March 25, 2008 at 8:06 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: blogs, classroom assignment, comparison, wikis
Blogs are more or less static once created – the initial text can only be changed by the original author, although people can respond in any way that they like. Wikis are potentially very fluid and can be changed by anyone who wants to at any time. It’s the difference between writing on the bathroom wall with marker, with people responding below with more marker, and writing on a whiteboard with people editing and adding as they like.
Blogs are more useful for news, for announcements, for event calendars, for book reviews, or for responses to a library pronouncement. Wikis are more useful for any kind of collaboration or shared projects. Blogs seem most likely to be useful for the entire library community – wikis are probably better for internal collaboration and use among staff. For instance, I would definitely use a blog to announce an upcoming event and ask for feedback. I would never use a wiki in that fashion due to the possibility of some person maliciously or inadverdantly chaning the announcement information.
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March 25, 2008 at 7:45 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: orienteering, wikis
I created – late – a wiki on wetpaint.com about orienteering at http://greenegret.wetpaint.com/. That probably won’t be interesting or useful to anyone but me, but there you go.
I’m a little annoyed because I can’t figure out how to create hotlinks in my threadposts, even though I can tell it’s possible because other people have done it. I’ll find it eventually.
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March 12, 2008 at 4:31 pm (Uncategorized)
I use FireFox’s built in RSS feed in addition to an Add-on Extension called RSS Ticker personally and at work, but I installed News Gator’s Feed Demon for this class. I’d never used a separate reader unless you count that really slow thing that comes with Vista, so this was interesting.
I’m pretty pleased with it – I’d been meaning to try a different one that would only upload unread items, which isn’t the case with Ticker. It goes by date added.
I also liked that I could stick feeds into this blog – I’m pretty pleased with WordPress, too.
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March 12, 2008 at 4:18 pm (Uncategorized)
I added widgets to this blog so that I could add a feed to the course blog, another to a search for sublingual immunotherapy on Pubmed, the TOC for Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, a journal from APA, to Science Daily’s Allergy section, and one to Yahoo Health.
I am not sure whether or not I need to sign up with separate reader now, but I will just in case.
I think I could use RSS feeds in my library to keep up with current trends in medicine and research (I already do), and also to keep particular users of the library informed about areas that they are known to have an interest in. It might also be good to set up feeds for our subject specialists in their areas – I’m pretty sure that most of them aren’t very aware of this possibility and do read journals in their areas heavily.
In addition to currently existing feeds, it might be beneficial to try to create one for new items that come into our library by subject. Patrons could then choose to subscribe to one to be kept apropos of anything new in their areas, without the library having to email lists that probably get treated as spam regularly.
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March 12, 2008 at 3:45 pm (Uncategorized)
Okay, after picking this blog host for its features and because it didn’t look cartoonish like the other one, I began to fuss around with the themes. I switched from Ocadia to Thirteen, which is much more interesting. I also fussed around with the text, and added a calendar and blog stats widget. This theme has nice toys associated with it.
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