Wednesday 25 August 2010

Thing 20

Still waiting for my collaborator to get this far . . .

Friday 13 August 2010

Thing 23 - Rosy's Wordle


Thing 23

Phew, made it!
So, to evaluate.
Some of the things are great gadgets and I'm glad I've found out about them - Doodle's really good. Zotero and Delicious seem to have a lot to offer. My iGoogle page is useful and now I know what to do with RSS feeds.
Seeing the social networking stuff has been interesting, too. There has been discussion about the Darwin Correspondence Project having a presence in this area; but it seems to me that if you want to do this you have to do it properly. Running a Facebook page is a commitment - nobody's interested if you haven't posted anything for three months.
So - definite possibilities, but like most things it takes hard work to be really successful.

Things 3 & 4

This is the proof of the pudding, I suppose. I can certainly see it value as a means of assessing students' involvement with a course of teaching.

Thing 22

Since our project has increased its staff numbers and has now acquired a third office about as far from the existing two offices as it is possible to be unless it was up the tower, I can see that wikis could be very useful to organise and plan without lots of telephone calls and emails.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

Thing 21

I haven't made a podcast myself, but there are several on the Darwin Correspondence Project's website.
There's one about the dramatisation of the correspondence - called 'Re:Design' - at

http://mediaplayer.group.cam.ac.uk/component/option,com_mediadb/task,play/idstr,CU-CSF-PC07-05_DarwinCorrespondence/vv,-2/Itemid,57

There are also interviews about Darwin and his relevance today which can be accessed from this web page

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/commentary

Like a lot of things, the more effort is put in, the better the final product.

Thing 20

This seems to me to be a good idea for collaborative working, but I haven't had much luck getting my collaborator up to speed on this! So I'm waiting to see what happens when someone else starts to add to the item I've created.

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Thing 19

The articles about the differenct libraries were most interesting - especially the Orkney one, as we have used the library services there. It's easy to appreciate how, in such an isolated community, social networking such as Facebook or Twitter can make people feel more involved. As for marketing the project I work for, this would have to be discussed with the rest of the project staff.

Thing 18

Zotero has been recommended by a colleague, so I've been keen to give it a try. After a brief experiment it seems easy to use and I shall be pleased to use it for real. With its little icon in the bottom right of the screen I may not forget its existence! In fact, it seems such a good idea that I have myself recommended it to my student children. Creating a bibliography can be such a tedious task that anything that improves speed and accuracy is useful.

Monday 9 August 2010

A few comments

Google diary: I notice the UL is running two diaries which you can find on its home page. The Google diary in the 'Library toolkit' suggests that the Spies exhibition is still running.
Facebook - if an organisation has a Facebook page, then really it needs to be active - something appearing at least every week. The Cambridge Libraries page hasn't had anything added to it since 3 May. That makes it easy to forget about. It seems to me that the Orkney Libraries on line presence is successful because library staff are busy putting things on it.
LinkedIn - the Darwin project is being pestered by someone who wants to be linked to it. But the darwin Project isn't LinkedIn.