This is fun. I Used Wordle to create a web cloud of my tags in del.icio.us (see how interested I am in web 2.0 and Second Life). Similar clouds can be created for any body of text you choose.
Thanks to Phil Bradley's Weblog for giving me this idea.
Showing posts with label distractions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label distractions. Show all posts
6/17/2008
Wordle Cloud
5/28/2008
7 Things You Should Know About
The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's (ELI's) 7 Things You Should Know About... series provides concise information on emerging learning technologies and related practices. If you have ever struggled to explain why various Web 2.0 tools are useful in the library or teaching environments here is a most useful series of explanations about technologies that may demonstrate positive learning impacts.
Currently there are 37 applications in the series which should give you all you need to stay up-to-date on emerging technologies.
5/14/2008
Virtual worlds
The Association of Virtual Worlds has just released its new title The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds listing over 250 virtual worlds and is pleased to offer it free to anyone who is interested in the rapidly growing field of virtual worlds.
Download it as a zip file and open it in .pdf. You will be rewarded with 43 pages of definition, explanation and links to all the virtual worlds currently available.
4/24/2008
Web 2.0 distractions
I was asked to do my standard presentation on Wikis and Blogs yesterday but "to make it fun". Well, these workshops are always fun but I thought that I could provide a new slant on this one by running through a few Web 2.0 applications and letting participants make whatever use of them they could.
I gave everyone the following handout and we worked together through each of the activities, referring along the way to what other people (myself included) had done with the tools available.
| What are we doing here? | |
| 1 | Create a Google account |
| 2 | Create an iGoogle page |
| 3 | Add elements to your iGoogle page |
| 4 | Create a Blogger account www.blogger.com |
| 5 | Create an avatar -- a representation of yourself. Go to http://avatars.yahoo.com/ ; design an avatar with a funky background. (You will have to set up an account if you don't use Yahoo!) Save your avatar and export to your blog. |
| 6 | Create a reader and add some RSS feeds |
| 7 | Facebook http://facebook.com |
| 8 | Del.icio.us |
| 9 | LibraryThing |
| 10 | Picasa – organise your pictures |
Participants were fully absorbed throughout and I had to get stroppy to get them to stand up after a couple of hours to help themselves to coffee and biscuits.
These are only some of the activities that we do in the 23 Things programme. I'm still thinking of rolling it out to the whole college but also struggling against lack of support for such "distractions".
4/22/2008
Bored? Never!
What does one do when stuck at home recovering from minor foot surgery? I caught up with some reading and finished the Life of Pi, spent many hours in Second Life and also played with StumbleUpon and discovered many fascinating new sites. If you haven't used StumbleUpon you are denying yourself hours of entertainment and finding sites that other people have considered noteworthy (yes, it's one of these new-fangled Web 2.0 tools again).
Some of the pages I discovered are listed below:
15 Handy Google Search Tricks
Most of us use Google but here are several built in functions within Google which make searching even easier. Learn how to use Google as a calculator, a dictionary, a currency converter and for several other useful field searches.
Maximize Firefox Without Extensions Using about:config If you type about:config in your address bar, Firefox opens the master directory of user-defined preferences and built-in settings. The ultimate arena for performance tampering, the about:config settings are the foundation for programming Firefox extensions.
The caffeine click test where I found out that my caffeine level for the day was High - Well Caffeinated & Easily Excitable.
This May Help Your Firefox Memory Leak is an excellent blog post that details how to reduce Firefox’s high memory use.
The search engine list is a list of umpteen search engines sorted by genre. I must admit that I have never heard of most of them but one day it will be fun to play around and see how they compare. There are special search engines for news, medical, maps, legal, jobs, games, enterprise, blogs – and many more.
5 Ways to copy music OFF your iPod. I have moved office to one with a new computer and my music folder was not transferred with me. I have all these tunes on my iPod and want to be able to edit and re-organise them, so what am I to do? It’s easy enough to copy music (or videos) from computer to iPod, but not the other way. Luckily this site has come to my rescue.
3/28/2008
Getting ready for the New World
I am forever shouting the praises of Second Life in which I can learn, create, socialise and play. I joined a year ago today and my avatar took her first steps inworld when we studied a course in Virtual World Librarianship. This was so rewarding that I then went on to do the Intermediate course and have registered for Working with a Class in Second Life next month.
If you don't know what all the hype is about read Second Life - what is the hype? a new post in the makeuseof.com blog. The writer claims that Education is one of the most progressive fields in SL and while I am still hoping that one day my college will see the light, I am preparing to offer training to our lecturers to get them ready for the new wave.
3/20/2008
Social networking in the library
Jessamyn West on librarian.net has a thoughtful discussion about why libraries should be socially networking. She mentions popular tools such as flickr, facebook and twitter, with helpful links to the ways in which some libraries are using them and recommends that all libraries should be offering 23 Things to help their staff get up to speed with the technology.
3/14/2008
Business using Web 2.0
Libraries all over the world have adopted web 2.0 principles as a way of connecting with their users promoting their services. In my new role as Management & Business Librarian I am pleased to see that many businesses are also seeing the benefits of the new approach to knowledge management through openness and discussion in blogs, wikis and online chat. This may have been happening for some time but I have only recently become aware of it through scanning more business journals. An example is this report from FUMSI seen on FreePint.
"Web 2.0 + Intranet: Connected Users"
The buzz on Web 2.0 applications in the workplace is nearly deafening, but how are companies really putting all that user generated content to work? Helen Day gives a view of how BT uses discussion forums, blogs, RSS feeds and wikis of Web 2.0 on their corporate intranet.
Now if only I could persuade College management to read similar articles and become aware that Web 2.0 is not just another distraction ...
2/22/2008
More on Social Networking
CollegeDegree.com library blog has a post commenting on 25 Useful Social Networking Tools for Librarians. I'll have to refer to them when presenting the workshop I mentioned in yesterdays post. My colleagues nod sagely when such ideas are mooted but there seems to be a fear of trying out anything that hasn't been passed by the College board for approval. "Stick to your job; you don't have time for the fun stuff", was my director's advice.
2/21/2008
Social Media Will Change Your Life
Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up or catch you later.
This is from an article in BusinessWeek that I plan to use to promote the staff PD course that I conduct at Central TAFE. I'm also going to borrow from the title and call it Social Media Will Change Your Life rather than Making the Most of Wikis and Blogs.
2/19/2008
New 2.0 Tools via ResourceShelf
ResourceShelf is a never-ending source of ideas and information. These new tools look particularly interesting:
New 2.0 Tools: From Twitter Traffic to Image Resizing to Visualizing del.icio.us Tags
Here’s a selection of a few new “2.0 tools and services” via the KillerStartUps weblog.
+ Traffic Alerts via Twitter–CommuterFeed.com
+ Momondo–New MetaSearch Flight Info and Pricing
From Denmark, over 800 sites searched.
+ Visalize del.icio.us info with TastyTag
Tasty spits out bar graphs indicating the top ten tags del.icio.us users use to categorize any one URL. Using its API, Tasty effectively canvasses the del.icio.us mindset and gives site owners a glimpse into how their site is perceived.
+ PicResize.com - Easy Image Resizer
+ JukeFly
Stream your music library to various computers.
2/13/2008
Dancing Librarians
The Infomaniacs in Second Life are a fun-loving, stimulating group of people and I am honoured to be one of their number. Here we are dancing in our new clubhouse. I'm the first avatar to appear in the clip.
9/04/2007
23 Things @ Central
We're in week 3 of this programme and the 9 participants have put up a variety of blogs reflecting their tastes and interests. I'm finding out a lot about them as they explore their 23 things and make new discoveries. Marsha advised us to take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid. This turned out to be quite an eye-opener for me You probably came from a foreign country, but then again you seem foreign to everyone in ways unrelated to immigration. Most people think you're quite funny, but maybe you're just sick. Talking to you ends up being much like playing a round of the popular board game Clue. How little I know myself! Kathryn Greenhill's latest post has some great pointers about how to find time to do the 23 Things:10 ways to find time for 23 Things
You're Pale Fire!
by Vladimir Nabokov
You're really into poetry and the interpretation thereof. Along the road of life, you have had several identity crises which make it very unclear who you are, let alone how to interpret poetry.
8/10/2007
Time wasters
Before I started blogging I would go through the various newsletters to which I subscribed and send useful articles to my colleagues. They may or may not have read the articles but if ever they wanted to read them at a later date my emails would have been difficult to find amongst the myriad of others that we receive every day. One of my colleagues has recently remembered some of these and asked if I could resend them - but I'm not sure exactly which she's asking for. I've been going through all those I sent to "Librarians" and have come across several that I'd forgotten. This one is not related to librarianship at all but is a lovely way to stay awake during a boring meeting:
Business Meeting Bingo http://www.tysknews.com/LiteStuff/bingo.htm
Do you keep falling asleep in meetings and seminars? What about those long and boring conference calls? Monotone voices burbling on and on like a creek for hours on end, forcing you to look for the nearest sharp object or length of wire to end it all. Here's a way to change all of that... Meeting Bingo!
1. Before (or during) your next meeting, seminar, or conference call, prepare yourself by drawing a square. I find that 5"x5" is a good size. Divide the card into columns-five across and five down. That will give you 25 one-inch blocks.
2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:
| synergy strategic fit core competencies best practice bottom line revisit take that off-line 24/7 out of the loop benchmark value-added proactive win-win | think outside the box fast track result-driven empower knowledge base solution touch base mindset client focus paradigm game plan leverage |
3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.
4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout "BULLSHIT!"
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