Edtechkat

The Horizon Report 2008 has been released.

A joint project of the New Media Consortium and Educause, it involves thirty to forty educators worldwide, across all sectors, examining existing and emerging technologies to identify those that within the next five years are :

likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations.

They examine reports, conference proceedings, press clippings, and other types of research to identify possible technologies. This year, over 80 technologies were identified, ranked by the panel and then narrowed down to twelve that were extensively researched. Six out of these then emerged as the major trends to watch.

This year they were:

Time-to-adoption: One year or less

• Grassroots Video - (eg. YouTube, Machinima, blip.tv, justin.tv)
• Collaboration webs - (eg. Google documents, Ning)

Note to self: Keep playing with FRAPs and Virtual Dub. Take video camera to Brisbane and Melbourne next week. Think about institution-wide education about collaboration webs.

Time to adoption: Two to Three Years

• Mobile Broadband
• Data mashups (interestingly Meebo chat boxes for “Ask a Librarian” services are given as an example of this)

Note to self: Learn to txt properly and budget for iPhone. Release the blidget I created for this blog following Ellyssa’s instructions …and then finish writing the Facebook App for it .

Time to adoption: Four to Five Years

• Collective Intelligence (eg. Amazon.com - “You may also be interested in…. “, Wikipedia)
• Social Operating Systems (eg. change of function of web from a place to share files to a place to share relationships. kazaa vs Facebook . Your social graph integrated with productivity tools - eg. email that gives you the history of your interactions with the email’s sender )

Note to self: Keep twittering, it’s useful. Become a wikipedian to understand more about the social culture. Be very careful who I friend where.

Check out the Horizon Report Project wiki where you can see their research in detail and tell them what you think of their predictions. On the same wiki is the “Where are they now ?” pages for the Horizon Reports going back to 2004.

Well, they were certainly right on the money in 2007 when they predicted that user created content and social networking would be having a BIG impact about now.

I guess that the Letters of Jessica Mitford that I bought for my plane trip will be put aside for a while as I read the whole thing. (Along with that JISC report with the scary kid on the front that concludes we are all the google generation, and that Pew report into online activities and pursuits, and that Enhancing Graduate Education thingy. )

Thanks to the collective intelligence of the twitter telegram, I heard that it was out via Jude O’Connell who heard it from Vicki Davis, one of this years’ panel.

University students are anonymously giving feedback to their Professors via RateMyProfessors.com .

Now - via video, the Professors Strike Back.

What most impressed me? Professor Laura Shinn’s response to a comment that “I didn’t understand most of what came out of her mouth”. It was basically - “Wow. That hurt. It made me change how prepared I was before class” - but not in a defeatist way.

I’ll be adding to this list

Captivate - using. $$$$. Version we have is a dog, but later are good

SnagIT - find out more

Wink - Free

Camtasia

CamStudio

Windows Movie Maker + Audacity + Firefox screenshot extension ScreenGrab

This article compares Camtasia Studio 4 and Captivate 2 for use by librarians: Tools for Creating Video Tutorials**

 From Web4lib

I had requested info last week on systems for booking or reserving study rooms via the web.

In addition to these that I mentioned before,

* paper and pen signup
* in-house programming
* III Millennium module http://www.iii.com/mill/circ.shtml
* ExLibris Voyager Media booking module
http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/Voyager
* E-vanced solutions http://www.e-vancedsolutions.com/
* EventKeeper http://www.eventkeeper.com/
* Meeting Room booking system http://sourceforge.net/projects/mrbs/
* Netsimplicity Meeting Room Manager
http://www.netsimplicity.com/products/mrm/webscheduling.asp

Kind folks also contributed:

* Microsoft Outlook calendar function
* PHPScheduleIt http://www.php.brickhost.com/
* PeopleCube http://www.peoplecube.com/
* Astor
* WUBS (http://sourceforge.net/projects/wubs/)
* Google calendar

Meeting Room Booking System was the most popular system, in terms of numbers of libraries using it and expressed enthusiasm.

Thanks much!
Elena
__
Elena O’Malley, Assistant Director for Technology and Access Services Emerson College Library, Boston, MA 02116

Meredith Farkas’ two posts - outlines possible products and how she ended up using a wiki.

The long road towards subject guide 2.0

We have wiki!Ellysa Kroski’s A Librarian’s Guide to Creating 2.0 Subject Guides

Cindi Trainor’s presentation about embedding the library in the Learning Management System  We’re not in Kansas anymore! Delivery of Library Resources & ervices Through Learning  Management Systems 

Mentioned in Cindi’s presentation - Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning - embedding “Refpacks” from the  library into Blackboard. I like their Research Guides too.

QUT Creative Industries - embedded del.icio.us into WebCT -

NEXT WEEK

We covered editing and exporting in today’s session, so there will be nothing formal next Friday, although 1.015 will be open 2-3 for anyone who wants to work on their audio file or ask questions.

NOTES

The notes from today’s session are at: http://mullet.pbwiki.com . The password is: walter . If there are bits that need clarifying, feel free to select “edit” and add them in.

INSTALLING

I have copied Audacity onto the G: drive ready for installing on your PC. 

1. Go to G:\Common\LET\AUDACITY

2. Double click on the file: audacity-win-1.2.6.exe and follow the prompts to install it on the C: drive of your PC

3. Copy (Don’t MOVE) this file libmp3lame-3.97 to the same directory as Audacity on your C: drive. If you didn’t specify location during installation, it will be at C:\Program Files\Audacity

At home, you can follow these instructions from Sue Waters to download and install  . The files are here:  Audacity  and the  LAME MP3 encoder .

SET UP

Follow these instructions from Sue Waters - to set up Audacity,. You will need to tell Audacity where you put the lame_enc.dll file. It is in libmp3lame-3.97 .

STORAGE

I have made a file on G:\Common\LET\MINIMOVIES if you want to store your files and images there for the Windows Movie Maker session.

WHAT TO DO NOW ?

Create an audio file, edit it and export it as an MP3 file. Marvel at your greatness.

Create at least 3 images (photos, screenshots) and save them in .png or .jpg format

Bring them to the Windows Movie Maker session on Friday February 22 in 1.015 2-3pm.

Digital Campus is a bi-weekly podcast from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It discusses “how digital media and technology are affecting learning, teaching, and scholarship at colleges, universities, libraries, and museums”.

The December 24 Podcast looked at the top 10 stories in education for 2007 - Episode 18 - Top Ten of 2007. The stories were:

10. Digitization of books

9. Launch of new Operating Systems - Vista for PCs, Leopard for Macs

8. Privacy concerns simmered

7. Wikipedia got respect

6. Digital humanities started to take off

5. Web applications (like google docs) started to move onto campus

4. Lectures started to move off campus (ie. online availability)

3. Second Life

2. iPhone made an impact (not in Australia)

1. Facebook takes over.

From this month I am working as Librarian – Emerging Technologies, or Emerging Technologies Specialist.

The official main duties are to “ work with the Learning Technologies Steering Group to research, evaluate, develop, communicate, and train library staff and the campus community in new technological tools likely to affect information provision and Teaching and Learning in higher education “.

My first project for the Learning Technologies Steering Group involves looking at when and how Murdoch University can host blogs and wikis for staff and students.

For the library, it means I will keep doing programs like the 23 Things, Library Emerging Technology Group and Second Life workshops, I am available to help all library staff find ways to use new technological tools in their jobs and serve our users – including giving advice and training as well as helping set up new tools.

I’ll be on campus in NWL3 3.005B on Tuesdays and Fridays, and at Rockingham once a month.

I’ll continue to scour RSS feeds and email out useful resources to staff I think will be interested. To go with the new position, I have created a blog where I’m posting these emails, http://edtechkat.wordpress.com/. If you would like to subscribe to the blog, the feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Edtechkat .

I welcome questions and suggestions about all aspects of Emerging Technologies – practical, philosophical, skeptical, speculative…whatever. If you have ideas for a project or training session, please let me know.

Ryan Deschamps, a Canadian librarian who blogs as the Other Librarian, has two great posts about computing terms that librarians should know. I learned a lot from both of them.

They are:

5 (Actually, 6) Three Letter Acronyms for Librarians defines the following terms and tells us why librarians should know about them: XML, API, CSS, PHP, GPL.

Under the Hood of Web 2.0 : the top ten programming concepts for librarians to understand   Describes 10 terms and how much we should know about them. The terms are:

• Object-oriented Programming (OOP)
• Client-side scripting (AJAX)
• Relational Database
• Server-side scripting (PHP, Perl, Java, Ruby etc.)
• Http Protocol
• Open Source Software (OSS)
• The Document Object Model (DOM)
• Encryption and Digital Rights Management (DRM)
• Platforms
• Stylesheets (CSS & XSLT)