Week 12 Wrap up; social networks and catch up

Welcome to week 12 – this is the last week of our Learning 2.0 program for test pilots.

This is a short week which includes four key activities:

• learning about social networking and how libraries and other organisations are using it


• catching up with any activities you haven’t finished


• providing feedback via our survey


• revisiting the self assessment survey

Discover: So what is social networking?
You have probably heard of Facebook and MySpace, they are just two examples of social networking services. See this map from LeMonde which shows the popularity of different services around the world.

Explore: How can government, museums and libraries use social networking services?

• Some interesting work in the UK is creating 'Communities of Practice' for local government which “are an attempt, according to their creators, to harness the power of social networking to share problems, ideas and expertise.”


• Another example is East Renfrewshire Council in Scotland using Facebook to boost its libraries and sports centres.


• The Renaissance West Midlands blog, a collaborative online diary for museum professionals, has some great suggestions in a fascinating post about social networking potential for museums.


• This article from NewsGrist discusses the rationale behind museums social networking in more detail.


• The American Library Association’s MySpace page includes a Meebo widget to contact them, embedded videos of recent events, more than 4,000 friends and highlights from their blogs.


• The British Library is in Facebook.


• Newcastle City Library Service (UK) has a MySpace page


• Rotorua Public Library is on Bebo


• The ALIA symposium Beyond the Hype: web 2.0 used ning to build a community for the event

But what about libraries in Second Life?
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. It is inhabited by avatars and yes, there are libraries and even library islands! You can find out much more from the Second Life Library Project.

Discuss in your blog possibilities for our library using social networking for client interaction, marketing and networking opportunities.


Feedback: There’s no adventure this week – please make sure spend a few minutes giving us your feedback via:
- completing the feedback survey Click Here to take survey
- revisiting the self assessment survey Click Here to take survey

Congratulations on successfully completing your mission of discovery paving the way for your colleagues at the library.



This image was generated using an image generator from BigHugeLabs and an image from NASA.

Week 11: Online applications and tools

Productivity software
Word processing, spreadsheets, calendars, presentations, project management, and web conferencing are all examples of productivity software. Online versions offer many of the same features yet are quite different from what is installed on your computer. How so? The online software we're looking at today is quite inexpensive - it's free. There is a reason for this - it doesn't do nearly as much as the software installed on your computer. The core features you see in Google Docs and Zoho match up surprisingly well. No installation of software is required. All you need is a web browser and an internet connection.

Collaboration
It's much easier to work on projects with others - colleagues, community group members, family, friends, whomever. Say, for example, you are working with your colleagues in a number of institutions. You post the first draft of a letter or a report, your colleagues make edits or add text to the document, and you bring the completed letter or report to your next meeting. The shared workspace means that no one is accidentally looking at an out-of-date version of the document. Watch this video to find out how Google docs works.

Other useful online tools
Converting file formats is easy at Zamzar. For example you can convert a document to a pdf file.

Sharing presentation and slideshows is easy using Slideshare and Thumbstacks.

Explore: Look at this slide show from Slideshare for some more examples of free online productivity tools.

Discover: Using your gmail account log into Google Docs and create a document.
Share it with us at slnsw2.0@gmail.com. In your blog consider possible applications for this in your work.

Adventure: Set up a Zoho account and compare it.

Week 10: Podcasts

This week we look at podcasts and audio files.A 'podcast' is a non-music audio or video recording that is distributed over the internet. The distribution is what makes a podcast unique. It's also what makes a podcast powerful - interested listeners or watchers can receive updates through RSS when new content is posted.

Variety
Podcasts come in many shapes and sizes. They can be brief (just a few minutes) or considerably longer (interviews, panel discussions, radio shows, etc). They can be slickly produced radio broadcasts or home-grown recordings. They can be audio only or they can be video. You can listen to them on your computer (don’t forget to use headphones in your work area) or play them on an MP3 player. Despite the name, you don't need an iPod or a MP3 player to listen or watch - all you need is a computer with headphones or speakers.

Discover: Listen to a podcast from the British Library and one from the ABC. [Hint use the subject option to see what is available].

Explore: Listen to some of the podcasts linked on the Library Success wiki. Blog about how the State Library could use podcasts for our clients and staff.



Adventure: Contact the team leaders to collect an mp3 player to further explore podcasts and recording audio files.

Listen to one of the podcasts on the Online Education Database.

To search for other podcasts use ‘podcast’ as a keyword in your search engine or you can use Yahoo podcasts search.