Thing 17: The Medium is the Message- Prezi and Slideshare

Picture courtesy of Ariane Hunter

 

I’ve wanted to “have a go” with Prezi for ages. The delay was actually seeing it in action so I could get my head around the display, the functionality and how to do snazzy things with it.

I decided over the summer to convert our standard library induction powerpoint to Prezi. This seemed like a good idea as we decided not to do tours for postgraduate students. This was linked to various reasons, the main one being poor attendance by students. It was also very intensive in terms of staff time. So this year the library has concentrated on more roving support on  all floors of the library and focusing on meeting, greeting and helping at the point of need. This in turn means the liaison librarians have been talking and doing even more presentations in Schools and departments. So I wanted to use a Prezi to deliver snappy overviews of the library of anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes.

Quite easy to get to grips with Prezi with zooming, adding images, adding boxes etc. I seemed to spend alot of time faffing about the overall layout and agree with other comments you need to plan in advance instead of adding text and images here there and everywhere.

I was amazed by the feedback from students (seriously not something I’m used to whilst delivering induction presentations in Freshers Week!) Lots of questions about the how I made my presentation, how easy it is to use and how it made a change from powerpoint. Hurrah; job done! I liked having the access to the online version and downloading a separate file as a backup in case something bad happens.

No bad experience for me! I love it! Be careful not to let people feel sick or like they’ve been round and round on a Merry Go ride (hence the picture)

Have a look for yourself at http://prezi.com/iyq1mextfzwx/robinson-library-induction/

I’ve used Slideshare to access other people’s stuff but never uploaded my own. We plan as a team to make more of our teaching material open access andnot  rely on lecturers to upload to Blackboard so I suspect I’ll be using alot more in the future.

Thing 16 Advocacy, speaking up and getting published

There seemed to be a little bit of a discussion on Twitter about the difference between advocacy and activism, if there was one and what role an information professional should play in all of this. See Johanna’s blog post on this subject.

I’m in absolute awe of those who actively get involved and do stuff because they care and want to make a difference. Especially when sacrificing their own time and holiday leave to do it.

I try and promote all types of libraries,  the value of librarians, information literacy and our profession. It’s sometimes easy and sometimes hard depending on people’s perceptions. Generally it’s part of your un-written job description and you should be making an effort to talk about all issues associated with libraries, whenever and wherever you are. I’d be suprised if many people working in libraries didn’t do something already.

Do as much as you can. Simples!

Thing 8 Google Calendar

Personal Use

Although I use many products available from Google, the calendar isn’t one of them. This is because I use my work calendar available in Outlook for everything. I mean everything: from work appointments, birthdays, gym sessions, nights out, dentists. We have shared calendars at work so I’m careful to mark them as private or public. For statistical purposes we also use colours to tag what we are spending our time doing. It makes for a very colourful diary.

The other bonus is that I can access my diary through my smartphone so I have access whenever I go. In my opinion no need to have a separate system or diary (famous last words!) I also have alerts set up in my diary so my PC or phone highlights the important stuff based on the time I’ve set for the alert. Handy for meetings, desk slots and birthdays.

It would be useful sometimes for friends and family to have access to my system so they know what I’m doing and when. Maybe I can sync some of the stuff from my work diary with my Google calendar and then allow them access. All sounds a bit complicated though.

Although I’m a bit persuaded after reading this blog post to go with Google Calendar

Work Use

We use a Google calendar to advertise our teaching sessions and event going on in the library. This is available from the library website. It’s useful to indicate what sessions we run (and how many!) Also handy for Reception and Front Desk staff to use when there are multiple sessions going on in the library and the students are unsure as to which room they are in. Also means a range of people can log in and add events.

Calendar is available at:

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/about/opening/events.php

 

Thing 2 Looking at other cpd23 blogs

Just spent an hour or so looking through the lists of particpants and seeing which other blogs have been created as part of Thing number 1. I’m quite suprised by the range of designs and widgets to display links and feeds. Feel like I should be jazzing up my design but I’ve stopped myself as I think you could “faff” forever.

After attending a workshop by Karen Blakeman on Social Media and Business today at Northumbria University today, I thought I’d spend the rest of the night looking through the tools and options in WordPress. I seem to set up accounts on all sorts of webpages and social media sites without really looking at the default settings and what alerts are possible. So a good wander around Google aswell as WordPress has really helped me to understand a bit more of the technology behind the scenes. Just don’t ask me to explain it!

Thing 1 : Blogs and Blogging

I’ve heard about the 23 things programme for a couple of months on various websites. When I saw it was available this year I thought I’d find out more about it by signing up for the programme.

What I hope to get out of it:

1) General awareness about the range of social media tools available. Like any busy job I’m aware of different products and services on the market but never seem to find the time to explore them. So hopefully by following a more formal programme it’ll push me to investigate weekly and complete the allocated tasks.

2) Sometimes when I explore stuff I feel it takes me ages to understand and get to grip with it; so hopefully by other “experts” providing the know how I’ll be up and running alot quicker instead of stumbling around in the dark.