Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

A recent post on the Netvibes blog titled Using public pages as virtual libraries! contains a list of 11 libraries that are using a Netvibes start page as a public portal or virtual resource center.

via Novus

Mashable presents a guide to How To Create Custom Twitter Backgrounds. This useful article includes excellent examples of Twitter background designs along with 7 helpful Twitter background resources.

Daniel Shain rounds up 10 Excellent Open Source and Free Alternatives to Photoshop in a post on the Six Revisions blog. Here are few from the list that I hadn’t heard of before but can’t wait to check out.

• Krita
• ChocoFlop
• Cinepaint
• Pixia
• Pixen

If you’re a freelancer, student, or just in the job market right now, a portfolio website showcasing your past work can really give you an advantage. Smashing Magazine has put together a top-notch guide to 10 Steps To The Perfect Portfolio Website. The article details the elements your website must have as well as provides screenshots of 40+ beautiful personal portfolio websites. Check out the full article for more on these ten recommendations for a portfolio website:

1. Logo
2. Tagline
3. Portfolio
4. Services
5. About me
6. Contact
7. Blog
8. Call to action
9. Use social networking websites
10. Language and communication

And if you are actively looking for a job, you may want to check out Mashable’s Top 10 Social Sites for Finding a Job posted earlier this week.

His Holiness The Dalai Lama joined the popular microblogging website Twitter yesterday and already has over 13,000 followers. In other social media news, the Vatican has created a YouTube channel, as has UK Parliament, (which is also blogging, on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter), The US House of Representatives and Senate. Know of any other interesting personalities or organizations which have recently joined an online community? Please link to them in the comments!

Update: It has been reported that the Dalai Lama Twitter account was actually started by an impersonator - news which hit Twitter almost immediately after the account was suspended. Although the account has been restored, it no longer claims affiliation with The Office of the Dalai Lama.

Jody Gilbert at TechRepublic discusses 10 simple things you can do to improve your writing. This best practices guide provides helpful tips and recommended guidelines including:

• Avoid echoes (repeated words or phrases)
• Avoid nonparallel list items
• Be aware of agreement problems (singular or plural?)

The informative guide is also available as a PDF download.

Alisa Miller at Smart Teaching has created a mega-list of 100 classroom videos to provide you with fresh perspective and inspiration to spice up your instructional sessions. Her recommended videos are divided into the following categories:

• The Basics
• The Arts
• Getting Physical
• Education and Technology
• Special Needs
• Creative Techniques
• Videos Made by Students
• Teachers Say
• Classrooms on the News
• Just for Fun

Trent Batson, Ph.D. at Campus Technology discusses the types of Web 2.0 collaborative technologies his research team employed throughout the life cycle of their project in Research Collaboration in the Ephemera of Web 2.0.

“What technology do researchers use at different phases of the project? With the new options available now and, it seems, each month, we consider all the possibilities. Part of research now is not just the research, but keeping abreast of new collaboration technologies. We all need to be ethnographers.”

Presentation Zen, the go-to blog for professional presentation design advice, has put together a list of 10 links to cool, high-rez images. These websites provide mainly public domain photographs in very large sizes for use in photo projects or in presentations. And check out their comments section for a few more suggestions.

The New Web has brought with it some amazing tools for creating online subject guides. These tools offer the addition of multimedia and multi-format elements such as photos, videos, social bookmarks, RSS feeds, and widgets to traditional resource guides, as well as an interactive dimension which makes them particularly 2.0. Here are a few tools for creating your own 2.0 guides. Got any other ideas for subject guides? Please share them in the comments!

Squidoo

Experts in any field are welcome to create subject guides which are referred to here as “lenses”. Lensmasters are able to add narrative sections, link to websites, online articles, blogs, RSS feeds and much more including pulling in multimedia and external content such as images from Flickr, bookmarks from del.icio.us, videos from You Tube, books from Amazon, and even inserting Google maps. Lenses can be made interactive by inserting user polls, enabling user voting on recommended resources, inviting users to add to resource lists, and allowing reader feedback.
Already being used by libraries & librarians?
Yes, check out these examples:
Using Web 2.0 Principles to Become Librarian 2.0
Library 2.0 Reading List
Resources for LIS753

Libguides

LibGuides is a white-label subscription service which enables libraries to create a branded community of librarian-created subject guides or portals for their users. These subject guides, or libguides can incorporate all kinds of content including pulling in RSS feeds, embedding videos and podcasts, pulling in del.icio.us tag clouds, uploading documents, and running user polls, etc. These guides are very widget-friendly - I was able to insert a Rollyo search box with my custom-made search engines, and libguides can be shared through a Facebook application. Libguides creators - librarians - get their own individual profiles which aggregate all of their guides and contact information, and they can even embed a live IM chat widget.
Already being used by libraries & librarians?
Yes, it’s currently being used by over 30 libraries, here are a few examples:
Dalhousie University Libraries
Boston College University Libraries
Utah State University Libraries

Koonji

Hindi for “key”, a koonji is a how-to or resource guide for a particular subject which is broken down into steps. Each step describes a process and can include narrative, recommended links lists, tips, videos, and images. Users can add and recommend links, vote for and add tips, discuss guides in forums, and rate koonji guides.
Already being used by libraries & librarians? No, not yet, be the first! For now, see these interesting guides:
How to get your book published
Fortune telling with Turkish coffee
How to sell your house

Library Subject Guides using del.icio.us

Here is a resource guide and a technique for using the linkrolls feature of del.icio.us combined with an RSS feed service such as Feed2JS in order to output a dynamic list of resources onto any website. This guide will let you know how to get started with creating your own subject guides utilizing your del.icio.us bookmarks. This technique is perfect for those who want to keep their existing subject guides, with their formatting, on their own websites, etc. but want to be able to offer fresh content regularly without the hassle of updating pages.
Already being used by libraries & librarians?
Yes, by a few so far, check out these examples:
Chelmsford Public Library
Hilton C. Buley Library

Latest posting from the Educause Librarian is “7 Things You Should Know About Augmented Reality”.

Augmented reality adds information and meaning to a real object or place. Unlike virtual reality, augmented reality does not create a simulated reality. Instead, it takes a real object or space and uses technologies to add contextual data to deepen students’ understanding of it. To the extent that instructors can furnish students with a broad context for understanding the real world, students are more likely to comprehend and remember what they are learning. Through exposing students to an experiential, explorative, and authentic model of learning early in their higher education careers, augmented reality may help shift students from passive to active learning modes and thus become more successful learners.

The “7 Things You Should Know About…” series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning practices and technologies. Each brief focuses on a single practice or technology and describes what it is, how it works, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use ELI’s “7 Things You Should Know About…”  briefs to gain a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

In addition to the “7 Things You Should Know About…”  briefs, you may find other ELI resources useful in addressing teaching, learning, and technology issues at your institution. To learn more visit the ELI Resources page.

“(Federal Judge Richard) Posner . . . speculates on how the Internet and other relatively new technologies will shape the future of plagiarism. He takes the counterintuitive position that plagiarism will become much harder to get away with. In fact, ’student plagiarism may be becoming less common as more colleges and universities adopt plagiarism-detection software,’ such as Turnitin (pronounced “turn it in”), an online service several thousand colleges use.”

Read the review of The Little Book of Plagiarism, by Richard A Posner at the New Atlantis.

Find many more reviews from the Critical Compendium - a daily dose of book reviews from around the world. Pretty neat! A good service addition from your library today?

Take a look at Teen Web a the Nashville Public Library. Flickr images, Teen Web Links on Del.icio.us, and embedded player showcasing the Teen Song Writing contest…and more!

If you’re a teen songwriter, and you didn’t participate in Nashville Public Library’s first ever teen songwriting contest, you missed out!

Finishes with a neat row of avatars, introducing the Library crew. It’s worth taking a look a the Web 2.0 features of Teen Web.

[From: Tame the Web]

Some people say fun does not actually exist. Others bare their teeth and hoot. Nevertheless, the Fun Open Secret Library by Darren Chase is a podcast of fiction and poetry about libraries–not everybody’s idea of a pleasant way to spend time, but it satisfies me. Librarians are a wandering tribe, ranging the best-known and remotest places, moving from job to job. Where are they from? Where are they going? Who are their friends? Do they have fun? The answer to all these questions is Yes.

“Which way shall I fly?” or “Black wind sweeps through the stacks, touching every black book and bound black periodical. Library shadows rock me to sleep.”

Whatever….! You really should subscribe to Fun Open Secret Library and have some fun!

Social networking is about “connecting people to people to people” or in other words, information power to the people long past the era of email! Throw social bookmarking into the mix, and we have ‘human search engineering’. All beautifully Web 2.0.

For the well presented version of Library 2.0 you can’t go past the power of Slideshare. Web 2.0 Kid Style: Social Software and Public Libraries is an excellent presentation from Andrea Mercado. From across the world, check out Going Social: the Librarian’s Bag of Tricks from Bonaria Biancu.

There are many more fantastic presentations in My Favourite Slideshows which I have collected at my Slideshare place at  Heyjudeonline.