Thing 25 - Social Networking

Social Networks allow users to set up a presence on the we to connect with other people with shared personal or professional interests and to share content with others. We've probably all heard of Facebook and MySpace even if we don't have accounts because they are the two most popular general social networks. There are other more focused tools like LinkedIn and Ning. For now, though, we'll look at Facebook and at the most basic features of social networking sites. If you are already using a social networking tool and don't want another, you are not required to have a Facebook account. You can just review the links and resources in the discovery exercises.

Common Craft comes through again with another "in plain English" video.



Discovery Exercises

1. Learn about Facebook
   
2. Check out some ideas for What you can do with a Facebook page
   
3. Get some tips on Privacy for Facebook.
   
4. Check out some of these Facebook Pages
   Hennepin County Library
   Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library
   New York Public Library
   Los Angeles Public Library
   
   
5. If you want, sign up for Facebook. If you already have a page on a social networking site...(see 6 below)
   
6. Blog about it! You can blog about MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn - any social network site you are familiar with or Social Networking in general.

#23 Is This Really The End?

Wow! Congratulations!! You’ve reached the 23rd thing. Be sure to give yourself a pat on the back for completing the program. Your reward for completing this journey before the January 12 deadline is a useful and handy MP3. But before sending this off to you, I ask for one last discovery post.

For your last and final exercise for this program please reflect on your learning journey and post a few thoughts. Here are some questions to prompt you if you're drawing a blank ...

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

And last but not least…

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again chose to participate?

In closing, we want to thank each and every one of you for joining us on this journey. Our hope is that this not the end of our learning journey together as a staff and a system, but rather it’s just the start of something amazing …

#22 Audio Books (or "The end is near")



In anticipation of your new MP3 player, it’s time to take a look around Overdrive downloadable eAudiobooks.

Discovery Exercise:

For this discovery exercise you merely need to familiarize yourself a bit with the structure of Overdrive's Downloadable eAudiobooks site and get an idea of the types of titles you can find there. Take a look around and locate a few titles of interest. That MP3 player is right around the corner and once you have it, you’ll definitely have a reason to try out this popular library service.

Discovery Resources:

Overdrive tutorial: Overdrive Quick Start Guide .

This tutorial takes a long time to load, so you'll have to have time and patience.
There are "Getting Started..." resources available as soon as you access Overdrive

# 21 Podcasts, Smodcasts

The word podcast is used to refer to a non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet. What differentiates a podcast from regular streaming audio or video is that the delivery method for podcasts is often done automatically through RSS.

In 2005, "podcast" was named the "word of the year" by New Oxford American Dictionary and with the growth of podcasting over the last few years, it's easy to see why.

Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minutes commentaries to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions. There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and the best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, you really just need a PC with headphones or a speaker.

iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is the directory finding service most associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.

For this discovery exercise participants are asked to take a look at some popular podcast directory tools. Do some exploring on your own and locate a podcast that is of interest to you. Once found, you can easily pull the RSS feed into your Bloglines account as well, so that when new casts become available you’ll be automatically notified of their existence.

Discovery Resources:

Video: Podcasting in Plain English

There are many, many podcast directories and finding tools out there. Some require you to download software in order to use. Here is a brief list:

iTunes

Podcast Alley

Odeo

Podcast Pickle

Podnova

Discovery Exercise:

1. You often must sign up or download an aggregator in order to view podcasts. However, you can find podcasts all over the Internet. Take a look around for a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting library related podcasts like book review podcasts or library news.
   
2. Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your Bloglines account
   
3. Create a blog post about your discovery process. Did you find anything useful here?

Optional Resource: Creating a podcast with Blogger

# 20 You Too Can YouTube

Within the past year online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily to upload and share videos on the web. Among all the Web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is at the top having recently reached a billion views per day by allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily.

Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find absolutely everything there including some library types who appear to have a lot of free time: library dominos. Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer. :)

Discovery Exercise:

Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.

Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any features or components of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites?

OPTIONAL: Try placing a video inside your blog. After you've found a video in YouTube you want to place in your blog, copy the code from the "embed" field on the right of the video into a new blog post.


Yahoo Videos

Google videos

NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light internet usage times. Remember to pause the video until it completely loads and then click on play.

#19 Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

Throughout the course of this Learning 2.0 program we’ve explored just a small sampling of these new internet technologies and websites that are empowering users with the ability to create and share content. But given time there are so many more we could explore.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to select any site from this list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees and explore it. With so many to choose from, it might be handy to first select a category that interests you (like Books or Personal Organization) and then simply select a tool/site to explore. Be careful to select a tool that is Free and that doesn't require a plug-in or download. The majority of these free, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Discovery Exercise:

• Select any site/tool from the list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees.


• Explore the site you selected.


• Create a post about your discovery. What did you like or dislike about the tool? What were the site’s useful features? Could you see any applications for its use in a library setting?

Web 2.0 – with so much to explore, just start with ONE. :)

#18 Web-Based Apps: They're Not Just For Desktops

The availability and use of online productivity web-based applications (think word processing and spreadsheets) has exploded over the past two years and for good reasons! These powerful applications provide users with the ability to create and share documents over the internet without the need of installed desktop applications. Some experts speculate that this emerging trend may mean the death to Microsoft Office and other software-based productivity tools, while others think web-based applications have their place, but not in the office. But no matter which side of the office suite platform you side with, on this both sides seem to agree; web-based apps have their place.

One large benefit to web-based applications it that they eliminate the need to worry about different software versions or file types as you email documents or move from PC to PC. Another bonus is that they easily accommodate collaboration by allowing multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning) and provide users the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiple file types (including HTML and pdf). And, you can even use many of these tools, such as Zoho Writer and Google Docs* (formerly known as Writely) to author and publish posts to your blog. It’s this type of integration with other web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based apps so appealing.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to take a look at a web-based word processing tool called

Zoho Writer, create a simple document and then document your discoveries in your blog.

If you're up to the challenge, you might even export your document as an HTML file or publish it through Zoho to your blog.

With Zoho and web-based applications, the possibilities are endless.

Discovery Exercise:

Create a free account for yourself in Zoho Writer.

Explore the site and create a few test documents.

Try out Zoho Writer’s features and create a blog post about your discoveries.


Optional: If you're up for the challenge, try using Zoho’s "publish" options to post to your blog.

* Note: You can also explore Google Docs (formerly known as Writely), Google's online word processer, as an option for this exercise. On Oct 11th, Google relaunched Writely (which it acquired in Spring 2006) as Google Docs.

I've created a document Zoho Doc for you to see how easy it is to create and share.

# 17 Playing Around with PB Wiki


"Sandbox" is the term that wikis often use to describe the area of the website that should be used for pure play. For this discovery and exploration exercise, we’ve set up a whole JPL Learning 2.0 Favorites wiki* that’s for nothing but play! The password/invite key to this wiki is learning

For this “explore-and-play-with-wikis” exercise, you are asked to add an entry or two to the PBwiki Learning 2.0 wiki. The theme of this wiki is simply “Favorites” : Favorite books, favorite vacation spots, favorite restaurants, favorite anything …all you need to do is play and add your thoughts. To mark your adventure on this site, you should add your blog to the Favorite Blogs page.

Discovery Resources:

• PB Wiki Tour - Find out how this collaborative tool can be used


• PB Wiki Tips

Discovery Exercise:

1. Access the JPL Learning 2.0 wiki and create a login account for yourself.


2. Add your blog to the Favorite Blogs page. That's how we'll know that you've been there. Just click on Edit at the top of this page add your entry to the bottom of the list.
   • Place your cursor at the end of the last entry in the list
   
   
   • Press ENTER on your keyboard. This will add the next bullet in your list
   
   
   • Type the name of your blog
   
   
   • Highlight the name of your blog and click the "Insert/Edit Link: Icon in the edit tool bar
   
   
   • The link type is URL
   
   
   • Type (or paste) the url to your blog in the URL box
   
   
   • Click ok. Your blog is now linked to this wiki page


3. OPTIONAL: Add a favorite or two to a few other pages (Favorite books, favorite vacation spot, etc). And, if you feel up to the challenge, you might even want to create a separate page for book review or short travel essay and link up to that.


4. Create a post in your blog about the experience. Post a comment to this blog with a link to your blog entry.

* NOTE: The JPL Learning 2.0 Wiki was created using the free version of PBWiki, a tool that lets you create webpages that anyone can edit.

# 16 So What's a Wiki?

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. With the benefits that wikis provide the use and popularity of these tools is exploding.

Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.


• Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.


• Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.


• And users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.

As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, libraries all over the country have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, ALA conference wikis and even library best practices wikis.

Discovery Resources:
Use these resources to learn more aboout wikis:

• Wiki, wiki, wiki - from PLCMC's own Core Compentency blog


• Wiki’s: A Beginner’s Look – an excellent short slide presentation that offers a short introduction and examples.


• What is a Wiki? – Library Success wiki presentation


• Using Wikis to Create Online Communities – a good overview of what a wiki is and how it can be used in libraries.

Discovery Exercise:

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at some library wikis and blog about your finding. Here’s a few examples to get you started:


• SJCPL Subject Guides – a pathfinder wiki developed by the St. Joseph County Public Library system


• Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public Library


• Library Success: A best practices wiki


• ALA 2006 New Orleans wiki – an example of a wiki created to support a specific event


• The Bull Run Library wiki - a public library wiki and also a Learning 2.0 participant


• Other library wiki examples


1. Create a blog post about your findings. What did you find interesting? What types of applications within libraries might work well with a wiki?


2. Post a comment to this blog with a link to your blog post

So what's in a wiki? Find out by doing some exploring on your own.

#15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0

Library 2.0 is term used to describe a new set of concepts for developing and delivering library services. The name, as you may guess, is an extension of Web2.0 and shares many of its same philosophies and concepts including harnessing the user in both design and implementation of services, embracing constant change as a development cycle over the traditional notion of upgrades, and reworking library services to meet the users in their space, as opposed to ours (libraries).

Many have argued that the notion of Library 2.0 is more than just a term used to describe concepts that merely revolve around the use of technology; it also a term that can be used to describe both physical and mindset changes that are occurring within libraries to make our spaces and services more user-centric and inviting. Others within the profession have asserted that libraries have always been 2.0: collaborative, customer friendly and welcoming. But no matter which side of the debate proponents fall, both sides agree that libraries of tomorrow, even five or ten years from now, will look substantially different from libraries today.

Discovery Resources:

OCLC Next Space Newsletter – Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web it take libraries?
Five perspectives:

• Away from Icebergs


• Into a new world of librarianship


• To more powerful ways to cooperate


• To better bibliographic services


• To a temporary place and time

Wikipedia - Library 2.0
Library 2.0 Discussions (list of great references from Wikipedia)

Discovery Exercise:

1. Read two or three of the perspectives on Library 2.0 from the list above.


2. Create a blog post about your thoughts on any one of these? Library 2.0 - It's many things to many people. What does it mean to you?


3. Post a comment to this blog with a link to your blog post