Ningalings

SG: What advantages/limitations do you see with using a Ning?

GC: Main advantages are ease of use and selectivity -- you can make an exclusive network "by invitation only". Main limitations are that it's another social network, and there are already plenty out there. Apparently, if you are a NKOTB fan, this is the place to be. Oh yeah, the ads are sooooo annoying (that targeted advertising again). And I think 1-member social networks are really sad.

SG: How could you use a Ning in a work environment?

GC: I don't see Ning replacing a company intranet. I do see Ning as a great way to get your branding/marketing out there, and to promote special events. I think for a library, Ning might be a terrific additional way to let people know about your branch hours or advertise for special programs. I'd like to try using Ning for an online bookclub -- it seems much more user-friendly than a lot of the wikis we test drove this semester, so users might be more likely to participate. I agree with Jen G that this really seems to hold a lot of appeal for educators, and Joyce K. Valenza's TeacherLibrarian group was the only reason I knew about Ning before I took this class....

Facebook Privacy Settings (screencast)

If you're new to facebook, watch my screencast on how to set your privacy settings!

Also check out the great article in danah boyd's blog about facebook privacy settings.

danah boyd + Library info/lessons = 1 sentence

Libraries who want to effectively reach their patrons by developing a social networking site (SNS) presence cannot limit themselves to one site.


links to danah boyd's articles:
"Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship"
"Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace"

Social Networking Stickiosity

I think social networking sites like facebook and MySpace are sticky for 3 main reasons:

1) Voyeurism. Look no further than the Nielsen ratings on reality tv shows (using "reality" loosely) and you will see that we love to watch other people. We like to know what's going on with strangers, so how much more fun is it to "spy" on people you know?? The best part is, you're under no obligation to interact. Even if people have strict privacy settings (like me), you can usually see their picture. You can spend hours scouting out profiles!!

2) Fun. There are so many fun things to do on these sites, and they are all just a click away. On facebook, when I'm not posting on people's walls or joining new groups, I play Scavenger Hunt, I take movie quizzes, and I (meanly) superpoke my brother. I also keep in touch with my HUGE extended family, including my Minnesota cousins and my siblings in MA, GA, and IL. On MySpace, once I got my page set up, I found my non-facebooking brother. I also found out that lots of bands, movies, authors, etc. have pages. MySpace has a lot of video and audio content, which is great, and I took the "What Kind of Mixed Drink Are You?" quiz to discover I'm a gin and tonic.

3) Easy. Anyone can use these programs. I would argue that MySpace is more frustrating to set up than facebook and requires more technical know-how, but that might just be me. Within their frameworks, social networking sites provide access to lots of programs and social software tools that users can explore with one click of a mouse.

My very own Dewey Decimal section!!

How great is this?? Spookily accurate, too... :-)

Gabrielle's Dewey Decimal Section:

832 German drama

Gabrielle = 712895225 = 712+895+225 = 1832


Class:
800 Literature


Contains:
Literature, criticism, analysis of classic writing and mythology.



What it says about you:
You're a global, worldly person who wants to make a big impact with your actions. You have a lot to tell people and you're good at making unique observations about everyday experiences. You can notice and remember details that other people think aren't important.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Gettin' Jingy wit it...

I discovered (after the fact) that my real-time actions didn't always synch with my end-result video, so there are a few odd delays. Also, constant narration takes some getting used to...there is a completely mute pause near the end while I was discovering that my click didn't work. I see myself screencasting for my mom, who is new to computer use and always wanting someone to show her how to do things (like look at her archived e-mail).

Click the link to view my [somewhat rough] instructional screencast on how to subscribe to the LISSA listserv.

About embedding...I wanted to embed here, but when I used what they gave me, the screencast was giant (and cut off on the right side). I coded the window to be smaller, but then the resolution was bad. I scouted around the Jing website and found this answer to someone else's question: "Just to clarify, you're looking to change the size of the embedded video through the use of embed code? Unfortunately, that doesn't work. Our videos don't scale when you change the dimensions in the embed code." So there you have it. Embedding would be ok for a website, but not good for a blog unless you make your capture area pretty small. (My capture area is in the neighborhood of 800x600).

My Top 3 Videos

I think our class did a great job on the videos -- there was something to love about each and every one. I narrowed down my top 3 videos by how hard I laughed while I was watching them...

#3...Amy: "bah, humbug!"
I especially appreciated the photo of the guy poised to trim his nose hair
(@ 0:46).


#2...Tara: "Zelda Fitzgerald's Favorite Recipes - Lesson One"
This video totally debunks the myth that a watched pot never boils and
it has an awesome soundtrack.


#1...Steve: "Learning Aramaic with Steve Caruso: Lesson 1"
What can I say? I was expecting an Aramaic lesson.
I love this video; it's brilliant.

Educational vs. Entertainment Videos

Online educational videos may not have the same popularity as entertainment videos, but they will have staying power because of their appeal to a broad user base, both in age and in gender.

Check out these fun facts from page 21 of the PEW/Internet "Online Video" report:

1. "[Educational video] is the only genre of online video, other than movies and TV, where there is gender parity among those who watch."
   
2. "... videos with educational content are equally as popular among the general population of internet users ..."
   
3. "young adult internet users watch or download educational video content at about the same rate as users aged 65 and older (28% vs. 21%)."

Having watched Mike Wesch's educational video presentation, "An anthropological introduction to YouTube," I thought it was cool that "Web 2.0…The Machine is Us/ing Us" is cited in the report as an example of an educational video. He almost makes me want to be an anthropologist...

Our Flickr Photos

"A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed." ~ Ansel Adams


To look at the great photographs our class chose to represent ourselves, click here.

To look at the great photographs our class chose to represent our education, click here.

Video Conversion (Not Required for Class)

My original idea for an educational video was to demonstrate how to write the cursive alphabet using the Palmer Method. It turned out to be difficult to capture the formation of each letter (but my kids did their best). It is also a fairly slow process which doesn't need narration. So, I wanted to add a soundtrack and speed it up a bit. Much easier said than done...

I take my videos with my Olympus digital camera, which doesn't allow pausing during filming. Also, it uploads video files with .mov extensions, which I can't edit in Windows Movie Maker (WMM). I'm a PC, and my computer is filled with Windows products. I won't bore you with the details of how many freeware converters I tried, or how movavi failed to deliver on its promise (twice).

I will tell you that the free version of the Prism Video Converter is marvelous (and it claims to work for Windows and Mac). I converted my .mov file to a .wmv file, did the soundtrack in Audacity, used WMM to drop in a few still photos and some special effects, and was able to re-convert my final movie back to .mov format!!!! The Prism converter is super easy to use. I noticed two (minor) problems with the converted video: 1) Whether I converted to .avi or .wmv, the converted video was slightly pixillated, and 2) the converted video seemed much shakier than the original. Speeding up the video exaggerates this.

For an amateur video done with a bottom-of-the-line digital camera, I'm happy with the results. I promise this is the last video I'll tag with scils598, but I thought others might be interested in conversions (and/or the Palmer Method).



If you don't want to use the player, go to YouTube or Blip.tv to watch it there.

p.s.- "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is used for handwriting practice because it contains every letter of the alphabet.

Picasa Movies (Not Required for Class)

I know, Picasa is another member of the Google empire, but I'm all about streamlining my life. I use Picasa to get my photos off my camera, organize into web slideshows, etc. A recent upgrade (Picasa3) allows you to make videos out of your slideshows and post them directly to YouTube.

My family recently attended a surprise 70th birthday party for my mother-in-law's sister. Unfortunately, cancer therapy prevented my mother-in-law from attending. I made this video for her; it literally took 5 minutes. The tools are not as flexible as Windows Movie Maker (you won't have as many options), but if you like the idea of dragging and dropping your pics into a YouTube video for family & friends, check it out.....

[Background Info: All the photos were taken in Brockton, MA. My in-laws grew up there (they met when they were 12). My MIL is a HUGE Elvis fan.]



You can also view this on YouTube.

Finger-in-a-Box = Educational

CONTENT WARNING: This video is rated TV-Y7 for fantasy violence. If you faint at the sight of "blood", you might want to skip it.

My grandmother loved to tell ghost stories. When I was a kid, she taught me how to do this awesomely gross trick. With thanks to Mimi for the educational experience, and apologies to my mother for the number of performances, click the player below to find out how to do the not-so-famous finger-in-a-box trick:



You can also go directly to Blip.tv and watch it there.

Cardigans = Entertainment

Along with glasses and the ability to "shhh", the cardigan is a must-have accessory for every librarian. I'm ready. Here are some (not all) of my cardigans in their very own entertaining (to me) video:



You can also go to YouTube and watch this video there.

Defending Dewey...

...against Chris Anderson's attack.

One question I think you could ask is whether the taxonomy/ontology of library catalogs somehow prevent patron access to the Long Tail of the library collection. My answer would be an emphatic "no."

"I tremble to think where the Dewey Decimal System will place the book you're reading right now" (p. 161). Of course, I had to look it up. Most libraries who use the DDC have this book in 658.8, which is the broad category for Marketing. I also looked at user tags in Amazon. The most popular tag for the book is...marketing. There are multiple bookmarks for the Long Tail in Delicious...most include "marketing" as a tag. I also looked up the Library of Congress (LC) classification number; it's HF5415.127. In either the DDC or LC classification, the subject headings for the book are: 1) Market segmentation; 2) Internet marketing; 3) Marketing -- Technological Innovations.

I get the whole "Shopping in the Miscellaneous Aisle" concept. I hear Anderson's frustration with the Blockbuster vs. Amazon model, and the constrictions of physical shelves. I generally bypass the genre-guessing at Blockbuster and ask the kid behind the counter where I can find what I'm looking for. Even better, I go to my library, which has an excellent anime collection (for free).

I would argue that, with the information available in a Google search increasing exponentially as I type this post, finding relevant results are more difficult than Anderson wants us to believe. Assuming that I don't know the title or the author of this book, and I use market segmentation as my keywords for a Google search, I get 6,170,000 results. I can select "Books" to narrow my results, and then I'm down to 3,590. If I perform a subject search in the Library of Congress catalog for "market segmentation," I get 115 results, but I do have the opportunity to scroll down the list and narrow my results by geographic location or other variables. I select the 115 results and find Chris Anderson's book at #15 and #16 on the list (original and revised editions).

How many people are going to search for this book using these keywords? I'm not sure. Probably not that many. Most people are going to have something like, "it's that guy from Wired," or "it's a book about internet shopping" or maybe they will even have part of his name or part of the title. Interestingly, the library catalog allows both author name and title searches. Patrons searching by Dewey number are few and far between.

I like to think that the library catalog helps us quickly locate "Long Tail" items for our patrons. Participation in InterLibrary Loan consortia and increasing digitization of collections allows librarians to move beyond the physical constraints of their small libraries. WorldCat finds the book right away, whether I type "marketing segmentation" (#1 on the list), or Chris Anderson, or long tail. I don't have to know the Dewey number, and I don't need special punctuation.

The library catalog helps filter out the "noise" that shows up in internet searching. Open source software promises to find new ways to connect library catalogs and expand access to existing collections. I believe that library catalogs, as they continue to evolve, will provide patrons with the best methods or fulfilling the two Long Tail imperatives that Anderson describes: "1. Make everything available. 2. Help me find it" (p. 218).

Teacher Training Videos

I know there are some other school librarians out there, so I thought I would post this link for you.

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

Russell Stannard uses Camtasia (sound familiar?) to do screencasts of how to use a variety of technology tools. And he has a lovely British accent.

We've learned about most of the tools from Steve, but just in case you eventually lose access to his videos, this is a good backup.