Tag Archives: facebook

Community, collaboration, conversation and content creation

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Module 4 OLJ activity – Arizona State University Library Minute

The Library Minute videos from Arizona State University Libraries tick all the right boxes

  • They are short
  • focus on one topic at a time
  • give a lot of information in a short time without over-complicating things
  • show where to go to learn more
  • and there’s just enough daggy humour to make you smile.

They would be well-received by today’s university students who, like millions of other young (and not so young) people have made YouTube the second top search engine.

I imagine these videos, along with the other social media tools used by the library, help break-down communication barriers by making the library staff approachable and available in multiple ways both online and in real life. The ASU twitter stream includes study tips, timely information about extended hours, competitions and special events. Their Facebook page includes lots of eye-catching visuals with similar information to the Twitter stream in longer, less frequent posts.

I am seriously impressed by the videos and I wonder how many man-hours go into making each one? The technological side would be relatively easy, even just with an iPad you can green screen (Green Screen by Do Ink), edit (iMovie), add effects and so on; but before they got to that stage someone (or several people) have spent serious time writing the script and story-boarding. They are evidence of a strong collaborative process and co-ordinated marketing plan. I would love to create similar videos for my library even though I don’t have the same level of resources behind me.

On a final note, this video, highlighting ways to have fun at the library is one of my favourites. Who wouldn’t want to connect with a library like that!

 

Social Networking and me

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INF506 Assignment 1 – OLJ first entry

Social MEdia by John Atkinson is licenced under CC BY NC ND 3.0

Social networking is the use of online tools to connect, communicate, share and collaborate with other people. Social networking can be used for purely social reasons or for education or work. Social networking enables people with common interests to connect in ways unthinkable before the birth of the world wide web and particularly the development of participatory web 2.0 tools which allow an individual to publish their writing, photographs, videos and so on.

I am proud to be Twitter user no.16,589,509 having joined in October 2008. At that point I already feared I was a late-adopter! Twitter is the heart of my PLN and is invaluable for my work in a school library, my interests in education and technology, and was a key driver for the connections I’ve developed with my fellow MEd (Knowledge Networks and Digital Innovation) students. That said, I also follow various accounts for news purposes and quite a few people/accounts just for their entertainment value.  Last year I set up and used a Twitter account for the Disaster Resilience Education project I worked on at Australian Red Cross and at my previous school I set up an account mainly to follow accounts to generate a Paperli daily news edition.

I use Facebook mostly for personal and social connections, all my Facebook friends are people I knew in real life before we became Facebook friends. In contrast in my early days on Twitter there were very few people I followed who I’d actually met. One of the great joys of Twitter though, is how wonderful it is when I actually get to meet one of my “old friends” and I’m happy to say that I now know many of the people I follow on Twitter and we were able to connect in real life because of the Twitter connection.

I belong to a few Facebook groups that are education/library/technology focused but I’ve not been an active user of them (until now with the INF506 group).

I’ve been using Google+ more and more of late, particularly since my experience at the Google Teacher Academy in September. I like the way the communities work and how everything integrates really well with other Google tools like calendar and hangouts.

I’ve used Diigo for bookmarking for a long time and before that I used Delicious. I don’t regard it as “social” in the way Twitter and Facebook are but I belong to a number of groups and have also created groups for work purposes.

Over the years I have belonged and contributed to a number of Ning networks and at my previous school I set up and managed a Ning network for our year 12 students and their teachers.

This is where you can find me:

Through studying this subject I hope to gain a more informed basis on which to draw on in order to advocate for the use of social networking within my library and school. Like many schools, mine is protective and wary of social media, particularly regarding the participation of students. I would like to develop my knowledge of the research about best practice in this field in order to make informed contributions to decision-making processes.