Week 8: Second Life

Well I viewed the video. I'd previously watched someone playing Second Life & watched her moving her avatar around & I'm afraid Second Life didn't grab me like blogging, utube & flickr. Although I admit to enjoying the odd solitaire game, I found Second Life tedious. The running around/flying & visiting "virtual" buildings, seeing a "virtual couple" carry on etc. quite uninteresting. I might have reacted differently if I had an real goal or aim when visiting Second Life. Usefulness for libraries - you could run some virtual information literacy or virtual tutorials out to second life. Due to its speed or re-activeness, I think Second Life would appeal more to the older "gamer" and students in their late teens or early twenties may find the pace a little slow.

Week 6 & 7 Flickr

I had a great time playing with Flickr & have added some photos. I was also able to "mashup" the photo with the road leading into the distance with a map of its location. Click on the "map" link.

I've also had some fun adding bits & pieces & feeds to the blog layout

Week 5 - Wikis

I had a tour through the recommended wikis & have come to the conclusion that they could have the following uses:
- quick version of a library homepage or perhaps library faculty homepage (e.g. SJCPL - however I found their discussion page strange)
- communication about good/useful books/resources for subject/unit areas (BookLovers Wiki)
- internal staff communication
e.g. library wide diary of staff movements (rosters, who's on leave etc)
e.g. library wide diary of meetings (easy to lose track when venues/times keep changing)
-FAQs for reference desk, loans desk- procedures manual
- staff discussions/collaboration/organizing (Library2.0 on the loose: unconference) this may cut down on the circuitous emails!

Blackboard wiki
Although I didn't try to edit the wiki, the process looks simple.

bloglines & rss

I've resuscitated my bloglines account which I started a while ago but set aside because of lack of time - it's another in-box I need to check. The problem is that there's so much interesting stuff out there, so easy to subscribe, but do I have the time to go through them all?? I've decided to weed out the ones which don't look as interesting or the ones which I tend to mostly ignore.

AmazingLearningLog

Hi all - Week2 of our learning curve! I like to think that by the end of semester, everything will fall into place like a pack of dominoes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwihz7iZlx0