WHAT YOU NEED TO DO BEFORE YOU CAN TICK OFF THING 23.

Come to a workshop on December 16th or December 19th and create a Second Life Avatar OR have completed a “create your avatar” session before OR  use the workshop slides  below to do it yourself. Please email your avatar name to Kathryn.

FOR THE WORKSHOP, YOU MUST HAVE AN EMAIL ADDRESS THAT HAS NOT BEEN USED TO CREATE AN AVATAR BEFORE, AND THAT CAN BE ACCESSED VIA WEBMAIL ON THE DAY .

Online virtual worlds use a similar immersive 3D interface as gaming. Characters called avatars can move around the environment and interact with objects and other avatars. There are however no gameplays, strategies, rules or points.

Educational and library sites in Online Virtual worlds sit side by side with porn and gambling sites, just like on the World Wide Web. Online virtual worlds are still developing and as technology improves, they will get more sophisticated and easier to use.

Virtual Worlds and Other Online Virtual Environments were named by Educause and the New Media Consortium in their 2008 Horizon Report - Australian and New Zealand Edition.as one of six technologies likely to have significant impact on education in the next five years. Gartner Inc., which bills itself as the “world’s leading information and technology research company, claimed on 24th April 2007 that “by the end of 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a “second life,” but not necessarily in Second Life
Many unversities are experimenting with an Online Virtual World called Second Life. Murdoch University has a presence there, as does Harvard, Princeton, University of Oxford, Griffiths, Monash, RMIT, AFTRS and USQ. Over 600 librarians are experimenting with providing library services on the 40 island Information Archipelago where Murdoch Library has a plot of land.

In Second Life, avatars can run, fly, teleport, swim, dance, drive cars and communicate with other avatars through typed chat or (if the user is wearing a headset) voice. Objects can be set up so that touching one (eg. a bookcase) can make the users’ webbrowser got to a specific website (eg. Libraries Australia). Databases like PubMed can be searched within a Second Life building and RSS feeds can be displayed in Second Life. ABC Island, for example, has a dome where the latest ABC news headlines are displayed.

This 23 minute slidecast (audio and slides) explains more about Second Life, Libraries, Universities and Murdoch University Library (Presentation at the Queensland University Libraries Office of Communication event, Social Software in Libraries, Wednesday 9th October 2007)

Infoisland.org - blog of the Alliance Library Service in Second Life .

Ten very good reasons why your librarians should be in Second Life

Six very bad reasons to have a library branch in Second Life

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO BEFORE YOU CAN TICK OFF THING 22:

Read the information below and then write a blog post about how we might we adapt our instructional material to better engage digital natives.

The gaming we are talking about is computer gaming……online, video, console based, hand held and PC. Gaming can be used as an immersive, compelling and engaging way of providing access to information and education.

Over 79% of Australian households have a device for playing computer and video games. 41% of gamers are women and 8% are seniors. The average age of Australian gamers is 28, but this is rising and expected to be 42 by 2014. ( Jeffrey E Brand of Bond University Interactive Australia 2007 : facts about the Australian computer and video game industry ). Market research from Parks Associates shows that US consumers play online games more often than watch online videos or visit social networking sites.

Rightly or wrongly, many students bring information finding strategies they use in gaming when they do research using our online tools. Several are spending hours immersed in incredibly engaging and sophisticated computer interfaces, where they are able to contribute to the action - so library websites look very different by comparison.

Gaming gives students skills like:

• Ability to quickly read and comprehend massive amounts of information on a screen.
• An understanding that many strategies and attempts may be necessary to accomplish a task.
• A reluctance to read wordy instructions.
• A preference to learn an online system by trying it out.
• An ability to rapidly synthesise facts and make split second decisions.
• Ability to learn a new interface very quickly.
• Ability to handle sudden or unexpected changes in their interface.
• Creative and lateral thinking.
• Collaboration.
• Teamwork.
• Ability to quickly assess what information is relevant and what is just noise.

Inside Higher Education reported on the American Library Association Symposium on Gaming, Learning and Libraries in the article When “digital natives” go to the library. The comments on the article are fascinating - they discuss the difference between the gaming digital natives and the librarians who serve them in our libraries.

Other references:

The recent 2008 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning and Libraries Symposium

covers some interesting topics. See the (rather long) video clip filmed by Tom Peters. Watch for the mention of Guitar Hero, Second Life and Donkey Kong, plus the keys to information literacy snippet right at the end.

Blog topic: How might we adapt our instructional material to better engage digital natives?

One example of designing instructional material with this user group in mind is Te punga

Also check out Liz Wilkinson discussing Te Punga.

Gaming as an immersive activity

Oblivion is an example of an “immersive gaming experience”. Players can spend hours designing their character’s appearance and qualities, selecting one of 10 races (do you want to play as a Dark Elf, a Nord, or maybe you feel like an Orc today?). The different races possess different attributes which will affect gameplay and alter your gaming experience. What are the main skills that you want your character to have? Will he/she rely mainly on strength or stealth or magic?

Vast amounts of specialised information can be found at official and unofficial sites, to help with character creation and gameplay strategy. When players have problems they contact their peers at forums and chat sites for cheats, walkthroughs and hints.

This Thing looks at what happens when people regularly upload video to the web via their webcam or a mobile phone.

I made a video post talking about the questions that librarians might ask about this practice and some of the differences between sites where people do this, Webcams and Libraries.

(To keep it authentic it is unedited - which is why I embarrass myself by saying “Jeff Chan” when I meant to say “Johhny Chung Lee” and am unable to remember the name for an interactive whiteboard - an “online touchboard” is just an odd thing to call it)

The videos mentioned in the video post are embedded below. Some of the tools I mentioned are:

• Facebook video
• Stickam
• YouTube
• Viddler.
• Blip.tv (not mentioned but worth knowing about)
• seesmic
• 12seconds.tv
• ustream
• stickam
• skype
• gmail chat

You can see examples of clips made with these different services embedded in this wiki page I made for the WA Library Unconference , Videocasting vodcasting lifestreaming.

1. Jason Griffey bigwig showcase 2008 - video 2.0

2. Michael Wesch An Anthropological introduction to YouTube

ABOUT USTREAM:

Ustream is a web application that allows you to broadcast live from a webcam straight to a webpage. It allows other people to log in to a chat room at the side of the screen and chat with each other via text as they watch you. You can create polls for people in the chat room to answer. You can drop in video clips or slideshows. The entire session can then be recorded and archived.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO TO BEFORE YOU CAN TICK OFF THING 21.

1. Go to Ustream and create your own profile.

2. Come to the workshop on Tuesday 9th (1:30 - 2:30) or Friday 12th December (12:30 - 1:30) and be part of the chat audience. Or, tune in to the Libkat Thing 21 Show at 2:10pm(ish) on Tuesday 9th or 1:10pm(ish) on Friday 12th December from anywhere else. Log in to Ustream, go to the show’s home page and then start chatting. You need to have made at least one comment during the live Ustream show to be able to tick off this thing.

According to a previous version of the YouTube entry in Wikipedia, in July 2006, the company revealed that more than 100 million videos were being watched every day, and 2.5 billion videos were watched in June 2006. 50,000 videos were being added per day in May 2006, and this increased to 65,000 by July. In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users had made over 3 billion video views.

Lisa and Kathryn show you how to embed a video or slideshare into your blog.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO BEFORE YOU CAN TICK OFF THING 20

1. Go to YouTube or Slideshare website:

http://au.youtube.com/

http://www.slideshare.net/

2. Search for clip or slide show

3. In the clip information on the right hand side of the viewing screen, find the embedding code

4. Highlight code (Ctrl A) and copy (Ctrl C)

5. Go to your blog and create a new post.

6. If using Blogger, go to Edit HTML Tab and paste (Ctrl V) code into body of work

7. You have now embedded your first video.

WELL DONE!!

Now you can go and blog about it.

Please do Things 16 and 17 before this one although they are separate ways of communicating.

Create account
Joining twitter is just the same as joining Facebook, except you don’t have to go to your email and click on a link to verify your membership.

It is important that once you have joined, you go to Settings (top right corner) and select “Protect my updates”. This means that only people you have allowed to “follow” you can see your updates.

Find Folks
Use the “Find Folks” search box in the green sidebar to search for the user “RossO49″ or go straight to his profile page: http://twitter.com/ROSSO49 . Select the grey “follow” button under his photo.

Look at the green sidebar on his profile page and you will see pictures of his friends. Mouse over each image to see the person’s name. Like we did with Facebook, click on some of RossO49’s friends to add them as your friends.

Remember to check your gmail account in case someone has added you as a friend. This will also display on your sidebar as, e.g, “2 new follower requests”.

Why? To see twitter in action - it’s the only way to “get” it.

Mon 8th - Friday 12th is Twitter week. Twitter only really works when it has critical mass. Please tweet at least once a day and share something work related that you are doing. If you can’t do it that week, you may try it another week.

Enter text in the box under “What are you doing?” and select “update”.

• Add a picture to your profile.
• Work out how to “Direct message” someone.
• Use the ‘Help’ link to find out more stuff, e.g., how @replies work.
• Keep twittering
• Watch this video by librarian David Lee King about software people have written to do crazy things with twitter. i r fluffin yr twitterz: or, Twitter, part 2: the “fluff” (made over a year ago so some things may now be out of date)

Thing 16: Join Facebook and add a profile

Why? Over 100 million people are there. Find out what it is about.

Thing 17: Add at least 3 friends and join a Facebook Group

Why? To understand how a social network works

GETTING STARTED

There is a good 10 minute overview of the history of Facebook and the basics on Youtube.

Alternatively, Kathryn made a 4 minute screencast for this exercise in last year’s “23 Things”. It is very pacy, so she suggests you first watch it all the way through. Then play it, pause it, do the bit just described, play a bit more, do that bit etc. Note that there have been a number of changes to Facebook since last year so this wont be exactly as you see it today.
The screencast shows you how to do more things than the exercises require. Those that are part of the exercises are marked with a * .

1. * Join
2. * Create a profile
3. * Search for a friend
4. * Add a friend
5. * Look at a friend’s friends to find friends
6. * Accept friendship
7. * View a friend’s’ profile
8. *Join a Facebook group
9. Write on a friend’s wall
10. Add a Facebook Application

IF YOU WANT MORE:

Write on a friend’s wall or Add a Facebook Application.

To create an engaging message that people want to read.
And do this easily!

Thing 15 - you need to use an image generator and create an image to describe your progress with the 23 Things so far.
Then upload the image you created to your blog.

For inspiration - have a look at some of the images created by the original Learning 2.0 particpants at PLCMC.

To do this you can start with the Generator Blog which has links to masses of Image Generators, or just Google “image generators” and have a play with what you find.

Once you have created your Image- most services will give you either of two options:

1. to right click and save the image somewhere - eg. your H drive, then upload this image to your Blog like you would with a photo
2. to have it hosted on their site - they will have instructions on how to get the html or embed code and you will need to copy this and paste it into your blog using the “Edit html” tab

Note: you will need to remote desktop if you wish to save the image you have created to your H drive

Join Flickr, then upload the image you used in Thing 13.

Why? To share images online
1. CREATE AN ACCOUNT

Go to Flickr

Select “Create Your Account”

If you are not already a member of Yahoo!, then select “Sign up” at the bottom of the “Sign into Yahoo!” screen and join Yahoo! Enter the required data and select “Create my Account”

When you have successfully signed up, you will see a screen that asks “Ready to experience Flickr?”. Select Continue

Select “Create a new account”.

2. UPLOAD PHOTOS

Select “Upload your first photo”

Step 1. Use the Browse button to immediately browse to the files on your PC.

Double click on the image you want, then select “Upload“.

3. DESCRIBE

Select “Describe your photos”

Add a title, description and some tags.

Separate each tag with a space: cameraphone urban moblog. Or to join 2 words together in one tag, use double quotes: “daily commute”.

Select “Save”

If you want more from Flickr!

You can explore the Flickr toolbox - Flickr Toolbox: 100+ Tools for Flickr addicts

Here you can do things like play around with your background, screen saver and desktop images, get RSS feeds of your friends photos as they add new ones, and get tools that can help you manage your flickr accounts, photos and uploads better.
It also has lots of fun things!
Put comic book word balloons onto your photos, play Hamster Sudoku, make a calendar out of your photos, or play Hangman.
For the truly bizarre - go to the Internet inferno and scroll through Dante’s levels of hell and find pictures that match each level!

You can explore what other Libraries are doing in Flickr!

Libraries Australia and Picture Australia
Picture Australia is working with a Flickr group to get contemporary images of Australia and to get the Australian Public to Re-Picture Australia
You can see photos uploaded to Flickr from the Picture Australia collection - by searching in Flickr for Picture Australia under groups. There are two main groups - Our Town and People, places and events.

Cambridge Libraries in their Flickr photostream have a great photo of their Let it snow book display which is very clever - as each book jacket in the photo links back to that book title in their OPAC!

See where delegates at the ALIA National Library & Information Technicians Conference in 2007 think Australian Libraries will be at in 2017!

Explore what other Libraries are doing with the 365 Library Days Project
Murdoch Uni Library has been contributing to this project - to see the photos we have contributed so far you can look at our photostream

If you want to add to our photos there are instructions on the Common drive - LET - 365 Libs
What’s interesting is to see the photos from before our renovations!

1 Take an image with a digital camera and embed it in your blog.

Why: Because a picture paints a thousand words….speaking of pithy phrases here’s another… If misery loves company then why don’t I have more friends?

Use your own digital camera or borrow the library one from Mike’s office.
Take a photo of something suitable to display on a work blog. Be mindful of people who don’t like having their photo taken.
Upload the image to your H: drive. (You will be shown how to do this in the workshop).

If you do not want to use your own image, then you can use one from this directory on the intranet: G:\Common\LET\23 Things\Thing 13 Most of these images have been taken by Kathryn or myself, feel free to use.
2. POST THE IMAGE TO YOUR BLOG
Go to your blog and start a new post.
Find the “Add image” icon and click on it.

Select BROWSE and browse to the directory with your image.
Change the size and position if you like.
Select UPLOAD IMAGE.

3. MOVE THE IMAGE
When the image is uploaded, it will appear at the top of your post. Drag and drop it wherever you want it. Now that it’s in your page you can also cut and paste if you prefer.

4. When you are ready to publish, select “Publish Post”.

There you go how hard was that? Now go tick off Thing 13.

What is it?

The “book-marking” part of social book-marking is the online equivalent of the ‘favourites’ list (of websites etc) that you manage from the browser on your own computer.  The “social” part of social book-marking is the way you can share with others and search what they have saved.  Del.icio.us is one of many social book-marking services.

If you’d like to see what a del.icio.us account looks like you can go to 23katethings

You can watch this introductory video (+ some other much more complicated things to do with del.icio.us)

One attraction to using del.icio.us, rather than ‘favourites’, is that your delicious account can be accessed from any computer, but more interestingly …

-  you can add your own ‘tags’ – categories or terms (aka keywords) that mean something to you; one website can have any number of tags

-  you can then organise your tags into ‘tag bundles’ – giving you groups of sites that have something(s) in common – depending on its tags a site can appear in more than one bundle

-  you can keep your bookmarks private – although you will be able to see all of them, those that have a padlock symbol cannot be seen by anyone else

-  you can create a network with other people who may have similar, or disparate, interests (membership of a network can be kept private)

and lots more

WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO BEFORE YOU CAN TICK OFF THING 12:

1st register for an account at http://delicious.com – click on ‘join now’ and follow the 3 steps

-  at Step 1 you will select your username and fill in the form

-  at Step 2 you will be asked if you want to ‘add firefox extension’ – I recommend that you accept this – it only involves a very quick automatic closedown and restart of firefox – then you have the del.icio.us book-marking tools available on your toolbar; or you can add the button to your toolbar later on by clicking and dragging the delicious icon from the address bar of your own account

-  at Step 3 you can import any existing bookmarks from, for instance, your ‘favourites’

*if you want to do this step at one of the workshop sessions you will need to remote desktop - please ask Aaron if you don’t know how to do this already*

Only you will be able to see your imported bookmarks when they are first transferred to del.icio.us. You can edit each entry - deciding how you want to tag it, and which, if any, you want to keep private. Although you will be able to see all of your bookmarks, those that have a padlock symbol cannot be seen by anyone else, even members of your network.

2nd add 3 or 4 websites to your account

There are several ways to do this:

-  right click in the page and select ‘bookmark this page in delicious’ – this doesn’t work from every page, but does in the blog All the Modern Things

or

-  use the del.icio.us button on your toolbar (either the one that appeared if you selected the firefox extension when you were registering, or one you installed yourself)

or

-  in a newspaper article, for instance, scroll down to ‘share this item’ options e.g. at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24611771-12377,00.html – and click on the del.icio.us symbol

or

-  copy the url of the page you want to save, go to your del.icio.us account and select ‘save a new bookmark’, and paste in the url

Don’t forget to tag your selections.

Consider creating some tag bundles and a tag cloud – select ‘tag options’ from the pale blue menu to the right hand side of the page – embed the cloud in your thing12 blog post.

3rd add 23katethings to your network

-  go to the ‘people’ drop down menu on your del.icio.us home page

-  select ‘add a user to Network’ in the pale blue menu

-  type in the username < 23katethings > and click on ‘Add’

4th blog it!