Simon CUL ILS 23 Things

Week 6, Week 7, Week 8
Because of two weeks’ worth of holiday, I am combining a lot of the Things in this week’s blog. I think I might have to come back and add more reflection in next week’s “innovation time”.

Week 6
Thing 13: Prezi
The first time I saw a Prezi was at the start of July on a CPD-25 course at the University of Sussex. It looked really good.

My First Prezi on Prezi

Looks good as I’m sure you’ll agree but then so did powerpoint at one point. I think the problem is more to do with how people use tools like this rather than what tools they use. I remember one meeting where someone had just pasted their hour long speech onto PowerPoint. They could just have easily done that on Prezi.


Thing 14: Doodle
I found Doodle quite useful but to be honest I think a good old fashioned email, text or phone conversation is better for personal occasions. And I do not think it looks that professional for work or training related invitations.

Thing 15: Survey Monkey
I’ve seen survey monkey used a few times at City. This is the first time I have ever created a questionnaire and it’s been good. I found it a bit hard to navigate at first. Some of the terms used were a bit obscure and the questionnaire doesn’t look sharp but it does its job. My questionnaire is here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TMN959P

One Extra Cool Thing: Remember the Milk

I have recently started Remember the Milk to organise deadlines, to-do lists. Unfortunately I don’t find it as good as a shared calendar on Outlook or paper diary. It is good to check you have met deadlines and I do this regularly but I don’t think this is the tool to do it. Other than that it is excellent.

Google Docs
I have used google docs before.

Week 7

Thing 16: Slide Share
I have been playing for Slideshare. I have not put my own slides on yet. I like it. I think powerpoints can be just as good as prezi. It's like my math's teacher said. It's not how many buttons the calculator has, its how well trained you are to use it.

Thing 17: Wikis
I have used a few wikis in my time. I like the wikis on the portal.

Thing 18: Delicious/Diggo

I have been playing around with delicious and Diggo for a little while now. They are both really useful. I use them in similar way to the way I used google reader but I find them both much better.

I find stuff like tags are a bit weak. It is hard to know how to tag because of etiquette i.e. Should I tag a bookmark Norman and Housley, NormanHousley, or Norman_Housley etc. No one seems to agree meaning you need to do multiple tags for the same subjects. I also noticed the same people on both sites bookmarking the same things. However using these two sites I have discovered new websites which are really good. I was also able to upload my bookmarks onto Diigo from delicious really easily. I am looking forward to exploring book sites in more depth later on.

http://www.delicious.com/Bralee

http://www.diigo.com/profile/sbbd588

I think they will be really useful for our subject librarians and look forward to seeing them use it.

Week 8
Thing 19: YouTube

I like YouTube a lot. It has a real potential to spread information. There is a problem though with time wasting. You can easily go from a video on Boolean operators to some student from UCLA to people falling down escalators. 

The best YouTube video on libraries I’ve ever seen is still this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cCVbHo_HGE  This is another  classic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dstiqYn2_wE 

Thing 20: Podcasts
I used podcasts quite a lot. I especially like Lord Bragg’s work on In Our Time and the Folkways-Smithsonian. http://www.folkways.si.edu/explore_folkways/folkways_collection.aspx
Although you can’t download it, you can find all the old In Our Times on the BBC site. I heard they were planning to do this for more, someone said all, shows.
My favourite episode is still http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0054921 A lucid classic.

Extra Cool Thing:
I have used Last.Fm and Spotify for a while now. I haven’t used Grooveshark before now but so far it has pleased me immeasurably. I also added to http://open.spotify.com/user/melon_h/playlist/1S78x8wh9SkUyZOhXXmPOI .