Library + Instructional Design

ebrary @ Rod Library

2011-06-27T12:41:00.004-05:00

5 Cloud Services

2011-06-21T11:38:00.003-05:00

Brian Chen did a great job in providing a comparison table for five cloud services: iCloud, Google, Amazon loudDrive, Windows Live, and Dropbox. You will find what you need to know about how each service works here.

Inspirational blogs

2011-06-17T14:23:00.003-05:00

I discovered these two blogs recently, all have lots of useful resources and tools. Check them out!

What I learned today

The author Nicole Engard had published articles about library intranet 2.0. Her blog contains links to lots of open sources and is published everyday!

Rose Colored Glasses: Random Thoughts on Instructional Design

The author JoAnn Gonzalez-Major is a senior educational technologist at Dartmouth College. Her blog is inspirational; I also like her research guides about tools for teaching and learning which can be viewed here.

Flowchart Workshop

2011-06-09T08:21:00.002-05:00

Do you know what is a flowchart? Can you read the symbols on a flowchart? And do you know how to create a flowchart without hassles? If you have one or more NO in your answers, then you should come to the Flowchart workshop.

Workshop Objectives:

* Understand the meaning of flowchart
* Understanding the basic parts of the flowchart such as the
flowchart symbols and the flow lines connecting these symbols
* Able to use a free online diagram software to create flowcharts

Who should attend: Anyone who could be assigned to creating and analyzing flowchart

Sign up in the Staff Lounge today!

---------------------------------
The workshop was completed yesterday June 8th. Six staff signed up but eight showed up. It was a successful workshop as at the end, Robin said that she thought it would be so hard to create flowchart! "You are such a great teacher!" She said. That made my day :-)

ABCD Objectives Model

2011-05-18T09:25:00.006-05:00

Students often have difficulties writing learning objectives. The ABCD model is an easy approach to guide the writing process.

ABCD model includes 4 distinct components:

A- audience (the learners of the instruction)
B- Behavior (the observable performance)
C- Condition (under what circumstance the learners will be assessed)
D- Degree (measurement of success)

Example: Given pictures of flowers (C: condition), 3rd graders (A: audience) will be able to identify which flower belongs to which season (B: behavior) with 90% accuracy (D: degree).

Now can you write up some objectives using the ABCD model?

MacBook Pro

2011-05-13T14:53:00.006-05:00

In this video we go over some of the great features that come with our new MacBook Pro laptops.

It was a fun project! My student and I spent 2 hours using a MacBook Pro from downstairs. It took a while to refresh my memory about using iMovie.. couldn't believe it's been 4 years! Well, Mac is mac, no one can beat it for the quality of a multimedia project!

Google Animated Logo

2011-05-11T09:28:00.003-05:00

Must see today's Google animated logo!

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

This animation is to celebrate Martha Graham's 117th birthday. Martha Graham is widely known as an early pioneer of modern dance. She danced 80 years of her life and passed away in 1991 when she was 96 years old.

Invited Speaker at Iowa Library Association Annuanl Conference

2011-05-10T13:39:00.003-05:00

The ILA annual conference will be held in Council Bluffs in October 2011. I was invited as a speaker for a concurrent session. Below are the information I provided for the conference schedule:

Bio: Elaine Chen is the Instructional Design Specialist at Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls. Elaine is also an adjunct faculty who taught web design courses for UNI’s School of Library Science. She has extensive experiences working on website design and redesign.

Session Title: Library Website Redesign: 20 Dos and Don’ts

Description: Explore current trends in website design and learn the steps needed to redesign your library website.

UNI partnership with Google Apps for Education

2011-05-03T12:45:00.005-05:00

Starts this summer, UNI will begin to offer three Google Apps for newly enrolled students. These apps are Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Sites. Also, all new students and transferred students will have Gmail. The university is also transferring all student emails to Gmail. And then the staff's emails.

Rod Library Services for Distance Learners

2011-04-27T20:32:00.005-05:00

My student assistant Justin and I created this video that highlights the library services for distance learners. Our distance learning coordinator Ellen Neuhaus contributed the scripts. We kind of experimenting some animations using the still images to give it a fun tuneup. Hope you like it. :-)

Tornado Procedures Flowchart

2011-04-26T17:27:00.004-05:00

Working on a tornado procedures flowchart for our student assistants using Gliffy. Any comments?

Mending and Binding

2011-04-22T16:46:00.003-05:00

Have you ever thought about how books are repaired? I did, and I finally got a chance to take a closer look after working at a library for four years.

First, the decisions need to made follow a decision tree:

Second, this video shows some basic in-house repairs:

2011-04-20T17:03:00.002-05:00

The workshop for migrating CE8 courses to Bb Learn 9 was held today at the ITTC. The workshop covered how to back up courses in CE8 and then import the course package to Bb9. Once imported, the instructor will need to move the materials under the old menu to the Course Contents in Bb9. Some items were lost when migrating, for example, the Grading Forms in CE8 did not carry over to Bb9.

They are some features that I like about Bb9: the drag and drop function, the customizable Course Dashboard, the ability to subscribe to the discussions, and the Bb 9 Help link. There are some limitations too. Such as you can't do much to customize your home page anymore. Although I do need to spend some time to play with it, and to see if there's more flexibility to individualize the course.

I failed to ask whether you can subscribe to the email within Bb9. I found out today that a student from last fall emailed me an interview survey about online teaching last week and was due 2 days ago. How should I know to check that email in CE8 since the course was ended in December 2010?

The built-in help link was helpful. Lots of videos made with Captivate for you to learn from them. Some faculty were worried about migrating the courses because the IT and the Continuing Ed will not doing this anymore for them. All faculty will need to do this themselves.

Assistive Technologies

2011-04-19T15:41:00.003-05:00

The Accessible Web Page Design workshop was help April 18th, 2011. Bob Martin, the History professor and Department Head demonstrated how he uses screen reader everyday to navigate internet. Bob's wife, Kate Martin, also works at the library, we had been to Russia together a few years ago. So, I have met Bob several times but all at very casual locations. Bob cannot see, the opportunity to watch him used computer at work is very helpful.

Although the library is equipped with some assistive technologies such as JAWS for Windows, OpenBook reader, Merlin CCTV system, APH GE cassette tape recorder and player, Perkins Brailler, and ZoomText; and I had chances to test on our website on those tools before. It is still useful from a different perspective.

Besides the demons, the workshop itself was not very informative. Most of the resources the presenter shared were information we attained from the WebAIM Accessibility workshop we attended at UI last year. Tools for assisting web accessibility can be reviewed at the WebAIM's Resources website. For example, the color contrast checker is useful, when I taught Web Design, I asked students to check their font color and background color using this tool.

Some tips were offered during the workshop, things like provide alt text description, minimize graphics, etc. However, nothing was deep.

Iowa Network for Women in Higher Education Leadership Conference

2011-04-18T12:58:00.006-05:00

The IOWAWHE conference was held Friday at UNI. The keynote speaker was Dr. Gloria Gibson, the executive vice president and provost of UNI. I had never realized that Dr. Gibson has a sense of humor. She used the top ten idea from David Letterman's Late Show. So, the woman leadership's top ten are:
#10- Seizing the moment: no one can go back to the beginning, but you certainly can make your own ending.
#9- Take pride in your identity: be who you are, understand your strengths and weaknesses and take inventory, then identify areas for improvement.
#8-Ethical behavior grounded in values and principals: Find out what your values and principals are. Whether they are religion, family, or belief. And revisit them often.
#7-Dreaming: Envision. See what is not there. Challenge people around you to do the same. We also need to have short term and long term dreams. Although dreams might turn into nightmares, we still need to dream for change.
#6- Service: carry the service concept working in higher ed. Service takes many forms, but it can be as easy as saying hello to a student or to your staff. Sometimes, giving others a little away means a lot to them.
#5-Risk: To be a leader we must take risks. However, know where you are going, making good judgment, and put one foot at a time.
#4- Laughter: we need to ding the bright side and the balance. Laugh and enjoy!
#3- Take care of your mind, body and spirit. In other words, take care of yourself! Read, exercise, get your annual exams, and take time to take care of your body. Knowing what refresh your spirit and revisit it at the end of the day.
#2- Empathize with your constituents: Know who those people are, and what they are thinking. Understand what they are saying even you are not agree with them, but tell them why your reasons in a respectful way.
#1- Recognize everyday, extraordinary people can become leaders: rise from where you are and say to others that "yes, you can be a leader". Take more active role and encourage others.

The first session was "Strategic Mentoring: Leveraging Mentor Selction Every Step of Your Career". In this session, we grouped with people from other departments or institutions. We were giving handouts and worksheets to write down some questions then discussed with our partner. It's helpful to read our self-reflections about the desired career path and discover an individualized mentor selection plan for the next career step. I think this session came just in time to help me select a mentor pool who will guide me in my future career path.

The second session was "Changing Course: Redefining Leadership on Your Own Terms" held by Ms. Maureen McCormick who has a MS in Instructional Design and Technology from U of Iowa. The participants were giving a list of 34 themes of the strengths from Strength Finder by Marcus Bucking's book Now Discover Your Strengths. My three top themes are Achiever, Learner, and Ideation. I was able to use these three themes to write up my strength statement. I will need to remember to revisit my strength statement often at my job. So, here is my strength statement:

"I feel strong when I can learn new technologies, to initiate new ideas for implementing those ideas, and to achieve the goals of using them."

The third and also the last session was "The Search Process: Optimizing Your Candidacy". The guest speaker was Julie Tea, who is a senior consultant from Academic Search, Inc. Julie gave a presentation about the search process for leadership jobs (deans, directors, presidents, etc) in higher ed. It's kind of nice to know the process, although I don't know how practical it is for me to go for this direction.

The conference only cost $40 and it is certainly a good conference for building network with women from higher ed in Iowa.

Staff Intranet Redesign

2011-04-13T14:03:00.005-05:00

The library's staff intranet has been redesigned. The original interface (home page) was captured below. The main navigation was on top and ran horizontally across the page:
The new design uses a fluid layout to increase space for a site navigation on the left hand side. Note that a search box has been added on the top right hand side. The main content area utilize RSS feeds from different places, includes announcements from the Dean's office to reduce email loads in the library. The new interface looks like this:
A site map was created after conducting an inventory for the current pages and documents on the intranet server.

The Everywhere Library

2011-04-13T13:45:00.004-05:00

Today we have patrons from everywhere using different devices such as iPad, iTouch, iPhone, laptop, desktop, etc. However, are we there yet to provide an everywhere library? Check out Jason Griffey's blogs to get some ideas:

Jason Griffey’s Personal Blog: http://jasongriffey.net/
Pattern Recognition: http://jasongriffey.net/wp/
American Libraries’ Perpetual Beta: http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/perpetualbeta
ALA TechSource Blog: http://www.alatechsource.org/blogger/16

A cafe page for staff intranet

2011-04-08T15:34:00.008-05:00

A staff cafe page design was requested for our intranet. This should be a virtual space for staff's social need and personal announcement. Since we have a staff lounge where people having meals, breaks, coffees, reading, hanging around, or playing puzzles. Ta-da, here is my conceptual map for a cafe page to meet these needs:

And then, the actually html page was constructed using the concept map:
http://dev.lib.uni.edu/chen/rodnet/cafe/index.htm

Any feedback?

Mobile Site Interface Design

2011-01-20T19:36:00.003-06:00

The initial design for our mobile site. While mouseover, the item background will become dark purple and the text and the arrow facing right will become white. There is a PHP code that call today's library hour on the top. What do you think about this design?

Youtube close captions

2010-10-01T16:57:00.004-05:00

Did a quick search today and found Captiontube for making close captions for Youtube videos. Captiontube is a free online program, it has the timeline based interface similar to any video editing software. The feature makes it extremely easy to use. Just sign up with a google account and it will link to your Youtube account for publishing the final file.

So, here is my first attempt. The timing was not perfect yet. Will need some practices..

A fun video about plagiarism

2010-08-19T15:37:00.003-05:00

“A Plagiarism Carol" by the library of the University of Bergen in Norway, very funny!

Drupal SEO Workshop

2010-08-12T13:43:00.007-05:00

The workshop was presented by Ben Finklea from Volacci- a professional search marketing firm. Ben's presentation was quite engaging, he has not only showed the real world examples and gave tips; he also provided activities for the participants to stay focused. I especially like the 7-seconds (and then 6-seconds, 5-seconds) rule activities to find out the most important information on a web page and whether the website is doing a good job.

At the end, I won Ben's book!

Ben has a blog at
http://www.volacci.com/blog/ben-finklea

What digital natives want from their libraries?

2010-04-26T13:47:00.002-05:00

Prezi- a new way for presentation

2010-04-15T19:40:00.004-05:00

The Instructional Technology program is hiring. One interviewee had a workshop about Prezi (http://prezi.com/) as his teaching demonstration. Since I am serving on his search committee, I went to evaluate it.

Prezi is very easy to use. The interface is very clean and light like other 2.0 tools. The participants created free education accounts, then played with it. Within 30 minutes, everyone had his/her slide show set up.

My impression for Prezi? Ar first, it looked cool. But I felt dizzy after a while. The zoom in zoom out feature made my eyes tired too. Who knows, I might give it a try for a conference presentation this November.

Website redesign boot camp 2

2010-02-17T16:41:00.004-06:00

Now, let me talk about the design trends for the 2009/2010 university websites.

Design Trends

1. Layout
Usually has a utilities navigation on the top.
A search bar placement
A large banner
2-3 columns for main contents

2. Centered page
Stony Brook University. The old site was left adjusted, but the new site is centered: http://www.stonybrook.edu/
Same as the University of Toronto http://www.utoronto.ca/

3. Wider design
Between 950-980, or even wider

4. Common search placement
Lots of examples, all have a search box on the top right hand corner

5. Big footers

6. Illustrations
Professional illustrations, some look like hand drawing...

7. Natural textures
Woodgrain, grass, textures (leather, worn paper, canvas, etc.)

8. Big photos
Most of the examples shown on this discussion have big photos

9.Photo backgrounds
Duke study abroad http://studyabroad.duke.edu/
(Refresh the browser to see more photos)

10. Gradient backgrounds
U Texas http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/index.html
(red to dark red)

11. 3D elements
Gradients, bevels, shadows, and reflections

Last but not the least, the checklist for all the trends:

CSS based and valid
Flash video
Mobile web
AJAX
Centered design
Wider design (such as 1024 px)
Gradients
Shadows
Icons
Search and navigation placement
News and events on the homepage
De-emphasis of audience navigation
Social networking links/landing page
Big footers

Now, it is your turn to apply these trends and redesign your website.

Website Redesign Boot Camp

2010-02-16T19:51:00.004-06:00

Attened the first webinar today about higher education website redesign. The presenter introduced many university websites, and provided 3 design trends for 2009 and 2010.

Technology trends:

1. Ajax and Javascript are on top of the web languages. There are severy frameworks available on the Internet, such as SPRY, Prototype, and JQuery. Among those, JQuery seems the most popular one. Examples of university website using JQuery are:

University of Virginia: http://www.virginia.edu/
Boston University: http://www.bu.edu/
University of Lethbridge: http://www.uleth.ca/

Either mouseover the main navigation menu or click on it to see how JQuery works. Additional information about JQuery is here http://jquery.com/ The tutorials are very good and are available in several languages!

2. Avoiding Flash content
The truth that the Apple products (iPhone, iPad, iTouch...) do not support Flash content probably plays a big role.

3. Video
More YouTube videos are available on univeristy websites. Such as American University http://www.american.edu/ (However, I couldn't find their videos!)

4. Mobile computing
Such as the University of Alabama: http://m.ua.edu/
NCSU http://www.ncsu.edu/mobile/
NCSU Libraries http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/m/home/?browse=iphone
Duke University http://m.duke.edu/
WVU http://m.wvu.edu/about/

Navigation Trends

1. De-emphasis on audience based navigation
University of Alabama http://www.ua.edu/
(the links to current students, future students are in light grey bar, and the font is smaller than the main navigation)
University of Oxford http://www.ox.ac.uk/
(the links to staff, alumi, etc on the top also has fewer focus)
William & Mary http://www.wm.edu/
(the links under "Information for" on the top are hidden)
University of Lousville http://louisville.edu/
(also, the Information for: is under the banner photo)

2. Expanded subsets of navigation
CBU http://www.calbaptist.edu/
Queen's College http://www.queens.unimelb.edu.au/
(need to scroll down to see the extanded navigation)

3. Popular links
The University of Queensland http://www.uq.edu.au/
(check out the Favorite links on the right hand side)
Northland Community and Technical College http://www.northlandcollege.edu/
(check out the Most Popular Links)
Ohio State http://www.osu.edu/
(Most Popular Link for different audiences, use tag cloud code)

4. Links to social networking
Cute icons on http://www.unl.edu/
More cute icons http://www.seattleu.edu/artsci/

5. Twitter
TweetChicago http://webcast-law.uchicago.edu/tweetchicago/
NCSU http://twitter.ncsu.edu/

(will come back tomorrow and talk about design trends.)

3 Read Posters

2009-11-25T10:57:00.004-06:00

Finally, I am getting the hang of Photoshop recently by working on these posters. They turned out great!

Some cool tools for social media marketing

2009-11-09T19:39:00.003-06:00

Screenr- a screencast tool for twitter: http://screenr.com/

Screenjelly- a screencast tool for email, twitter, and facebook http://www.screenjelly.com/

Celtx Studio

2009-10-28T20:43:00.003-05:00

I am preparing my presentation for the Brick & Click conference and came across an article. In the article, the author mentioned a collaborative multimedia freeware: Celtx Studio. Looks very cool, I think I will give it a try!

http://celtx.com/

Jing Project

2009-10-15T16:32:00.002-05:00

Jing has been available for a while, I finally had our tech guy to download it on my desktop, here is the first try. If goes well, we will go for pro and use it for our IM service.

http://www.screencast.com/users/echen/folders/Jing/media/ee40198e-6653-474a-ad9a-3909eb3d3370

Creativity

2009-10-14T20:11:00.002-05:00

6000 sticky notes = a creativity video!

What is a browser?

2009-07-31T11:14:00.004-05:00

An interesting survey by google.

YouTube Insight

2009-06-12T12:19:00.004-05:00

YouTube Insight let you find out who is viewing your video, where they come from, how old they are, their genders and more. One thing I don't understand is how do they find out users' ages if they do not have a YouTube account?

More than 80% of the viewers are between 45-54 years old females; does this imply that the videos are mostly viewed by the library staff? Interesting!

Bookmarks

2009-05-22T15:43:00.003-05:00

A series of bookmarks are being developed to be used for our freshman, transfer, and graduate student orientations.

Yahoo Pipes Example

2009-05-13T19:38:00.004-05:00

This pipes example uses 2 sources (uni.edu and weblogs.uni.edu) with 2 modules (filter and fetchsitefeed) from Yahoo Pipes.

Sharing tools

2009-05-12T19:40:00.000-05:00

ALA 2009

2009-05-01T13:12:00.003-05:00

ALA conference from July 9- 15. http://www.ala.org/ala/conferencesevents/upcoming/annual/index.cfm

ACRL 2009 Day 4

2009-03-15T12:22:00.003-05:00

User eXperience (UX)

Simple, compelling, meaningful, memorable: Iceland cruse vs dental experience (memories)

Definition: The quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific design (that design can be everything, a service, a web interface, a trip, an event...)

Origins- the experience economy- the memory that becomes the most important (1999- Pine and Gilmore), trade and commodity

Commodity (coffee bean, 1-2 cent)->goods (5-25 cent)->experience (starbucks coffee, 2-5 dollars) move from transaction-based to interaction-based

Startbucks created a powerful user experience, they are more than just selling coffee

Commponents: usable, findable useful, valuable, credible, desirable, accessible

Google has a user experience team- there are 10 elements- people, trustworthy, simplicity,

Apple (what made apples iphone arguably the greatest gadget of a generation? the user experience) and blackberry (blackberry focuses on the first few minutes of the user experience, since first impressions mean a lot) the first impression decide the user will use it or leave. Two companies' ux group are different but have the same goal.

Experiences: good vs bad-fidelity starbuckis has hi fideltiy lo convenience. MacDonald, lo-fidelity, hi-convenience (UX vs $)

Think about how to make library a hi-fidelity and hi- convenience

I conic UX: apple, disney, nordstroms- how to make library like these places?

Your library: the expectation is well received, not that you need to go circulation, then go...the patron won't come back, they go to amazon to buy that book

Totality is important; meaning (stuff- clothes, cars, ipods, tvs). We focus too much on the stuffs but not the meaning. A book (?) surveys people all over the world what are the meaningful things Meaning (accomplishment, beauty, creation, trust,

Relationships (the librarian

Totality, Meaning, and Relationships are the 3 things we need to focus.

Library at Geogia Tech- camping there. Where does this fit into our traditional assessment program.

Transportation experience- how do you improve it? Eliminate the fear of the dental visit (TLC dental, computer, massage chair, wifi,..)

Example: pizza order interface (domino)

What do groups get their work done? What if we made finding books easy? what types of resources are students using and how are they

Are librarians asking the right questions?

Collaborative space (lighting, table)- asked students draw out, chose two designs from students, and in last summer, they built the prototype, how the wireless work? how the table and the chair work?

Instruction- check the course list and consult with professors about student assignment, then create handout for the professors, also talked with students about their struggles

Storyboarding- ask students to draw on sticky notes what works and what does not work for them?

Right now they are looking for laptop (everyone has a laptop at GT), how can they print from laptop,

Next steps-

Read Subject To Change (Merholz)

Subscribe to designing better libraries blog (dbl.lishost.org) http://dbl.lishost.org/blog/

Start the UX discussion in your library

look for what's broken, then fix it, always be on the lookout for good and bad UX encounters, consider joining national, regional, or local UX associations

ACRL 2009 Dary 3

2009-03-15T12:21:00.001-05:00

Beyond the Entertainment Factor

Presenters: Jennifer- instructional design and integrating technology into instruction; Catherine- instruction librarian

Part one- technology, 2.0, integration,

Part two-basic ID model and how to relate to ACRL standards

Part three- examples for instruction, hands-on activities

Leave with framework

Definition of Multimedia- interactive technology communicative media, the incorporation of a number of media such as text, audio, video, and animation, esp, interactively. (OED)

Technology-web 2.0: blog, wiki, zoho, video, delicious, flickr, 2nd life, FB, MySpace, widget, yahoo pipes, youtube

The web 2.0 landscape image (I used that for my web 2.0 workshop too), the problem is how to use it? What to use?

S1. Technology as a tool-

The technology should: support learning outcomes, establish a balance, encourage varied and broad applications, utilize common skills and practices

How you can apply that in a variety ways, manipulate to meet your needs. The positive way is to be creative! Don't just talk, students need more hands on experience (PBL)

S2 Impact on instruction - pros: creativity in instruction, easy and quick distribution, fosters interaction/ collaboration, connectivity between

S3 impact on instruction- cons: shifts focus / distracts from instruction, anxiety, potential for copyright, status qup hinders innovation, lack of confidentiality an dprivacy , equipment/ software issue

S4 disconnections between: information and technology, perceived skills and actual skills, personal versus academic life (students use technology everyday but might not even know how to convert a PDF)

S5 activity one: identify relevant technologies and activities- brainstorming in pairs, exercise 1: identify technologies based on particular activities

exercise 2- identify activities based on particular technologies

ID- the primary goal of ID is to establish a sold learning framework or scaffold that includes well defined, learning outcomes

5 Qs about ID- what do you want the student to be able to do (outcome)? Curriculum, pedagogy, how will the student learning? evaluation, criteria

ADDIE- analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation. ADDIE is a process, not using in a linear way.

What's the difference?

Analysis- determine a need for teaching or instruction, ex: environmental scan, learner analysis

Evaluation- testing or checking acquisition of specific knowledge or skills within in a specific instructional setting as related outcomes

Ass- identify gaps of skills or knowledge at the broadest level, not dependent on a specific instructional setting

Design- blueprint the big picture

Development- give the big picture specific objectives and outcomes

Objectives-

Outcomes- what shtdents are able to do after the instruction

"Information" literacy models- ICT (information and communication technology), ACRL information literacy, IT fluency, information fluency, media literacy, 21st century literacies (critical thinking skills, )

Why ICT?- effectively integrates tech literacy, brings together critical 21st century literacies, relates with ACRL standards, practical, skill-bases

ITC literacy- define (identify and appropriately represent), access (be able to know what and where to find info), manage (to apply an existing organizational or classification scheme for digital info), integrate (interpret and represent digital info), evaluate, (determine the degree to which digital info satisfies the needs of the task) create (the ability to generate info by adapting, applying, designing or inventing info), communicate (the ability to share and communicate knowledge)-DAMIECM

ACRL standards- determine, access, evaluate, incorporate, use, understand (DAEIUU)

Learning outcomes- tie directly to assessment, student focused, knowing what you are doing, knowing why you are it, knowing what students are learning as a result, changing because of the information

Objectives- statements that describe how an outcome will be archived. Rewrite the objectives if you can not reach the objectives

Need to apply learning theories into design.

Formula (learning outcome)=> what + in order to + why

Activity 1-example construct a search statement using topic relevant and controlled vocabulary in order to search academic databases with maximum effectiveness (ICT proficiencies create, integrate, evaluate)

Students want to know what they are learning and why they are learning.

Check & balances- verbs, action or not, variety of levels of skills (Gardner's multiple intelligence skills), is your language clear, different and specific in order to

Choosing verbs for learning outcomes- avoid: become familiar with..

verbs to use: define, list, recognize, explain, identify, locate, analyze, compare, differentiate, assess, critique, evaluate, construct, design, synthesize

Activity 2- Scenario 5- a local state wide energy coop is at is maximum energy consumption and is seeking help in developing a marketing campaign that will educate and motive members to reduce the amount of energy they are consuming. Students in an introductory marketing class are to develop a variety of marketing campaigns to meet the coop's goal.

- locate demography data in order to evaluate data and decide who and how to market

- design and construct videos in order to educate and motive consumers- the targeted market; analyze data

Sharing-

- using google docs, and type where they are while searching, leave a trace.

- using audio from MPR, talks about no child left behind and identify the keywords

- using statistic and poll data, a good way to get students thinking

- create a wiki where everyone is sharing how to do a search/research (wiki is a great way to keep the interactivity)

- citation styles, using a Javascript refrigerator magnet program http://www.nuff-respec.com/technology/javascript-and-css-magnets

As you consult with faculty and create activity, you need specific objectives.

When you writing a learning outcome, think about how to incorporate technology. Need to be more specific

Example- Creative Commons (CC): different levels of copyright. Objectives- students will be able to identify 5 types of CC. Students will download the image and cite properly. Student will discuss copyright issue...

Survey- most of the attendees want to learn more about twitter and video. The most barrier to learn technology is lack of time. The most used technologies are blog and FB.

Sometimes a simple video is easy to incorporate.

Teaching examples- information strategies- outcomes- students will utilize multiple methods for finding and identifying information in order to improve their information literacy skills

Objectives are steps to achieve outcomes!

Sample project- (students are as savvy as you think they are) students created videos, graded for content, not so good. The video was about war of Iraq; a video with still images and quotes, statistics, then a war film, followed by some interviews about "looking back to the war of Iraq".

Example technology to encourage students- wikipedia, wiki scanner, websites, databases. To be able to get wiki knowledge, find a calmer from a wikipedia, Colbert and wikiality quote, then use wiki scanner- it is a website created by a graduate student. It is a data mining tool. Tracked anonymous wiki articles edited in 19 -

http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/

http://katrina.cs.caltech.edu/erenrich_rnd345/scanner_final/

Examples of using wikiscanner to compare original articles and the modified: wal-mart, Amenian-Turkish relations.

Activity 3: Use a potential learning opportunity at your institution, fill out the survey http://tinyurl.com/beyondeval

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=btrnJCzn8O6p7hjevfJs_2fg_3d_3d

The handouts are located on the ACRl virtual conference website.

ACRL 2009- Day 2

2009-03-13T19:45:00.003-05:00

(Notes from the conference)

1. Workshop- digital project ideas

The presenter showed us how to use the One-Page Project Management template (http://www.onepageprojectmanager.com/resource.html)

to manage projects. The attendees were then work in small groups to work on a project design. The template is useful, I might use it for some of our projects later on. P.S. the presenter has a background in ID.

2. Twitter- (I planed to attend another section but the schedule on the pocket program was wrong). The section presenter was bored and did not even demonstrate how we can use twitter for the library! (Disappointed!)

3. OpenURL (The presenter Peter McCracken is a Seattle local, his ppt presentation had one slide for his professional work and followed by another slide for the hidden sights in Seattle, quite interesting) try local coffee Seattle Best, not Starbucks!

The measure of success- better access for patrons, -fewer false positives and false negatives

Seattle sightseeing: Art Museums, Frye Art Museum, George monument, Burke museum, the Smith tower (1914), volunteer park water tower, Kerry park, the chocolate, ice cream cruise, underground tour, doughnuts, Top Pot 2124 5th ave, under monorail, Mighty o doughnuts, 2110 N5th st.

KBART- UKSG 2007 http://www.uksg.org/project/

how to deal with data accuracy

Q: newspaper linking

Olympic Sculpture Park
2901 Western Avenue

Seattle Art Museum Downtown
1300 First Avenue

15 west, marine used store

4. The poster section is quite good, however, most of them did not provide handouts, I will need to remember to check the ACRL website

5. Assessment results on academic library web sites - Meg Scharf, Univ. of Central Florida

http://www.educause.edu/Community/MemDir/Profiles/MegScharf/43020?time=1236982629

Everything measured gets better, does it?

Different kind of assessments take time and do they work?

Who are our stakeholders? The students, faculty, administration. right now, maybe our local public libraries, neighborhood, community, our web users!

How to communicate with our users? The fierce power of narrative!

We want to prove that we are listen to our users. We do assessment to see if the new ideas work. Should we step outside of the box? The university won't give you money unless you are assessing something.

Appreciative Inquiring tool (?)

Orange county library system http://www.ocls.info/Default.asp?bhcp=1

Examples of assessment

Are we communicating the wrong way? the best way is through our webpage, we are afraid of change

Methodology-

1. Random number list 2. Sample drawn: 250 academic libraries, 3. timing

44.6% publicly assisted institutions, 55.3% private funded

She developed a rubric with A: excellent, B: very good, C: OK

Searched google for the univ home page then go to library website from there

searched "about us", about the libraries, library facts & info

searched for assessment, evaluation, performance, measures, measurement, plan,

searched circulation, ILL, reference, cataloging

5% got A, clear, intuitive

6% got B

16 % got C

73 % got F, could not find any info at all

Best practices- logical location on your website

UW- univ. of Washingtonn, UW libraries assessment: survey, libqual report, easy to get there

USC Libraries, facts and figures, easy to find, user satisfaction study result (LibQUAL)

Univ. of Central Florida- search "assessment"

Jerlyn asked question how old the survey should be? A: 1 year old

6. Digital libraries need digital organization- John McGinty

Digital resources are changing the way the library it was. First, the size of digital collection is increasing; second, the major shift to be able to digitize materials; third, faculty and student have the ability to access resources using the Internet. The dynamic situation charge us to think about the management structure of the library.

Digital milestones, 1966 MARC record created, 1968-73 library integrated only systems emerge, 1971 OCLC union catalog debuts, 1987 online journals begin to be marketed,1991 web created, 1996 google goes live, 2001 wikipedia begins, 2005 youtube starts

Digital problems- (the presenter talks so slow and some people started to leave...Super disappointed!)

7. Keynote

Keynote speaker: Sherman Alexie

A prolific novelist, poet and screenplay writer and has been hailed as one of the best young writers of his generation. In his lectures, he tells autobiographical tales of contemporary American Indian life laced with razor-sharp humor and bits of history, pop culture and social commentary. Alexie's best known works include The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Smoke Signals, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. ~ACRL website

"I love librarian conference, there are thousand of hot women here!" (Laughters..) ~Alexie

He really got the librarians! He is funny.

He talked about how American is so strange. Indian, the native American serves in wars, but people never talk about who indian people are. "We are American."

People surprised that he was interested in pop culture because they think that the Indian does not have radios or Tvs, they live in mountains.

His grandfather died in Okinawa in World war II, but the family never talked about that. He and his father never said something like "I love you son" or "I love you, dad". Then how can you tell your family history? A librarian did a research about his grandfather (what really makes the librarian important), his grandfather earned 16 medals but they did not know until they read the paper.

People love (tolerates) each other. What's the difference between laughter and hate?

Indian people want to be who we see- the negative image of Indian. But he said that he is not because he hates snow, that's why he lives in Seattle.

Being an Indian, he is always being guarded what he is presenting. For example, by interviewed with Opera, what is he going to present? What kind of books you read? Where are you from? How long you have lived there, 1200 years? He is carrying the Indian's image with him all the time. Some people even talked to him using Spanish because he is a brown skin American.

For more about him

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Alexie

ACRL 2009 - Day 1

2009-03-13T14:37:00.002-05:00

The ACRL 2009 conferencee is in Seattle from March 12- March 15. Since this is my first big library conference, I have very high expectation to learn from the conference sections.

We arrived one day earlier at Seattle and did a little bit exploration to this city. Although I visited this city 6 years ago (time really flies!) for the NECC, I am still very excited to see more faces of this city. We learned how to use the bus system and made it to our motel Days Inn. After checking in, we went to Pike Place Market and Space Needle for picture taking. Yes, lots of photos again.

Then the day 1, about one hundred people from 21 countries attended the first timer orientation. A brief introduction to the officers and the conference hightlight, a refreshment was provided. I have learned that all the library conference provides foods and drinks in most of the sections!

The opening keynote started at 4 pm. The keynote speaker Rushworth Kidder gave a speach about how to make good decision. As he stated, our rooughest choices are not matters of right versus wrong but of right versus right. He also suggested that ethic is not the most important thing to consider but the culture where we live.

The exhibits then started at 5:45 where the exhibitors and receptions were provided. Food were excellent! The exhibits was smaller than the NECC conference, but still lots of free giveaways for you to take home. Of course, the registration fee is not cheap!

There was a gaming night but I was not only exhaused and just wanted to go back to sleep, but also forgot about that at all.

Quick Tips

2009-01-20T14:06:00.000-06:00

Spreadsheet Art

2009-01-03T02:12:00.000-06:00

Store and share articles

2008-12-23T15:25:00.002-06:00

http://www.citeulike.org/home

I was finding some articles about new literacy and come across this web 2.0 tool where you can search articles and find/retrieve the articles in your library. Then store the articles and share them with your class/friends. The data can also be exported in different citation formats. Wow, it is like using the Refworks but has the 2.0 features!

I will recommend whoever is writing thesis, dissertations, research paper to start create an account and put the articles there. It will be a time saver!

Dim Dim

2008-12-19T12:27:00.004-06:00

http://www.dimdim.com/

A free video conferencing tool for up to 20 people to meet virtually, it seems a very nice video conferencing tool!

Maybe we can all set up a time to meet there:)

Library Holiday Party

2008-12-17T19:26:00.003-06:00

A fun and successful holiday party!

SMS Text Message Service

2008-11-26T16:28:00.004-06:00

The RIS department has started a discussing about providing SMS text messages. However, how to send SMS messages from a computer / PC is still quite new in academic libraries. I did a little search and from I have found most of the services are not free.

Some other interesting discussions include how do Chinese people text? I took some pictures from my nephew's cell phones, one uses the old one-finger touch keys, the other use a writing pad, very smart!

AECT 2008 Photos

2008-11-25T21:48:00.002-06:00

Testing a google form

2008-11-23T17:25:00.006-06:00

We are revising our research consultation form because we got so many requests this semester and would like to change from 24 hours respond to 48 hours. This might be a good time to use Google Form. Please test it for me:)
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Open source and free sources for educators

2008-11-20T19:41:00.003-06:00

The best session I attended at AECT 2008 was this one presented by Dr. Odin Jurkowski. The list was based on his ppt file. For questions, please contact Dr. Jurkowski at jurkowski@ucmo.edu

Web Browsers

• Firefox http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

• Google Chrome http://www.google.com/chrome

• Opera http://www.opera.com/

• Camino http://caminobrowser.org/ Mozilla for mac

• Safari http://www.apple.com/safari/

Office Productivity

• OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/

• NeoOffice http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php (Mac)

• AbiWord http://www.abisource.com/

• Google Docs http://docs.google.com for working online

• Google Apps http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/included.html

• Scribus http://www.scribus.net/ Desktop publishing

Wikis & Blogs & Social

• Wikispaces http://www.wikispaces.com/

• pbwiki http://pbwiki.com/

• Blogger http://www.blogger.com

• ePALS http://www.epals.com/

• WordPress http://wordpress.org/ create your own blogs

• Elgg http://elgg.org/ create your own social network

Communication

• Skype http://www.skype.com/

• Google Talk http://www.google.com/talk/

• AIM http://dashboard.aim.com/aim

• Pidgin http://pidgin.im/ multi-protocol instant messaging

• Jabber http://www.jabber.org/

Images

• Gimp http://www.gimp.org/ (similar to Photoshop)

• Inkscape http://www.inkscape.org/ Vector graphics (similar to Adobe Illustrator)

• Blender http://www.blender.org/ 3D modeling

• Google Sketchup http://sketchup.google.com/

Screen Capture

• Zscreen http://www.brandonz.net/projects/zscreen/

• Greenshot http://greenshot.sourceforge.net/

Screen Casting

• CamStudio http://camstudio.org/

• Wink http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

• Jing http://www.jingproject.com/

Audio

• Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Video

• Windows Movie Maker

• Jashaka http://jahshaka.org/

• Jumpcut http://jumpcut.com/ online video editing

• JayCut http://jaycut.com/ online video editing

Web Editing

• Nvu http://nvudev.com/index.php

• KompoZer http://www.kompozer.net/

• Amaya http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

• Bluefish http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/

• SeaMonkey http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

AntiVirus

• Avast http://www.avast.com/

• ClamWin http://www.clamwin.com/

• Avira http://www.free-av.com/en/products/index.html

Utilities

• Filezilla http://filezilla-project.org/ FTP

• CoffeeCup http://www.coffeecup.com/free-ftp/ FTP

• 7-Zip http://www.7-zip.org/ Zip

• Wuala http://wua.la/ Social Online Storage

• FOG http://www.fogproject.org/ Ghost

• OpenVPN http://www.openvpn.net/ VPN

Course Management Systems

• Moodle http://moodle.org/

• Sakai http://sakaiproject.org/

• Claroline http://www.claroline.net/

• NineHub http://ninehub.com/ Free Moodle Hosting

Library Automation

• koha http://www.koha.org/

• emilda http://www.emilda.org/

Educational

• Celestia http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ Space

• Stellarium http://www.stellarium.org/ Planetarium

• Tux Typing http://tuxtype.sourceforge.net/ Typing

• Typing Web http://www.typingweb.com/ Free online typing

• Tux Paint http://www.tuxpaint.org/ Drawing

• Scratch http://scratch.mit.edu/

Other

• Cmap http://cmap.ihmc.us/ Mind mapping

• FreeMind http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Mind mapping

• gliffy http://www.gliffy.com/ Flow chart

• Zamzar http://zamzar.com/ File conversion

• GanttProject http://ganttproject.biz/

• GnuCash http://www.gnucash.org/ Account software

• FET http://www.lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/ Scheduling software

• Adeona http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/index.html Laptop tracking

AECT 2008

2008-11-17T19:40:00.001-06:00

The Association of Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) conference was held at Orlando from November 4th-8th. Some highlights of this year’s conference include:

1. AECT 2008 and UNI- the president was Dr. Mary Herrings from Curriculum and Instruction at UNI. One of the conference planners was Dr. Ana Donaldson from UNI. Dr. Z gave a workshop and a presentation about Web 2.0 and open sources. I gave a showcase about multimedia design and development process. And I met Dr. Bill Callahan Dean of the College of Education.

2. Study Tour- This year, AECT offered 2 study tours to the University of Central Florida. I attended the one that visited the Institute for Simulation and Training (IST). IST is one of the nation leading research centers for simulation, training, modeling, virtual, augmented, and mixed reality research for both defense and commercial applications. Involving students in real-world research has resulted in numerous undergraduate and graduate student research positions. IST is helping to define the future of simulation and training and is charged with identifying new directions for this technology. IST support comes from government and industry sponsors. Current research efforts include computer generated forces, embedded training, virtual, mixed and augmented reality, computer graphics, high performance parallel processing, interactive entertainment, public safety, advanced distributed learning, computer-controlled robotics, human factors, and behavioral science.

3. Joint University reception: 13 universities participated the reception including Florida State, Brigham Young Univ, Indiana Univ, Nothern Illinois Univ, Nova Southeastern Univ, Pen State, University of Georgia, Univ of Central Florida, Univ of Memphis, Univ of New Maxico, Univ of North Dakota, UNI and Utah State Univ. They had tables and some giveaways.

4. Keynote speakers:
Dr. George Strawn is the NSF’s Chief Information Officer, his opening keynote was about The Future of Education and IT: (http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/640). He provided some statistical data from the past and his projections in the future for “IT-based learning.” He concluded that perhaps education won't be for job training anymore, but still for democracy and for good live.
Dr. James Paul Gee from May Lou Fulton College of Education. His suggests that good video games are designed to enhance learning through effective learning principles supported by research in the learning sciences. Also suggests thinking about how game based learning can help reform schools.
Dr. Allison Rossert from San Diego State University. Her ending keynote was about using blended learning opportunities to support learning. I also attended her other two sessions focused on Performance Support.

5. Conference focuses-
Virtual worlds and mobile learning
Educational Transformation
Instructional Design Culture
Serious Gaming for Education

6. AECT 2009- will be held at Louisville Kentucky in October 2009. The main theme is Integrative Approaches Meeting Challenges with six sub-themes:
Transforming Learning and Instruction
Linking Design and Development with Learning and Performance
Establishing the Benefits of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Approaches
Exploring New Media in Learning, Instruction and Performance
Assessing and Evaluating Educational Technology Applications
Integrating Social Networking and Distributed Media into Learning and Instruction

READ poster

2008-08-25T15:01:00.003-05:00

The PR committee is planing to use ALA's READ CD to create some posters. Here is an example of a Read Poster, just this one was created using the online widget.

Laws of web usability- notes from "Don't make me think"

2008-07-15T19:42:00.004-05:00

Steve Kurg's laws of web usability:

1. Don't make me think!
2. It doesn't matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.
3. Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left.

Trunk Test (Navigation test) for each page:

1. What site is this? (Site ID)
2. What page am I on? (Page name)
3. What are the major sections of this site? (Sections)
4. What are my options at this level? (Local navigation)
5. Where am I in the scheme of things? ("You are here" indicators)
6. How can I search?

Questions for home page:
1. What is this?
2. What can I do here?
3. What do they have here?
4. Why should I be here--and not somewhere else?
5. Where do I start?

Google Lively

2008-07-11T12:46:00.002-05:00

Google's new baby- Google Lively! This is the room I have just created, there are not too many objects you can use to decorate the room. For example, I would like to make the room more like a library reference service desk where we can test for our virtual reference service. But it is so limited.

Well, Google Lively is released on July 8th, it is only 3 days old, I will keep updating the room. Stay tune or come in the room to chat with me!

Webspace restructure

2008-07-03T23:44:00.004-05:00

This week, after a 10 days vacation, I was quite busy for removing all the files that our department is responsible for. We have about 350 pages, which did not cost too much time to do that; however, assign the files to new created subfolder did take a while. Moreover, we need to create a spreadsheet that has the old file name, old file urls, new file name, move to which folder, and the new urls. Yes, for all the 350 pages. This is time consuming! Hopefully, we will get it done next week. After that, some student assistants will help to check every page to find broken links. Another race with time!

The fun part today was creating this flyer for freshmen orientation.

Second Life Workshop

2008-06-19T11:46:00.004-05:00

Second life workshop is the last one for our web 2.0 series. I spent several days to prepare for it, not only it is the most complicated tool, but also, I am so newbie about SL. Even yesterday when I tested on our instruction room computer, I still could not get to the place I wanted to be- the AECT headquarter. Fortunately, I went to a place (don't remember where?!) and met a girl, she showed me how to get to AECT. The workshop is this afternoon, will be back for the update.

The workshop was over, whew! The 28 powerpoint slides went well but when I tried to log into SL, it failed! I tried several times, and finally it worked. I showed the basic movements in SL, how to change your appearance, and how to teleport from place to place. A librarian asked me to find a bar, we did find one by a beach in Japan, lots of people there speaking Japanese and some English! And finally we found the business school at UNI, and stopped my presentation there.

The workshop was one hour, 10 staff attended this workshop, and some stayed for another 30 minutes to exchange ideas.

Library Newsletter

2008-06-06T13:46:00.003-05:00

The first issue of library newsletter was made public. The PRC head told me that she only received one negative comment. So, we will see if this is helpful for promoting the library.

Alternative JPEG to Flash

2008-05-08T20:05:00.007-05:00

The distance education coordinator asked me to create an instructional web page for students who try to access databases off campus. Since the content is so limited, I decided just to create a flash file instead of a captivate file.

However, considering some people might still not have Flash player installed, I use a method called “alternative jpeg to flash”. You can also use an animated GIF or a QT movie instead. Within Flash (6 or later), when publish the output, click on the Publish Setting under File, check one of the files: JPEG, GIF, or QT; check html, and check swf. Then within the created html file, the codes are embed that will detect whether the browser has flash player or not. Finally within the html file, replace the image or QT file name in the quotation marks within the code document.write( ).

I think it will work, but I couldn’t find a computer in the library that does not have a flash player. Will need to find one for testing later.

Library instruction presentation

2008-04-25T11:56:00.004-05:00

Tuesday, April 22, 2-3pm. I did a presentation for our visitors from Russia. A student interpreter was also there who helped with the translation.

I explained what I did as an ID and then I presented stuffs from my website, some of the projects were especially highlighted, such as faculty webpage, YouTube videos, and database tutorials. All the projects are listed here.

The presentation went well, they asked abut Captivate, and at the end, we took this photo.

Fiesta Party

2008-04-17T20:27:00.005-05:00

This week is the National Library Week. Each year, the library has a theme party for students work here. This year, the theme is Fiesta!

That was a great party! Comments are positive and some students even said that this was the best party they had had ever! Although the committee was exhausted after preparing food for 120 people, we were happy about the result.

An avatar building tool

2008-04-07T15:58:00.004-05:00

An avatar made in Meez.com.

PS, that is the only short I could find, need to spend more time on it.

The spirit of service

2008-03-28T09:53:00.002-05:00

The University hosted a guest speech yesterday for everyone who says "thank you very much" everyday. The speaker was Holly Stiel who used to be the chief concierge at Grand Hyatt hotel San Francisco for 16 years. She is funny. She changed hats, wigs, and clothes when she talked about someone else. Like she said, the service is inside out, and for us who provide services, we should consider service as a performance art.

Let's be the artist and put on a show!

iPhone 2.0: iBand

2008-03-22T09:48:00.004-05:00

How creative it is to use iPone for another use!

On March 6, Apple announced iPhone Beta (2.0) and released iPhone's Software Development Kit (SDK) for free download. Within a month, it has over 100,000 downloads from developers all over the world. Developers can upload their applications (including free) and retain 70% of all sales, and Apple keeps the 30%. The company doesn’t need to pay salaries to the developers all over the world, what a smart decision!

See Apple’s announcement at http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/03/06iphone.html

Recent projects

2008-02-29T17:11:00.006-06:00

Two print designs from my recent works.

In addition, I did a Web 2.0 workshop this Tuesday that covered Podcast, MP3, streaming media, and YouTube. Below are some of the tutorials I created for this workshop. 18 library staff attended.

iTunes tutorial

Audacity tutorial

Windows Movie Maker part 1(.wmv)

Windows Movie Maker part 2

Ajax and Drupal

2008-01-26T21:19:00.000-06:00

Two things come to my mind recently. One is Ajax (asynchronous javascript and xml) and the other one is Drupal. It might be not suitable to mention them together, since one is a technique and one is a web application framework. However, they share one thing in common, they are all NEW to me!

Let's talk about Drupal first. Drupal is a content management system; both UNI and the library are considering use it as the framework for our websites. Drupal is an open source, it is free; however, it is not easy to use as a framework for a university site. So, to get it started, university pays for a training company and will start some workshops in February. Although we know it is a CMS, how it works is still a mysterious for most of us. One thing I know is, the website won’t be fancy using a CMS, based on the examples I have seen so far., I hope I am wrong.

When I asked the Information Literacy Game developers at the Brick and Click conference what language they used, "it's Ajax" that was my first time to learn about Ajax. Last week, a guy from Microsoft came to the campus and did a presentation about Ajax, it said very well on the abstract, however, the presentation was disappointing, the guy is young (25 years old!) and lack of preparation. So, right now I only know that Ajax is a Javascript technique for quick download when it is needed, and it will stay at the browser while the user is using the computer. Example? When you mouse over the contact person in Gmail, the little box that shows the person’s info, and link to chat.., that is Ajax.

Designing the obvious

2008-01-10T08:50:00.000-06:00

Designing the obvious, image from: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/117L39C2o9L._AA115_.jpg

What is obvious design?

Robert Hoekman, Jr. defines it as "The design should make things clear. The products should be simple to understand, easy to learn, well organized. Interface elements should be intuitive, streamlined, uniform." (Hoekman, 2007, p.7)

He observed and suggested the qualities among great web-based software (p.9):

- It focuses on the activity instead of a specific audience.
- It has only those necessary features.
- It supports user's mental model.
- It helps users get started quickly.
- It makes it easy to recover from mistakes.
- It has uniformly design interface elements.
- It reduces clutter to a minimum.

Hence, he proposed the above mentioned features as design guidelines in designing web-based application.

The book is an easy read along with associated screenshots. I feel like reading Don Norman's "The design of everyday things". Although the approaches are different, the focus is the same. That is, the designers (including software designers and web developers) should design things that are so intuitive and common sense to the users.

It is good to see more studies on this topic:)

A handy tool for captuaring webpage

2008-01-02T15:32:00.001-06:00

Use the Print Screen key on keyboard to take screenshot is convenient, however, it is limited if you would like to show a webpage that is longer than the screen. A handy tool named thumbaliz allows you take screenshots of any webpage you want. Cool!

Example of screenshot from my page

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-11T18:13:00.000-06:00

Today is my last working day of this semester, and of this year! I still like my job, and the people around me in particular; they really did a good job in supporting me. Thank you so much!

It is hard to believe how many wonderful experiences I have gained so far, as a new employee at the University, a new ID specialist at the library, as well as a new resident at Cedar Falls, Iowa.

My hope for those coming years would be as good as this year, or even better:)

Happy Holidays!

del.icio.us tag cloud

2007-12-04T19:07:00.000-06:00

YouTube Playlist

2007-12-03T18:51:00.001-06:00

The end of the fall semester is approaching, it's time to show off our YouTube videos. See the playlist here .

I am not satisfied with the quality of the five ways to success. The good and bad ideas are much better.

AECT at Second Life

2007-11-29T19:57:00.000-06:00

AECT at Second Life's webinar was this afternoon, it was presented by Ross Perkins at Virginia Tech. The webinar started with general development histoy about SL, then went specifically on the teaching and research aspects by utilizing SL. After the presentation, there was a party held at SL's AECT building. I finally got through the info island, and teleported to a place that I don't know. I asked people there how to go to the place I want, one nice girl told me to use search tab and type in the place I would like to go. Then I found myself standing in front of people, with bare feet and funny clothes, and scary hair too. (At that time, I like my first life better!)

I took a walk in the AECT land, there are buildings, conference rooms, beautiful gardens, posters, and I even got a free T-Shirt. So, I spent like 2 hours, everyone left, I changed my appearance, wear my free t-shirt, and finally got myself a pair of jeans, shoes and a party hat! So, do you like my new look?

PS, I haven't figured it out how to turn myself, or to find a mirror to see myself. It might still scary:)

Library T-Shirt

2007-11-20T15:19:00.001-06:00

Each year, library gives gifts away for some events such as family weekend (home coming) and web usability test. Although buying gifts is easy, finding gifts they represent our library is not an easy task. It seems to have something that we are proud of is a must. Therefore, some people (including our student assistants) suggested to have library T-shirts that we not only can give away, but also we can wear occasionally.

So, what should we put on our library T-shirts? Yes, a logo!! However, at UNI, we cannot create logos without getting permission from the Public Relations and Marketing department. Here is the one that got the most votes and finally got approved by the PR.

More than 100 orders are made. I ordered 3, one for my father, one for King, and one for myself. I will tell you what is it like to wear a T-Shirt that has a logo that I designed.

Information Literacy Game

2007-11-16T15:05:00.000-06:00

We played the information literacy game in our department meeting this morning. Everyone loves that! So, it is no doubt that we will integrate this into our new site. My first task for the year of 2008.

The presenter did not distribute handout for her presentation, but from my
notes, the statistics for using the game is 1528 for the first month.

They also did a survey, some of the results include:

The game is somehow challenging: 50%
The game is fun to play: 71%
You learned something new: 62%

It is worth a try!

Design Language

2007-11-09T17:00:00.000-06:00

One session that caught my attention at AECT was how to teach design language in the filed of ID. If we examine closely in our field, we have hundreds of models, tens of theories, but what is lacking is a set of systematic design language; consequently, we ended up perform badly in describing projects and in demonstrating our ideas.

I totally agree on this. See the storyboards we created for our two YouTube project, you will know what I mean.

However, these poor storyboards helped us film the scenes one after one, and we are finally done.

Something about the B&C Library Conference

2007-11-05T19:45:00.000-06:00

The B&C conference was really good. Although it happened in only one day from 8 am to 4:30pm, it started with breakfast and door prize for next year's free registration. Since I am used to conference with no food, not getting any prizes home did not upset me a bit.

The B&C conference was really small. Only about 100 people (95% librarians I guess) attended, it had 5 concurrent sessions, one poster session, and meals in between.

The list below were the sessions in which I attended:

1. Often Overlooked: Database Users with Disabilities

This session introduced accessibility issues inherent in database use, examines how the major database vendors are progressing toward accessibility, and reports on how well(bad?) a select group of libraries addresses the needs of database users with impaired vision.

2. At the Point of Need: Usage Patterns of Streaming Video Tutorials

This session analyzed the access patterns of over 2,000 uses of 18 videos. The usage rates of types of videos are compared, and where several points of access of a single video are provided, the access points are compared. And, to the extent possible, on and off campus access was compared.

This session concluded by suggesting what instructional content should be provided, and where within a library's web-presence it should be provided.

3. Lights, Camera, Action! Developing You.Tube Style Videos to Enhance Information Literacy

This session highlighted how to develop short videos that reinforce the Association of College and Research Libraries Information Literacy practices. These short videos can be employed in traditional classroom instruction, online and distance education classes, and web based tutorials.

The paper included several scripts from videos specifically created for instruction at the University of South Dakota.

(Note: these so-called "videos" were created with Camtasia by using still photos and powerpoint files. Very low quality and no music was involved- to avoid copyright issue I guess)

4. The Online Information Literacy Game: A Trivial Pursuit?

Believing that library instruction in information literacy can benefit from a games-based approach, University at North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) Librarians created a computer board game with a question-and-answer format. The game was created using Ajax and XML and can be adapted easily by other libraries. The game allows from two to four students to play against each other by answering questions about information literacy topics in four different categories (such as Choose your Resource, Avoiding Plagiarism, and Searching and Using Databases). The game also has a one-player version in which students provide timed responses to questions. The game can be accessed at http://library.uncg.edu/game/.

I have sent out the link to all of our librarians to test, if most of them like the game, then I will try to integrate it into our page.

5. Digg This: Tagging and Social Collaboration on the Web

This session introduced Del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, and LibraryThing, after the library 2.0 workshop, this session was too easy. I expected to see more examples of how other libraries are implementing them, but not too many information about it.

6. Tales from the digital trenches: Start-up process management for library media production service

This presentation discussed the multimedia production service, a form of emerging user service arising from the idea of the information commons model as a collaborative workspace. While these environments involved library space and network technology, the research focused on the blending of information technology and library staff into collaborative processes arising from these novel library work elements.

This research should help me to write a proposal for establishing a multimedia production lab at our library in the future.

Brick and Click Library Symposium

2007-11-01T10:26:00.000-05:00

This Friday, I will be attending my first library conference, the Brick and Click Library Symposium held in the J.W. Jones Student Union, Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, Missouri. Some of the programs look very interesting and might relate to what I am doing. It might also be a good idea to get some insights for next year's conference proposal too.

Library 2.0 Workshop Summary

2007-10-20T11:50:00.000-05:00

This 4 weeks workshop was ended last week. Except what I've learned from the readings, postings, and introduced tools, I also have gained some friends and facebooked each other. This is out of my expectations!

Okay, back to my topic. The reading load for week was heavy but a good training for understand the concepts and history of the 2.0 phenomenon. Also knowing the tips for persuading IT people would definitely help me in the future. I have no problems with the tools introduced this week such as blogs and RSS readers, thanks to wave, I have been a blogger since 2005, while we were procrastinating for our dissertations. As RSS feed reader, I love Netvibes among others!

I got better for the second week reading, but started to spend time on reading the posts. There were 48 students in this class. The instructor used 2 big groups for the first week icebreaker activity but decided to use the whole class group for the following weeks. It was nice to see EVERYONE's posts, but as the threaded messages increased, you can image how hard it is to track the message. The University of Wisconsin- Madison's course management system is Desire to Learn, it is not too powerful compared to BB. As the tools for this week, I gave del.icio.us a second chance and finally downloaded the buttons to my firefox browser. It is nice though. Library Thing is a great tool! Some libraries have begun to use it for cataloging, although I don't exactly know how it works, it work out very well for me to organize my books. I learned WorldCat when I first come to work here, it is a good tool to search materials all over the world. I have used it to help patrons find books from other libraries for interlibrary loan, it is handy! And the last one, Doodle, it should be helpful for planing a trip or something else that needs tons of communication via emails.

Week three, reading was easy too cause I have read most of them since I got here. I built two wikis, one with pb the other one with wetpaint. I like wetpaint's interface better, the capacity for more templates, unlimited storage, but has ads on it no matter what. On the contrast, pb is free (or you can upgrade it with fees) , but limited in size and templates. I leaned that it is very hard to get other people contribute to the wiki. For example, I invited two people from our department and two student assistants, but only one student started to post some content to the wiki. To be used as a collaborative tool, wiki remains a goal for us to reach. Facebook is fun but might use too much of my working time:) I don't like MySpace at all and would not give it a try. We use QuestionPoint as our IM, it encountered some difficulties this week, but I don't think we will switch to free IMs such as meebo. Finally, mashups is the one I haven't got the whole picture. I tried two mashups tools, Pipes and SuprGlu, my first impression was it was not too different from an RSS feed reader like NetVibes; however, I know I need to invest more time on it.

The last week was not bad too. Some of the discussions threads had more responses than others, although I still feel that maybe create some small groups will engage more depth discussions. As the tools, Flickr is one of my favorite; I have experience with audio podcast but haven't try video ones. YouTube is on my list, I created one video from last week's purple pride day and got many positive feedback for the potential use for YouTube, but it has our university mascot in it and before we submit it, we need permission from the university. My Second Life name is Huei Meili (the screenshot on the top), I spent a whole afternoon changing cloth and modifying the look in order to make my avatar looks great; then another hour for flying through the intro island, but all failed. Met some other male avatars and one asked if I could speak French! Maybe I should say yes, it is my second life, and I should have the ability to do whatever I want, right? Just haven't made the connection for our library to use, yet.

ERIC Searching Guide Tutorial

2007-10-12T16:37:00.000-05:00

Check out the first database tutorial, ERIC EBSCO Searching Guide I have made. One of the recent hired student helped with the narrations. She is pretty good!

The multimedia production team is finalizing ideas to be produced for YouTube, do we want to focus on RIS only? Or give a tour for the whole library? We haven't decided yet! After all, this is just our first week, and we are getting to know each other:)

And guess what? Today is the purple pride day at UNI, the homecoming weekend. See I was wearing purple!

wiki wiki

2007-10-01T17:22:00.000-05:00

Our wiki (a Hawaiian-language word for fast. See the photo for the wiki wiki bus.) is officially published on the PB (peanut butter) wiki at: http://rodmultimedia.pbwiki.com/FrontPage . Right now not many contents are there, I hope it evolves when the project proceed.

We had a good interview today, the student is actually in the theater major which we are very excited about it. I took a digital photo of her, recorded her voice using Audacity, also recorded her introduction using my camcorder. I haven't connected the camcorder to my desktop, actually, I might just use my MacBook for easy editing and better software on it of course. When it comes multimedia, Mac is the only choice! Sorry, my PC friends!

Web Usability Test

2007-09-28T13:22:00.000-05:00

The Library 2.0 online workshop keeps me very busy. Not only because the reading load, but because spending time on the tools that the authors mentioned. Can you believe that I have three wiki accounts now! Why I tested all the wiki products is I would like to use one of them to keep track for the Multimeida Project Team progress. The team is on the process of hiring students, we have two applicants, one of them is in the acting major, the interviews have been scheduled, and I will need to remember hookup the camcorder on my desktop and laptop as soon as possible.

One other thing I also spent time on is categorizing books in my LibraryThing. If you scroll down a little bit, you will find the link to my LibraryThing account from the right hand side. Isn’t it we are what we read? I started to realize that I have more text books than other books; I really should get a life:)

Before the library to design a new website, there is a need to conduct a usability test for current site use. The goal for usability test is to learning things that we want to find out, such as what works and what doesn’t. A group was formed to perform this task, I am one of them. Here I found Jakob Nielsen’s resources list useful: http://faculty.nhmccd.edu/lrosenberger/usability_testing.htm (some of the links are no longer active). And of course, it means more reading for this weekend!

Multimedia Project Team proposal

2007-09-18T18:38:00.000-05:00

Note: the proposal was submitted yesterday and got approved today. This is my stepping stone to Library 2.0! If all goes well, we will write another proposal and ask for more fundings!
-----------------------------------------------------
Multimedia Project Student Worker Fee Proposal 2007

Proposal Description:
The Department of Reference and Instructional Service (RIS) provides a variety of services for students and faculty at UNI through numerous means. For patrons who prefer to visit the library, they are assisted and their questions are answered by knowledgeable librarians at the reference desk. On the other hand, some learners prefer to visit the library virtually. The RIS department provides synchronous services (QuestionPoint chat and phone services) as well as asynchronous services (email and online forms for requesting research consultation). However, the above-mentioned services have one thing in common, that is, they all demand a timely response. In order to overcome the limitation, like many other libraries, the RIS department provides online tutorials that allow patrons’ self-paced learning at ANYTIME and from ANYWHERE around the world with Internet access.

Unfortunately, the animated tutorials made by the RIS department several years ago are outdated. The need to create new tutorials goes without saying. Today, with the new and mostly free Web 2.0 technologies, we are able to create different formats of online tutorials such as podcasts, YouTube videos, or Flash-based movies. However, considering that the reference librarians and the RIS staff members are very busy with their daily obligations, although they are willing to serve as content providers, it is impossible for them to find the time to actually work on the tutorials. Therefore, I propose to form a Multimedia Project Team to explore available emerging technologies for creating online tutorials, and to develop tutorials. The team will be led by EC, the Instructional Design Specialist, and supervised by CN, the Instructional Coordinator, and JM, the Head of RIS. Two part-time student workers are needed in order to work with EC for tasks such as script writing, editing, recording, narrating, acting, and testing. A collaborative wiki or a blog will be created by the team to document the process and for later evaluation purpose.

Benefit to Rod Library
• Gain insights in providing Library 2.0 services by student/user participants and collaborators
• Provide updated online tutorials 24 hours a day and seven days a week
• Make library site an interesting place to visit
• Make Rod Library one of the leading libraries in terms of library 2.0 service

Budget Summary

Student Workers Fee:$XXXX

TOTAL REQUESTED: $XXXX

Contact Person
EC, Instructional Design Specialist, RIS

Library 2.0 Online Workshop

2007-09-14T14:41:00.000-05:00

The Library 2.0 Online Workshop started this Monday. This workshop is offered by the School of Library Science at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. The course management system is called Learn@UW Madison powered by Desire2Learn. The interface is quite different from BB, WebCT, K-State Online, or Angel. However, I am getting used to it. The instructor is Joy Schwarz who is working on Project Play: Play More, Learn More, Fear Less! from Winnefox Library System.

The topics will be covered within the four weeks include:

Week One

What Is Library 2.0?
Implementing new technologies at your library
Blogs & blogging
RSS feeds & Newsreaders

Week Two

Tagging
del.icio.us
LibraryThing
WorldCat
Doodle

Week Three

Wikis
MySpace
Facebook
IM
Mashups

Week Four

Flickr
Podcasts
YouTube
Other resources
Optional questions

For each topic, there are tons of readings. I am still on my week one topic one reading, what is Library 2.0? One article I like the most so far is Library 2.0 Means Better Service by Marylaine Block. There are examples and resources throughout the paper. There are 48 students, imaging reading all the introduction messages. In week one, there are two big groups, Joy said that he might merge the 2 groups into one big class next week.

My ultimate goal after this class is gain the insights of the Library 2.0 and how to convince the IT people to buy in!

Blog Header

2007-09-10T15:14:00.001-05:00

Hey,

Check out the new headers (they are six) I created. Thanks to "uncle" for the photos, and thanks to freeyasoul for the codes that randomly display a different header by click on the refresh button.

The template's width and all the related images were also changed, since everyone has bigger monitor, I like the main content area bigger too.

Librray banner

2007-09-07T16:55:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I was asked by the public relation committee to create a banner to be used on the University's home page.

I prepared 4 designs, 3 are static images and one in Flash. Which is your favorite?

And the Library Banner Project in Flash format.

Library Instruction

2007-09-04T21:48:00.000-05:00

Last Friday during our regular department meeting, I proposed to redo the library instrucion page, although two of my colleagues were absent, the rest of them (8) agreed. So, today, I finished the draft.

On the job description, 15% of my time should spend on making tutorials and training modules for using databases. Since the Adobe Captivate is ordered and should be here soon, I started to look for some other university libraries' examples. I need to learn the databases and their providers (sometimes they are the same, but sometimes they don't), I also need to learn how to contact the vendors for latest updates and if we would like to have some features to be turned on.

One exciting news is we will have some extra money to spend, I suggested in the meeting about hiring student workers to work on some video/youtube projects. This in one thing that I always want to try, now with assistants and money, my library 2.0 attempt is feasible!

Meeting and meeting

2007-08-24T22:23:00.000-05:00

Two meetings were scheduled today. One is our department meeting. The other is Library’s Public Relation Committee meeting. There are 5 committee members and one student representative. The service for committee member is 3 years and for student is 1 year. The PRC is responsible for library’s each month exhibitions also to promote our library. Typical events include family weekend (open house), children book events, celebration for tenured and promoted faculty, and other events collaborate with other libraries. This year, some events have been scheduled. It should keep me busy.

By the way, the Flash floor maps is done with many people’s inputs. Some volunteered to be models in those photos, and some provided suggestions. The last thing will be working on the accessibility issue to make sure it is accessible with JAWS- a screen reader. Everything is a learning process.

I got my second monitor today. And finally got updated my SecondLife application. I spent like 2 hours trying to find the way out of the intro tutorial, but I just met all the first timers in SL. My SL name is Huei Meili, in case you see me in my second life.

W3C Standards

2007-08-18T12:40:00.000-05:00

The Library was busier this week. International students were all over the campus. They came to the library a lot to use computers in order to check emails and to buy phone cards. Stay connected with family and friends at home country is always important. Some students were more eager to know how to check out books, how to search journal articles in their field. One service came to handy. The graduate student's research consultation request form.

We developed this form just this week, but I discovered that only the webmaster can upload the form to the University server. The webmaster kindly reminded me that the form has errors when she used the W3C Markup Validation to check the codes. I finally spent sometime on the codes and figured it out how to fix the errors. Actually, Dreamweaver has the function to check the markups, it's just never an issue for me. It is time for me to be aware of the Web standard, if I am going to improve my web developing skills.

Now, the form is error free, and I hope graduate students will find it useful, when they start to think about their research topic, consult with a librarian would be helpfull to find cutting edge research at the first place.

An Open Library

2007-08-10T15:01:00.000-05:00

Last week, I mentioned a social networking (Web2.0) sites, Library Thing, that allow you categorize your books and maybe meet people that have the same books as you. Today I am going to talk about another site that also utilizes the Web2.0 technology.

Open Library is a Website that uses the flipping book technology and reads book for you! It reminds me a lot when the time we were taking Flash and tried to do the flipping book programming in the Graphic Design course at the Art department. We had never finished that part! Back to my topic, the best part of the Open Library site is some of the books have the audios, when I clicked the “Listen” button; it opened my iTune and started to read the book, page by page.

Here is the article that introduces the young developer, Aaron Swartz, who is at the age of 21 and has already created RSS that was in his early teens. I am looking forward to seeing how far this site will go.

Our secretary helped me registered the AECT conference so I don't need to pay, the membership registration fee is $390 for early bird, I wish I was a student! This time PC and I will be staying at Hyatt, tired of walking and chasing time! I also registered a workshop that shows you how to make Flash animation into movie. Hopefully, I will learn something useful. PC is going to another workshop about task-centered instructional strategy host by David Merrill, an instructional design consultant.

Barnes & Nobling and Googlization of libraries

2007-08-03T16:11:00.000-05:00

In a previous post, I mentioned that the library use 3 different call numbers. Here is an interesting article that states the debates between using the learning-curve Dewey Decimal system and a plain English system:
The Wall Street Journal

So, what’s your take on this debate? If the goal of a library is to reach more patrons, then the answer is without a doubt.

One interesting social networking site for meeting people who read the same things as you do. The Library Thing.

The library paid for me to attend two trainings. One is for the Fire Extinguisher next Wednesdat, it should be fun because we will drill on real fires. The other one is a 4 weeks online workshop about Library 2.0. Although I have known and using most of the mentioned tools such as RSS, del.icio.us, and Flickr; it's no harm to learn something new as well as to have some discussions with others.

Summer sections are over

2007-07-29T12:18:00.000-05:00

Friday morning, I checked out the newest Photoshop CS3 bible book and read some, I will keep this time as a time for my learning. Usually, I write blogs on Friday afternoon, but not this week because two of my colleagues came to my office, and we kind of had a discussions about some of the works for the next semester. I feel that I have gained their trusts, not only my ability for work, but also my personality that willing to work and collaborate. I feel good about it. So, the directions for the Fall semester will be developing a library user guides. We have many contents, but how to use them effectively will be a challenge. And since the library assistant will be helping with some pages, I will design a template and ask her to use that template. Since many people here are not using Dreamweaver (even they have had that software for many years), not to say how to use Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). This should be a good time to show them how to use it.

The next three weeks I will be working for the day hours. Because the summer classes are over, and the Fall semester will start soon!

To be more functional in the distributed world

2007-07-20T11:14:00.000-05:00

Redoing faculty and course website kept me busy. More faculty responded their willingness for me to work on their websites. Three interface designs are done this week and now the balls are on their courts. It would be easier for me to find colors in order to match their personality if they could send me some photos. Chris, the instruction coordinator, sent me a link; it has photos about University buildings, student life, and campus events. I called the public relations office and got the permission for using those photos; it really saved me some time in finding graphics to be used. Oh, then I missed the staff recognition party yesterday afternoon, I just totally forgot, even it was on my calendar!

The library keeps meeting minutes for every meeting. I saw the whole hiring process for my position. The first search started last fall, 6 applicants, 3 came for interview, one offer was giving but the person chose to be a librarian at other institution. The second search started this February after rewrote the job description, 11 applicants, 4 were invited for interviews, one withdraw, three came for interviews, and one offer was giving. Yes, it’s me. I though I was the only one who applied.

The library is reviewing web authoring software for the next few years. Three people have the Adobe Web Primer, the web coordinator of the library, the department head of the library technical services, and I. Some people have Dreamweaver 8, and most of the people use FrontPage. Now the university is switching contact from FrontPage to SharePoint, all Microsoft products. The problem is some of the people in the library do not want to switch to the new product. (Hey, some people have been worked here for 30 years!) So, if changing is a must, it might also an option to migrant to Dreamweaver. On the other hand, do we need so many people using web authoring tools and create pages with different flavors? Do we need to spend tons of subscription fees for every staff member to have a copy of SharePoint or Dreamweaver? I think it is a big waste. How can we be more functional in this distributed world in order to save the resources is really a lesson that we should learn, and learn it well.

The next workshop will be about design principles and visual literacy.

Chandima's Action Script 3.0 Book

2007-07-17T11:58:00.000-05:00

Here is the link to Chandima's book. I hope I could take his Flash class!

Keeping pace with all the changes

2007-07-13T21:15:00.000-05:00

This week, two website were done. The time spent on working these sites were quicker because now the framework is basically the same with slightly modification.

One exciting project this week was the animated map I created using Flash. The Flash CS3's default ActionScript is the newest version 3.0. I tried several times but still could not make the AS to work. I kept getting the error messages. At last, switching back to AS 2.0 was a smart decision and I finally got the job done. Should I get a copy of Chandima's AS 3.0 book? Will it be hard to imigrate from AS2.0 to AS 3.0? How long will the version 3.0 stays? How can keep pace with the changes? I have so many questions in mind!

This afternoon, I spent 3 hours fixing some of the image files on our website. The problematic image files were in WMF format, it is the window meta file and it is not supported by the Mac based browsers such as Firefox and Safari. Even worse, neither the Fireworks nor the Photoshop can open those files. Fortunately, they can be opened with Paint. But the Paint is limited in producing batch files. So, I could only fix the image files one by one by saving them as jpeg files. Almost 50 ones! The next step is easier, within Dreamweaver, I then use the find and replace to change all the ".wmf" to ".jpeg". Wow, 367 places were found had those wmf files. The last step was painful too, I checked every page to make sure there's no messing up. More than 500 pages! This really concludes my day!

So, you see the problems with the playforms and the time changing? How could we minimize the challengs in the future for updating and for learning new skills? It almost wonder "is it possible to keep pace with all the changes?"

Websites

2007-07-06T16:11:00.000-05:00

With the 4th of July holiday in the weekdays, the pace for the library was very slow. Not many students came to the library at my reference desk hours; it actually gave me some time to read and to find some resources online. One thing I would like to learn is how to write the "tag cloud" code and embed it into my blog. Unfortunately, I have got the luck to find the code that works for me.

The World Geography website was made live with the Professor’s permission. She loves the site and she gave the credit to us. The other two sites will need to be finished before the semester begins on August 20th.

I started a new website for providing Faculty Information.
One librarian suggests to do a similar one for graduate students. Yes, it is the same contents that I am developing within the WebCT. I will be designing the graduate students site next week.

Also, I created a Flash file with our library maps. My idea project will be when you mouse over locations on the maps, it will show the photos associated to that locations. I have seen other Universities doing that, and it should be not difficult to accomplish. It might take longer time to complete since I will need lots of photos.

After the Flash animations are done, the whole library orientation site will be re-designed. Not many ID models and procedures were applied so far due to many of the works are redoing things they have already been done. However, many design concepts were applied based on Linda Lohr’s visual design principles that inherited the German Gestalt theory. Once again, they proved useful.

The first ID workshop

2007-06-29T13:20:00.001-05:00

Today I had my first ID workshop at the library. 12 people came. Actually many of them have more advanced knowledge than I, especially the technical service staffs, but they just came to support me. This is why I love here!

The topic today was “RSS feed and Library 2.0”. My intention with this topic was to promote interests in using RSS readers, to introduce some of the library 2.0 services such as fliker, facebook, second life, youtube, wikis, and blogs that other universities have been doing for delivering library presences and services. And the objective for this workshop is people can walk back with interests in the new way of Internet experience and start to think about what will be appropriate for our library to provide services in this 2.0 phenomenal.

The workshop was divided into two parts. The first part was a PPT presentation. Yes, a powerpoint! But I made it very vivid with self-made graphics and associated animations. After the presentation, it went to the fun part- the hands-on activity! I prepared a handout that has screenshots on how to use Netvibes to subscribe feeds. Trust me, there are people here they didn’t even know how to do that before them came in. I hope this was the eye-opening experience for them, at least, some of them.

The other thing I have been doing this week was structuring the course unit within WebCT. The workshop I went to was very good. Hey, it took me 3.5 hours each day for 4 days! It is worth it. The course module looks very good. I had a meeting with the instructional coordinator and the reference librarian for distance education. They agreed on the need to have this unit ready before the semester starts. We will have another meeting to decide on the contents next week.

Since most of the distance courses are housed within WebCT, they will be most benefited from this library research guide unit. I was told that there are almost 2,000 graduate students here, and more than 800 of them are distance learners. They are off campus. The library has special services for distance learners. We mail books, articles, interlibrary loans to their houses, with no charge! So, we have students from Iowa City or Cedar Rapids, some of them are students at UI or Iowa State. LM is right, distance education is not going to die!

P.S. Three people, including my department head, came to tell me that the workshop was a big success. Also, three other emails. Wow!

The PPT is now on SlideShare. Note that all the animations are lost.

Tools, they are just too many!

2007-06-22T15:33:00.000-05:00

Does anyone have the idea of how many free-open-social-web2.0-applications are out there? I have no idea. Below are just some of them I found this week:

Conduit Connect is a customized Library toolbar creator.

(This is the one I created for our library, but we haven't used it yet, some people are not sure about free open sources.)
Feed to JavaScript 2 allow you to create feed file.

Library Thing let you categorize your books and see others virtual book shelves. You might meet someone who read the same books as you did.

Top 25 search engines is from a blog that provides information about search engines, many of them are visual search. I know HL must be very interested in it.

I like the tagnautica the most, how about you?

The author of this tool is Mario Klingemann from Munich, he created other interesting experiments as well.

I did a quick search and found that he wrote a Photoshop book and looks like he is a Flash geek, Mario’s bio.

Too many tools, too little time, enough is enough.

Is Second Life going to die?

2007-06-16T12:51:00.000-05:00

When is Second Life going to die?

This week I spent more time on exploring Second Life. While the May/June of T.H.E. Journal has an article that reports statistics on how many people and university libraries are currently using SL (I do not have that article at hand, sorry for not providing the exactly numbers); the editor of the PC Magazine has a totally different perspective. He said that SL is going to die. I am actually happy to see this article. Maybe due to my frustrations in not successfully entering SL, and the examples I have seen were not strong enough, I am not buying into SL, yet.

I learned that there are 3 types of call numbers used in our library. The LCC (Library of Congress Call Numbers), DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification), and the SuDoc (Superintendent of Documents) call number classification system.

My website draft is on. Comments are more than welcome. Also my objectives for 2007/08 are:

I. Provide collaborative service to reference librarians in planning, designing, developing, and evaluating reference and instructional service materials including but not limited to:
• Print materials (such as brochures, posters, graphics, etc.)
• Website design and development
• Instructional tutorials
• Podcasting for library orientation/tour
• Multimedia projects (CD-ROM, videos, audios, Flash files, etc.)

II. Collaborate with reference librarians in helping faculty develop their faculty and/or course websites on our library website.
III. Provide a series of instructional technology workshops for all library employees. Alternative topics include but not limited to:
• RSS and Library 2.0
• Podcasting for Library Orientation (using Audacity)
• Animated tutorials for databases (using Camtasia or Captivate)
• Creating effective graphics for website (using Adobe Fireworks)
• Creating animated site banner (using Adobe Flash)
• Webpage and CSS (Adobe Dreamweaver)

IV. Serve on at least one library committee and become more active in that committee.
IV. Attend professional conference to learn latest trends and issues in ID and library fields:
• Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT): October 23-rd-27th, 2007. (Presenting 2 papers)
• Brick and Click Conference: November 2nd, 2007

V. Continue to work on library reference desk and to build up skills in helping patrons.

Time flies. I just celebrated my first month here.

Taking any wooden nickels?

2007-06-08T22:38:00.000-05:00

UNI Campanile

WebCT 6 workshop

The ITTS department offers technology workshops for students and faculty campus-wide. This week I attended the WebCT CE6 workshop from 8:30 to noon, Tuesday to Friday. Every day, two of the three instructional designers from the ITTS took turns to teach the workshop, the workshop were very interactive, hands-on, and at the end of the week, we, eight faculty and I, were able to create courses for our own and set up assignments, discussions, chatrooms, groups, different kinds of quiz, calendar, and grading book. WebCT CE6 has a new interface and many new features compares to the old version. But it doesn’t integrate the video conferencing feature yet. Create a library 101 course inside WebCT will be one of the direction that I will be working on in the future.

Camtasia, Captivate, or Articulate?

In order to create online animated tutorials, I need a handy software to do it. So I downloaded Camtasia, Adobe Captivate, and Articulate trials for comparisons and to decide which software for purchasing. Camtasia is easier to use, especially recording the powerpoint presentation. I have one done after two attempts. However, it is limited for a software demonstration. The worst part is, the interface looks ugly. Captivate is more powerful, the timeline and the stage are similar to Flash and Director. The demo looks better but it doesn’t have the zoom in capability like Camtasia has. The Articulate is very new for me, and it has 4 or 5 kits. I guess it should be the Articulate Engage that is somehow similar to Camtasia or Captivate, however, I haven’t got the chance to try it. Our step-down Dean sent a link about RSS for library which is created in Articulate. It looks not too bad though.

These three software all have its strengths and downfalls, and it is really hard to compare them. It is like compare oranges with apples and with bananas. So, which one is on my top list? Captivate.

Facebook and Second Life for library presence

Some Library 2.0 articles mentioned about using Facebook and Second Life for library presence. However, I feel there is a generation gap here, a huge gap! So, I signed up these two online applications and started to play with Facebook. I was surprised to see many of my friends (younger ones of course) they have been using Facebook. It looks like a social-relationship-seeking site for me, and trust me, I feel those young people were surprised to “see” me there too. The Second Life is more complicated, I will save this one for next time☺

A colleague said to two colleaguse they are having a trip to Alaska, "have a nice trip and don't take any wooden nickels!” Yes, stay skeptical remains a wise advice for this rapidly changing world.

The role of an instructional designer

2007-06-01T10:59:00.000-05:00

How good it could be to work in a library? Imaging working in a big study room, how convenient it is to search books and walk to the bookshelves to get them, within a few minutes, I already have 5 books at hands. Couldn’t find books here? Not a problem, I filled out an online request form for purchase recommendation. The books I would want to read are recent published topic regarding to Library 2.0:

Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication, and Community Online (Paperback)
by Meredith G. Farkas (Author)

Library 2.0: A Guide to Participatory Library Service (Paperback)
by Michael E. Casey and Laura C. Savastinuk (Author)

Wednesday noon, I went out for lunch with two faculty members from the Instructional Technology department, Mary Herring and Ana Donaldson. I met Mary two years ago at the joined IVLA and AECT conferences at Orlando, FL. Last year at AECT in Dallas, I went to Mary and Ana’s presentation about using synchronous chats in LMS. Who would know that one day I would work with them in the same university?

Thursday afternoon, I printed out pages and pages of screenshots from our library website. To be honest, they are so confusing. The main reason might be that too many people have access to the website. The IT people, the website coordinator, the librarians, the Dean, and department heads. All of them can make changes without ask others’ permission. They all have different tastes, different philosophies, and different perceptions of how a website should be functioning. Well, since I am the professional here (hehe), I use those printouts to make a conceptual flowchat. (It reminds me my colleague ZA at K-State, who used to make big concept map of his dissertation proposal). Back to my topic, this flowchart is very helpful. Two librarians, one of them is the instructional coordinator in our RIS department came to my office and we had a very constructive discussion by looking at the flowchart. They see the problems immediately. Next week, we will have a meeting with the web coordinator for the library; we will bring her into my office and show her my hand-made concept map and propose our suggestions.

Sooner or later, we will need to develop a new website. To help me do a better job, I am collecting good university library websites for evaluation. Anyone who has information about it please let me know. I need your inputs!

So, want to know my thoughts so far for this job? I think instructional designer is really important for bridging gaps between knowledgeable people and technologies! The things we learn such as the brain research, the cognitive load, the hypermedia, and other things can all contribute, more or less in their ways.