Friend Me, Baby!

One of my goals for our Learning 2.0 program was to create all those accounts I’ve been meaning to create. This blog was one such account, as was my Del.icio.us account. Facebook was another – I’m familiar with social networking sites and all the issues surrounding them. I’ve been meaning to get on Facebook to increase my direct experience with social networking and to connect with friends from college.

Despite feeling some online apathy today (I think Erica and I both caught a virus that is making us really tired), I created my account. Woo-hoo! Thing 22 made me feel old, but now I’m back into the land of the hipsters. A friend from USC had sent me a friend request last spring and Facebook remembered (cool!), so I already have a friend.

Now if I can just find the time to create my profile and find a few more friends, I’ll be good.

IM (#21)

IM me, baby! Or not. Or maybe.

Hey, I know all the kids are IMing and that IM is replacing email as their communication tool of choice. My initial reaction to Thing 21 was that I’m just not into IM, don’t want to do it (don’t want to Twitter either). Since I did not have the time to post yesterday – or perhaps couldn’t work up the energy to write about IM, truth be told – I’ve been doing some more thinking. And, in no particular order, here are some thoughts.

1. I IMed back in graduate school when you had to know Unix to do it and there wasn’t an IM slang dictionary (a friend and I had our own slang, though, including a way to say “someone’s walked up to the desk and I have to help them; back in a few minutes). It was great at the time – a good way to chat with a friend when you both happened to be online and other communication tools weren’t feasable. I suppose I stopped doing it so much when a) I had a full-time job and more to do and b) GUI interfaces took over and I didn’t have Unix windows open so much.
2. I use text chat a lot in my teaching. I teach in a graduate program that uses voice-over technology (my voice is broadcast to my students in real-time) combined with a chat room where my students can chat (send written messages) with me and each other. I’m actually quite proficient at this form of communication – I can type fast, I know the abbreviations, I can read fast and, most importantly for my work, I can follow multiple conversations at one time (and one a good day, lecture too!). It’s IM with 25 people at a time and it serves a professional purpose.
3. My graduate students and I have been having a conversation about small group work in online classrooms – whether it works (or, the better question might be, for who does it work?), when to use it and how to best structure it. One interesting suggestion from a student was to foster small discussions through whispering (in our context, one person talking to another) rather than small groups, as it is easier to get coordinated and stay on topic where there are only two people. Essentially, they’d rather IM than have small group discussions, at least in the online environment. The article that Mary pointed us to about IMing in the classroom dovetails into that, so I’m having a nice confluence of work and Learning 2.0 this week.  
4. Many reference libraries offer IM-based reference service, something I discuss with students in my reference course. I even have an assignment where they use and analyze an e-reference service.

So, I’m neither oblivious nor incapable. I’m just not interested in IM’ing for personal communications. Does that make me unhip or in denial (or something worse)?

Can I Read that Podcast? (Thing #20)

I do love my iPod – it has my relaxing music for airplane travel (ah, my traveling days are so much better with music) and my upbeat music for working out. I wish I could listen to it more, but with two small kids I usually need my ears available to listen for trouble.

If I had more time for listening, I would definitely be downloading NPR. So many great programs! I did some browsing and found some radio favorites, like Whad’ya Know?, as well as some new things, like In Character. The Podcast Directory is also full of fun stuff, like Grammar Girl.

Once I found Grammar Girl and realized I could add it to my feedreader, where I check my RSS feeds daily (rather than my iPod, which I update infrequently), I started to poke around the site a little more. When I found the Grammar Girl written transcript I was in heaven – I’d much rather read it than hear it (I did listen to one five minute clip, which I could concentrate on for oh, three minutes). Now I’ve added a bunch of podcasts to my feedreader, where I can either read the transcript or listen to the podcast on the computer, whichever I feel like at the time. 

My excitement over the written transcripts of what is supposed to be an auditory experience was a good reminder of the power of learning styles – just as I am print oriented, many of my students are auditory oriented and learn better from the spoken word.

Side note: A great use for podcasting are feeds to help people learn languages. The Podcast Directory has lots of programs on different languages. These would be a great supplement to classroom instruction.

YouTube (Thing #19)

I’ve been a YouTube fan for a while. I don’t spend much time surfing the site for fun, but I love the educational uses people have found for it. Although I am strong print oriented, I recognize that many people are visually/aurally oriented. Just as I’d much rather read my news, others would much prefer to see or hear it.

Libraries have started to use YouTube for publicity. There are serious videos like Welcome to Jonkoping University Library and then more entertaining ones like Tour the Library  and The L-Team.

A few libraries are starting to integrate videos with their teaching, like this film noir piece that is part of an orientation program: Library Mystery Tour 2007. It’s creative and engaging to an audience of 18-19 year olds.

The “…in Plain English” videos on GoogleDocs and Del.icio.us that Mary pointed us to are great examples of educational videos. They are short, clear and fun to watch. If only libraries could do the same! There is enormous potential for short research tutorials in this format.

YouTube can also be used to engage users by letting them create videos about the library. Check out Common Misconceptions about the Eden Prairie Library, which was submitted as part of a teen contest.

And, finally, I have to link to two videos of IT humor (Introducing Le Book) and library humor (March of the Librarians).

Del.icio.us (#17 and 18 – movin’ right along today)

This was fun! I was already familiar with Del.icio.us and have been meaning to set up an account to use for my teaching. I particularly wanted a place where I could post resources for my graduate students to access semester after semester. The ability to add tags and description is perfect, since I can group similar sites together and add notes. Plus, I can add new sites at any time – efficiency rocks!  

Here’s what I did tonight, culling online tutorials from a list I had, plus some recommended by students on our course page, plus some recently discovered ones that I shared with the class: http://del.icio.us/MWongLIS

I’m still interested in moving my personal bookmarks over to one location (right now they are split between a work computer and two home computers), but I don’t want them mixed in with the sites for my graduate students. I’ll either have to set up a second Del.icio.us account or look at another service (I’d like my personal bookmarks to be private). Or, perhaps the problem will take care of itself when I leave Marymount – it will be the impetus to consolidate onto one computer!

Wiki Weary (Thing 15)

I have fallen behind again, mostly due to burnout on wikis. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not anti-wiki. I use Wikipedia, I see the potential academic uses of wiki software and I am trying to start a wiki for our Library. I’m just temporarily tired of thinking about Wikipedia.

About two years ago I wrote a chapter on encyclopedias for a textbook on reference. The book’s publication has been delayed and I’m expecting to get a copy of my chapter back for revision this spring. Although I dealt with Wikipedia in the original piece, it is clear – two years and some interesting developments later – that it deserves even more attention. Fortuitously, there’s been a number of recent articles on Wikipedia, which led to lots of discussion about the site on various library blogs and listservs. Abut two weeks ago I spent a lot of time reading all the blog and emails posts, as well as the articles, carefully saving the ones that were articulate and thoughtful for later reference. And now I’m temporarily burned out.

More cool sites (for Thing #14)

After a few days of playing around with new sites, here are the ones I like best:

1. One Sentence - people submit stories of one sentence; funny, haunting and addicting (much like Post Secret that Mary recommended)
2. Web 2.0 Awards - great list of sites; I’ll definitely be looking for future lists
3. bubbl.us - a site for online mind-mapping; maps can be saved, edited and downloaded; I plan to use this in the online graduate courses I teach – my best discovery of the week!

Image Generator – work ideas

Image generators could be used to create signs for use in offices and departments on campus – we could create catchy, humorous signs quite easily. Here’s one I created to remind people to take their phone calls out of the library.

Image Generator II

This is another image that captures my feelings about Learning 2.0.

Image Generator

I made this with Sign Generator – it captures my feeling of “don’t forget to stay on top of Learning 2.0 work,” a feeling I have often lately.