Activity #11 - Library Thing

What an interesting tool! Enjoyed setting up my account and looking for some books. Great to get people’s reviews/comments etc. Didn’t have any trouble finding the books I searched for and thought this could be useful for cataloguing help when books couldn’t be found on SCIS.

I finally got my LibraryThing widget embedded into blog. As you can see my trial didn’t work – I’m hoping Margie will be able to help as I noticed she had one on her blog post. However my desire to problem solve got the better of me and when all else fails what do you do? Google it of course!! And yes I found an answer instructing how to embed it permanently on my page. Yippee!!

As far as using this with students you could use this to list popular reads, new books in the Discovery Centre, what students are currently reading and their reviews, focus on an author etc.

If I had a lot of spare time this would be great to list/catalogue our own personal collection of books. Maybe one day!!

Trial – Library Thing Widget

<div id="wec14b031900d9c3b7d034772b0a03747"></div><script type="text/javascript" charset="UTF-8" src="http://www.librarything.com/widget_get.php?userid=sharon64&theID=wec14b031900d9c3b7d034772b0a03747"></script><noscript><a href="http://www.librarything.com/profile/sharon64">My Library</a> at <a href="http://www.librarything.com">LibraryThing</a></noscript>

I have tried to embed my LibraryThing Widget into the post but as you can see it hasn’t worked.

Activity #10 – Online Image Generators

 

WOW you could spend hours playing with these tools!!!!!!

This above text generator is from Custom Glitter Text

 
The following are from http://www.happyfacegenerator.com/

The above is from  http://www.famousdefaces.com/famous.asp

  This above is from www.imagechef.com

I selected a mobile phone image and entered words to do with recent Web 2.0 activities.

These images didn’t take long to create and the sites were simple to use.

Activity #9 – Virtual Worlds

Well this topic certainly raises a lot of mind boggling questions!!!!

I remember a while back at a SLAV conference in Melbourne watching a presentation from the ABC about virtual worlds and Second Life. At that time I didn’t really take a lot of notice about it as I couldn’t see how it related to me or my role in a Library. Looking at some of the suggested sites reminded my of the ABC so checked their website and sure enough they have a set up “ABC Island” on Second Life. Their reasoning can be found under FAQ on their Second Life site ……. “The ABC thinks it is important to explore this rapidly growing virtual space. Second Life - and other 3D virtual worlds -allow the ABC to present content to audiences in new and different ways, create social spaces for visitors to interact with each other and the content, and showcase Australian talent and creativity in an innovative way.”

After looking at some of the suggested links (Murdoch Uni one is quite interesting) I can see how virtual worlds could be useful for learning and would certainly engage students in this day and age but as mentioned in the Murdoch Uni clip it needs to be done in a very controlled way otherwise it can become out-of-control very quickly. How do you maintain control?

This whole area raises a lot of questions; Do we really need to teach our students in this way? Where do you draw the line as to what is educational and what is not? Where is the balance between what is real and what is not? Isn’t there the danger of isolating a student in an “unreal” world rather than teaching them to interact and learn with others in the real world? Do we want well-educated confident avatars in a virtual world or students who are confident collaborating and interacting with each other in the real world? I don’t know, it’s all a bit too much to comprehend and I am unsure of the long term benefits to the student!!

New Theme

If anyone following this blog is interested, I have created a new theme. I love sunflowers and wanted to have some as my background – took quite some time searching to find a picture that would be suitable for downloading – anyway here it is and hope you like it!!

Activity #8 – iGoogle

 

I now have an iGoogle page – wow so many choices with themes, gadgets etc which became quite time consuming but also fun to explore!  It is probably something I could get used to – having things like time, date, weather, news items, rss feeds, quotes, gmail, bookmarks etc etc etc all there on one page. Not sure what improvements could be made as I don’t have anything to compare with.

Loved the YouTube clips of working at Google. Looks like a cool place to work, actually you could rest and play there as well! Has a real community feel to the organisation where employees seem to be well looked after in every sense; free food, exercise facilities, childcare, bring your pets, on the job training and ideas become reality! A very high energy, vibrant workplace filled with enthusiastic, fulfilled employees. It makes sense – these employees are more likely to produce their best rather than stressed out ones!!

And now we have our very own Googleplex here in Australia.

Maybe we should get hammocks in our Library (Discovery Centre)??

 

 

Or maybe one or two of these in the Workroom?

What do you think?

 

I use Firefox at home so thought I would try the Google add-on as suggested. However it really is unnecessary if you have iGoogle as your homepage – all your tools are there already.

Watched Google Chrome clip which really didn’t tell me much but I guess it was trying to say that your web browser can be organised yet simple by using Chrome?!? Not sure whether I would try it as I’m quite happy with Firefox.

Activity #5-7

I am familiar with a number of the Google “search” products but have not used many of the “communicate, show and share” products so I am very interested to see what I can do with Google Docs.

GOOGLE DOCS (#5):
Thought I would have a bit of fun with this and created a document to share with the Discovery Centre team. I wait with anticipation to see what changes or comments they will make!!!
To be continued………

This is an amazing tool. A few of us learnt today that you can see when someone else is making a change to the document (there is a little tag identifying them above where they are typing) and you can have multiple users adding to the document at one time. How cool is that!

GOOGLE MAPS (#6)
Before this course I had used Google maps to check a location using street view, get directions or check out Google Earth but never realised by logging in to your Google account that you could actually add a place or edit the map by moving a marker etc. and then save to “my maps”. I also didn’t realise that you can collaborate your maps by sharing with others.

A boardwalk through the mangroves near where I live.

GOOGLE BOOKS (#7)

Google Books is something I use quite regularly (mainly at work) for use with the Premier’s Reading Challenge. When students have read a personal choice book and it is not found in the PRC list nor borrowed from our Discovery Centre I check for the legitimacy of title on Google Books. Very useful indeed!!

One of my favourite books as a child was Charlotte’s Web – I found it with ease.