Other than using our computers to play games the number one thing kids do is look for photos, be it for school projects or their own interest.
I love all the options at BigHugeLabs. Make a magazine cover, movie poster, pocket photo album, etc. There are months worth of activities for kids right there. Create a literary or news magazine and add designing the cover as part of it. Ditto for a movie poster. The possibilities are endless as long as you have interested kids and access to a couple of computers with internet. I can't wait to present some of these options to our fledgling Tween TAB. (I need a better name for that.)
A couple of other image sites I love are:
1. Picnik - my favorite tool for doing simple adjustments to photos, though there are some more advanced options as well
2. BlockPoster - I made some photo backdrops, so kids could pretend they were at the beach.
(I'm having way too much fun making librarian trading cards for some of my colleagues.)
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Week 4 - Photos
For the past couple of weeks we've been discussing the use of the word Tween, it's current use and how much to embrace the terminology ourselves. The day after the initial email came through my email I was shopping for a retirement card at Walmart (they didn't have them, by the way). What they did have was a section of greeting cards marketed for tweens. Seriously? How many tweens shop for greeting cards? At any rate, this was the first time I saw the use of the word outside of professional literature. Have you seen it out and about?
Furthermore, do you market just to tweens? And do you use the word tween or have you found a suitable replacement? Do you have staff that focus on tween services?
Speaking of tweens, have you seen the new Dora?
Week 3 - Firefox and Addons
I've experimented with any number of browsers. IE, Flock, Chrome, Safari and Firefox. Though I had been using Firefox exclusively about a year ago I settled on using Flock at work and Safari at home. (Because suddenly, every time I had to load a new page in Firefox at work I had to type in my password, and at home it got really slow.)
I'm glad to have an excuse to try Firefox again. I love it. My favorite bits are being able to have multiple rows of tabs open, keywords for searches, determining where tabs open, and control L. I'm big on customization. I'll have to give it an extended preview to see if I run into roadblocks of compatibility like I did the last time I tried to use it at work.
Customization and versatility will become increasingly important in all software we use. The ability to tag bookmarks is fantastic. As the amount of accessible information grows the need for users to organize that information in a way that is meaningful to them becomes vital for success.
Customization and versatility will become increasingly important in all software we use. The ability to tag bookmarks is fantastic. As the amount of accessible information grows the need for users to organize that information in a way that is meaningful to them becomes vital for success.
Week 3 - Wikis
Apparently, I forgot to blog about week 3.
So, wikis . . . I find some wikis extremely helpful and others nearly pointless (even if they shouldn't be). The key to it all is organization and standardization. Otherwise things end up being a hodgepodge of links and articles that no one can find. There are some library wikis out there like that, but I'm not naming names. The other issue is ease of access.
For the past year I was responsible for migrating information from an independent PBWiki to our state wiki. Before that I had created a wiki for the children's services of our large system using Google Sites. (There's an example of a Google site here.)
The idea for the system wiki was to share information, cut down on those pesky emails asking if anyone had a frog puppet to lend. However, the site is rarely used with the exception of a couple of people. I have a couple of theories as to why. One, it required a Google Account to access. (Even when we provided a general account for everyone to use the matter of remembering the login proved a roadblock.) Additional roadblocks including little to no training for staff and the fact that it was not part of our intranet. I have to admit I've quit using the system wiki for very much, because there's not information there I didn't add.
The use of the children's wiki picked up a bit when we posted our summer sample crafts and program ideas to it. What would you do to promote use of an internal wiki?
Training for wikis is pretty straight forward, after all, if you can write up an email or type a word document you can contribute to a wiki. I find the most difficult step is insuring there's a core architecture to the wiki to facilitate navigation.
So, wikis . . . I find some wikis extremely helpful and others nearly pointless (even if they shouldn't be). The key to it all is organization and standardization. Otherwise things end up being a hodgepodge of links and articles that no one can find. There are some library wikis out there like that, but I'm not naming names. The other issue is ease of access.
For the past year I was responsible for migrating information from an independent PBWiki to our state wiki. Before that I had created a wiki for the children's services of our large system using Google Sites. (There's an example of a Google site here.)
The idea for the system wiki was to share information, cut down on those pesky emails asking if anyone had a frog puppet to lend. However, the site is rarely used with the exception of a couple of people. I have a couple of theories as to why. One, it required a Google Account to access. (Even when we provided a general account for everyone to use the matter of remembering the login proved a roadblock.) Additional roadblocks including little to no training for staff and the fact that it was not part of our intranet. I have to admit I've quit using the system wiki for very much, because there's not information there I didn't add.
The use of the children's wiki picked up a bit when we posted our summer sample crafts and program ideas to it. What would you do to promote use of an internal wiki?
Training for wikis is pretty straight forward, after all, if you can write up an email or type a word document you can contribute to a wiki. I find the most difficult step is insuring there's a core architecture to the wiki to facilitate navigation.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Week 2 - Track My Library
I've been using Google Alerts for awhile to track by library system. Most of the hits I get off that are from our own web pages and event calendars, but it's nice to see when other sources pick us up. We were mentioned on professional wrestling site. Also, I once found an self-published author complaining about the difficulty of getting in the library. It's great to know what's being said about us, even if, especially if it is not complimentary. I think everyone should know when their library and library director make the news.
This type of information is crucial to marketing because it shows what information is being disseminated and what isn't. It can inform how to word tweets, blog posts, etc. I can definitely imagine monitoring these results as part of a PR job description.
I will be adding Addict-o-Matic to my toolkit. The results are robust without including very much of the unrelated things that appear in both Google Alerts and socialmention.
This type of information is crucial to marketing because it shows what information is being disseminated and what isn't. It can inform how to word tweets, blog posts, etc. I can definitely imagine monitoring these results as part of a PR job description.
I will be adding Addict-o-Matic to my toolkit. The results are robust without including very much of the unrelated things that appear in both Google Alerts and socialmention.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Week 2 - Delicious
How happy am I that Delicious took all the extra periods out of their name? Very. How happy am I that I finally have a solution to making Delicious work for us? Even more so.
My problem with Delicious has always been that throughout the course of the day I could be on any one of four computers - and so could 6 other people. So how do you use Delicious easily when you have to log in and out constantly?
I just tried setting up an account that could be used on our public service desk to access the sites we use regularly. It sent me on a wild goose chase of logging in and out of Yahoo and Delicious. One of my biggest pet peeves is having to link accounts like Delicious to a Yahoo account, but still have separate log in screens, usernames and passwords. In my experience the multiple account thing has been one of the biggest barriers to learning these new tools.
How can we use delicious? I'd like to have an account that could be active on our public service computers so that bookmarks did not have to be added separately to each computer and so that they would be consistently labeled and organized.
However, I've given up using it personally. I've just found using the service to be too frustrating. One of our IT guys came to fix my computer yesterday while I was in the middle of trying to set up the Delicious account and suggested I try Google Bookmarks instead. I think I'll give it a try.
There's lots of potential for students to collaborate on group projects with Delicious. Just like with a Wiki it would cut back on a lot of email back and forth. I like the idea other people are floating about adding the toolbar to our public computers. I may be adding this to my database and research talks.
My problem with Delicious has always been that throughout the course of the day I could be on any one of four computers - and so could 6 other people. So how do you use Delicious easily when you have to log in and out constantly?
I just tried setting up an account that could be used on our public service desk to access the sites we use regularly. It sent me on a wild goose chase of logging in and out of Yahoo and Delicious. One of my biggest pet peeves is having to link accounts like Delicious to a Yahoo account, but still have separate log in screens, usernames and passwords. In my experience the multiple account thing has been one of the biggest barriers to learning these new tools.
How can we use delicious? I'd like to have an account that could be active on our public service computers so that bookmarks did not have to be added separately to each computer and so that they would be consistently labeled and organized.
However, I've given up using it personally. I've just found using the service to be too frustrating. One of our IT guys came to fix my computer yesterday while I was in the middle of trying to set up the Delicious account and suggested I try Google Bookmarks instead. I think I'll give it a try.
There's lots of potential for students to collaborate on group projects with Delicious. Just like with a Wiki it would cut back on a lot of email back and forth. I like the idea other people are floating about adding the toolbar to our public computers. I may be adding this to my database and research talks.
Week 2 - Google Reader
Google Reader is one of the 4 websites I visit every day. I tried multiple RSS readers before settling on Google's. If only I had time to catch up on 1000+ unread items I have waiting for me.
One of my favorite features is being able for create folders so I can sort my feeds into work related and just for fun.
Reader has definitely kept me more in the loop in terms of upcoming titles. The flip side is that as my time gets filled with more and more things I no longer have time to read the hundreds of blogs I did a year ago. So what do I do when I face information overload? I just let all those unread posts sit there, unread. I ignore them. Every three months or so, when I can't take it anymore I just mark all posts as read. Eventually I end up feeling even less informed because I've created a mental block that stops all the information. It's time to go in and weed my feeds to a more manageable list.
One of my favorite features is being able for create folders so I can sort my feeds into work related and just for fun.
Reader has definitely kept me more in the loop in terms of upcoming titles. The flip side is that as my time gets filled with more and more things I no longer have time to read the hundreds of blogs I did a year ago. So what do I do when I face information overload? I just let all those unread posts sit there, unread. I ignore them. Every three months or so, when I can't take it anymore I just mark all posts as read. Eventually I end up feeling even less informed because I've created a mental block that stops all the information. It's time to go in and weed my feeds to a more manageable list.
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