07.31.06

Recent Article on Social Networks in USA Today

Posted in Social Networking at 9:15 pm by letc

The short version: MySpace is by far the most popular with 81% of the the traffic share; Facebook comes in at #2 with 7.7%; and, Xanga is the 3rd most popular social networking service with 3.1% of the traffic.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-31-myspace-over_x.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/hotsites/2006-07-31-myspace-invaders_x.htm

And of particular interest to libraries, the article mentions that: “…the House late Monday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would keep libraries and schools from allowing children to access social networking sites, as well as chat rooms. It now goes to the Senate.”

–Pam

07.25.06

Video Podcasting

Posted in Podcasting at 11:11 am by letc

Ellie forwarded some information from another blog about libraries that are using video podcasts.  Here are links:

Westerville Public Library:  http://www.ocls.info/Programs/podcastAndRSS.asp?bhcp=1

Manchester Public Library’s Teen Matrix:  http://castr.westervillelibrary.org/

Orange County Library System:  http://library.ci.manchester.ct.us/teen/podcast/

Public Library Delft:  http://www.dok.info/index.php

–Pam

07.24.06

Knowledge Media Laboratory

Posted in Uncategorized at 6:13 pm by letc

Sent to us by Carol Phillips:

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/programs/index.asp?key=38

How do students learn in the classroom? How can teachers best utilize new and emerging technologies in the classroom? What can teachers do to seamlessly incorporate technology into the learning experience? These are all questions that are asked by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s Knowledge Media Laboratory. On their website, users can learn about their work with communities of teachers, faculty, programs, and institutions over the past several years, and also look over some of their informative case studies. The Gallery of Teaching and Learning is a good place to start one’s exploration of the site, as it contains a number of exhibitions that look at how web-based tools can be used in teaching and how scholarship may change as a result of an increasingly networked milieu. One seminal resource on the site is the KEEP Toolkit. With the Toolkit, teachers and others can create engaging knowledge representations on the web for their own use. For visitors who might feel a bit overwhelmed by this, there
is also a nice tutorial that explains how the Toolkit can be used.

–Pam

07.13.06

Wikalong

Posted in Social Computing at 9:25 pm by letc

From Linda Salem:

I had Wikalong installed to use with Firefox on the workstation in my
office. http://www.wikalong.org/

They call themselves a “wiki-margin for the Internet.” It is cool. Next to
any page, in the margin, I can type in the content I want. Then, others can
come and edit that content just like with any wiki if they are using
wikalong with Firefox of course. Anyone else who uses wikalong with Firefox
will see the margin comment I have made next to the page and can edit and
change it to improve the comment. All the education librarians, for
example, could begin putting together instructional information in the
margins next to the ERIC database.

–Pam

07.07.06

Using Wikipedia as a Reference Source

Posted in Social Computing at 3:16 pm by letc

Sent to us by Jim Julius in ITS:

This is the best thing I’ve seen regarding the whens, whys, and hows of using wikipedia as a source: http://kairosnews.org/developing-a-wikipedia-research-policy

–Pam