Tuesday, April 29, 2008
On-line Videos
I love youtube. I have enjoyed the library posts I have found. But I am especially enjoying the old Julie Andrew clips I am finding.
As far the library videos I have seen, I find this web tool very useful for generating interest in a library. I have been very impressed with the creativity of different libraries in capturing their library's unique features and the humor of their staff.
As a tool for instruction, Youtube is also a great tool. It helps preserve lessons for students and makes ideas very accessible. One exampe is the capture the converstion videos we have been watching.
Week 6: Online Photo Sharing (April 14 - 20) entry
I found this week's exercise not as intuitive as I expected. To post the image, I had to email it to my unique email address within Flickr. I had expected that I would just create a web address like I do for my blog entries. It will take some playing around with flickr to get the rhythm. And I would probably have to expand to a level of flickr that I must pay for. It is interesting to think about uploading versus just emailing the image to one individual. Emailing directs the image to specific individuals, but the power of this tool is to get an image out to many people at once. And images in a blog can really help to clarify an point one is making.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Google Docs presentation
I have been working on this week's exercise This is a link to my presentation.
As for this week's question, "Is this the future of all software products? What do you think?",
it is an interesting idea. I think companies, research groups and libraries can make good use of this technology as long as they can keep items secure. That is a big concern for everything we have been learning about in the class. And the providers have to make sure there is a functioning business model to support this evolution. I read a comment about being able to work offline and then resubmit to the web afterwards. I think this will be a necessary aspect of the web office tools. The only concern I have is the permanence of the documents. Users would still have to make sure that they are backing up documents on their own computers so that they have access to a hard copy as well as the on-line version.
It seems that at my institution, we have done this already in having shared drives. Web Office tools do this on a larger scale.
As for this week's question, "Is this the future of all software products? What do you think?",
it is an interesting idea. I think companies, research groups and libraries can make good use of this technology as long as they can keep items secure. That is a big concern for everything we have been learning about in the class. And the providers have to make sure there is a functioning business model to support this evolution. I read a comment about being able to work offline and then resubmit to the web afterwards. I think this will be a necessary aspect of the web office tools. The only concern I have is the permanence of the documents. Users would still have to make sure that they are backing up documents on their own computers so that they have access to a hard copy as well as the on-line version.
It seems that at my institution, we have done this already in having shared drives. Web Office tools do this on a larger scale.
Week 4 Social Bookmarking
This week's tool has been the tool I have heard most about before starting the course. I can see how it could be used by researchers in the basic sciences, especially when it is linked to a blog or a wiki. It can tailor you web surfing by seeing what someone who is writing or creating a resource is saving as relevant websites. It can be used as a lauching pad for someone who found the starting blog or wiki. And it could be the place to find the wiki or blog that leads you to other resources.
In addition, a tool like this can give information that might have been obtained through something like a user's survey. If you have links on your website, you could see how many others are saving the same link. The big draw back is trying to gather this information from your unique user population, since del.icio.us is showing you all world wide web users.
I find that I am still using my favorites folder on my browser because most sites I visit frequently are already there. I will have to add bookmarked sites from my favorites folder to my de.lico.us account so I can access these sites from anywhere. But this is also a place where I can choose to leave out websites that I may not want to share out of privacy concerns, or a feeling that these sites do not contribute to a blog or a wiki that is designed to be more work oriented.
In addition, a tool like this can give information that might have been obtained through something like a user's survey. If you have links on your website, you could see how many others are saving the same link. The big draw back is trying to gather this information from your unique user population, since del.icio.us is showing you all world wide web users.
I find that I am still using my favorites folder on my browser because most sites I visit frequently are already there. I will have to add bookmarked sites from my favorites folder to my de.lico.us account so I can access these sites from anywhere. But this is also a place where I can choose to leave out websites that I may not want to share out of privacy concerns, or a feeling that these sites do not contribute to a blog or a wiki that is designed to be more work oriented.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)