Thing 11 - Social bookmarking @ del.icio.us

I resurrected a moribund del.icio.us account from a previous web 2.0 learning endeavor and actually added a few bookmarks. Having my bookmarks available at any computer seems like it could be very convenient, but I'd have to see how it actually played out in real life. I'm still trying to get a handle on how useful it would be for collaborative work. As with a lot of these tools, the application in an education setting seems obvious (the podcast tutorial on del.icio.us mentions reading lists and syllabi) but discovering a useful library application proves more challenging.

I like the additional information available about a site through seeing how many others have linked to it and how they have tagged it. It would be interesting to "mine" the site to see what others thought was valuable enough to bookmark on a topic of interest to me. Helene Blowers in the podcast refers to the 'magic middle'. The idea is that when other people look at stuff and bookmark it, the good stuff is what gets bookmarked most often. This provides filtering by authority -- it helps pull out the useful information from the vast sea that is all web content. To the extent that a tool like del.icio.us can achieve that end, i.e. assisting me to find the 'good stuff', it would be very valuable.

I also downloaded the bookmarklet from del.icio.us to my browser. I can only hope it is helpful and not annoying. It's kind of hard to tell before you use the feature over time. We'll see. I noted that there are uninstall instruction in the help section at del.icio.us. :)

Back to library applications of this tool. I took a quick look at the Maui Community College Library's bookmarks on del.icio.us. and tried to find out how they were using this tool. I found the link to their del.icio.us bookmarks buried on the library's website under "About Us" under a subcategory "Our Current Interests". It's hard to assess this. Obviously it's not being presented as a real tool for students or faculty. Is it just a collection of bookmarks that the librarians find interesting? So, it's out there, but what is it's use?

Thing 10 - Wikis

23 Things wiki on PBwiki

Had fun adding to the 23 things wiki. (Hint - look for the Holstein.) The PBwiki interface was easy to use, the toolbar options in the editing / composing screen were straightforward and offered a pretty good range of tools. It was simple to create a table, import an image, or create a link to another URL or wikipage. As I am not fluent in html, this was critical to using the wiki efficiently. Creating a new page was also easy. I liked the template option idea, although the particular templates available might not be very useful in a library setting. They seemed geared more to schoolwork, more for either the student or the educator. But it also looked like you could develop template of your own that might more closely fit a library milieu. Or maybe others in the PBwiki community have developed templates one could use.

I read "Using Wikis to Create Online Communities" by Meredith Farkas. She makes some valid points about the possible uses for wikis in libraries. But the whole idea of making the library’s website the online hub of the community -- I'm skeptical. It just seems to be another of those let's be all things to all people endeavors. Mission creep. Why is this a role the library should take on? Does it make sense? Is the library website the best place for local restaurant reviews? Aren't other places doing that better already? I just dunno.

I looked at some of the example of libraries using this for staff information, policies and so on. I think that kind of use makes a whole lot of sense. Our own library is experimenting with some similar uses.

Luv that Lee LeFever and his videos. He's got another winner with his "Wikis in plain English".

I set up a quick wiki on PBwiki, I'm already using it to coordinate Christmas gift buying with my family. I really can see the benefits of this kind of tool for a lot of collaborative efforts. I discovered that PBWiki also had some more useful templates available at the page level. These make it easier to set up a specific-purpose page, e.g. project tracker, document repository, team member list and others.

Thing 9 - Collaboration

Hmmm. Google Docs shared editing feature. I'm not impressed based on my experience with the sample document in this exercise. Here's my story.

I have a Google account, I asked for the permission necessary to edit the document via email as instructed at the 23 things blog. I got an e-mail that indicated that I have permission to edit this shared document. I clicked on the link, went to the doc, clicked on the "edit this page" link and got a message that I don't have permission to edit the document. (I summarize, this circle was reiterated with variations several times, but with the same results.)

If people who were actually trying to co-edit a document ran into this many obstacles, they would just call and set up a meeting at a coffee shop and bring their laptops and yellow legal pads. Maybe the whole setup for 23 things added another layer of complication, but this is NOT straightforward.

I see the value of this kind of tool, but based on the evidence of this experience, not this particular tool.

So, based on what I was able to see of the shared editing of this obscure little document on Google docs -- here are my thoughts. It sure resulted in a mess. I realize this exercise is not really like a true shared authoring situation would be, still... what a mess. Strikes me that the hard part of shared editing is negotiating with the other editors about the content. I couldn't see how this tool allowed for a history of the revisions to the document. Nor did there seem to be the facility to put notes to your collaborators (independent of the doc text) explaining why you were making an edit/addition, etc. Of course, I may be all wet with these observations, since I couldn't get access to the edit function. ;)

A presentation to share - please view!
Anyway, I created a slide presentation on Google Docs. It was pretty straightforward. This tool is limited, though. There were several simple tasks it could not do. For example, when a photo I imported needed to be rotated 90 degrees to orient the correct way, this presentation tool couldn't do that. I found a solution by manipulating the image in other software on my pc, re-saving it and uploading it again. Also, if you want to layer a shape with, for example, text, you can no longer manipulate the shape in any way once you've sent it to the back layer. It is also difficult to place graphics consistently in the same relative place from slide to slide because there isn't a ruler or grid to help you position things. So, if you had a bare bones kind of presentation to do, this could work well. Anything more sophisticated might not be possible.