Welcome to the third Learning 2.0 @ SEMLS class. I created this blog during our first Learning 2.0 class in the Winter of 2008 to share my experiences teaching an online class.  However, as I have told many of my previous class participants, I am a horrible blogger and my posting was infrequent, even as I was expecting all of the participants to post on a weekly basis.

For this class, I decided to try something new and discuss my personal experience with each of the technologies we are covering during the week. I’m hoping this will keep me blogging throughout the course of this class.

I have been writing the SEMLS Tech Watch blog for about four years now. I originally used Blogger for the Tech Watch blog, but I have since moved it over to Movable Type, which is the blogging software installed on our Web server.

I am a sporadic blogger. I can go two months without adding a single post, and then I can add five in one week. This is not an example anyone should follow. This week, we cover the technology behind setting up a blog, but the difficult part is making sure it remains relevant and up to date. And that’s what your blog is all about: content. You need to be committed to regularly posting to your blog.

How frequently should you post? It really depends on the nature of the blog. Some blogs require daily posting. Others can get by with monthly posting. But I think it’s important that your users know if it is something that’s only updated monthly.

Another blogger who is a much more frequent poster, Brian Herzog from the Swiss Army Librarian, once told me that when he started his blog, he just forced himself to set aside time every week so that he would be posting on a weekly basis. If you look at his blog now, you’ll see he usually posts more often than that, but I think it’s a good policy to start that way to get yourself in the habit of posting.

And, one day, I’ll try to do that with my Tech Watch blog!

I do hope you all enjoy the class over the next seven weeks. It’s one of my favorite classes to teach, and I look forward to seeing how everyone progresses through the Web 2.0 universe.

I’ve received a questions from a few people about how I created videos for some of my lessons, and I thought it would be useful to talk here about some of the tools I’ve experimented with in creating some of these videos. I still haven’t found the perfect solution.

To start, I will say that I know Camtasia and Adobe Captivate are commonly used to create tutorials. However, I’ve been in search for a free solution, not just to save SEMLS money, but also because I know many libraries would not be able to spend money on these products. I plan to try the free trials at some time to have a basis for comparison.

I created the tagging tutorial during my first Learning 2.0 class last spring. I used a simple screen capture program called HyperSnap to take static screen shots. Both Windows Vista and most Mac operating systems have built-in tools to take screen captures, but I’ve been using HyperSnap for my handouts for years. I then used Windows Movie Maker (free on every XP and Vista computer) to import the screen shots, record my voice, and create a movie. We have offered a couple of Windows Movie Maker classes with Barbara Andrews in the past, and I intend to bring her back to SEMLS again, either this winter or in the spring. What I like about using Movie Maker is if I do a perfect voice recording with just one second where I stumble upon my words, I can re-edit that one second piece very easily.

Hyperionics, the company that makes HyperSnap, also has a product called HyperCam. This product works much more like Camtasia and Captivate. It records everything you are doing on the screen and allows you to record your voice at the same time. I haven’t tried it yet, but I do intend to try it since it is much more affordable than Camtasia or Captivate. However, there are also some free options that I will discuss below, and HyperCam would have to do a better job than those alternatives to convince me to buy it.

For the week that we did Images and Recommending a Good Book, I had to create a new video for this session since they had been included in other lessons the last time around. I had discovered some freely available screencasting programs, and I wanted to give them a try. I explored using Screencast Recorder, Jing (thanks for the suggestion Inna!) and CamStudio. However, I couldn’t find a way in any of these applications to edit the audio after creating the initial screencast. I ended up using TipCam from uTIPu. This program allows you to re-record the entire audio track if you aren’t happy with the first attempt, but I find it very difficult to record an entire 10-minute audio without any trouble. There’s a reason I never went into radio!

I do intend to try HyperCam and to take a second look at CamStudio. Both applications will save the videos in AVI format, which is something I can import into Windows Movie Maker if I want to do more detailed editing of the video.

I also wanted to mention that we had a class last spring where Rita Gavelis from the Metrowest Regional Library System showed participants how to create tutorials using Windows Media Encoder. I don’t know much about it, but it is free with Windows. We can certainly bring her back for a training as well.

Let me know if you’ve found anything you like to use.

I thought today’s Unshelved strip could give us some perspective as we get ready to explore social networking sites next week.

Just trying a Podcast through WordPress using Feedburner’s podcasting service. I probably won’t use it because there are so many steps involved, but it does offer more storage than Switchpod, and I’m happy to share more information with class participants on how they can set up a podcast using a WordPress blog. My favorite podcasting service, Odeo, seems to be in transition. Although I can continue podcasting the SEMLS CE podcast through Odeo, it looks like they are not yet allowing new accounts to podcast under the new platform.

One of the frustrations of Web 2.0 is that good services are always changing or eliminating the part of their service that makes them so good. Web 2.0 in Libraries Virtual Roundtable

Hi all!

I created this blog during my first Learning 2.0 class to discuss my experience teaching an online class. However, as I’ve already mentioned in comments on some of your blogs, I am a horrible blogger and have a hard time posting on a regular basis. As you can see, I did not keep up with my weekly posts during the last class. I don’t want to become one of those “do as I say and not as I do” instructors, so I will try to do better for this class.

For some history on this class, you may want to read an article I wrote about the original Learning 2.0 @ SEMLS class on page 5 of the April SEMLS Sighting Newsletter. Based on feedback from the last class, I have changed the structure of this class slightly, extending the length of the class by a week and reducing the amount of work assigned on a couple of weeks that were particularly heavy. I also resisted the urge to add new content (and there is a lot of stuff I would like to add), but I will probably be using some new technology to support the instruction.

Hope you all enjoy the class!

I just wanted to write a post about the tools I’m using for this class.

The original Learning 2.0 program used a Blogger blog to post assignments. For some time, before I had even heard of Learning 2.0, I had been thinking I would use a wiki once we started offering online courses. I went back and forth between using a blog and wiki as I was designing this class, and I ultimately decided on a wiki so that I could have greater control over how the content was organized. My colleague, Barbara Andrews of Andrews Consulting, suggested that I look into Zoho because it offers chat, which I also wanted to use at various points during the class. I liked the fact that Zoho had so many applications that I could utilize during the course of the class.

One of those applications was a presentation tool, which I briefly used for the first week’s assignment. I had created a PowerPoint to demonstrate the process for setting up a WordPress blog. I could easily import it into Zoho. The custom animations did not work in Zoho, but I think this is common among online presentation tools. The one problem was that I could not find a way to enlarge the slideshow without giving students access to the editable file. I had some small text in the slideshow that was hard to read in the Zoho slideshow. I ultimately switched to the presentation tool offered through Google Docs, which could be viewed at a larger size.

A couple of other complaints about Zoho. There doesn’t seem to be a consistent way that comments are sorted in the wiki. Most of the class discussion is taking place on the wiki, and it would be useful if they were sorted by the post time/date. I posted a question about this to the Zoho forums, but I have not yet received an answer.

I also wish there was a way to add existing Zoho members to your wiki without the necessity of sending them an e-mail with a link they need to click to join the wiki. We had a couple of problematic signups, and it would have been much easier if I could have said – “Add the person with this Zoho ID to my wiki.”

I’ll let you know how well Zoho chat works after our first chat session.

For the second week of the class, I also tried a video demo of how tagging is used in del.icio.us, flickr and technorati. I then uploaded the video to YouTube. This essentially was my way of trying to replicate an Adobe Captivate experience, a piece of software we currently do not own. This may be a future purchase for our office, but if anybody knows of a more affordable alternative to Captivate, I would love to hear about it. I produced the video in Windows MovieMaker, and it turned out OK in its original state. But the quality degraded during the YouTube upload. After a couple of days, I did poste a link to the WMV file, but it does take a while to download. I’ll explore other video sharing options for next week’s assignment.

NO CELL PHONE USE IN THE LIBRARY!

Originally uploaded by Travelin’ Librarian

This Library Signage Group is a fairly popular group on Flickr. Library cell phone signs are a frequent target of the photographers who contribute to this group.

Hello all! I hope you are enjoying your first week of Learning 2.0 @ SEMLS.

Many of you already know me from classes you’ve taken at SEMLS, but for those of you who haven’t had a chance to make it to our office yet, I wanted to include a brief introduction here. As the Assistant Administrator for Technology at SEMLS, I assist libraries in integrating technology in their services. I also provide assistance and consultation for their online services. I love thinking of new ways libraries can use the Internet to reach out to their users and provide a sense of community in a virtual environment. As libraries try to find their place in the 21st century, I firmly believe we need to offer online services that are as interesting and easy to use as the Web sites our patrons and students are accustomed to using.

My interest in blogs, podcasts, wikis, and other Web 2.o applications goes back several years. However, I must admit I do a better job as a consumer of these resources than as a producer. Although I have my own blog at www.semls.org/tech/technews.html and am working on a new podcast for the SEMLS CE program, I find that I do not post as often as I should.

As part of this class, I am asking participants to post weekly to their blog. You can blog about your experience taking this class, your experiences with the Web 2.0 applications we will be exploring, or about some news item you find that is relevant to this class. Or, you can totally stray away from the Web 2.0 theme in your blog. Your blog is your own personal publishing space on the Web. If you have just been waiting to find some venue to share your thoughts on a particular topic, go ahead and blog about it.

The point of this assignment is to help you transition from a consumer of online content to a publisher. You are more likely to make this transition if you are free to write about the things you love the most.

In my case, I will be blogging over the next seven weeks about my first experience leading an online class. At a minimum, I resolve to blog weekly along with the participants of the class.

On a final note, I would like to reflect on my positive experience with the Internet. One thing I have loved about the Internet is the way it allows me to maintain connection with friends I have made through various stages of my life. I was never very good about writing letters or keeping phone contact with friends, and the Web has allowed me to connect and re-connect with friends I haven’t seen in years or who live as far away as Venezuela. Initially, e-mail was an easy way to maintain these connections, but I soon found that I wasn’t keeping up with e-mail as much as I would like. But social networking apps, like my personal blog, Flickr, and Facebook, have made it much easier to keep in touch with people. I have often heard people worry that the Internet leads to fewer face-to-face social relationships, but, in my case, I’ve found it has helped me maintain relationships that I may otherwise have let fall by the wayside.