Week 10/Play Week 2/Lesson #21: Mashup Editors

Discovery Exercise #1:
Let's study some extended uses of Mashups: Go to Mashable.com and discover the 11 crazy ways to browse Flickr photos.

Through other learning 2.0 Discovery Exercises, I am now familiar with several of the 11 crazy ways to browse Flickr photos. As for the new ones...

Depictr: I love music, so I should love this. Plus, I am a lyrics person, which is probably the fault of the Literature major in me. I tried the opening lines from Snow Patrol's Hands Open. The result was suprisingly tame, considering that Depictr searched the words/tags grave, digging, and tongue.

Flickr Combat was cute...if you used cats or dogs.

Flickr Numbers: I get to see interesting photos, randomly, without having to think...I like!



Exercise #2:1:
Go to Mashup Awards' website and explore the many mashups created by different mashup editors.

The Mashup of the Month Award for September goes to....

LazyLibrary!

Well, that's great. Apparently, LazyLibrary will allow you to "find books on any topic without having to worry about high page counts." According to MashupAwards, LazyLibrary allows you to search for books with 200 or less pages by pulling in book data from Amazon and filtering out any book with more than 200 pages.

Hmm....I want to believe that this is a good thing. So, I said to myself, "Self, can you think of a good, solid educational use for this mashup?" After I chastised myself for talking to myself (again), I thought about a specific assignment, one that we often get questions about at my public service desk. As a class requirement, students in a certain class are required to read several books from several genres. Often, they want "shorter" books because of time contraints. I guess this mashup could help those students find books that fit the genre requirement of the class while also working within time constraints. Of course, they would still need to search for those books in our library...

I also checked out Oakland Crimespotting, an interactive map of crimes in Oakland, California, that also includes the date, time, and type of crime reported. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed for a location to receive alerts about crimes in a chosen area. MashupAwards points out how this mashup takes your local neighborhood watch to a whole new level, but I think that instructors and students in the Criminal Justice program, Police Studies program, and other such programs might find such a mashup interesting.

2. Now it's your turn! Try create your own Mashups by using the Mashup editors.

I'll give it a go, but I don't think I will be blogging about it or linking to it!

Week 10/Play Week 2/Lesson #20: Mashups

Discovery Exercise #1:

On my first visit to Mashup Directory, what do I find on the very first page? SkateSpotter, a mashup that allows users to search, rate, and discuss skate spots, parks, and shops and identify the locations of these spots using Google Maps. You can also upload, view, and rate videos. JN may like ;)!

I know that many of these mashups can be fun, but I wanted to find some library/education type mashups. So, I dug around a bit and found Boulder Library with Amazon Reviews , which should have allowed me to view/access Amazon.com customer reviews and editorials within the online card catalog of the Boulder, Colorado public library, but....it won't load. Sounds interesting...oh, well.

When that didn't work quite as well as I would have liked, I returned to my search and found E41ST. This mashup -- named after New York's East 41st Street, Library Way -- "provides an integrated interface for browsing at Amazon, and looking up at your public library." It is an interesting little mashup. If you would like to try it, you can either sign up for an account or give it a test run by using the guest login.

E41ST allows you to keyword search or browse categories/genres for books in Amazon, and see book covers, customer comments, reviews, etc... If you find a book you are interested in, you can either search Amazon to purchase or to search your library. If you create an account, you can select primary and secondary libraries from a list of available libraries. The mashup will search for books in your primary library's online catalog first; if the book does not appear to be available at your primary library, your secondary library catalog will be searched. As of 09/17/2007, there were no Kentucky libraries on the list of available libraries, but the creator is always accepting new additions. You can request your own favorite/local library be added to the list of supported libraries, but there are some restrictions/requirements.

This mashup also allows you to add items to a bookshelf that you can then make accessible on from web page or blog.

As for the Ten Best Flickr Mashups....

Flickr Retrievr: Fun, but how is it retrieving? Is it really based on my sketch, or is it just random?
http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/#sketchName=2007-09-17-17-46-28-988361.2

http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/#sketchName=2007-09-17-17-46-28-988361.4

http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/#sketchName=2007-09-17-17-46-28-988361.5

Spell with Flickr: Hmm..it does look shockingly similar to a ransom note...




Fastr is fun. It also kind of provides an interesting example of uncontrolled vocabulary/tagging...an answer to one of my 'games' was "throw"...I guessed "toss." Same idea, different words.

Flickrball gave me broken images, but seemed like fun from the description...I'll definitely try it out later.

Not touching Flickr Sudoku.

Discovery Exercise #2:

As for educational value or merit: I am sure there are countless ways that even the "fun" applications could be used in an educational setting...you just have to match the right setting/assignment to the right mashup.

Week Nine/Lesson #19: Podcasts

I think I've done too many Discovery Exercises in a row, so I'm going to make this one brief...

I visited the three podcast directories suggested in this week's lesson:

Podcast.net
Podcastalley.com
Yahoo Podcasts

All three seemed adequate. The categories or genres in all three could be useful/interesting if you just want to browse a certain area of interest. The "top ten" or "most popular" categories are also interesting. I especially liked that I could browse tags at Podcast.net. I browsed tags associated with library, libraries, librarian(s), etc...and found a few things that I might be interested in. Unfortunately, I am currently at a public service desk, sitting at a computer with no sound...so no podcast viewing for me!

I did investigate and discover how to add the RSS feed for a podcast to my Google Reader. When I get back to a computer where I can view a couple of these podcasts, I may be adding a few. Also, I noticed an article this week's Eastern Progress about EKUcast. It seems that, later in September, EKU will offer podcasts about the "happenings on campus." The podcast will be free, and students, faculty, staff (and others) may subscribe (free on iTunes for your iPod) or watch them directly on the EKU website. Hopefully, I will soon be able to subscribe to EKUcast and keep up with the "happenings on campus!"

Week Nine/Lesson #18: Video - Discover YouTube

Okay, I must admit that I LOVE YouTube. Personally, much of my YouTube viewing is musical in nature. YouTube is a great place to find videos, live recordings, etc... of bands you like. It is especially useful if you happen to enjoy musical artists from other countries who are not yet "released" in the US.

I'm not sure how libraries could use YouTube...maybe for advertising/marketing the library and its services? Since I was a bit stuck on this, I decided to look for libraries on YouTube. The first video I stumbled across was actually developed by students in a library science marketing class University of Pittsburgh (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItCIHAksjf4). From there, I found several "I love my Library" themed videos (it seems that there was some sort of contest), which do end up serving as advertisements:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeQI25n8qPQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcNIsWExKEw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-oBHCsFbkk

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=i+love+my+library

Now, for the optional embedding...enjoy!:

Week Eight/Lesson #17: Processing Words on the Web

Discovery Exercise:

1. Create a free account for yourself in either Zoho Writer or Google Docs.
2. Explore the application and its features by creating a few test documents.
3. Create a blog post about your discoveries:
4. How does the application you chose compare to word processing software you're familiar with?
5. What features did you like/dislike the most?
6. Can you think of any ways the application you chose would be useful to you or to EKU students?
7. Optional: If you're up for the challenge, try writing your blog entry in ZW or GD and then using the "publish" feature to post it to your blog.

As you can see from the list above, the Discovery Exercise for Lesson #17 instructed me to create a free account in one of two free web-based word processing programs: Zoho Writer or Google Docs. Since I already have a Google account, I chose to explore Google Docs.

Google Docs is interesting. It is fairly easy to use and incorporates most of the more commonly used features of the word processing software with which I am familiar. It is a bit "bare bones" and simplified; for instance, as far as I can tell, it seems that there are only about twelve font styles and seven font pt. sizes. Of course, I tend to use only one or two fonts consistently, and those are included. As a current student, I am relatively confident that most students also use only one or two fonts and font sizes. I think the ability to share documents with others and being able to designate those individuals as either "collaborators" (can edit the document) or as "viewers" (can only view) is interesting, and could be useful for group work/projects. Plus, Google Docs will also provide a RSS feed of document edits.

...and to complete this Discovery Exercise, I would like to point out that I typed this blog in Google Docs AND used the "publish" feature to post it to my blog.

*Just a note: after posting via the "publish" function in Google Docs, I had to rename this blog post in blogger. I named/saved/titled the Google Doc the same title I wished it to have when posted to my blog and directed Google Docs to do that (or at least I think that's what I told it!), but Google Docs still titled the posting using the first view words of the first line of the document. Oh, well.

Week Eight/Lesson #16: Intro to Web-Based Applications

The lesson for this week instructed us to browse through the blog posts on UCD Library 2 go, read bout the different applications highlighted for students by the librarians who maintain this blog, and then blog about our reactions, specifically about interesting applications or applications that our students might find useful.

All of this is definitely interesting, especially seeing posts about applications that are used by people I know and realizing that these types of applications are much more a part of our lives (read MY LIFE) than I thought.

As for which applications EKU students might find useful, I've seen students (geography students, maybe?) use Google Earth to create a better mental image of the terrain on a flat map of some far away place that they could not possibly visit. Then again, maybe they are just curious and are not using it for any educational purpose. My husband used Google Earth recently to see just how close a hotel in Colorado was to the interstate.

Google's free software pack, with its promise of some level of Norton Security Scan and Spyware Doctor Starter Edition, is intriguing, although I wonder what level of protection is provided. Also, StarOffice, zoho, Google Docs, thinkfree and other free Microsoft Office alternatives might go over well with students who cannot afford the $70 Microsoft Office Pro offered through the EKU Computer Store (yes, I know it is a major discount, but still...some of these students don't have an extra $70 dollars), or those who just want to "stick it to the Microsoft man."

Any application that includes citation formatting is usually a hit with our students, especially when they are being asked to cite in several different styles across disciplines, so free Open Source software such as Zotero could be helpful.

I think the very fact that I personally know students (my sister uses a free Open Source word processing application...I can't remember which) who are using these applications says something about the benefits of being aware of such web applications if you work in higher education, whether in the library or elsewhere.

Week Seven/Lesson #15: Get your hands dirty in the wiki sandbox!

Discovery Exercise:

Once you have edited or created a page, write a short blog entry about wikis. How could we use a wiki in the library? Can you think of another use for a wiki outside the library?

Wow! I edited our wiki! Yay!

Uses in the library? Hmm...as lots of my coworkers have mentioned at the brownbags and/or in their own blogs, I think a wiki could possibly make a great library intranet.

Outside the library? I have a friend in grad school who is constantly working on group projects. Sometimes it is a presentation, sometimes it is a research paper/project. I watch her and her fellow group members struggling to communicate and share resources or other useful information via email or (worse) Blackboard. Now that I am a little more familiar with wikis and how they work, I think that a wiki would be a much better alternative to mass emails and the oh-so-clunky Blackboard. It would definitely be a great way for multiple members to edit and add to a presentation script or a term paper; plus, everyone would know when a change was made, who made it, and why the change was made. Of course, this is assuming that all individuals involved know how to use a wiki...

Week Seven/Lesson #14: Gettin' Wiki with it!

Discovery exercise:

Use some of these wikis to see how this flexible tool is being used in libraryland. Write a short blog entry about your favorite library wiki or about an application for a wiki that you might see in our own library.

All the wikis seem pretty neat, so I don't think I have a favorite. Sure, some are more useful or more attractive than others, but over all I think the concept is a great idea.

As for an application for our library...

Much like my coworkers, I think that a wiki has great potential for a library intranet.

One more possible application...

I hate to bring these terms up, but...when the time comes again, could strategic planning committees in our library and in other areas of the university make good use of a wiki? I remember when strategic planning, QEPs, objectives, goals, and the like became a big issue here...and these big issues came with lots of meetings. It seems that a wiki could lighten that burden. Sure, it would have to have some tighter rules, guidelines, and restrictions on who could create or edit content (only members of the committees, verified by EKU email?), but it's possible and could save time.