Making, Monitoring Connections

I have just completed this module about making and monitoring all the stuff you are interested in on line.
The first part was looking at what you wanted to keep up to date with and how much time you have to do it in. I have found that the things that are being talked about and my own experiences do not really tally up. The information given assumes that you spend almost your whole working day sat by a monitor. Realistically I would have half an hour a day, at work, using the computer and most of this is just keeping up with emails. I probably spend about another half an hour a day at home on the computer but not regularly everyday. Whilst I think I have already changed how I spend my time on the PC at home realistically I still have very little time to keep up-to-date and will just have to do the best I can.
I loved using delicious and think I will use this to help me keep my bookmarks in check as I am very bad at using these at the moment.
Despite the fact that my time is limited, I do think I will use my time more productively now and try to keep up-to-date especially with the programmes installed on the free internet PCs.

Head in the Clouds

So here I am in Google docs writing an up-date for my blog. I was very excited by this cloud computing unit as I realised I was a cloud computer user without even knowing it! I have been using Google Docs and the calender for some timebut didn't realise I was in the clouds!! All quite straight forward so far.

I have also looked at Librarything before but never been motivated to join up so now I have. It is a great place to be and look and discuss books but as with so many of these things, time...

I've just tried to cut and paste a Word doc into Google Docs and it was easy to do but the images didn't come across and there were a number of formating issues. I would have shared it with others in the group but I don't know who really wants my Storytime songs.

Wikis

I have just done the Wikis module. I found some of the library related wikis very interesting especially the Library Success wiki. There appeared to be a lot of interesting entries on there and I will go back to it at a later stage. However, with all the wikis there is a reliance on it being up to date and dynamic and I was surprised at how old some of the entries were and how little comment there was. I wonder how many of these are set up and then forgotten about?

My experiences of trying to put a page on the sand box was very frustrating and I am now not surprised by the lack on contributions to wikis if it is this hard to add something. However it was easier to add to the exisiting pages.

It all begs the question - are more heads really better than one?

Productivity 1

What a mission this module turned out to be. We don't have free Internet here at Linwood yet and so I was unable to make a start on this. The lovely ladies here at Linwood cleared the timetable so I was able to go to South to have a go at this on Monday morning .
When I got there LAMS wasn't working and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing so it was a complete waste of time. I was not feeling entirely positive about things at this point...(mild understatement).
I ended up loading the relevant programs at home so I could complete it there and e-mail it all off to Glenn and at least I spent an hour or so looking at all the free Internet stuff at South so am aware how it all looks.
On a more positive note I was surprised at how easy OpenOffice was to use and how much it looked like the older versions of Microsoft Office. I have the new Office loaded at home and it has caused a few complaints from the kids becasue it doesn't look like the old one and the one they have at school and I guess this would be a solution for people who don't like change!
Here's hoping for a better week this week.

New Zealand GLAM

No, not my dress sense! GLAM is galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Some great places to look provided here by CCL learn. Shows the benefit of concentration bringing things together in one package for the user.
The NZ Museums site was a great way to find a particular museum either by topic or place and I loved the NZ Live site for finding all kinds of events.
However, as with all these things, relying for their strength in numbers using it, there were omissions from the NZ Live site so obviously not everyone involved in this area is on board with it. Also, as a fairly regular concert goer, I have never been aware of this site, mainly getting info from theatres etc. As with all these things you need to be aware that it is there.
Similarly, with the museum site, I could see it had all kinds of potential for images and collection info to be added, but with many museums being run by volunteers, unless someone makes the effort to add the info, it looses its strength.
I think the main thing I have learned from this section of the course is that there is a lot of Web 2 use out there but it is not always easy to find or stumble upon, it's there if you look for it and that takes effort and determination.

New Zealand Business/Education/Community

I have been looking at use of Web 2 on New Zealand education sites and there appears to be a greater up-take than the Local Authority users. However, the use is often several layers deep and is hard to find from just a quick look at their websites. There are lots of blogs and social networking going on but this appears to be at a departmental level and not often representative of the organisation as a whole. Big use of RSS feeds on University of Auckland site. Hard to gauge how well use as a lot of the groups etc. are password protected.