite user friendly and except for 1 newspaper i chose sites like New Scientist and this week in science as feeds because that is a area of interest for me.  In my current job there is very little need for me to use this as a option but i can see the potential particularly when researching or studying.

Google Drive

I think that Google Drive can be very handy we decided to use it for our desk shift roster. Even though we use sharepoint to share documents it is good to know that there is another option available that is easy to use.