Discovering the use of QR Codes

Just in case you have not noticed on my blog “Finding Happiness in Social Bookmarking, I make mention about my experience with QR Code but also I posted there my QR code for your review. However, I have decided to add my own personal view on my experience on QR Codes.  For the QR Code assignment I chose for the link my Google site page on Early Literacy.  Prior to this assignment, QR Codes were ignored. I've seen QR codes popping up in all places and it got me thinking the following: What was its purpose and what can the consumer gain from its use?  It seemed to me that it was just another step to add to the many that already exist to access anything electronically.  So, I never really bother to check them out nor did I try uploading the app’s that were free and available to add to my smart phone.

So, now that I have used it and learned how to create one I can say this much about it. It seems to be a a new marketing strategy to attract attention in people wanting to know what is the message hidden behind the labyrinth shaped box. A key point here is that users are asked to do something to access the brand. The viewer, audience or member/passerby must take an action to interact with the QR Code and many of those interacting are expectant consumers etc. that are interest in not only finding out what is the surprise found in code but they do expect a payoff.   My take on this is, it is fun, new and it is always healthy to try something new. But I also say in my personal opinion if it is not in plain English why even bother.

I hope you enjoy looking at my QR Code since it was fun to create. For those of you that are unable to scan the QR Code I have included the following page to view my Early Literacy page.

Finding Happiness in Social Bookmarking

As Social Bookmarking continues to grow and gain acceptance, browsing through old bookmarks are becoming less popular. One of the reasons why I say this is because browsing through bookmarks that allow for you to add to your computer favorite links in a certain way are outdated, frustrating and unmanageable.  Just imagine folders, after folders bookmarking websites not in a neat organized way and if you have more than one computer you may not have the same folders in all computers. So, I feel that I do not have to struggle anymore because of Social Bookmarks like diigo or delicious.  Access to my favorite sites is now fun and organized and most important my bookmarks are kept safe online and I can access them from any computer. My favorites on delicious are now organized, click here and see for yourself.  I like how each link has a site picture, I have added tags, descriptions I can edit, remove. I am able to share my delicious with others and I can even use the delicious blog.  

I found similarities with the use of diigo all of my favorite links are organized,  I was able to add tags, descriptions, remove and I can also share my diigo with others either by sending messages or joining their blog.  But what I liked the most about my diigo, click and see, was the page set up it seemed more organized, user friendly, colorful and I can check into a group, review group categories, I can go into community and read bookmarks that are hot and make comments. I enjoyed adding my favorite links to diigo and even though they are the same links used for delicious. I felt more comfortable and less intimidated using diigo than delicious.  It is still early to determine if my fascination with diigo will last since I am still learning how to use it.  But I hope to master the app and use it more often. Another feature that I want to share and I think it is an important reason why I enjoyed learning about delicious and diigo is that with both bookmarks the idea of saving pages has become easier, I can now browse and share the results of my bookmark with Facebook and Twitter.  Diigo has also an advantage over delicious, I can now highlight the page that is being bookmarked making it easier to retrieve the information at a later date.

Another Social Bookmark very popular, especially among Facebook members is Pinterest. I was first introduced to Pinterest through Facebook a few months back. It all started with pretty pins of doors, decorating entrance doors.  I love images of doors and beautiful entrances with lots of flowers and color so I knew I wanted that pin and that is how I got to join Pinterest and Pinterest has become my best friend I now have three Pinterest accounts the most recent opened account is the Pinterest dedicated to all library thing and I wish to share with all of you, so click and see.  What I find most attractive about Pinterest is that it lets me think and learn to organize. I enjoy sharing all of the beautiful things that I have found on the web. I have heard that some people actually use pinboards to plan parties or change the decorations at home.  Viewing Pinterest has been therapeutic, I have used Pinterest to get ideas about decorating doors. Pinterest has allow me to share with my friends on Facebook, browse through all the interesting pinboards, discover new things and get inspiration from people who share my interest.

When it came to creating the QR Code, at first I was reluctant not understanding its importance. It became a challenge as I had to figure out what to do with my Google site.  I think I struggled more creating my google site page than with anything else.  I struggle deciding what I wanted my Google site page to look like and what type of messages or information the page was about. I then realized that I wanted it to be a page for parents and care givers to get ideas on Early Literacy and it would be a page that would be constantly updated with new ideas, information and tools for teaching Early Literacy. The page is still in its early stage to view this page, but please scan below the QR Code to view my page.  

 

 

 While discussing with some library friends about QR Code, I learned that QR Codes are being used in some libraries. One library that is using QR Codes to announce Library services is Broward County Public Libraries “Free Books Posters”.

Finally, let me add that if I was given the choice to choose which Social Bookmark would be my app of choice to work with, share and maintain as a link to communication, it would most likely be Pinterest, the reason is very simple, Pinterest and is visual bookmarking services offers users certain advantages that diigom does not offer. Diigo does not show thumbnails on bookmarked images. I see Pinterest like a visual scrapbooking (I enjoy Scrapbooking!). Another reason is that Pinterest as a Social Bookmark allows consumers to promote products and services for free. So, I thought why not use Pinterest to promote library services and programs  and even share with others different pins taken about the library or even adding pins that share library announcement.  I guess there is no stopping creativity!!!

 

 

The benefits of pod casting for library's and other institutions

I think that the benefits of pod-casting are many.  Libraries, schools and other institutions such as Museum can benefit from pod-casting as it facilitates communication, delivers information and can serve to broadcast a range of services by making audio content available to the public. Pod-casting is also a great tool for staff development; it can serve as a reference resource, or to guide a patron on how to use the libraries services. It can serve to announce up coming events. 

I think it can also be used to promote programs being offered at the library, for story time, to promote a bestseller books or upcoming collections. Pod-casting is another form of media and it’s used are multiple  they can go from something  as easy as providing instructions to a student how to use the libraries catalog to library tour.  I enjoyed discovering the use of a podcast but I was even more amazed on how easy it could be to share and view others podcast through Drop Box. 

The Early Literacy Podcast Experience

While searching for a topic to discuss, I came across some of my Early Literacy training documents. I realized at that moment that it would be fun to be able to create a podcast for parents to listen to on the topic of Early Literacy and how they can apply the six early literacy skills while reading to their child. Every child deserves the opportunity to discover bookd to learn to read and to fall in love with reading and writing. But most important to the basics of reading and writing  before they start school. My podcast on Early Literacy is about preparing parents to engage in reading activities with their children so that they can succeed in school in reading and writing. How children learn will make a difference in a child’s academic growth. The podcast provides the basic for learning the six literacy skills and applying it to everyday learning.

My experience at creating this podcast at first was stressful. I was not sure of my ability to pull through with recording and creating a mp3 and then transferring to Dropbox. My first attempt at creating the mp3 was a disaster the recording would not recognize my commands and would continue to give error screens. A day later, I decided to give it a try again and carefully followed Dr. Martin’s instructions until I was able to finally put together the podcast.

I am giving Podcast a second chance to work with me. I think is a wonderful media tool that does not require a lot of knowledge in media technology as long as you follow word by word the instructions. I think so far podcast is a media tool that has a future with me and probably I would use it for different library presentations library workshops and even for staff training. But the one application that I found quite impressive and useful was the Dropbox. I had heard about cloud storage and I even attended a presentation at Best Buy where they were presenting the new chromebook and they explained how it works with clouds. It backs up all of your documents, photos and others into cloud storage instead of the hard drive and it works faster than other laptops. I was tempted to buy it but because it was a new technology my husband did not feel comfortable about making an investment until he learned more about it.

Here goes my Podcast Presentation

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/108709166/Iglesias_Teaching%20Early%20Literacy%20Skills.mp3

Will Prezi replace PowerPoint

Prezi is another fun web 2.0 application that can be used for school projects, art projects, marketing presentations or just for fun. It offers an innovative way to present a project. It delivers fun, active, colorful presentations. It is a great tool for a person with imagination, looking for something different non-linear. For the individual with a sense of creativity and enjoys exploring new ways of getting the message across Prezi is for you.

The difference between Prezi and PowerPoint is that it is non-linear while PowerPoint has more of the traditional presentation applications that we are used to seeing especially in the business world.  

At first I was quite impressed by the brightness and smooth look of Prezi. The platform offers a very different angle at looking at a presentation definitely different from the linear series of slides that one can create with PowerPoint. I loved how you can zoom in and out of your frame set, rotate each frame or create a flow diagram of your topic and include the content as you are editing.  

I spend most of one day putting my Prezi presentation together at first I did not know how to go about using Prezi but I followed each of the instructional tabs and started to explore its use. I played with Prezi like putting together a puzzle with each of the pieces that I selected I discovered how I can manipulate its use and make it more interesting. I played with background colors offered and loved how it made the presentation looked different. I selected the spring color schemed of colors  available because it looked like the look that it gave of coloring with crayons or markers and I wanted the presentation to be more appealing to the eye and hoped to attract a younger audience.  I think that with time Prezi will grow on me, but I think that its use will be more towards fun presentations to do for youth programs or even for marketing a school or a library program.

As functionality goes I think I will continue to stick to using PowerPoint. PowerPoint is very functional and simple and the data can be inputted quickly and effectively. It is part of the Microsoft packages so you can save the presentation in your computer or a flash drive. This is something that I found to be important. While with Prezi, as far as I can see you have to log on from the Internet to be able to open your presentation and I am not sure of how safe or protected is your presentation on Prezi. I understand that because Prezi basic is a free application it is free for the public to see.  Using Prezi may be a fun tool to explore and play around but in my opinion is not a tool that I would use for a serious professional presentation.

PowerPoint offer versatility, a high degree of customization tools and features that makes it possible for the user to keep its format consistent and organized in each of the slides. The animation, video links and many of the inserts available are easily accessible. Prezi offers animation,  youtube uploads or other downloads function and like PowerPoint it offers clipboard, charts and many other features but it is not easy to tweak the presentation to suit any need or occasion like PowerPoint.

Maybe it has to do with the basic access application that is free to the public and it does not offer as many options for creating a more formal kind of presentation without losing is luster.  I think it offers enough options for a nice presentation.  I will continue to play with Prezi and hope to discover more uses; I may or may not incorporate the Prezi to future presentations. In the meantime, I will continue to be faithful to PowerPoint until I find that Prezi or other presentation platforms out there are capable of meeting my presentation needs.

Facebook as a Social Media Hotspot for Libraries

It seems that social media is here to stay from Twitter to Facebook social media tools have found their way into the library environment. More libraries throughout the nation are successfully using some form of social media tool to make a difference in their marketing strategies by connecting, contributing and collaborating in social network.  Social media provide libraries the opportunity to communicate with their users through a variety of tools such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. 

 ComScore, Inc. a leader in measuring the digital world released a report in December 2011 “It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to Knows About Social Networking and Where it’s Headed. According to the report Social networking is the most popular online activities worldwide. 82% of the world internet population age 15 and older accessed the Internet from a home or work computer, representing 1.2 billion users around the globe. That is an important fact that cannot be overlooked. It’s not only a younger generation of people that are using social networking anymore. Social networking is seen not only as a way to continue a conversation, it provides news, promotes businesses, serves as a community, is informative and is a way to connect with people that you otherwise would never meet or places you never been too.

According to ComScore, Inc.  report in “October of 2011 Facebook had reached more than half (55 percent) of the world’s global audience and accounted for 1 in every 7 minutes spent online around the world and 3 in every four social networking minutes.” If Facebook can gather 

these many users, then why not use Facebook as an avenue for reaching library users. In my opinion Facebook is one of many social networks that can successfully promote advocacy and generate community awareness about library services and programs.  It could be a wonderful tool if use properly to start and continue a conversation about books; encourages conversation and comments that can lead to quality reference services, and improving patron services. There are many libraries out there that are taking advantage of social media. Such is the case of the New York Library. The New York Library is doing wonderful things through Facebook. The New York Public Library Facebook to be engaging they update post every day and I have seen them provide post every hour. The Facebook page is attractive to the vision, is informative with news of what events are taking place at the library. It serves as a marketing tool. In their webpage they promote books, music and events. There is a section for recommendations and allows for others to make post or announcements about the library. I really enjoyed browsing thru their Facebook page. 

One thing I did notice is lack of traffic from followers.  But the New York Public Library is not the only Facebook page that attracts a following. There is a Social Media for Libraries Facebook page that I discovered the other day and it seems to be a relatively new page, most of the post listed are about converging social media and libraries. The page seemed to have lifted off on a good start but it is now static and the last post listed on the page is from May 2, 2011. I wonder what could have happened. I can only imagine that the page was created by librarians for librarians and it lost down the road a following or simply was abandoned due to lack of support. Finally a last look at another libraries Facebook page, I decided for my own library Miami-Dade Public Library . Miami-Dade Public Library Facebook displays beautifully with colorful pictures of children. Its page displays events, announcements, many event pictures, news, recommendations and maps of its location. They do not seem to post daily but they seem to at least post weekly. They seemed to have a following but not a large one. I did not see a Calendar of events but they do make announcements of what is going on. Although is colorful and organized it does not provide a statistical snapshot of usage. Aside from activities it does not promote reading or a list of recommended books.  

I think that with so much going on at the library it is a shame to see that not as much as we would like is being done through Facebook. In Facebook, conversation is an important draw. It’s the primary activity of most Facebook users. If libraries want users to become advocates they are going to have to engage more in Facebook or any other social network in order to get people to become followers and share the library content and help spread its message.

Libraries Now Serving Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is seen as the next step in the evolution of the World Wide Web.  It is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the web. (Click, Petit)  This form of online activity is seen as creating online communities with all parties sharing ownership and participation.   Libraries are moving to benefit from these applications by enhancing their services to patrons and highlighting their importance as a community resource. One of the oldest Web 2.0 applications is Wikipedia.   This interactive application is considered by reference librarians as a general reference source due to its open acceptance of input by users.  It also highlights the clash between traditional reference sources and Web 2.0 sources allowing open access and input to users. 

Most Web 2.0 applications are linked to social networks.  Facebook and Twitters are important examples.   Social networks are based upon a software that facilitate people to connect, collaborate and form virtual communities via Internet (Aqil, Ahmad, Siddique)  Facebook and Twitter are used to highlight library services and create long term interactive relationships with patrons.  Facebook can provide interactive discussions on specialized programs and twitter can give quick notices and instructions on upcoming programs and new online products.  As an example, a specialized program, such as services to the homebound can have an associated Facebook page to assist with interaction with patrons.  However, a large portion of this group includes the elderly who may not have access to computers or be open to using them.  These applications also require extensive work by highly qualified and technologically savvy librarians.  Training, motivating and developing these librarians is an important challenge for library administrations (Aqil, Ahmad, Siddique).  Related is also the use of YouTube to share videos.  Libraries can use this application to provide educational and/or informational instructions.  This can be used to help patrons navigate new online databases or be part of programs they may not be able to attend.  Patrons can also provide their own recordings of library programs they enjoyed and interact with the library and other viewers by reviewing events (Kern, Stephens).         

Web Podcasting provides real time access to programs and instructions.   Participants can review and provide input or review the presentation.  Web Blogs are on-going active web pages that are related to a particular subject or position.  While the blogger writes and publishes an entry, reader’s contributions and participation can influence and control the direction of the blog.  Libraries are learning to use blogs to discuss new services, possible programs or library issues, such as new technology products and funding options.  Blogs can be critical in obtaining buy in from patrons to proposed service changes and funding challenges. 

All these applications are critical to maintaining a vibrant and active relationship with internal and external stakeholders.  The challenges to Library Administration lies with the development of a new skill set for librarians, especially those who have serve for a considerable number of years.  Development is costly and time consuming but is critical since moving to active online interaction with patrons is ultimately the new direction for libraries.  At the other extreme is to prevent being overwhelmed by the rapid and increasing scope of new technology or what some are calling Technolust.  Technolust is when the need to at the forefront of new technology clouds a person’s faculty to study changes in a logical and cost effective manner (Kern, Stephens) Through long term planning and scanning of internal and external factors are key to making sound operational decisions related to overall library services and not rely solely on technological advances to dictate the future of library services (Kern, Stephens). The future of the library’s technology may well be Web 3.0. However, libraries cannot place their future in technology alone but in encouraging completely new creative ways of educating people in the use of library services and changing the structure and overall library concept to increase the importance of libraries as a resource to its communities.  

 

References

Click, A., & Petit, J. (2010). Social networking and web

 2.0 in information literacy. The international

 information & library review, 42, 137-142.

 doi: doi:10.1016/j.iilr.2010.04.007

 

Kern, M. K., & Stephens, M. (2008). Taming technolust:

 Ten steps for planning in a 2.0 world. Reference &

 user services quarterly, 47(4), 314-317.

Aqil, M., Ahmad, P., & Siddique, M. A. (2011). Web 2.0

 and libraries: Facts or myths. Desidoc journal of

 library & information technology, 31(5), 395-400.