OLJ task - Delicious

I have engaged with Delicious for the first time as a result of INF506.  As brand new to social bookmarking, Delicious was not user friendly, a sentiment echoed by others (Tyler, 2010).  It threw up a lot of barriers that were not easily solved and needed a lot of initial time investment to get decent benefits. Although the organisation and tagging of links was very helpful, this was overwhelmed by the amount of unrewarded effort required to access the features. The email verification system was problematic. Once that was fixed by Delicious, I found a problem with following or checking my followers. I am sure that more time interacting with Delicious would result in a much higher benefit to effort ratio. However reluctance quickly developed around clicking anywhere new or exploring beyond the known.

Once past the initiation period, there are advantages for schools. It has the potential to be used as a topic pathfinder or comprehensive resource list for students where they are given access to safe and appropriate sites for research on topics. This would both increase student online safety while supporting the current curriculum requirements to conduct inquiry-based lessons using digital technology (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA] 2010: ACARA, 2012).  Having access to an organised online set of bookmarks is a boon as students will rarely be on the same computer.  This opens up the possibility of students accessing resources from home and for homework. Delicious could be as an alternative reading list and reduce concerns around school bag weight.  School libraries could create resource lists for staff or students, or classify resources according to type (audio, video, graphic) by adding tags (Dixon, n.d.) or even crowd sourcing (Tay, 2009) to increase the participatory nature of the library (Schrier, 2011).

Teachers can harness the collective wisdom of other educators as they have access to comments, tip and traps regarding Web 2.0 tools and other resources before visiting any of the sites. Being able to narrow a tag search by using the tag filter usefully targets and refines searching. Multiple tagging is very useful as resources often fit into more than one category. The fact Delicious suggests tags means you are given the option to immediately be in line with what is already available. However it is essential to remember that as there are no standard for tag structures, and this leaves the door open to miss-tagging in areas such as capitalisation, spelling, and just plain misinterpretation of websites.

 

References

Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (2010) General Capabilities: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capability. In The Australian Curriculum. Retrieved 12^th January 2013 from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/Information-and-Communication-Technology-capability/Introduction/Introduction

Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (2012) Draft shape of the Australian Curriculum: Technologies. Retrieved 12^th January 2013 from http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Draft_Shape_of_the_Australian_Curriculum_Technologies_paper_-_March_2012.pdf

Dixon, A. (n.d.) Social Bookmarking. In SVEA Project. Retrieved 30^th January from http://www.svea-project.eu/fileadmin/_svea/downloads/Social_Bookmarking_02.pdf

Schrier, R. A. (2011). Digital librarianship & social media: the digital library as conversation facilitator, D-Lib Magazine, 17(7/8) July/August 2011. Retrieved 27^th January from http://dlib.org/dlib/july11/schrier/07schrier.html

Tay, A. (2009). Libraries and crowdsourcing – 6 examples. In Library 2.0.  Retrieved 31^st January from http://www.library20.com/profiles/blogs/libraries-and-crowdsourcing-6

Tyler, J. (2010). 2.0 – Advantages and Disadvantages of the “delicious” method.  In What the cool people know.  Retrieved 20^th January 2013 from http://whatthecoolpeopleknow.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/20-advantages-and-disadvantages-of.htmlI)

Good reasons for information policies

This reading gave me a better idea why organisations need information policies:

Bryson, J. (2007). Chapter 10: Policy making. Managing information services: A transformational approach (pp/125-130). Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate e-Book. [ebook]

 We need policies around accessing and using information because basically it can be used for evil as well as good.  And companies can get bad publicity out of it – as in the UK phone hacking scandal.  Plus companies need them as a set of guidelines to follow in certain situations.

In a nutshell information policies should:

·         solve a problem or recurring problem at an organisational level.

·         provide guidance in decision making – just consult the policy!

·         ensure consistency – are we presenting a consistent face to the public? Are we all doing the same things?

·         declare where the company stands on issues

·         clarify company values or intentions

·         grant rights and entitlements

·         set out expectations

·         make commitments

It’s not a “set and forget” thing.  You have to have an ongoing process.  Things change, situations arise, repositioning of organisations occurs.

Reasons why libraries need to be on social media

The article What is social media NOW?  by Marta Kagan gave me some great reasons why schools and libraries need to be on social media:

The biggest argument is that:

·         Social media is so big – it uses outrageously big numbers.

·         Therefore it’s a big audience – most of the world!

·         Plus most of the world’s population are under 30.  They don’t have to figure out how to use this stuff – it’s just the stuff you use.

·         It’s not ‘social’ media to them – it’s just media.

·         If you’re not in that audience you are cutting yourself off from what is going on.  In old-school terms it would be like opening a shop and not advertising at all. 

 

 

Kagan, M. (2010). What is social media NOW? Retreived 3rd December from

http://www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-is-social-media-now-4747765

Practical suggestions for TL+Social Media

Loved the practicality of this article.  The orginal link was broken but searched and searched until I found it somewhere else. It had been buried in all my Module 4 notes but it deserves to see the light of day.

14 Ways K–12 Librarians Can Teach Social Media, in Tech & Learning by Joyce Valenza (27 
September, 2009). Retreived December 2nd from http://www.techlearning.com/copyright/0031/14-ways-k–12-librarians-can-teach-social-media-by-joyce-valenza/46329 

GREAT article. Here is a summary of the main point.

1.      How to have fun with intellectual property.  How to mash up, remix – use creative commons.  And a rethinking of copyright – ‘fair use’ is now OK.

2.      Resources will still need to be attributed to who created them.  But there are tools, online tools that make this less onerous.

3.      Move beyond one-trick single-search mode.  Google is not the only band in town. Maybe custom searches?

4.      Have the info come to them.  Like Google alerts, or widgets, RSS feeds

5.      Search for you – students need to know what he general world will see when they type their name into a search engine.  Maybe clean a bit up before prospective employers have a go?

6.      Be online yourself.  If you’re out there in the social media world, you’ll be in touch and on the lookout for the next cool or useful thing.

7.      Transparency in the research process.

8.      Use organising tools.  Like Inspiration.  But there are others out there.

9.      Connect with authors and experts.

10.   Communicating research and telling stories.  Students can now publish beyond classroom and family boundaries.

11.  Rethink the collection.  Physical, virtual pathfinders, student-created work and projects.

Social Media - useful in libraries?

A few as-yet unposted reflections on reading from Module 4:

Casey, M. & Stephens, M. (2009). You can’t afford not to do these things, Library Journal, 15 March. Retrieved from http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6639942.html?industryid=47356

OK so this one shows how social media and online tools can actually reduce budgets and help cope w cutbacks. "While costly new initiatives are unlikely, ideas that make use of existing tools should be encouraged and studied….Actually, tight budgets should foster creativity and the exploration of free online tools for outreach and low cost programming that taps into user needs."

and

Andy Burkhardt’s post Four Reasons Libraries Should be on Social Media (August 25, 2009).

1.    Communication

2.    Respond to +ve and –ve feedback.  You can’t control what they say but at least your voice is in there.

3.    Marketing/Advertising – it’s just another way of getting your library noticed.

4.    Understand you users better – you can’t possibly know everything, something may surprise you.

Delicious starting to be useful

Well now that I know how to add links to Delicious, I am starting to go to it as my website organiser of choice. Previously I would have added a website into the favourites bar provided by Google, but now I am defaulting to Delicious.  I haven't got enough yet to get a good number of tags, but I can see my use and tag number growing. 

I am a bit regretful that I discovered how to use Delicious so late in the course, but i can also see it will be useful after INF506 has finished. 

Another step.....

There is hope for Delicious yet!

I am a little excited because after struggling with Delicious since the beginning of this course, I finally made some progress.  Although it may sound very basic I managed to add 1 link to my Delicious account: 15 Web 2.0 tools for students. 

Already I can see why Delicious may be useful.  Straight away I have access to comments from other educators rating each Web 2.0 tool, practical feed-back, tips and traps to watch out for.  I don't even have to have used any of the tools with my students to get some idea about their practicality. 

Additionally, I now have a link to a useful site stored in a place I cannot lose.

I think a little more exploration is in order.

Facebook after 1 day

OK so I made some people friends with me on Facebook, only family as I thought that would be relatively safe.  Went back on today and am very surprised about how many posts there are now.  It took a while to scroll through.  Some interesting stuff, photos of the family that were nice, but didn't realise I'd get all their friends too.  Don't know how to stop that at this point. And surprised about the content my niece is posting and receiving - Auntie is a bit dubious.

But was brave and did something completely new for me. I created a Facebook page about Wikis in education to help me with my Project Assignment.  I have very little idea what I just did or how visible it is but I view it as a step forward in my Social Networking journey.  I'm hoping some nice teacher or educator will post soemthing useful maybe? 

Facebook exploration

Ok so to be perfectly honest I have been quite resistant about using Facebook.  With all the stories at our school about teachers being harassed by students and parents on their Facebook page, students finding teacher addresses on Facebook and trashing houses, school administration warning us not to friend anybody on Facebook, it all seemed like a dangerous area to go.  And so I just avoided it. 

But INF506 has forced me on.  I have invented another email address so it can’t be linked to my work email and up until now all I had been doing was checking what was happening on the INF506 page.  There was no way I was going to use it for anything social. 

Until today.  A study buddy doing the same course had been harassed by her kids to ‘friend’ them on her Facebook account.  So I ventured into my profile and started searching for my family.  Found my two brothers.  Found a cousin.  Sent a request for friendship. 

Then found how to change my profile.  And here I stopped and thought about what information I wanted to put on here.  I want to be identifiable to my family but I don’t want my students searching for me and finding me.  Ahh, the concerns of digital literacy kicking in.  And found the button that makes things public or private or anything in-between. 

So now, for the first time I have something in my profile apart from just my name.  Let’s see if I end up with any friends.  And if I end up keeping this account once INF506 has finished. 

The question is – have I been converted to Facebook?