Web Based Office Tools

Answer: 1821

Significance: any of this?

Mobile Technologies

I’d never uploaded photos from my mobile but I dug out the appropriate cable, plugged it in and hey presto. 

This is a picture of a wood near where I live taken earlier in the year when the bluebells were out in force.

I have only used the internet on my mobile a couple of times – mainly to look at news stories and check sports scores.  I find the process quite slow and am concerned about how much it is costing me!

I can certainly see the advantages of using text messages to communicate with our users particularly our NHS users, some of who have difficulty accessing their email – they are currently unable to access email in the library and computer access in the hospital is limited.  Sending library messages to a portable device which the vast majority have would be a really good idea and help improve communication with our users.

Wikis

As a member of MILG (Medicine Information Literacy Group) I’d previously registered with WetPaint in order to use their wiki – though to be honest since I’d registered I hadn’t really looked at it. 

I was good to be able to have a play around with the Learning 2.0 wiki - edit text, add photos, post comments etc. and I can see that they are great forums for collaborating.  I liked the Common Craft podcast idea of using a wiki to organise a trip rather than doing everything via email.

Multimedia

I had a bit of a block on what to post but eventually found this on YouTube which I think is funny if you know anything about Dave Gorman but probably won’t make much sense if you don’t!

I was surprised at how easy it was to add and can see that adding audio and video files can really enhance a blog – for example I enjoy watching the Common Craft videos which have been posted on the Learning 2.0 blog.

Social Networking – Twitter

I already have a Facebook account (which I mainly use for sharing photos with friends) so after I’d read the useful, recommended post – 10 Privacy Settings every Facebook User should know, I signed up with Twitter.  I found some people to follow, including a couple of Learning 2.0 colleagues and added a widget to my iGoogle homepage so I could easily see new ‘tweets’ as they were posted. 

I don’t use the status update facility on Facebook, mainly because I can’t think of anything interesting to say, and therefore had the same problem with Twitter.  I like the fact that the tweets have to be short and sweet (maximum of 140 characters) but does this leave room for anything of interest to be said?  As none of my friends are on Twitter, and I’m not that bothered about what ‘celebrities’ are doing, I don’t think this is a service I’ll be using past this week.

Social Bookmarking – Flickr

I enjoy photography so was keen to take a look at Flickr.  Although it will take some time to upload all my photos onto the site I can see the obvious benefits – a safe place to store my photos and share them with my friends. 

The site is easy to use and the ability to tag the photos, whilst time-consuming to begin with, will definitely help make them easier to organise and sift through.  My brother already uses the site so I was able to link to his photos and also Dave Gorman – a comedian who also takes brilliant photos.  I’ll definitely be making use of this Web 2.0 technology.

Social Bookmarking – Del.icio.us

This week I set up a del.icio.us account.  First I bookmarked Imperial College’s Reporter and then imported some of the favourites from my IE browser.  When adding descriptions and tags it was really useful to be able to have a look at the tags which other del.icio.us users had thought of.  It was also handy to be able to keep a check on the tags I’d used so I could use the same tag(s) where possible, hopefully limiting the list of tags so it doesn’t get too unwieldy.  As I had added quite a few bookmarks at once it took a little time to add descriptions and tags but I can see the obvious benefits of doing this when it comes to organising them and remembering why I thought they were useful in the first place. 

It’s great that you’re not tied to the favourites you’ve saved on a particular computer – I’ve been able to pull together the bookmarks I’ve collected on the various computers I use at work and home which is really useful.

Being able to share bookmarks with other users will hopefully mean I discover some great new resources.  I’ve added Kate Perris (she may not know this!) and hope to add Andrew Regan once he gets himself organised with an account!    

The only thing I’m not sure about is the colour scheme – blue and grey – which I don’t find particularly appealing … these things matter! 

Personalised Homepages – iGoogle

As I already had a Google account I used iGoogle to set up my personalised homepage.  I had fun choosing various gadgets and playing about with the visual themes.  I particularly liked the fact that I could link to the feeds on my recently created Google Reader account.  I created 3 pages which are accessed via tabs at the top of the page – Home, Work and Travel.  I could then spread the gadgets out appropriately.  My Travel page has, for example, the Tube service update, Train Journey Planner and Google Map Search.

I’m definitely going to use this – in fact I already am - it’s a really easy way of accessing lots of resources in one place and is not tied to a computer.

RSS – Google Reader

Today I set up a RSS account.  I’d seen the RSS icon before but never really understood what it was for – now I do!  After reading Gina Tarpani’s article comparing Bloglines and Google Reader (as mentioned in the instructions) I decided to set my account up on Google Reader.  This was very simple as I already had a username and password.

Subscribing to feeds was also very easy.  I started with the Learning 2.0/09 blog and Phil Bradley’s weblog as suggested.  I also set one up to the Library as suggested by Janet Corcoran, one to Andrew Regan’s blog to see how active he is (!) and a couple of non-work related ones (Dave Gorman and Wimbledon – not long to go!) 

Now I’ve got to see whether I will actually use the resource.  It’s interesting to read in other participants’ blogs, who did this course last year and are re-visiting it this year, what technology they are still using and what fell by the wayside.

Learning 2.0 & Blogs

Hello & welcome to my 1st ever blog posting!

Why Learning 2.0?

I’m looking forward to finding out more and actually getting some hands-on experience with a variety of Web 2.0 technologies – some of which I’ve heard about and others of which are new to me.

Blogs:

It was really easy to set this blog up – no need for any techy knowledge which suits me!  I can see there are lots of things I can use to personalise it… I’ll have a go at them later.  I know blogs are used by a number of teams in the Library, the Medicine team having recently set one up, and would seem to be a useful device for transmitting information about about services.  The fact that it is so easy to add content is obviously a bonus.