Technology Learning Community » Communication Technologies

Facebooks Goes Back to School

Rachel Wadham — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:52:29 +0000

A long, long time ago–about two years–students filled Facebook and found and “friended” others who were taking the same courses. They shared information and tips. Then in 2006 Facebook was opened up to nonstudents, and class interests got crowded out. A new Facebook program aims to bring it back, allowing members to view their courses and chat with classmates and friends that have opted in to the program. The new wrinkle: the program is going to run through the universities, with information fed into Facebook by the registrar’s office once students give permission. PC World reports that students who join the program, called Schools, can view their course calendar, and if they add or drop a course, changes will be reflected in Facebook as soon as the registrar’s office reports them. Schools also includes communication tools for student groups such as teams and residence halls. Each organization, class, and friend has a page within Schools where students can interact with people. The program comes from a small company called Inigral, which already has a student-controlled course calendar on Facebook called, predictably, Courses. But Schools aims to be more of a social network within the Facebook social network, and the company is now testing it at Abilene Christian University in Texas. –Josh Fischman

iPads and iPods for Education

Rachel Wadham — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:25:44 +0000

Technology is impacting education in a big way, and the iPad and iPod is only two of those devices that are finding their niche in schools and libraries. To keep up on this developing trend take a look at some of these articles found in ERIC:

Banister, S. (2010). Integrating the iPod touch in K-12 education: Visions and vices. Computers in the Schools, 27(2), 121-131.

Hammond, D. L., Whatley, A. D., Ayres, K. M., & Gast, D. L. (2010). Effectiveness of video modeling to teach “iPod” use to students with moderate intellectual disabilities. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 45(4), 525-538.

Vess, D. L. (2006). History to go: Why iTeach with iPods. History Teacher, 39(4), 479-492.

Waters, J. K. (2010). Enter the iPad (or not?). T.H.E.Journal, 37(6), 38-40.

You can find them by searching in ERIC or using the Journal search located at the bottom left of the library home page

Or check out these web-resources:

Educause: 7 Things You Should Know About iPad Apps for Learning

http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutiPadA/223289

Blog Posting: Tommie Williams: State Considering iPads for Students

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2011/02/01/tommie-williams-state-considering-ipads-for-students/?cxntfid=blogs_political_insider_jim_galloway

Information from Apple: Learning with iPad

http://www.apple.com/education/ipad/

WordPress Blog Helps and Tips

Rachel Wadham — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:55:40 +0000

This is a fairly comprehensive list of the best WordPress tutorials, hacks, help files, and cheat sheets. They are written to make life easier, to help us expand WordPress functionality, and to give us a better understanding of WordPress and how powerful a blogging tool it is…
Speckyboy, Mar. 8

Word Press Hacks and Helps

LibGuides

Rachel Wadham — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:29:38 +0000

Something new on the horizon that has lots of potential, LibGuides:

“LibGuides is a library 2.0 online publishing system. It combines the best features of social networks, wikis, bookmarks and blogs, to help librarians share information and promote library resources to the community. LibGuides is fully integrated with Facebook, and LibGuides widgets enable the distribution of library content on social networks, blogs, and courseware systems. Patrons can also subscribe to the email updates of their favorite LibGuides content. Simply put, LibGuides connects you with patrons, wherever they are.”

Check it out at http://www.springshare.com/libguides/

Also this blog http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/ has a couple of recent posts about how Boston College and Dalhousie University are using LibGuides.

This is a possible topic for an upcoming meeting so check it out.

September Meeting Minutes

Rachel Wadham — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 21:36:19 +0000

This month we discussed instant messaging. Peter Zuber discussed how they use IM in science. You can check out their client through any science subject page. Science uses PLUGOO as an interface. You can find more about it a www.plugoo.com. Peter said that they have had moderate success with this showing sometimes several questions a day. Andy Spackman discussed how MEGI uses MEBO on their business page. Check it out at http://www.lib.byu.edu/business/. MEBO can be found at www.meebo.com, look for the Meebo Me Widget. Andy indicated that while traffic was slow over the summer it is really picking up now and they see a noticeable difference in the number of transactions. We ended with a discussion the pros and cons of this form of communication especially as it relates to reference services. There was discussion of how this is different from the Chat Ref that we tried and abandoned. There was also discussion of how the students use this for communication and how it really fits their needs when they are on subject pages and need an answer. The group was asked if this should go library wide or not, and it was decided that there were pros and cons to this. It was also asked if support could be put forward for programming or if contacting the developers of the programs we saw today could help us to develop features we may want. We will certainly revisit this topic as more people implement IM reference to see how implementations are working.

Text a Librarian

Rachel Wadham — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:19:01 +0000

Here is a very interesting blog post from the ALA TechSource about texting reference questions. The example is for a service from Australia and it’s very interesting. Is their anyway we could use this in our library? Take a look and post any comments or ideas you may have.

Can U TXT the LBRY?

http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2007/06/can-u-txt-the-lbry.html