Friday, September 28, 2007
Microsoft Office Rival
You know about OpenOffice and Google Docs, but have you heard of IBM's Lotus Symphony? It is obviously getting some attention. See the full article here.
Learning 2.0--Del.icio.us
According to their website, del.icio.us "is a social bookmarking website" whose primary use is to allow a user to store links to his/her websites in one place so s/he can access them from any computer. When I first heard about del.icio.us,a few years ago, I immediately liked the idea because of the frustration of having to try to remember websites I visited at home and at work. If I went from one computer to another, I had to try and recall the address of the website, or I would have to Google the site to call it up on the computer I was at. Del.icio.us could solve that problem, yay!, so I created an account. I also discovered that several libraries are using del.icio.us instead of traditional subject guide pages. I originally learned about this at the 2007 ALA midwinter conference from a roundtable discussion I attended. I was excited at the possibilities, especially since patrons could contribute to the tags for the subject guides and could even add sites. How cool would it be to see what sites your fellow library users found to be most useful? I think the del.icio.us interface is not the prettiest, but its function and purpose is terrific, especially if libraries want to find ways to offer more user-centered services.
Learning 2.0 Tagging part 2
I'm baaaaack. Well, after a very long hiatus, I am finally getting back into the swing of the Learning 2.0 lessons. The semester got started and I was drowning in a sea of instruction and other duties, but I am ready to get back on track.
We were directed by our Discovery Exercise #2 to explore Encore with a number of searches and to discuss the effectiveness of the tag clouds. My first search was for "differentiation," a term that is heard often in the context of education and teaching. So, I was expecting to find resources dealing with education when I did my search. The first item that appeared in the results list (at Michigan State Univ) was an education-related title. However, the tag cloud that appeared had no terms related to education. After clicking on the "more" button that appeared below the tag cloud, I was led to the larger cloud that did contain a few more phrases related to education. I had to click on "individualized instruction" (a phrase that appeared in a tiny font size) to find relevant titles. The tag cloud that appeared on the initial screen might not benefit education majors in this instance. In fact, seeing all of the biology and math related terms in the cloud might even confuse students. The concept behind the tag cloud is beneficial, however, with a search like "death penalty." In that search, capital punishment appears as a phrase in very large print along with many other very relevant terms and phrases that would certainly give a user ideas for related concepts.
I think the appeal of tag clouds lie in the visual ability to identify terms that are more "relevant" or appear more often in a catalog search. In the most recent search for "death penalty," for example, "capital punishment" was the more popular term and had more entries in the catalog than "executions and executioners." This wasn't indicated by a number (as is typical in a results list of a catalog search), but rather by font size. I think this visual indicator may appeal to students. Instruction will be key to our implementation of Encore and the benefits of features like the tag clouds. Showing students to go deeper than the first screen, to click on relevant "tags" to run a new search and to see titles that are relevant to that new term or phrase will be helpful. I think students will like not having to come up with new terms on their own; in that respect, the tag clouds are also very helpful. In an instruction session I would likely also demonstrate a non-example to students, though, to show that tag clouds are not perfect; the differentiation example shows that while tag clouds can be helpful and visually appealing, they aren't always instantly useful. If students are willing to put the time into clicking deeper, the "more" button can help them think through the terms and to get more ideas. Quality research isn't a quick process; I think it is worth reminding students of that in our instruction sessions.
We were directed by our Discovery Exercise #2 to explore Encore with a number of searches and to discuss the effectiveness of the tag clouds. My first search was for "differentiation," a term that is heard often in the context of education and teaching. So, I was expecting to find resources dealing with education when I did my search. The first item that appeared in the results list (at Michigan State Univ) was an education-related title. However, the tag cloud that appeared had no terms related to education. After clicking on the "more" button that appeared below the tag cloud, I was led to the larger cloud that did contain a few more phrases related to education. I had to click on "individualized instruction" (a phrase that appeared in a tiny font size) to find relevant titles. The tag cloud that appeared on the initial screen might not benefit education majors in this instance. In fact, seeing all of the biology and math related terms in the cloud might even confuse students. The concept behind the tag cloud is beneficial, however, with a search like "death penalty." In that search, capital punishment appears as a phrase in very large print along with many other very relevant terms and phrases that would certainly give a user ideas for related concepts.
I think the appeal of tag clouds lie in the visual ability to identify terms that are more "relevant" or appear more often in a catalog search. In the most recent search for "death penalty," for example, "capital punishment" was the more popular term and had more entries in the catalog than "executions and executioners." This wasn't indicated by a number (as is typical in a results list of a catalog search), but rather by font size. I think this visual indicator may appeal to students. Instruction will be key to our implementation of Encore and the benefits of features like the tag clouds. Showing students to go deeper than the first screen, to click on relevant "tags" to run a new search and to see titles that are relevant to that new term or phrase will be helpful. I think students will like not having to come up with new terms on their own; in that respect, the tag clouds are also very helpful. In an instruction session I would likely also demonstrate a non-example to students, though, to show that tag clouds are not perfect; the differentiation example shows that while tag clouds can be helpful and visually appealing, they aren't always instantly useful. If students are willing to put the time into clicking deeper, the "more" button can help them think through the terms and to get more ideas. Quality research isn't a quick process; I think it is worth reminding students of that in our instruction sessions.
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