bibliotechy

Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

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Wordle is the Word

In STT on December 4, 2009 at 4:02 pm

OK, here’s another of those things that I heard of long ago (honest!), thought was totally cool, had lots of potential, combines two of my favorite things – tag clouds & graphic design – and then I promptly forgot about it … until today!

And I owe to Mary here in the NMRLS office for showing it off by using Wordle as a way to sort the context of some recent survey results.

Find it, use it, bookmark it here: http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle is fascinating even in black & white just to see what words actually are being used most often whether it be survey results, a strategic plan, a resume, or a blog posting (see below).
In case image doesn’t load (thanks WordPress!), try this link:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23683499/null

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Why hadn't this been done before!? Google News Timeline

In STT on April 29, 2009 at 9:32 am

New from the GoogleLabs and blogged about like crazy already, but just in case you hadn’t heard, here’s my 2¢.

http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/

This new Google site features allowing you to see news stories in a series of columns, easily scrollable back and forth.  It’s a news story timeline, how cool!

Don’t you wish every newspaper & magazine database worked like this!?
Yes, yes, yes, it’s in beta and it’s not perfect, and it has limited sources (for now), and there are some other sites like this kinda already (See: newsmap), but you can see this thing has potential right away, you can see this has a future. But, don’t jsut take my word on it, here’s some other folks takes on it:

Maybe it’ll inspire library vendors to clean up their database interfaces, make them easier to use … hope so for them (and us), otherwise it’s bad for our database stastics as Google will have a lock on this audience.  With all the buzz I’m hearing and reading, in a week Google Timeline has already won the hearts of users and librarians for that matter.  When’s the last time a library newspaper/magazine database ever got this kind of media hype?

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Why hadn't this been done before!? Google News Timeline

In STT on April 29, 2009 at 9:32 am

New from the GoogleLabs and blogged about like crazy already, but just in case you hadn’t heard, here’s my 2¢.

http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/

This new Google site features allowing you to see news stories in a series of columns, easily scrollable back and forth.  It’s a news story timeline, how cool!

Don’t you wish every newspaper & magazine database worked like this!?
Yes, yes, yes, it’s in beta and it’s not perfect, and it has limited sources (for now), and there are some other sites like this kinda already (See: newsmap), but you can see this thing has potential right away, you can see this has a future. But, don’t jsut take my word on it, here’s some other folks takes on it:

Maybe it’ll inspire library vendors to clean up their database interfaces, make them easier to use … hope so for them (and us), otherwise it’s bad for our database stastics as Google will have a lock on this audience.  With all the buzz I’m hearing and reading, in a week Google Timeline has already won the hearts of users and librarians for that matter.  When’s the last time a library newspaper/magazine database ever got this kind of media hype?

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Jing – Do one thing and do it well!

In STT on April 10, 2009 at 9:00 am

To compliment upcoming workshops I’m teaching, here’s an updated re-post from last spring.

I’ve been Jing-ing like crazy lately prepping for a D-I-Y presentation at MLA 2009 in Springfield.  If you don’t know already Jing is a FREE program that can take screenshots or make “movies” of whatever is going on on your desktop.  It’s a great to show folks “How-To” use an online resource like say InfoTrac or OverDrive or EventKeeper.

Video is saved and presented in the Flash format and you can store your videos online at a realted site called Screencast.  Each of your videos has it’s own URL, or you can link or imbed them from your own website.

  • Click here for a collection of NMRLS “how-to” videos on Screencast.

Jing also takes single screen shots which you can store online for FREE at Flickr, here’s my collection of Jing tips on Flickr (also linked below).You can also annotate these images before you upload them to highlight or add notes.

Everything I mentioned above is FREE!
 Run, don’t walk, to your nearest internet and download Jing now!

OK, so there may some expenses involved …  you need a microphone unless you want all your videos to be silent movies.  Pretty much any mic will do and if you’re lucky you have a laptop or netbook with mic built-in.  NMRLS has USB mics to loan out to our member libraries, just contact Scott, click here to see all of the NMRLS loaner equipment & gadgets.

There is also a Pro version of Jing, it allows you to save video in either Flash or MPEG4 format as well as direct uploads to YouTube. It costs $14.95/year, not bad for a few more bells & whistles.  The nice thing about this version is you can edit the video afterward, add another voiceover or a backing music track (see my tips below for another way to do this), as well as link to it off you own server, you don’t need to use Screencast or YouTube.

Here are a few of my YouTube NMRLS How-To videos:

Here are my Jing videos on Screencast.com (via my delicious.com account):

It’s easy, it’s fun, it can be time-consuming …
But, it’s informative, it helps your users, and it’s easy and it’s fun!

Scotts Jing Tips

Scott's Jing Tips