Week 7 - Podcasting and online hosted videos

I was having trouble earlier accessing podcast.net , but after including it as a trusted site, my browser let me in. I don't know--if you're searching a topic like health, you really want to be certain of the identity and trustworthiness of the authors of these videos. I just can't be sure on this site. Similarly, I don't think I'd come to Podcast Alley for their health-related podcasts.
I viewed the "Pubmed the Quick Way" podcast from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center - Health Sciences Library. This included screen capture with voiceover; and the podcast of Paul Root Wolpe's "DISPLAYING DEAD AND DIFFERENT BODIES: SPECTACLE/SIDESHOW/EDUCATION?" from the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library - History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series, which was an audio-only presentation regarding the artistic, educational, and ethical considerations of anatomical exhibits. Both were informative, and provided examples of the different uses of podcasts.
I subscribed to the Odeo podcasts for the library tag, and found this one on "The Ghost and the Rock," about a ghost at Gettysburg. I subscribed to it via Bloglines, my usual feed reader, since when I clicked on the title, the RSS page came up. Another link in this set of tags led to a page that listed several podcasts, and each of those had a link to subscribe using iTunes. Another library tag link just went right to a single podcast, which included an option to add it to channel. So it looks like depending on what is available, you can subscribe in a number of different ways.
On to YouTube. Here's one that I found enjoyable, the "Betty Glover Library Workout Tape Ad," from 1987. It's so seldom that you see a workout tape provided by librarians themselves, and it was enjoyable also to see the old Victrola (and the old VHS tape). And this instructional video itself is a great way to "recycle" old videos. Enjoy!
The blog exercise for this week asks how I feel about the experience of using YouTube and what I think about this service. I think YouTube and sites like it, such as TeacherTube, are wonderful resources to utilize both to provide instruction and to learn from instruction. I do wish, however, that this week's exercise included tasks regarding how to actually create and upload podcasts and videos onto these services. The blog of ALA's Washington, D.C. office provides instructions for creating podcasts; and I'll try that out sometime. It doesn't look difficult.
The blog exercise also asks whether I see any potential uses for Podcasting in the library, and if so, what and why? Well, different people learn differently: some by reading, some by listening, some by watching, and some by interacting. For those who learn best by listening or watching, I think that providing audio or audiovisual podcasts on how to do various library- or research-related tasks would work best for them.
Next week's class is the last, and I'm having a blast!

Week 6: Photo Sharing (flickr)

Here's a link to my photos from the 2008 Philadelphia Flower Show, which I finally uploaded this week. Thanks to the course designers for including flickr in the assignments. Fortunately, I already had a flickr account. For some reason my uploading software wasn't working properly, so I had to use the site's upload feature to get my photos up. I also found instructions for including a slide show of my photos into my blog, so here goes:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Also appearing in this blogpost is one of my favorites from the show, although I can't seem to figure out how to align it properly, even after looking at the html:
Next step: upload to Facebook. Apparently, there's an application, zuPort, that can be used to import from flickr to your Facebook page, although the people commenting on it indicate that there are other methods. Well, that worked, although it kept looking like it was trying to upload all of my photos, instead of a selection. You can view the facebook set (which is a subset of the flickr set).

Week 5: Web Office Tools

This week we're learning about web office tools--tools that let you create, edit, and share documents over the Internet in real time. We are using Google Docs as an example.

I have questions right away:

• Exactly what are the differences and advantages/disadvantages of using a web office tool rather than a wiki? ANSWER: You could use Google Docs as an adjunct to a wiki that's meant to be seen by the public--create and edit in Docs, then upload the final version to the wiki. Alternately, you could just use the wiki for all versions.


• If the final version of the product (journal article, presentation, etc.) must be in a specific proprietary format (Word, etc.), can you accomplish that using a web office tool? And if so, how? ANSWER: Yes--under File--Download file as, there are options of different formats to download the file to, including Word, PDF, RTF, etc.

The questions for participants' responses are: Is this the future of all software products? What do you think?

I think that for non-proprietary documents, this is a very simple way of collaborating. But for disciplines in which competition is fierce, companies would probably just use their own intranets and the ability to log in remotely for collaboration, unless there were some type of guarantee from Google, et al. regarding the security of documents created on these types of systems.

Comparing Google Docs to Zoho: with Google Docs you can create a new document, spreadsheet, presentation, or folder. With Zoho, all that, plus: notebook, wiki, organizer, webmail, chat, etc. Slate.com and Technology Review both seem to like it, at least more than Microsoft Office products.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace purportedly Works with Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint--not that I'm a great fan of any of those (especially Word), but at least I have experience with them. But as PC Magazine indicates, there's a steep learning curve, and their proprietary format precludes use with browsers other than their own. However, PC Magazine did like Webex WebOffice better; the review that I read indicated that it was very easy to use. And since that review was written, WebEx mail has been made available.

Well, this has been a fun exercise. I have written this blog post using Google Docs, and if you are reading this on the blog, then I have successfully published the post from that application.

See you next week.

UPDATE: After I published this from Google Docs to Blogger, I checked the post from the public side; all was fine EXCEPT that everywhere I had named Google Docs and included a link to it, the links were changed to the URL of this blog! And now as I am editing the post to fix that, I see that all of the Google Docs links are no longer the URL of this blog, but simply of Blogger.com! Curiouser and curiouser. As both Google Docs and Blogger are in the same Google "family," perhaps there's some kind of glitch in translation. Anyway, I have gone back and fixed them all.