Event management

I signed up to doodle and Google calendar. I then created a mock invitation as practice for this week's activities. I also signed up to Anyvite. I like this one more. It has features which are very handy and which allow us to create event invitations easily. There is an RSVP feature with simple options for our guests to respond with a "Yes, maybe or no". Anyvite also lets guests know how many people they can bring with them and what they need to bring to the event... You can also mark and link the event onto the Google calendar, Outlook, and ical so we can receive a reminder for ourselves.
I think that Anyvite can be useful for library events such as the youth and children's summer reading parties because we need to know the number of people attending so we can prepare (foods, staff etc). We can also send invitations and receive responses via two way communication. It will work especially well if all parents have their own email addresses.

Productivity : more ways with rss

I was introduced to RSS tools in nswlearning2.0 last year and have been using them as a tool for my self-study since then. I've been subscribing to learning language sites and been listening to, and reading them on a regular basis via iTunes, emails and bloglines.

I've tried Google alert, Spoken Text--Text to speech RSS and Tabbloid.
"Spoken Text" is the tool which I like the most. It is just like magic when you see how easily and quickly it can convert text in a word document, pdf file, powerpoint, and web pages into audio files. You can then share these audio files on blogs, or transportable devices eg, ipod, cd.

Slideshare

All the presentation tools introduced this week are very useful tools. Some of the excellent features they present include:

Their accessibility- we can use them everywhere at any time as long as a computer and internet are available.

We can edit our presentations, or slide shows even once they are sent. When we edit our original presentation or slide show it will then automatically update all others when opened.

We can use these presentations to conduct online training for staff as well as patrons etc...

Slideshow - Zoho show

Nings exploration

After a bit exploration during the last few days. I've developed this understanding about what Ning are:

When signing up with Ning2.0 we have to wait for approval to be accepted as a member. We can then see our name indicated under latest activities. Activities such as leaving comments or joining groups will also be up dated under that section.

We have our own Ning page; we can develop our own page using the same features as found on the main page. We are then able to invite people to join, customise our page, add photos, videos or bring up topics for discussion.

Ning are great for sharing knowledge, ideas, and learning from each other.

Nings are not places where people can share their personal matters such as Facebook...

As member of Ning we are able to find people who have the same interests and same jobs to share and learn from them. We learn through asking questions, or reading comments between members. We have to follow certain rules, in general, we always respect other cultures, and belief... We are not to allowed to insult other people. If someone does it their membership will be canceled as a result.

Nings

What I like about the library 2.0 Ning is the way it combines almost all of the 2.0 tools including blogs, wikis, forums, photos, and videos. These features allow people to

express their thoughts (blogs)
colaborate on the same projects (Wikis)
discuss topics (forum)
add photos and videos (flickr, Youtube...)

I find Nings are very useful and handy. All content is accessible on the one page. It groups people who have the same interests, passions and jobs so that they can share ideas, knowlege, expertise and learn from each other in an international network. We can also make friends with people we wouldn't otherwise have been able to meet, and friendship is one of the needs in one's life besides our own family.

I joined library 2.0 ning yesterday, I am very happy to see my name appear on it today. I added my flickr photos on it. It is so exciting to me. I need more time to explore it.

I think it is a very good idea to have Nings in our library website. It helps libraries to get feedback from our patrons. evaluate our services and our resources...

It is also good for promotion, marketing, bookclubs and book reviews.


Visit Library 2.0

Evaluation

Besides the Marrickville blog http://marrickvillereads.blogspot.com/created recently, and of course our website, we haven't used many of the 2.0 tools yet due to council restrictions.

In this lesson, some evaluation 2.0 tool features (Google alert, Survey monkey , Tweet reach, twitter counter, surveymonkey, zoomerang ) were described and shown to be very useful tools. They can save time and money and allow us to attain feedback about our services in a speedy manner. In the past, our council had to hire out site companies to conduct surveys which is a very expensive and time consuming process.

I set up a feedburner account for my blog and am currently waiting to see the results.

I have a flickr account which has a feature that indicates how many visitors have viewed my photos. I just discovered that flickr has many statistic features, including:

• graphs & charts
• discovering where your visitors come from
• Tracing how visitors arrived there
  
• which of your photos are popular today, this week, or over time

Delicious

I practiced adding a linkroll (which displays my latest delicious bookmarks) and tagrolls to my blog.

I linked my twitter and delicious account, so now i can share some of my bookmarks with others.

I recommend using delicious to save any useful online resources in the library intranet. It can save time, particularly for other staff wishing to answer similar questions. It can also be used to share good sites with our patrons or with other libraries.

I find that delicious and RSS feeds are similar in that we can get up to date information once we bookmark or subscribe to sites.

Delicious- Tagrolls

Twitter

I signed up for a Twitter account. I tweeted and found some people to follow. My twitter username is -stnov09

Struggling to link photos from flickr to Twitter. I followed the instructions how to set this up in the lesson but it wasn't successful. I then went to Google search to find out how to link photos from flickr to Twitter via this link
http://www.ivanwalsh.com/2009/06/how-to-link-your-flickr-and-twitter-accounts/www.flickr.com/account/blogs/add/twitter

What i like about micro-blogging is the short messages and quick updates of features. It is useful for things such as:

• sharing useful links
• keeping the clients informed eg. of events or library closing days
• promoting library new services and resources ...

Journey continues -2.1

I haven't posted anymore blogs since finishing the original course. I am back and feel that choosing a template for a blog is fascinating. There are lots of free beautiful templates online for us to choose from. Changing a template within blogger is easy but it took me a long time to download a template from the other online sites because a software called win-rar was needed to unzip the template files. The templates are so beautiful. It was worth spending time to learn how to download them. With the help from my daughter we worked it out.

Many business organisations including libraries now a days use blogging as a tool to promote their services, to communicate with their customers. What I like about the blogging is the two way communication, which allows us to share ideas, skills. We can learn from each other. We can find people with the same interests to join them and become friends wherever they are.

This time in the 2.1 I found that Excellent Reference link is a really useful resource for library staff who want to refresh or build up reference skills. I am starting to do this now.

I have read some blogs from 2.0 course and some blogs from ESL sites. I sometimes commented on other blogs.