YouTube

I very much enjoyed watching the YouTube videos that the 23 things team have put up on the 23 things blog.  I think my favourite was the one with the dinosaurs: very educational and bizarre, though perhaps a tad long. When trying to find some more entertaining/educational library YouTube videos, I found a mixture of good ones and dreadful ones.  This highlighted to me that like all of these tools, YouTube can be used for both good and evil.  If used in the right way, YouTube can provide a funny and interesting way of educating students.  If used in the wrong (dry and boring) way, it may put students off from ever watching a library YouTube video ever again (perhaps evil is a bit of a strong word!).

When it comes to information literacy, I think many students don't even realise they need it.  YouTube provides libraries with a useful tool to educate students in the ways of information literacy, though I think this is most effective if the video is short and entertaining, as otherwise, it may be difficult to persuade a student to even watch it.  I think it complements other teaching tools very well, and the more ways a library can use to get the message across the better!  I think for some, a short video can be a more effective way of learning than reading lots of instructions.  I know when it comes to crochet, YouTube has often been my refuge when all my books have befuddled me!

Delicious

 

With thanks to Clare Sutton for image used under CC licence

I had never used Delicious before, so had no idea what to expect.  After playing about with it, my main conclusion is that it's ok.  It's not that there's really anything wrong with it, and I can see why it's useful, but I just don't feel that excited.  Maybe it's just because the website itself looks a bit dated, and I like things to be pretty!  I'm glad there are tools available that enable you to share bookmarks, as I can see that it is very useful for some individuals and companies to be able to do this, but I don't think I'll use it much.  Like Twinset & purls, I would be concerned about what would happen to all of my bookmarks if the site broke or was closed down or something.  If there is a website I really like, I'm very old fashioned and I write it down in my diary!

Wikis

Slideshare

This is the first time I had looked at slideshare.  It seems to have lots of good educational resources on it, as well as a lot of entertaining random things.  I like that so many people are willing to share their work to provide some inspiration for others. Good for the environment too, as it provides an alternative to printing out multiple copies of powerpoints to hand out to people when giving presentations!   Here is a presentation I think is appropriate for me, as I seem to be falling further and further behind in 23 things!  Overcoming Blogger Burnout

View more presentations from Childhood101

I have to say I wasn't expecting to find things like the Ikea catalogue on slideshare, but I thought it was interesting that it was there.  I don't know if it was just the kind of topic I was looking for, but I found quite a lot of advertising content.  I didn't mind; I quite like being advertised at.

Nothing really

I found another quotation I like (actually, it found me via my igoogle page):

Borrowers of books--those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

- Charles Lamb

Perhaps this would have been a good (inappropriate?) one for the library wall?  Ha ha haa.

Prezis, Doodle and Survey Monkey

Overall, I've found that I like prezi very much and will continue to use it in the future.  It's novel to me, as I had not heard of it before I came to City.  I enjoyed playing around with it and experimenting with the different effects you can achieve.  However, I think to really come to grips with it will take me quite a long time, as I didn't find it that intuitive.  I found the tutorials useful and I thought Ned Potter's advice to position your materials sympathetically to avoid motion sickness was particularly wise.  When I watched the first prezi I made (before reading any tutorials), the effect was dizzying and a bit horrible. I haven't included a prezi in this blog post, but will put one up once I have thought of a good topic.

I've also become fond of Doodle.  I have used doodle before as a participant, but I have never created one for an event myself.  I was very pleased with how straightforward it was and I think it is a useful tool that I will continue to use from now on.

 

Sock monkey photo by Rocketeer made available under the CC BY- NC-ND 2.0 licence

Survey Monkey: why is the 'Seriously Blue' theme grey?  Or have I misunderstood?  Apart from this, I liked survey monkey.  I found it fairly intuitive and straightforward to use.  Again, I haven't included a survey on this post, but will do so sometime in the future when everyone least expects it.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of those things that I have never liked, but feel as if I have never given a proper chance.  So I signed up to it for 23 things to double check.  I still feel quite sure I don't like it.  I don't really like the way it looks, I don't like the emails it keeps sending me, and I don't like the way I can never remember my password to get into it.  I still think I am being unfair.  I'm sure it can be a very useful tool, but for some reason, it just makes me feel uncomfortable.  I think it is like Library Apocalypse and Librery Bloggery say; it just feels too 'schmoozy'.

With thanks to Aimee Ray for the 'crowded' image under this licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)