EKU Library Learning 2.0 Update

The lessons are officially over! Please join me in applauding all the library staff and faculty who read and created blog posts and did lots of experimenting over the last 10 weeks. Yay, us!

The good news is that we’re extending the program through the end of the semester. The EVEN BETTER news is that IF there are any more lessons, they will be completely optional; to qualify for our grand prize drawing at the end of the semester, you must complete and write blog posts about only the 21 lessons offered between July 2 and September 14, 2007.

The best news of all is that everyone* who completes all 21 lessons will be eligible for a drawing at the Learning 2.0 celebration at the end of the semester.

So, there is still plenty of time to get your lessons finished, no matter where you are in the program. I look forward to reading more blog posts over the rest of the semester!

* To qualify for the drawing, participants must:
1) complete the 21 lessons in the EKU Library Learning 2.0 program;
2) write a blog post about each lesson;
3) submit the URL for EACH Lesson to the program's email address;
4) be a member of the library faculty or staff.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

The Commoncraft gang has done it again, this time for Social Bookmarking. In Lesson 13, we learned a little bit about the social bookmarking site del.icio.us. This short video demonstrates the three main points of social bookmarking, using del.icio.us as an example: it's a way to organize your favorite web sites; it uses tags; and it's social because you can see what others are bookmarking. Enjoy!



The weekly "talkcast"--a talk show that is delivered via streaming audio and podcast--Uncontrolled Vocabulary provides us with a good example of social bookmarking: each week, listeners and participants in the show add bookmarks to their own del.icio.us accounts and tag them with "unvocab." Before every show, the host, Greg Schwartz, reads and organizes content to be discussed in the show using these bookmarks. It's added great variety to the articles and websites discussed there. Read this post on how to participate or listen.

#21 Mashup Editors

Are you thrilled by the many Mashups you have played with? Actually you can create Mashups on your own by using something called Mashupu Editors. Another good news is that you don't need to know anything about coding. The three major Mashup editors, Yahoo Pipes ,Google Mashup Editor, and Microsoft PopFly, provide you with a graphic-based intuitive interface to create fun Mashups in a few minutes. Yahoo Pipes is especially designed to create unique Mashups of RSS feeds. Yahoo defines Pipes as a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code. You can create your ultimate custom feed , power widgets/badges on your web site, and geocode your favorite feeds and browse the items on an interactive map.

Using Microsoft PopFly and Google Mashup Editor, you can not only create Mashups but also create web pages via a graphic-based, user-friendly interface.

If you already have a hotmail account, a google account, or a yahoo account you can simply login and explore the amazing world of Mashup editors.

Resources:

About Pipes
Pipes Blogs
Learning How to Build a Pipe in Just a Few Minutes
Basic Instructions for Creating a Mashup

Discovery Exercise #1:

Let's study some extended uses of Mashups: Go to Mashable.com and discover the 11 crazy ways to browse Flickr photos

Discovery Exercise #2: (To complete this exercise you have two options:)

Option 1:
1. Go to Mashup Awards' website and explore the many mashups created by different mashup editors
2. Now it's your turn! Try create your own Mashups by using the Mashup editors. (Be sure to add the link to your Mashup when you email to ekulibrarylearning@gmail.com)

or Option 2:
1.Go to Mashup Awards' website and explore the many mashups created by different mashup editors
2. Blog about your experience with Mashup editors and be sure to email your blog entry to ekulibrarylearning@gmail.com


*some information was retrieved Sept. 13, 2007 from http://cit.duke.edu/tools/web20/mashups.html

#20 Mashups

[Sorry, no podcast for this "thing."]

Welcome to the learning 2.0 finale -- Play Week 2. This week we will be exploring some fun web 2.0 Mashups. So what is a Mashup? Regarding to the Center for Instructional Technology at Duke University Libraries, It is a web application that combines data from two or more sources and creates something altogether new or different with those sources. "At their most basic, mashups take data from a source and filter it through another source or application. For a low-end example, look at iPhone Maniacs, a news site which mashes together Flickr photos and blog postings/news headlines tagged as "iPhone". For a more elaborate example, try MoreMap.com, which takes data from the web about weather, traffic, movies and even earthquakes and mashes their locations through Google Maps. Applications like SearchMash allow users to search for a keyword, and find not only search results but also related blog entries, Flickr photo feeds and more." (Retrieved Sept. 8, 2007 from http://cit.duke.edu/tools/web20/mashups.html )

In the past, you may have already used Mappr, Badges, and other Flickr mashups to create fantastic image mashups. Take a look at the following resources and begin your fun journey with Mashups.

Resources:

More about Mashups
Mashup Directory
Ten Best Flickr Mashups


Discovery Exercise #1:

1. Go to Mashup Directory or Ten Best Flickr Mashups
2. Play with a few Mashups
3. Blog about your experience with Mashups and make sure to link to your Web 2.0 Mashups' thing.

Discovery Exercise #2 (optional):

Think about how Mashups can be used in education in general. We can discuss about this during our brown bag lunch.

*Don't forget to e-mail your blog posts to ekulibrarylearning at gmail dot com.