Week 7: Online video hosting and podcasting

I have always thought youTube was just for entertainment and thus never really investigated it. Oh I would play the clips that were sent to me, but I never searched anything out on the site itself. MY GOODNESS! I just looked at a 55 min lecture on hypertension, (the first few minutes), and viewed a clip on echocardiograms...which looked just like the one I had done yesterday! I can see tremendous use for these videos in an academic setting. Beginning with a library tour, designed by students for students, and continuing on to physical assessment videos, ascultation and so much more. I'm sure young folks are well aware of the potential and use of YouTube, but I bet their professors are fairly clueless. I do wonder where all the videos come from and the production and copyright aspects, but that is for another discussion.

I have been utilizing podcasts for a couple of years, and developed a podcasting webpage for our library. It is just a simple linkage to health related podcasts. I am trying to finish a podcast tour for our library, but now I'm wondering if a video clip would be better. I love the commoncraft videos about social networking tools, and have embedded one on a wiki I made. It seems these tools strive to make themselves as interactive with other types of web 2.0 as possible, facilitating transferring of data from one venue to another. The ease is ridiculous. Podcasts could easily be used as instructional tools embedded on our database page for example.
TA Ta...

Week 6 : Photo Sharing

I am really glad to have had this opportunity to "Play" with photo sharing. It has always seemed just a bit out of my reach...or I never took the time to figure it out. I am pretty amazed at how interactive all these programs are and the ability to share photos is so easy. I have a Mac at home and discovered that I could download a simple app which allowed me to export directly from iphoto to facebook. Blogs and wikis too have made it easy to add images. I am sure there are multiple uses for photo sharing in library land. Once exposed to all these various tools, it is great fun to discover how to apply them in a useful way. 

Week 5 Web Office Tools

I really enjoyed trying out Google Docs. I had heard about it, but being involved in this class got me to try it. I know students on our campus are using it already. I think Web docs are probably evolving towards the future, but probably not the definitive product. The way things keep changing I imagine that eventually there will be even better, more versatile tools.
I think ZOHO seems to have more applications than google docs, but google is so ubiquitous and innovative, that I think it is a trusted "friend". Folks are always waiting to see what Google will do next.
So...web docs are in the future, but will continue to morph...for the better. MY Opinion!

Week 4 Social Bookmarking

I really like delicious and have been using it for sometime. Great to see what others are saving and I know I can always get to my bookmarks. I have used it when teaching to pull up a favorite, and we have thought about using it for a reference resource. We have moved our library and all the bookmarks we had are now on a single pc that we don't use much. Need to try establishing a reference account and transfer the bookmarks.
I like tagging, but find I am inconsistent when applying tags...need to have my own authority file!
I have played with Citeulike, but after being away from it Ifound it not intuitive to get back into it. We are encouraging students/faculty who are using endnoteweb to use citeulike to save pdfs.
All for now!