About Jing

Jing - This is a screen capturing tool. I love the beautiful interface and how it sits at the top of your screen - you can't possibly "lose" this tool!
The bundled tutorials are excellent and easy to understand. I think it is wonderful that this software is free; and its' video screen capturing tool can be used in many ways that are applicable to schools and libraries. Jing is a great tool for making tutorials on using internet resources, like search engines and databases. For this assignment, I made a Jing video on using the Florida Electronic Library, which I will share with my students at my high school. We have an  English class that  is currently doing a research project on genocide and our school is lacking the internet resources that would help students with their project. Many students just use Google, period. Since, FEL is free for all students in Florida, becoming familiar with how to navigate and find information in FEL is a great first step down the path of information literacy.
See my Jing video below; I had to post the link because....I'm guessing....my screenshot is larger than the 600 x 600 that is recommended for best results . But I had to make it that large to capture all the features on the catalog web page, otherwise it defeated the purpose of explaining things that the student cannot see.

Dignam_LIS6303: Jing Video

http://screencast.com/t/rQpPkot7

Wikis and Libraries

Working on a Wiki was a new experience for me; and I thought the process was very time-consuming. I thought learning the navigation part of the wiki was difficult and frustrating. I'm still not sure if I got the uploading of the documents part right - what's the difference between putting the documents on as a page or a folder? - and do you have to do both? I spent so much time on this project. And that to me is the drawback of using wikis- this it is too cumbersome for librarians - too much time checking what is posted and editing postings that are inaccurate.

However, one way that libraries can benefit from using wikis is to share information; particularly forms, written procedures, presentations. This would save us a lot of time because we librarians wouldn't have to go around re-inventing the wheel. My personal preference of a web tool for informational purposes is blogger. It is easier to use than wikis and I like the navagation better. It is much simplier and I think you can be more creative with blogger. It is so simple to pick a template and you are ready to go! Love blogger, would pick it hands down over wikis.

Delicious and Diigo

I think both delicious and diigo are great tools for saving web pages and sites. I used to save sites and web pages in folders but there was no way to search or organize them and I just ended up with a lot of information that wasn’t searchable. I really like the interface of delicious and thought it was the best until I started using diigo. Diigo is really more useful because you can highlight parts of the site and add your own notes, so that you don’t have to search the site to remember what you thought was useful about the site to begin with. Click here to see my delicious site and here to see my diigo site.

I plan to use both my delicious and diigo sites as  teaching tools to illustrate social bookmarking at our next faculty meeting on how to use Web 2.0 tools. Very few teachers in our school are familiar with social book marking, so these sites will be great to illustrate how to save, search and use all this electronic information.

QR Codes

This is a QR Code that links to my Google Sites page. I created the QR Code and the Google Sites page for my Preparing Instructional Media class at USF. The Google Site will showcase my portfolio of instructional media coursework. 

Podcasts - One More Way for Libraries to Reach Patrons

Using podcasts to instruct patrons is another way that libraries can connect to its' tech-savy users. Although the percentage of tech-savy patrons is still in the minority, podcasts can reach those patrons that prefer their information on demand. Because podcasts are audio-only, the information given needs to lend itself well to listening -topics like giving instructions or descriptions. Readers advisories, author's interviews, and walking tours are all easily understood in this kind of listening format. But a big disadvantage of podcasts is that many things library patrons want to learn requires a visual element, too;
and podcasts are not a suitable choice for teaching something patrons need to see. Thus, it's funtionality is somewhat limited. The most logical and time-effecient use of podcasts in libraries is a self-guided audio tour - like museums offer to teach visitors about the layout of their collections. The big advantage for using podcasts for audio-tours is that podcasts free library staff from having to do this. Another advantage to using podcasts is that they are relatively simple to make.

Podcast

My podcast is about how to use our library card catalog to find a book in the library. I am amazed at how manyof our high school students do not know how to use the online school card catalog. They will walk up to my desk and ask "Do you have any books on soccer"? When I say "yes" and to check the card catalog, they will respond that they don't know how to do that. So, this podcast is for all our students who got to high school without learning how to use the online card catalog. The podcast covers how to log-in, use basic search, Title Peek, and to save books to a resource list. I want the listener to understand how to use the card catalog to search for, find, and save information on books.

Click this link to hear the MP3.