The last post...

...on 23 things that is. I have really enjoyed blogging and fully intend to keep going with my blog now that I'm up and running.

Looking back on my first few posts I see a nervousness about exploring the unknown and a definite reticence to get involved. As one of the organisers of the Sot 23 things programme I should have been throwing myself in enthusiastically. So early on I was handling a large helping of guilt that I wasn't finding the time, when I was expecting all the partipants to. My approach to the first few things was that I tried to explore everything about the new 'thing' and tried to become proficient. As nearly all the things were new to me I soon realised that I had to change this approach. If I enjoyed something and could see a use (attempt nothing that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful ) I would spend longer. Other things I explored on a more superficial level and made a note to come back to.

The things I most enjoyed were Twitter, a surprise one here, along with Flickr, Wordle and Tagxedo, not so much of a surprise as I like creative things. I  really want to explore the use of Twitter in a professional context at work, particularly with regard to the artists' book collection at WSA. I least enjoyed Netvibes - it's just not how I work.

I feel very proud both to have organised and completed 23 things. In pushing myself to try new things I have more often than not surprised myself, and there has been a knock on effect of me trying new things in other areas of my life. I feel so much more confident with social media and have really started to think how I can use the things I have learnt both professionally and socially.

I think if we were to run it again I would want more consistency with the instructions and to give more thought to the order that the things are delivered in and the time involved.

I have really enjoyed being part of the Sot23 things team and have learnt much from my colleagues Nick, Emma and Vicky. Thank-you for your patience and humour! More on the Oscar speech next week!

Right, I'm off to register my completion and finally get myself a smartphone. It's time to move on!

Drive time

As I already had a gmail account I was able to swiftly log in to Google Drive although I did switch my browser to Google Chrome for enhanced functionality. I uploaded a document I had already created and shared that with a Sot 23 things colleague. Other colleagues have successfully shared documents that needed editing with me so I can see this being a useful tool in the future. I had used Dropbox before for sending large files but with some difficulties. This I found much more straightforward.

A question of interpretation

I hadn't used Slideshare before but I will definitely use it in the future. I found it easy to navigate around and decided to look for a presentation on libraries and mobile technologies as this is currently something that the Library is exploring. Found this presentation.

ARLIS Experimenting with mobile technologies in libraries from Jo Alcock

The difficult part was embedding it into my blog. Each time I copied and pasted it in I just had a block of HTML. When I clicked preview, the HTML text remained rather than displaying the presentation. With the help of fineanddandy I realised that my options in Blogger were set to 'show HTML literally'. Once I'd changed the setting to 'interpret typed HTML' all was revealed!

T is for Tagxedo

As with Wordle this was very easy to use but what I really liked was the shape feature. Here's what I did!

W is for Wordle

Here's my wordle for my blog. I thought this tool was easy and fun to use and I can definitely envisage using it again in the future. I found it interesting seeing which words I've used most often in my blog. I'm reflecting on what that says about me....

And here is one based on the Books by Artists exhibition I have co-curated with Linda Newington at the Winchester Discovery Centre. Catch it while you can! It is on until 12 April 2013.

Code cracked!

This one should work thanks to Ric's troubleshooting! I think I deserve to crack open an Easter egg now!

Breaking the code

Or rather being broken by the code!

 

 

Here's my attempt at making a QR code. It should link to information about the exhibition 'Books by Artists' which I'm co-curating with Linda Newington at the Winchester Discovery Centre.

 

I tried using the Nexus tablet in order to read it but got into a complete muddle. I was confused by the fact that I kept seeing myself  until discussing the problem later with my son. I now realise that the camera/reader element must have been set as front facing rather than back facing. However, I was unable to work out how to change this. If you are not used to using this kind of technology (that's me as I still don't even have a smartphone) then this sort of thing is not intuitive. I did manage to scan my code and was very excited but then got the message "oops Google Chrome did not recognise that http". I've left it in this post so do let me know if it works for you!

 

If we were to take these seriously and start using them across the Library we would need to know that more users than not had the technology to read them. In my naivety I thought all smartphones came with the capacity to read QR codes but this doesn't seem to be the case. I also feel that much information is more easily accessible in other forms. We have experimented tentatively with using QR codes at WSA library. We produced holiday opening times as a QR code and some users, mostly our international students, did find this helpful. This sort of infromation seems more suitable for a QR code rather than, for example, a website.

 

It was good to learn about QR codes but I can't see myself using them in the future and remain in need of convincing of their worth to libraries.