Week 7: Wikis

This week is all about wikis and so we set up a FAQ Wiki for the GSU Library. We are going to explore collaborative group work. Our wiki has a page for each of the departments in the library and the idea is to post commonly asked questions along with the answers. The beauty of a wiki is that one person can post the question and someone else can come in and supply the answer.



There is also a good discussion going about the authenticity of the entries in wikis. The fact that some wikis allow anyone to edit with checking the facts raises flags. We are discussing the different ways of limiting who edits the wikis. There are passwords, locking the wiki, and the discussion is continuing.

Week 6 Wrap-up

Well we survived Week 6. There were a few problems with downloading the del.icio.us buttons to the toolbar. For some unknown reason different computers showed different buttons. It was a little confusing, but it got straightened out. There was also a little debate about tags, subject headings and bookmarks.


Tags are subject headings that are assigned by the user. There are popular tags which many people use and there are suggested tags which are recommended by ? I don't know who recommends the suggested tags, are they experts, authorities, I am not sure. I have noticed that many of popular tags are the same as recommended tags.

Week 6: del.icio.us and Technorati

Here is my wrap-up of del.icio.us and Technorati. I use del.icio.us all the time and I am slowly changing all of my Google bookmarks over to del.icio.us. It is easy to use and to share, each tag (subject heading) that you use will have it's own URL and RSS feed. You can share the URL or they can subscribe to the RSS Feed. If you are working on a group project, you can assign a group tag and everyone can pull up all of the websites that you have tagged. You del.icio.us tags are accessible on any computer, anytime, anywhere.

Technorati, well I just don't see the use for it at this time. I claimed my blogs and well that was fun, now what? I will check occasionally to see if it gets any better, but for now I don't plan on doing anything with my account.

Week 5: Play Week (Image Generators, Rollyo, and LibraryThing

Can you believe it? Week 5 already. This week are playing with Image Generators, Rollyo and LibraryThing. Let me start off with LibraryThing, I have just started adding my books and I don't see the attraction. Maybe I will change my mind after I have added a few more books.

The image generators are fun, here are a couple of images I created:
I used the fortune cookie generator to create my own fortune cookie.

I used LunaPic to alter a digital photo. I can see libraries using image generators to create images for signs or displays.

I create a search roll in Rollyo on the topic of plagiarism that is located on the side of the blog. I can see libraries (especially public) using this to create search rolls for online dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.

Week 4 - Bloglines and RSS Feeds

Week four was all about Bloglines and RSS Feeds. We had everyone sign up for Bloglines and subscribe to at least two RSS Feeds. I have been using Bloglines for several years and I subscribe to 123 feeds. Many of them are library related, a few fun blogs, comic strips and blogs from this class as well as blogs from the online course I am taking. The best part of using Bloglines is that the feeds are there, ready and waiting for me to read them. I don't have to worry about missing anything.

I see great potential for RSS Feeds in Libraries, they could be used for new books, changes on subject area pages as well as what's happening in the library.

Next week: del.icio.us, tagging and Technorati

Week 3 Wrap UP

We finished week 3 and I hope everyone had fun, I know I did. There weren't too many problems last week, at least nothing major. At the end of the week when week 3 ended the discussion thread disappeared, I fixed that the next morning. It didn't disappear until after the week was ended so it really didn't affect any one's meeting the deadline. We have started releasing the material a little earlier in response to requests by several people.

Playing with Flickr

I was trying out some of the Flickr applications and liked PictoBrowser Builder the best. I had found a different one that looked promising, but unfortunately I don't understand French. I will use Flickr for photos for now (but I will continue to save my photos elsewhere too). And I definitely won't put pictures of my young nephews up, unless I make them private and even then I am not sure if I will. I might put them, make them private for a short period of time and then delete them after my family has had a chance to look and download/print the photos they want.

Here is my slide show using PictoBrowser:





Here is the link if you want to try it yourself:

http://www.db798.com/work/

In order to start creating your slide show, click on the word pictobrowser which is located in the bottom right corner off the slide show.