Wouldn't a burrito be nice? (or, wrapping things up)

Introduction:

As the director of a rural public library, I am frequently asked to share or present information to groups in the form of reports, marketing tools, invitations and announcements. My enrolment in EDES 501 provided me with the opportunity to explore a variety of Web 2.0 tools and discover if they would fit into the realm of my professional life.

Web 2.0 tools as a whole terrified me at the beginning of this process. For the most part, I am not an early adopter of Web tools or technology, preferring instead to have them prove themselves valuable before taking the time to learn how to use them. As Soloman points out, “tools are ephemeral” (2011) and I have always been happy to allow others to go first and let me know if those tools are truly valuable. Acknowledging that I may be selecting tools that may very well have a very short lifespan was one of the most significant hurdles I had to jump. Like my classmates and instructors, I am busy and dedicating time and energy to learning a tool that may be obsolete in the not-very-distant future was difficult for me to come to terms with.

I am so significantly slow to adopt that I own neither a home computer nor a hand held device, so my priority remained throughout this process to select tools that would be of use in my professional life over my personal life. As such, I chose the following tools to explore:

1.       QR codes – With a goal to incorporate them into at least two promotional tools, I approached QR codes as a novice user with high hopes for creative use in my promotional arsenal.

2.       Microblogging or Twitter - Twitter first entered my consciousness during the Obama Campaign of 2008, yet it took until early 2011 before I willingly began tweeting (badly, I might add). Including Twitter in my inquiry provided me with the opportunity to further explore the tool, learn the associated language and shortcuts and of course to announce news and updates to library followers.

3.       Social Media or social networking software, specifically Facebook – I check my Facebook daily using it personally to keep in touch with friends and family and to share photos. In my professional experience, the library I worked in found it to be a very effective means of engaging the public in a two way conversation as well as advertising upcoming events and celebrations. My learning goals included increasing the number of followers and incorporating Facebook into at least one promotional tool for the library.

4.       Prezi – as a frequent presenter (at conferences, to the public and to my board and staff), I have long been a user of PowerPoint software. It was effective and easy to use. However, I have also been told by a friend and other professionals that Prezi presentations are more interesting than my traditional PowerPoint presentations. My concern that Prezi is seasick-inducing was a prejudice I needed to get over in my exploration of this tool in order to find a means of incorporating Prezi into a library setting.

5.       Glogs – I am a visual learner so the appeal of Glogs was high to me. I have created a few and have failed at half of them, either discovering that Glogs do not do what I thought they might do, or simply because I had forgotten my password. As a novice user, however, I could certainly see the application for Glogs in a public library setting, and especially hoped the tool would enable me to communicate effectively with a variety of literacy levels.

6.       Poll and Survey tools, specifically SurveyMonkey – SurveyMonkey is another tool that I have played with in the past with mixed success, mostly due to my forgetting my password. There is no doubt that people’s opinions matter in public libraries, and finding an effective means of generating patron feedback is one worthy of learning.

Summary of Learning:

When I started this process, I was a sometimes-user of some Web 2.0 tools, but not an excited one. I approached Web 2.0 tools as I did most things I need for work: they are tools, I will use them but only those I need.

Now, having played with some tools I was already familiar with and having explored a few others I was not familiar with, I am more open to investigating other tools as they present themselves.

What worked:

QR codes – and HOW! I do not even own a device that can read a QR code, but generating them is incredibly simple and I know other people own devices. The library has already begun integrating them into displays (see below), featuring them on handbills advertising upcoming programs, and incorporating them into gift certificates. I plan on having a QR code linking to our library’s website incorporated into my business card, or having the QR code on the card import my contact information into the person’s phone. I hope to use QR codes on T-shirts to promote Freedom to Read Week, and (shhh... don’t tell) hope to incorporate their use into the Info to Go newsletter at the Alberta Library Conference. QR codes were by far the best present out of this little Web 2.0 exploration.

Facebook – I will continue to use Facebook both personally and professionally and it may very well be my favourite informal communication tool. Personally, I have kept in touch with former students, classmates, friends and family spread across the country. Followers continue to grow on the library’s page and we are starting to use Facebook to promote our events in Camrose Public Library much like we did in Stettler Public Library.

Twitter – Twitter has clearly become the tool I use to communicate with other library and “book professionals” (although I do follow my sister and a few friends) rather than patrons. In the short time that I have been the one responsible for Tweeting for Camrose Public Library, our followers have risen to 56 (from a dozen in September). Some of the really valuable (translation: they retweet my tweets to a whole lot of people!) include @CamroseAB (Camrose booster association), @CamroseCounty, @CityofCamrose, other interagency groups and a number of authors.

I had planned to have a Twitter conversation during my inquiry, but that never did happen. What a stroke of luck that I had one (unprofessional one) recently! The icing on the cake of my Twitter exploration having that happen during the 11^th hour of this course!

What I’m on the fence about:

SurveyMonkey  - At this point, I find SurveyMonkey to be an effective tool, but I cannot justify paying for an upgrade to be worth the cost to my organization. I may or may not use this tool every year for the annual satisfaction survey and could certainly adapt it for program evaluations since it is simple to use, easy to set up, easy to gather information, however the website template I use for the library also provides the opportunity to create similar surveys and pull analysis at no additional cost. Those surveys can be standardized at the regional library level ensuring that we are comparing “apples to apples” when issuing repeat surveys with our annual satisfaction surveys required for government reporting.

Prezi – I am cautiously optimistic about Prezi. I can see me dabbling in this from time to time depending upon the audience, but I truly do prefer PowerPoint (call me old, call me boring. I’m okay with both!). My main objection to Prezi: clarity of images once copied, saved, downloaded, uploaded, cropped, zoomed, etc. It’s a long process to prepare the images for use in Prezi and once they are there, I found them to lack the clarity that PowerPoint provides. I was successful in producing a presentation that had a limited amount of spinning, and the zooming feature is incredibly effective in pointing out steps in a process so Prezi certainly is not a complete disappointment.

What didn’t’ work:

Glogster – I can barely get over my childish rant over my experience with Glogster. It was frustrating and disappointing to produce a Glog only to have technical upgrades to the site bar my use of the Glog for two weeks. I am grateful I was not a teacher with a lesson plan dependent upon Glogster during that time. I may still use this tool in the library because I can see its value as a way to communicate to a variety of literacy levels, but I think I would assign the development of them to someone else.

Sharing with others:

It is without a doubt that I will share my lessons learned with my experience with Web 2.0 tools with others thanks in part to a board who is keen on increasing our presence on the Web and (I admit it) my increased comfort level with many of the tools. I do feel the need to point out that certain criteria must be met to have the use of Web tools be successful in my workspace:

1.       I must have continued support in the quality of Web access. Currently, public libraries in Alberta have access to the SuperNet thanks to an agreement with APLEN. This access to high speed must be maintained into the future for us to justify using the Web as a means of communicating with our audience.

2.       My staff must be empowered to explore and use the tools; it cannot be just me maintaining a web-presence for our library. Empowerment includes opportunities to both learn and use the tools, embedding their use into the staff arsenal as something they are comfortable using. My staff includes a number of older individuals who are still uncomfortable with the standard library databases and downloading ebooks. It will be my responsibility to not only motivate them to use technology, but to provide them with the time to learn to use technological tools effectively and with a high degree of comfort.

3.       We must keep in mind that not all sectors of the library public are technology users. We cannot adopt exclusive use of Web tools to communicate with our public, but must find a balance between our online presence and our offline presence. For the foreseeable future, we will still be making phone calls, handing out brochures and hanging posters.

Having said that, how do I see my staff using the Web 2.0 tools I explored?

1.       Assign. There will be some people on staff who will rapidly embrace the use of Web 2.0 technology. I will endeavour to incorporate the use of Web 2.0 tools into their jobs and provide them with time and the tools to learn how to use them well. A recent workshop had six of my staff members learn to use our library’s website template. Their enthusiasm for learning and adopting this skill set can certainly be translated into an appreciation of using Web 2.0 technology.

2.       Plan of Service. Public Libraries depend upon their Plan of Service to act as a map for their development of programming and planning. If the Web 2.0 tools fulfill a need in our Plan of Service, we will certainly adopt them as a means of communicating.

3.       Empower. Rather than suggesting I want specific tools used in a certain way, I would like to see guidelines developed so all staff are on the same page in knowing what is appropriate use and what is not, then sitting back and allowing staff to be empowered to make their own choices about sharing as the voice of our library.

4.       Use what fits. There are eighteen people on our staff and as with our shoes which are not one-size-fits-all, we do not all feel the same level of comfort with all tools. I will certainly allow people to select the tools they are comfortable using, while encouraging them to explore others and share their learning with their coworkers. We have a sharing component built into our staff meetings already; why not use it to allow staff to share their Web 2.0 knowledge with one another?

Specifically, I would like to see the following happen:

·         QR codes will be incorporated into all our promotional items (including bags, coffee mugs, pamphlets/brochures, handbills, reports to councils, articles in newspapers, displays etc.) and we will explore other ways of using them.

·         Twitter and Facebook will have administrative access assigned to several staff members to encourage a frequent presence on both. Guidelines will be drawn up regarding appropriate use and language while using these tools to ensure the success of the staff and the communication.

·         SurveyMonkey or at least another survey tool (most likely those we can develop on our own websites) will be incorporated into all our satisfaction surveys for programming, events and needs assessments.

Although I do not love them, I can certainly see applications for both Glogster and Prezi and will encourage others to further explore both of these tools.

Finally, blogging, although not officially part of my inquiry, is an effective tool. On our website, there is a component called “news” which certainly would serve to provide a blogging presence. Using this space to reflect what is happening in a “snapshot” could be an effective means of communicating with technology-savvy patrons who do not follow us on Twitter or ‘like’ us on Facebook. Sharing this responsibility with other staff would allow us to collaboratively develop a web-presence and voice.

Imagining the future:

In the words of Laura Solomon (2011), a Web 2.0 presence “doesn’t just happen” (Solomon, 2011, p. vi). I still believe that learning everything is an overwhelming process and unnecessary. I would much rather learn and know a few tools and use them really well, meet customers where they are and drop what doesn’t work. This process has opened me to a few additional tools that I would like to explore for both personal and professional use:

·         Animoto and YouTube. Keeping in mind that some of my patrons are still using dial-up for their computer access (and still others do not have computer access in their homes), I can see both Animoto and YouTube being effective tools for sharing. Imagine if you will an Animoto collection of images from our Christmas party posted on our website, or, envision teens producing book trailers and posting them to our library’s YouTube account for others to discover.

·         Skype is a tool I explored peripherally this past summer. My Summer Reading Club programmers held three sessions where authors “visited” the participants in the club. In a small, rural community, being able to afford to have authors in to visit is cost prohibitive; however, many authors are willing to take 20 minutes out of their busy day to visit with their adoring fans. I can certainly imagine authors visiting book clubs or doing storytimes via Skype.

My parents use Skype to visit with their family members (Mom and Dad live in BC, their siblings all live in Ontario) and if I ever break down and purchase a home computer, it is not difficult for me to imagine Skyping in to family gatherings (as I am the only one who lives in Alberta). To be honest, Skype continues to remain in the realm of “magic” to me, but if my mother can figure it out, I have hope that I will be able to, too.

I hope to learn more and become better at using the Web 2.0 tools I love. QR codes, Twitter and Facebook will certainly be further explored. I plan on attending a Twitter session at the Alberta Library Conference in April 2012 (I have it on good authority there will be one) and (gasp) I am working it into my 2012 PD plan to attend my first ever Netspeed conference.

I remain cautious of inviting the Web into my home; I know my inability to turn off and allowing time to “unplug” and find time for other things I love: yoga, ballet, knitting, reading, and spending time with friends are still important to me.

Ultimately, they are still tools. I will use what I find helpful and will not feel pressured to learn everything out there. I will, however, not be afraid to try new things if that is what my staff and patrons require of me.

Read what I read (throughout the semester):

Baker, L. (2010). Making physical objects clickable: using mobile tags to enhance library displays. Journal of Library Innovation, 1(2), 22-28.

Barr, B (May 2009). How to: get the most out of Twitter #hashtags. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2009/05/17/twitter-hashtags/

Berger, P. & Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited.

Cahill, K. (2011). Going social at Vancouver Public Library: what the virtual branch did next. Program: electronic library and information systems, 45(3), 259-278.

Circle, A. (2009). Marketing trends to watch. Library Journal, 134(16), 26-29.

Facebook (n.d.). In Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

Fletcher, J. (2010). Marketing for the QRious: the beginner’s guide to using QR codes for library promotions and resources. Multimedia Information and Technology, 36(3), 26-27.

Going Beyond Loch Ness Monster. (2010). School Library Monthly, 26(8), 6 – 8.

Hampton, D., Peach, A. & Rawlings, B (2011).Reaching mobile users with QR codes.Kentucky Libraries, 75(2), 6-10.

Harris, C. (2010). QR codes in the library: use 2-D barcodes to offer the coolest services ever. School Library Journal, 56(10), 12.

Hicks, A. &Sinkinson, C. (2011). Situated questions and answers: responding to library users with QR codes. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 50(1), 60 – 69.

It’s My School Library. (2010). School Librarian’s Workshop, 31(1), 17.

King, D.L. (2011, May 27). Facebook for libraries.American Libraries. Retrieved from http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/05272011/facebook-libraries

Milstein, A. (May 2009). Twitter for libraries (and librarians). Retrieved from http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/may09/Milstein.shtml

Porter, M. & King, D.L. (2011). QR codes in libraries: some examples. Public Libraries. May/June 2011, 25-29.

QR Codes (n.d.). Library success: best practices wiki. Retrieved from http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=QR_Codes

Schiller, K. (2011). High-Tech Classrooms.Information Today, 28(8), 34-35.

Solomon, L, (2011). Doing social media so it matters. Chicago: American Library Association.

Thomases, Hollis (2010). Twitter marketing: an hour a day. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.

Three Heavyweights (2011). Internet@Schools, 18(1), 10.

Timm, D. (2010). Prezi: One Cool Tool for Making Presentations. Louisiana Libraries, 73(1), 28-9.

Vandenbroek, A. (2010). RtI: The Librarian’s Fairy Tale? Library Media Connection, 29(2), 48 – 50.

Walsh, A. (2010). QR codes: using mobile phones to deliver library instruction and help at the point of need. Journal of Information Literacy, 5(1), 55-63.

Web 2.0 (n.d).In Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Zooming User Interface (n.d.).In Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface

Soloman, Laura (2011). Doing social media so it matters: a librarian’s guide. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.

SurveyMonkey Trumped by ... other stuff

oopsie! I've been ending all my blog posts with a word cloud of my blog. I completely forgot with this one. The real reason: I'm excited about stuff. I'm days (count 'em - days!) away from finishing my degree. That's 4 more letters behind my name. That means I can order new business cards. Really? Who has time for a word cloud when you can be finishing the last 12,000 words of your degree and looking at pretty business cards?

Anyway - see the pretty word cloud....? Now, want to help me design my new business cards? Do you know how many websites there are out there with pretty designs? So many. Like this one. And this one. And this one.

Oh right... 12,000 more words. I should get back at it.

As fun as a barrel of monkeys!

Online surveys can be a huge help in understanding what your patrons think and how successful your programs are, without dedicating a huge amount of your budget to survey tools. They can be a very cost-effective way for delivering surveys and collecting and analyzing results through one central system. While they’re not going to be the right fit for every research need (for example, some communities respond better to a paper survey and you are more likely to get a higher response rate using paper among populations that are not as comfortable with computers), online surveys are great for gathering informal data quickly and easily.

What Do These Tools Do?

A good online survey tool will allow you to easily define your survey questions and the possible responses using an online interface, and then provide you with a link to make available to your patrons to answer the survey online. There are a number of them available for little or no cost. I will break down a few of them here:

SurveyMonkey offers a popular online hosted survey tool that works well for basic surveys. It is so popular among libraries, in fact, that I received three SurveyMonkey surveys this week alone!

SurveyMonkey allows you to create and publish custom surveys in minutes, and then view results graphically and in real time. The free version is useful for very small and informal surveys, but allows very little customization of the look of the survey, no downloads of reports or data, and can only collect 10 questions and 100 responses per survey. The Select version ($25.00/month, or $228.00/year) offers unlimited questions and 1000 responses per month, customizability, skip logic and the ability to export Excel and PDF files.. Reports are minimal, but they allow you to export results to another application to do more serious analysis. Higher end Gold and Platinum versions ($29.00/month and $69.00/month) offer advanced features like question and answer piping, randomization, text analysis for open responses, and integration with IBM’s SPSS statistical software. Most importantly to me, the SurveyMonkey logo is discrete on the survey produced and there are not any SurveyMonkey banners on your survey’s pages.

You can read more on my experience below.

Although SurveyMonkey is very popular, there are many other online survey tools. Some of them include:

PollDaddy offers a free package with a maximum of 10 questions per survey and 100 responses per month, plus basic reporting. More advanced versions cost progressively more (up to $1000/year) but with limited options: no skip logic or piping. But survey administrators have a lot of flexibility over the look of the survey, and can select from pre-designed templates, or fully customizing the template by editing stylesheet code. Surveys can be delivered in pop-up windows, and results can be tracked via RSS feed. They call themselves “the most powerful and easy-to-use survey software around”.

SurveyGizmo offers a low-cost (approximately $20/month) package with some advanced features like supporting 1,000 responses per month, and basic logic, as well as a range of more advanced packages at higher monthly rates. At all levels, SurveyGizmo offers basic piping, fully customizable survey look and feel, and the ability to embed images and videos hosted on your own website. More advanced levels offer many randomization options (question options, questions per survey page, and pages themselves), skip logic, and more.  Sadly, the free version is only good for 14 days. Not such a great deal in my opinion!


Zoomerang is similar to SurveyMonkey in many respects, but in general, offers more for more. As with SurveyMonkey, there’s a very limited free package. There are two more levels of packages for a price, but  the survey building tools are not quite as intuitive as SurveyMonkey’s, and it can be more difficult to learn. However, Zoomerang offers more extensive reporting, with a flexible cross-tabulation report tool that lets survey administrators see the data relationships across any set of questions. 

I would suggest that if you are going to use an online survey tool, try out a free version of a couple and see which one suits your needs best. I did that and quickly settled on SurveyMonkey. I’ve used SurveyMonkey in the past and found it quite simple, so to be honest, the learning curve was pretty flat (actually, they’ve upgraded it since last year and the learning curve may have actually been a little downhill!). The hardest part for me is that I can never remember the login and password after I run one survey so end up creating new email addresses so I can create a new login. Really, if that is the most difficult thing about creating an online survey, I’d be willing to bet that the most online-challenged individual could figure it out.

Building a survey is as simple as:

1. Creating an account (if you’re like me, write down the login and password somewhere you’ll find it when you’re ready to create another survey. For me, this is an annual event at the moment).
2. Creating a “new survey.”
3. Adding a page for each question or two (too many on a page and a survey taker has to scroll down. I find scrolling frustrating; just let me see all the questions on my monitor and click next to get to the next page).
4. Adding the question to the page.
5. Let people know about your survey (link to it on your webpage, add it to your electronic signature in your email, post it on Facebook or Twitter). SurveyMonkey does most of the rest!

Need more in-depth help? SurveyMonkey has a manual. Don’t be alarmed by its 71 pages (eep!); it really is simple and full of images.

What I see when I log into my list (of one) surveys:

A sample results page (notice, I have kept it to two questions per screen):

And this is how the narrative answers appears to the survey creator:

The upgrades I’d have liked weren’t worth the additional price for the small (9 question) survey I wanted to use, so I chose to forgo upgrading. However, you can easily plug the results SurveyMonkey provides into a spreadsheet and manipulate your own charts and statistics without much extra work. Since I work in a library who’s population still prefers paper surveys over online, I will have to manipulate those responses that way anyway, so the few (16 so far) online surveys I’ve received really don’t add much workload to that.

What can you use SurveyMonkey for? Anything you’d like feedback on. I use one every year for our annual satisfaction survey. I can see it being used for program feedback (however, I can also see survey tools my website has built in to gather those responses). A library instructor at UBC uses SurveyMonkey to understand the needs of her learners so she can customize her instruction classes to suit the learners’ need. Another person uses SurveyMonkey to create registration forms for events. In reality, the questions you could ask using SurveyMonkey are only limited to your imagination!

Read what I read:

Gordon, A. (2002). SurveyMonkey.com – Web-Based Survey and Evaluation System. Internet and Higher Education, 5(2002), 83-87.

OMIGOSH! It's working! (kinda)

HOLY COW!!! My glog actually WORKS today!!!! Hurrah!!! Quick - before it vanishes, go look at it!

The embedded version still isn't showing up on my website (see for yourself) but at least the link works. Oh, HURRAH!!!

Oh yeah! This took, what, three weeks? Two and a half anyway....

I'm pressing "publish" before they vanish.

I admit defeat

Sigh. I give up. It's been more than a week since my Glogster post, and almost two weeks since I created my glog. Although I can now see it on the Glogster website, it won't let me access a full-sized version of it. It's still a teeny, tiny postage stamp version of what I created. It still won't show up on my library's website, either; not the embedded version or the linked version.
I had great hopes for this tool, but am now just so disappointed in it. Glogster, you've let me down.

Enough of the grumpy pants

Seriously. Glogster's hold on my life needs to end now. I need to quit my griping and move along.

And what a great thing to move along with! Joanne de Groot, one of my fabulous instructors in this course just tweeted this ingenius use for QR codes. Now, don't you want to run right out and buy something from JC Penny so you can use it? I know you do.

Continued Frustration

Great news... Glogster EDU is "runnig". Fabulous. Just fabulous. Not only can't I access anything, they can't spell.








And here they remind me that although I do have 2 Glogs saved, I can't actually get to them. Good times had by all.

*****************************






This is from the email they sent on October 27:

Glogster.com will be down while we finish moving you to the NEW site. Please be patient — this outage may last up to 2 days next week. We’ll keep you updated on the exact day and time.

Up to 2 days without Glogster?! Yes, we know it will be difficult, but please stay strong! 

Strange - 2 days next week would bring us to somewhere between October 30 and November 5. I am more than a little frustrated that on November 14th I'm still unable to access my work.

In more good news, I've been getting this message for 3 days now.

I am actually surprised that the largest words aren't "frustrated", "broken", or "useless". Glogster really tried my patience and ultimately, I don't see the value of this as a tool. It certainly has the potential to be a useful tool, but with all the problems and 5 days of struggling to overcome those problems, my professional life doesn't have that kind of time to muck around with a tool that doesn't work.

Nightmare on Glog Street

This was my first disappointing week of inquiry; until now, I’ve played with four other Web 2.0 tools and have found a practical and exciting use for each of them in my professional (and often personal) life. Glogster, however, has not met that aspiration but rather has disappointed me because I had very high hopes for it.

When I first tried Glogster, at the encouragement of a teacher-friend, I thought it would be the ideal tool to create exciting and interactive reader’s advisory tools. In fact, I spent a bit of time this summer creating and having my staff created a few of them in order to post them to our library’s website. As sometimes occurs, however, time ran short and I actually changed jobs and wasn’t able to put the created Glogs into operation before I left the old job.

I initially chose Glogster to create my “Autobiography of a Tech User” early in this semester only to discover I couldn’t link to pdf’s. I was excited to try Glogster again and looked forward to this week’s inquiry to afford me that opportunity. I sat down, created what I thought was a pretty snazzy little Glog as a reader’s advisory for Young Adult Dystopia novels. It took hours to complete the process: deciding on the titles, finding images, saving them to a folder on my computer, cropping them to an appropriate size, saving them to a file on Glogster then finally uploading them to the actual Glog page. Links to book trailers had a similar procedure: find them, save the link to a folder, then link them to the text on the Glog. There just seemed to be a bunch of extraneous steps slowing the process. Considering this tool is supposed to be education-friendly, which I read as “child-friendly”, I don’t really understand why there are so many steps. The easiest and most logical step of all was linking the book images to their catalogue record, a web address that did not require being saved to a folder before being linked. Why couldn’t the videos be linked that same way?

I did have a moment of celebration when I was successful in embedding the Glog into the library’s website; a process that is simply and clearly explained on Glogster. As an extra step, I added a link in case it wasn’t apparent that one could click on the Glog itself to see it full size (there is a little drop down menu that shows up right on the embedded Glog that should enable one to do that). I embedded, I tested, it all worked, I celebrated. Sadly, I celebrated too soon. When I went to show a co-worker my ingenious creation, the embedded Glog didn’t link to a full-sized version of itself, but to the Glogster website where one could create a Glog. That certainly wasn’t my intention of working on it and embedding it in my library’s website. I thought perhaps it was a little glitch and had my co-worker try the link only to have the same results: instead of linking to the full-sized version of the Glog, it linked to the site where one would create a Glog.

Sporting rose-coloured glasses, I assumed again that it was simply a glitch, a one-time, freak-of-computer-gremlins, so while talking to a teen who was in fact signing out a dystopian novel, I showed her. Of course I was horrified when once again it linked to the Glogster main website rather than to my own Glog. Truly, the sole purpose I could think of to use Glogster in a library application wasn’t working.

Finally, when I started trying to write this blog post, Glogster just gave up the ghost for me. I tried logging in, only to be told Glogster was too busy to log in. Then when I finally did log in, I got a message that "something really bad had happened" and the Glogster dashboard showed that I had two Glogs, but it wouldn't let me access either one. Honestly, if I'm going to use something for work, I need it to be a lot more dependable than it has been this past week.

So what is Glogster used for? As with Prezi, Glogster is not mentioned in the library literature and I was left with searching education databases for my answers.  Three Heavyweights explains that Glogster is “a mashup of graphical blog” (2011, p. 10) and when used in a school setting, allows students to create interactive posters. According to Berger and Trexler, “Glogster is a free poster creation tool that contains text, images, videos, links, and audio” (2010, p. 143).  They mention creativity as a drawing point for use and I will admit that it does appeal to my creative side.  They even go on to suggest a library use: as a link to a school library account, a place to share teacher and student resources, book reviews and author promotion, so I don’t think it was such a stretch for me to assume I could use it for a library application. In fact, It’s My School Library suggests using Glogster to record wish lists for future reading (2010, p. 17) reinforcing that it was not irrational for me to assume that Glogster could have library applications. Even Vandenbroek suggests that teacher-librarians use Glogster as a means of reaching struggling students in association with their teacher’s plan to assist struggling students (2010, p. 48).

Berger and Trexler also tell us that Glogs can easily be shared: Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and other Web 2.0 options are described as being ways of easily sharing Glogs (p. 145). However, my experience has told me that although they can be shared easily, they cannot be easily read or used if the option to see them in full-size only works part of the time.

I received an email a couple of weeks ago saying that Glogster was undergoing some upgrades and that I would find new and exciting tools when I next used it. True enough: I found new wallpapers and icons, but I still struggled with locating what I was looking for. Icons, wallpaper, fonts and the like are all broken down into “themes” such as “romantic” or “Christmas” but they are not broken down into things I would find useable: colours or types of icons. It took me 52 pages of icons before I found one that contained an arrow. It seems to me that logically others, too, would look for icons of a similar function: arrows, happy faces, hearts and what have you. Without a search option, in my opinion, Glogster hasn’t upgraded sufficiently. Until I can simply search for or easily locate something in pages upon pages of options, Glogster is not an efficient enough tool for me to pursue professionally. And I’ll be honest: I can’t ever imagine using Glogster for my own personal use.

Ultimately, Glogster receives a low score for library use from me. Perhaps this is one of those tools that should remain in the realm of education and not venture beyond it.

I've delayed posting due to all the issues I've had. At the time of posting this, I'm still having difficulty accessing Glogster. I will work on it and post images as soon as it allows.

Read What I Read:

Berger, P. & Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited.

Going Beyond Loch Ness Monster. (2010). School Library Monthly, 26(8), 6 – 8.

It’s My School Library. (2010). School Librarian’s Workshop, 31(1), 17.

Three Heavyweights (2011). Internet@Schools, 18(1), 10.

Vandenbroek, A. (2010). RtI: The Librarian’s Fairy Tale? Library Media Connection, 29(2), 48 – 50.

Prezi

That about sums 'er up! Prezi presentations in the library. Funny, though, that the zooming, spiralling presentation tool has the word "linear" showing up (under the 'tat' of presentation). That's my personality, for sure, not Prezi's!

You Spin Me Right Round, Prezi, Right Round

The song, originally by British band Dead or Alive has been covered by a number of musicians including Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Billy Idol and Dope. I sang and danced to it often when I was in high school, and it is how I felt when watching a Prezi presentation. But not in a good way. More in a “please pass the gravol” way.

Prezi is a means of creating presentations in a non-linear way using words, pictures and videos. I first encountered Prezi during a library conference when author Judith Graves used it for her presentation. I have to admit it; I was both intrigued (although doubtful that anything could be presented coherently in a zoomy, swirly manner) and a little nauseous. It was the nausea that has kept me from ever exploring it more closely despite teacher-friends telling me what a wonderful tool it is. Then a classmate in this class presented her “biography of a tech user” in a Prezi but in a nice, linear manner. I liked it. I wasn’t nauseous. I was intrigued and now here I am exploring it.

I know – the whole point of Prezi is to be non-linear. But let’s face it, some of us just ARE linear or need to have information presented to them in a linear manner. Certain information has to be presented in order; sometimes step one just has to come before steps two and three. That doesn’t mean Prezi cannot be a powerful presentation tool.

A Prezi presentation is created on one large canvas. The entire presentation can then be choreographed into zooms and swivels across that canvas, focussing in on each area of the presentation before moving on to the next. In fact, the “zoom” feature of Prezi does what I have been cropping and pasting into my good old fashioned PowerPoint presentations for years. Timm tells us that “anyone can use it” (2010, p. 28) and that “you must use Prezi to truly understand how it can fit into your workflow and improve your finished product” (2010, p. 29)

So use it I have. First, I watched the tutorials on the Prezi website (which are surprisingly entertaining and informative) then I just jumped in. Prezi offers a series of templates, but I chose to go with the very plain one called “blank” and build from there.  My first attempt won’t go down in history as anything special, but to be honest, the most difficult part was creating and cropping the screen captures to use. I tried to break myself of the linear habit, but truthfully, I’m not terribly pleased with the circular structure I chose, either.

One of the tutorials taught me that one could create a Prezi out of an existing PowerPoint presentation. Very simply, one saves their presentation as a PDF then imports it into Prezi. The result, if left alone, is still a straightforward slide presentation, but with a little playing, one can take advantage of the zooming feature (that is the feature that really makes Prezi special in my opinion) and voila! A fancy version of a plain old presentation (warning, there’s a little adult content in this presentation).

Uploading the PowerPoint presentation allowed me to realize that one could lay out the presentation linearly and still have some fun with it. I had to try for myself. Once again, the screen captures and the cropping took longer than anything. Once that is done, pulling together a presentation really only takes a few minutes. I do need to work on the resolution of the images I use, though.

What can I see Prezi being used for? I think this is certainly a case of picking one’s audience. I cannot imagine using Prezi to present my budget requisition to our municipality nor can I imagine it as a tool for many of my board meetings (although it certainly could be used in more formal settings like this one about MRI’s). I can, however, imagine it for library instruction in cases such as:

·         showing people how to use the library catalogue or database

·         showing someone how to download a book to their ereader

·         sharing photos and videos from a library event

·         providing an online tour of the library

·         creating a presentation version of our annual report (leaving it on a loop would be a wonderful way to capture people’s attention!)

or any number of other less formal opportunities. Embedding them directly into the library’s website would enable patrons to access instruction anytime! Prezi sets up options for you to tweet or share on facebook in just a few clicks, too. I am starting to see how these Web 2.0 tools are going to work well together.

 

The people at Prezi seem to want you to succeed so they have provided a number of their presentations in a showcase . They even encourage people to build their own presentations based on the samples they have posted on the site. If you are working on a Prezi with another person, you don’t even have to be in the same room/community/country. Shared editing is simple and the tutorials also walk you through how to set up a Prezi so people can watch it in 10 different locations simultaneously. Imagine the potential!

Although Prezi hasn’t been written up much in the library literature (or even in the required textbooks for this course), I certainly see the value in this tool and would encourage other librarians to try it out.

By the way, I miss 80's hair bands.

Read what I read:

Schiller, K. (2011). High-Tech Classrooms. Information Today, 28(8), 34-35.

Timm, D. (2010). Prezi: One Cool Tool for Making Presentations. Louisiana Libraries, 73(1), 28-9.