Thing #22 - Take a Look at Titles on NetLibrary and Learn How To Download eAudiobooks
For this Thing, we are dealing with two different kinds of books - ebooks and eaudiobooks. Ebooks are read on the computer screen or other device and eaudiobooks are downloaded and listened to on a computer or other listening device (mp3 player, iPod, etc.).
While there are many places to access both ebooks and eaudiobooks, for this Thing we will discuss the collections available in NetLibrary. To access these collections, you will need an account from the library. The Ephrata Public Library subscribes to NetLibrary's eaudiobook collection separately from other libraries and an account is needed. To set up an account, please email the following information to ptalbert@ephratapubliclibrary.org:
- Your Name
- Your Library Card Number
- The Municipality in Which You Live
- Your Email Address
- A Username and Password (Usernames and Passwords must be at least 6 characters and should be unique identifiers.)
Within 24 hours, we will email you to let you know your account has been activated.
For this discovery exercise, you merely need to familiarize yourself a bit with the structure of NetLibrary's Downloadable eAudiobooks site and get an idea of the types of titles you can find here. Take a look around and locate a few titles of interest.
Discovery Resources:
NetLibrary's eBook Collection
NetLibrary's eAudiobook Center
eAudiobook Tutorial
Discovery Exercise:
1. Create a NetLibrary account using the instructions above.
2. Once you have an account created, you can access NetLibrary directly at http://netlibrary.com
3. Click on the eAudiobooks link and explore some of titles.
OPTIONAL: Try downloading a title from the NetLibrary. You don’t have to have a portable player to listen to audiobooks, you can also listen to it from a computer.
***Thing #23 - Summarize your thoughts about the program on your blog.
When are done with this - your final Thing - send an email to ptalbert@ephratapubliclibrary.org. After we review everyone's blog, you will receive an email informing you of when to pick up your free flash drive, as well as informing the winner of the Amazon Kindle.
We hope you have enjoyed this virtual learning experience and would love feedback on the program.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Week #8 - Podcasts and Video
***Thing #19 - Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos.
Wikipedia's explanation on YouTube
In this exercise we will be having a look at the video hosting site YouTube. YouTube is currently the most popular site to allow 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 everything from Web 2.0 to the Revolution of dance to Mr Bean's revolution of dancing. Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that does not mean you shouldn't explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer.
Also, here is a video created by the teens at Ephrata High School as an introduction the their morning show, Ephrata AM.
Discovery Exercise:
1.Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
2.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?
3. Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.
Other popular video hosting sites:
Yahoo Videos
Google videos
Others - top video site list
***Thing #20 - Learn About Podcasts and Discover Some Useful Search Tools for Locating Podcasts
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 (like the podcasts that have been created for this Learning 2.0 program) 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, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) 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.
Discovery Rescources:
Have a look at Podcasting in Plain English.
Some Podcasting Directories
http://www.podcastdirectory.com/
www.learnoutloud.com/podcast-directory
Optional Advanced Resources: (for those who want to learn how to create a podcast of their own)
Beginner's guide to Podcasts & Creating Podcasts
How to podcast tutorial
Discovery Exercise:
Take a look at ITunes or one or two of the podcast directories listed above and see if you can find a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting library related podcasts, like book review podcasts or library news.
Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your Blogger account
***Thing #21 - Post Some Links on Your Blog for Videos and Podcasts You've Discovered. Discuss How This Medium is Changing the Way People Can Share Creative Projects
Wikipedia's explanation on YouTube
In this exercise we will be having a look at the video hosting site YouTube. YouTube is currently the most popular site to allow 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 everything from Web 2.0 to the Revolution of dance to Mr Bean's revolution of dancing. Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching too. But that does not mean you shouldn't explore and see for yourself what the site has too offer.
Also, here is a video created by the teens at Ephrata High School as an introduction the their morning show, Ephrata AM.
Discovery Exercise:
1.Explore YouTube & find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.
2.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?
3. Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.
Other popular video hosting sites:
Yahoo Videos
Google videos
Others - top video site list
***Thing #20 - Learn About Podcasts and Discover Some Useful Search Tools for Locating Podcasts
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 (like the podcasts that have been created for this Learning 2.0 program) 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, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) 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.
Discovery Rescources:
Have a look at Podcasting in Plain English.
Some Podcasting Directories
http://www.podcastdirectory.com/
www.learnoutloud.com/podcast-directory
Optional Advanced Resources: (for those who want to learn how to create a podcast of their own)
Beginner's guide to Podcasts & Creating Podcasts
How to podcast tutorial
Discovery Exercise:
Take a look at ITunes or one or two of the podcast directories listed above and see if you can find a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting library related podcasts, like book review podcasts or library news.
Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your Blogger account
***Thing #21 - Post Some Links on Your Blog for Videos and Podcasts You've Discovered. Discuss How This Medium is Changing the Way People Can Share Creative Projects
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Week #7 - Online Applications and Tools
***Thing 17 - Take A Look At Some Online Productivity (Word Processing, Spreadsheet) Tools
One major benefit to web-based applications is 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 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, you 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 are 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 Resources:
A short list of web-based productivity applications – Note: This list was authored in ZohoWriter and exported as HTML.
Discovery Exercise:
1. Create a free account for yourself in Zoho Writer
2. Explore the site and create a test document or two.
3. 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, Google's online word processing, as an option for this exercise.
BTW: Here’s a Zoho-created document (viewable as a webpage) about some of the beneficial features of Zoho.
***Thing #18 - Learn About The Online Library Catalog and Create An Account
Your public library offers a wealth of information for patrons. The online catalog allows patrons 24/7 access to their library account. You can reserve materials, get reading recommendations and more!
To create an account, visit the help section for instructions.
A new addition to the catalog is Research Pro. Visit the help section for instruction and information about Research Pro.
Blog about new features you've learned about the library catalog and/or how you might use the library catalog to use the library in new ways.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Week #6 - Wikis
Thing #15 - Learn About Wikis and Discover Some Innovative Ways That People Are Using Them
Please listen to this short online video presentation to explain Wikis (a youtube video created by Common Craft).
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 this tool is increasing.
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 with what has 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, conference wikis and even library best practices wikis.
Discovery Resources:
Use these resources to learn more about wikis:
Wikia - This is a directory of wikis. Explore some of the wikis included here and discover how you might use one in your everyday life.
For information on how to create a wiki, using Wikispaces, visit - http://www.wikispaces.com/
Discovery Exercise:
1. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at some wikis and blog about your findings.
Thing #16 - Add a Blog Entry About Wikis and (Optional) Start Your Own!
Consider different ways you could use a wiki and blog about your thoughts.
Try setting up a wiki that would be useful to you. It's easier than you might think! Go to http://www.wikispaces.com and try it! (For example, I have one that I use to keep all my recipes. I have another one that I use to at work to assign projects to student workers.)
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Week #5 - Tagging & Technorati
***Thing #12 - Learn about Tagging and Discover Del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site)
Tagging is an open and informal way of allowing users to describe online content (webpages, pictures & posts) by associating keywords.
Please watch this short YouTube video to explain Social bookmarking in plain English
The Horizon report (2007) has this to say:"A little group of Web 2.0 technologies—tagging and folksonomic tools, social bookmarking sites and sites that make it easy to contribute ideas and content—is placing the power of media creation and distribution firmly into the hands of the people formerly known as the audience” (Rosen, 2006).
No longer satisfied to be consumers of content, today’s audience create content as well. Producing, commenting and classifying are just as important as the more passive tasks of searching, reading, watching and listening."
We’ll be looking more closely at Web 2.0 applications that take serious advantage of tagging (we've already looked at few - Flickr, YouTube and blogs all use tags). Tagging, remember, allows you to associate keywords with online content - webpages, pictures, posts, etc.
It is considered a folksomony, aka an unstructured categorisation scheme, unlike the more formal taxonomies that require adherence to strict rulues and vocabularies eg. The Library of Congress.
This week we’ll look at still more innovative applications that take great advantage of tagging – Delicious and Technorati.
Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that lets you save bookmarks to a central location (so that you can access your web favorites regardless of the browser or computer you're using) and then describe them all with tags so that you can easily find them again.
How is that social? Well, in addition to tagging your bookmarks, you can see how other users have tagged the same links and see related websites are important to them. This is an excellent way to find websites that may be of interest to you. Delicious even offers RSS feeds - you can create a shared bookmark site (say, for your team) and receive news every time a new link is added (say, when one of your colleagues add a new link).
Discovery exercise:
1.Create an account at Delicious and take a look arou nd and add your own bookmarks and explore the site.
***Thing #13 - Explore Technorati and Learn How Tags Work with Blog Posts
Technorati is the leading search tool and authority on blogs, the number of blogs doubles just about every 6 months with over 51 million blogs currently being tracked by the site. So how does a person get their blog listed as part of the blogosphere and how can you tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search? The answer to the first question is that your blog is probably already being captured by Technorati due to the fact that you're already using Blogger, the most popular blogging tool. But if you want to join the party and have your blog officially listed on Technorati and also take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you’ll need to claim your blog yourself.
As for tagging posts with Technorati tags?
This is easy, too. All you need to do is add a little bit of HTML code to the bottom of your post and Technorati will pick up these tags when it spiders (or web crawls) your site.
There are a lot of new features that have been added to Technorati, including new ways to search for blogs. You can search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries).
Exercise:
Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for something of interest to you.
***Thing #14 - Blog Your Thoughts About These Technologies and How You Might Use Them
We've covered quite a bit of ground this week. Getting a handle on Delicious and Technorati can actually make your life easier, even though it may seem overwhelming right now. Experiment a little with what you've learned this week and post a blog entry about your thoughts and ideas on using these technologies.
Tagging is an open and informal way of allowing users to describe online content (webpages, pictures & posts) by associating keywords.
Please watch this short YouTube video to explain Social bookmarking in plain English
The Horizon report (2007) has this to say:"A little group of Web 2.0 technologies—tagging and folksonomic tools, social bookmarking sites and sites that make it easy to contribute ideas and content—is placing the power of media creation and distribution firmly into the hands of the people formerly known as the audience” (Rosen, 2006).
No longer satisfied to be consumers of content, today’s audience create content as well. Producing, commenting and classifying are just as important as the more passive tasks of searching, reading, watching and listening."
We’ll be looking more closely at Web 2.0 applications that take serious advantage of tagging (we've already looked at few - Flickr, YouTube and blogs all use tags). Tagging, remember, allows you to associate keywords with online content - webpages, pictures, posts, etc.
It is considered a folksomony, aka an unstructured categorisation scheme, unlike the more formal taxonomies that require adherence to strict rulues and vocabularies eg. The Library of Congress.
This week we’ll look at still more innovative applications that take great advantage of tagging – Delicious and Technorati.
Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that lets you save bookmarks to a central location (so that you can access your web favorites regardless of the browser or computer you're using) and then describe them all with tags so that you can easily find them again.
How is that social? Well, in addition to tagging your bookmarks, you can see how other users have tagged the same links and see related websites are important to them. This is an excellent way to find websites that may be of interest to you. Delicious even offers RSS feeds - you can create a shared bookmark site (say, for your team) and receive news every time a new link is added (say, when one of your colleagues add a new link).
Discovery exercise:
1.Create an account at Delicious and take a look arou nd and add your own bookmarks and explore the site.
***Thing #13 - Explore Technorati and Learn How Tags Work with Blog Posts
Technorati is the leading search tool and authority on blogs, the number of blogs doubles just about every 6 months with over 51 million blogs currently being tracked by the site. So how does a person get their blog listed as part of the blogosphere and how can you tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search? The answer to the first question is that your blog is probably already being captured by Technorati due to the fact that you're already using Blogger, the most popular blogging tool. But if you want to join the party and have your blog officially listed on Technorati and also take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you’ll need to claim your blog yourself.
As for tagging posts with Technorati tags?
This is easy, too. All you need to do is add a little bit of HTML code to the bottom of your post and Technorati will pick up these tags when it spiders (or web crawls) your site.
There are a lot of new features that have been added to Technorati, including new ways to search for blogs. You can search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries).
Exercise:
Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for something of interest to you.
***Thing #14 - Blog Your Thoughts About These Technologies and How You Might Use Them
We've covered quite a bit of ground this week. Getting a handle on Delicious and Technorati can actually make your life easier, even though it may seem overwhelming right now. Experiment a little with what you've learned this week and post a blog entry about your thoughts and ideas on using these technologies.
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