Learning and Teaching Technologies

"Presentation software like Powerpoint can bring together both old and new media to create a professional presentation."

One of the educational roles of library is making learning and teaching easy and realistic for people in geographically distant locations to their instructors and institutions.  Distance Learning could be at any educational level for those who do not have the advantage of formal classroom education.  The purpose is to help students learn whenever and wherever they wish.  A typical example of distance learning is this course LIBR 105 00F which gives me the opportunity to post this blog online.

So far, I have enjoyed the opportunity of posting to my blogs information about Social Bookmarking, Facebook, Skype, and other forms of Web 2.0.

  

Library 2.0: Skype

Skype, just like some other forms of Web 2.0, is interactive and collaborative in nature.  Skype could be used in dialogues especially in virtual reference where users could get information from the OPAC by making calls to libraries.  This form of communication fosters screen-sharing and data-sharing between patrons and librarians.  Thus, Library 2.0 is socially rich and also user-centered, engaging, connecting, and communicating with the community of users that it serves.

As at the time of posting this blog, I have downloaded Skype on my laptop, waiting to speak to my group members.

Summary of Resources for Monitoring

Both Resourceshelf and Lisnews proved that libraries and librarians are integral part of a community, contributing to its health.  They demonstrated that the 21st century library's mission is to support reading and serve its community with useful information.  The Internet, however, plays a big role in disseminating information to seekers and also helps libraries to serve patrons in the best way possible through library technology skills.    

    

Web 2.0

                                                                               
Web 2.0 provides media for social interactions.  Already I have experienced some aspects of these in our Wiki Activities, Blog Posts, RSS Feeds, Facebook, and other Social Bookmarks.  More are coming as we proceed in this course.

                                                         Resources for Monitoring
Resourceshelf: A 21-member RLG Partners Social Metadata Working Group reviewed 76 sites relevant to libraries, and museums that supported such social media features as tagging, comments, reviews, images, videos, ratings, recommendations, lists, links to related articles, etc.  More information could be obtained from the full-article on the Website.   

Lisnews: Report from lisnews says that libraries and librarians are not a community 'bolt on' service.  They are an integral part of a community, they help represent a community and they contribute to the health of a community.  That's why cuts to libraries are so dangerous - not just because they deprive people of access to resources, or jobs, or information or pleasure, but because they say 'You don't matter.  You are not important.'  That's not a good thing.

                                                        Classmates' Blogs
Five of my classmates' blogs viewed are those of Sandra, Britta, Wes, Jessica, and Cristal.

Social Bookmarking

 

My experience with Social Bookmarking began with setting up an account with Delicious.  Later, my bookmarks were organized by Tags as they show how new bookmarks are added to Websites.  Moreover, I was able to use my classmates' bookmarks and others could also benefit from mine.  It was real fun going through my colleagues' bookmarks.  I got some nice pictures from Flickr Photos and use them for my blogs. 

Social network forms bonds among people.  Two examples of social networks are Facebook and Myspace.  I don't have much experience with the latter, but I quite enjoy bonds with my family and acquaintances on Facebook.  This screenshots of Facebook show part of my social life; above are pictures of my sons' graduation together with me and my husband, my son's wedding picture, a family friend's wedding picture, and faces of other people.     

Search Competencies

"I am competent; I can search and find anything."  IvyCat is for books, and EBSCO: ASP is for articles"

Self-Assessment of My Search Skills: Using the Search Competencies Document.

The weekly Wiki Assignments has really helped my competencies in searching for information in the  online catalog.  Thanks to my instructor who constantly guides me through her comments on where to search for articles, books, and other information.  For example, I have found out that books are better retrieved from WorldCat while articles are better found from EBSCO: Academic Search Premier.  Also, the lessons on the limitation on Google Search for books, even though it is a good search engine is well noted.  Moreover, key components/concepts in searching, evaluating documents, using search engines, and knowing the differences between structured databases and other Internet resources, all combine together to improve my search competencies. 

  

Sources for Monitoring

Resourceshelf brought news from Flickr blog among others that Flickr is proud to announce their 200 million public Creative Commons licensed photos (still counting more).  They are grateful to all for the celebration of this success.  This achievement makes Flickr the largest CC photo repository in the world!  Moreover, the Creative Commons on Flickr has sharing images which has added color to my blog posts so far.  Thanks to them! 

Lisnews, on the other hand, has some news from which I am writing this: Blake's report says" Start Your Own Little Free Libary."  He says that your little library can be free library for adults, children, or both.  The important thing is to offer a positive selection of good reading that is appropriate to the community.  collections can be about history, heroes, Art; even "how-to"books and classics.  

Added to my social Bookmarking are delicious beta status and delicious popular stacks.     

Network Technologies

Communication is an important aspect of human life.  Effective communications are facilitated around the globe through the means of computers.  Among tasks that computers made possible are: interconnections of libraries and numerous services e.g. e-mail, scanning, and other opportunities that can reach far to the remote parts of the world.

                                                        Report on Sources for Monitoring
 ResourceBlog: http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/
EBSCO Releases 64 New eBook Subject Sets: From the press release, key collection areas increased are: Arts & Humanities, Business, Information Technology, Medical, Personal Growth & General Education, Science & Technology, Social & Cultural Issues, Social Sciences and Vocational Education.  The new subject sets provide an extensive array of subject matter including: American History, leadership & management, LGBT, social networking, nursing and teacher resources.  A full list of the latest subject sets are available at: http://www.ebscohost.com/ebooks/subject-sets.

LISNews: http://lisnews.org/
County of Los Angeles Public Library: The county of Los Angeles Public Library announces that it will add an additional 10,000 eBooks to its digital collections.  These eBooks will be available free of charge for County Library card holders at http://colapublib.org/eBooks.
Amazon.com announced that "kindle and kindle app customers can borrow kindle books from more than 11,000 libraries in the United States."
Support for the kindle platform means that even more County Library customers can take advantage of the County's growing digital collection.  Other support devices include the Nook by Barnes & Noble, the Sony Reader, the iPad and smartphones including the iPhone, Blackberry and Android.
County Librarian Margaret Donnelian Todd says, "We are a library for the 21st century.  Our mission is to support reading and the love of books.  For a hundred years, this Library has made the printed word accessible to all  Los Angeles County residents.  For the next hundred years and beyond, we will continue this important mission.  Our investment in eBooks and digital technology ensures that we provide continued access to books regardless of format."

Social Bookmarking: New Tag -  Libr201 added, monitoring resources Web cites added, Sandra and a couple of other colleagues' blogs added to Libr105 Tag.
 
 

Storage Devices in Libraries: Why Store Information?

It's amazing to see many of medieval and renaissance documents being kept intact in library archives.  How is this possible?  Libraries have the good reputation of preserving and sharing materials or information.  Originals or copies of both old and new materials are stored and preserved for future reference in libraries.  I came across some old pictures of past American Presidents and many important documents like the constitution while I was searching the Flickr Creative Commons.  Take a look at these:

                                     One-hundred Fiftieth Anniversary of the Constitution, 1941 - 1945.
                                   
                                    Photo belongs to the U.S. National Archives' photostreams (8,042). 
                                     Rights: No known restrictions on publication.
                                     Photo was taken on September 17, 1937.
                              
  

For president, Abraham Lincoln.  For vice president, Hannibal Hamlin (LOC)

Photo belongs to Library of Congress' photostream (14,055)

                                         Rights: No known restrictions on publication.
                                         The photo was taken some time in 1860.
Notes: Prints shows a large campaign banner for Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865. and running mate Hannibal Hamlin. Lincoln's first name is writen here as "Abram." The banner consists of a thirty-three star American flag pattern printed on cloth. A bust portrait of Lincoln is encircled by stars, in the corner of the banner.

Information sharing and safeguiding are the major tasks of libraries; from oral history, down to writing in paper, sound recordings, films, hypertext documents, etc.  Sometimes, I ponder in my heart how numerous full text of articles, journals, and periodicals in general are made possible on the Internet.  Thanks to the invention of magnetic media which serves as a storage system.  It makes digital devices like videos and thousands of other formats possible to access and distribute by placing them on hard drives from where we can download files (transfer directly) to our computers' hard drive or back up in other portable forms of magnetic media.  A practical example is the Respondus LockDown Browser
that was required to be downloaded on our computers in order for us to access Session 1, Term 1 quiz.

                                                        Sources for Monitoring
From ResourceBlog: http://web.resourceshelf.com/go/resourceblog/
An exiting new initiative about the World Wide Web Index was announced by the World Wide Web Fountain on September 18, 2011.  This will be the world's first multi-dimentional measure of the Web and its impact on people in a large number of countries.  According to the news, it will be a composite index, incorporating political, economic, social, and developmental indicators as well as indicators of Web connectivity and infrastructure. 

From Lisnews:  http://lisnews.org/
 Do Book Ratings Belong in Library Catalogs?  Blakes expressed his concern over this question.  He said, "to me, it feels like a violation of public library philosophy."  He said further that it is less of a problem to him when rating is average or high because it would encourage patrons to check out books they are already considering.  But when patrons see a low rating on a book in catalogs, especially a rating not attributed to an individual patrons, it seems that the library is bad-mouthing the book.  This of course, he said, discourages rather than promotes literacy.