Information R/evolution

I really envy some of the bloggers whose stuff I read regularly for their dedication, but where do they get the time to do all those posts?? After a period of relative silence, imprisoned writing a book about Web 2.0 and InformationLiteracy, I can come alive again. I've just seen a little video that has made me drop everything so that I can post about it!
Michael Wesch, Kansas State University, has come up with another brilliant little video called Information Revolution.
It " explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively."
This video complements the work of David Weinberger "Everything is miscellaneous" very well. Brilliant!

LibGuides at Dalhousie University

I wanted to draw attention to the collection of subject guides at Dalhousie University in Canada. They have been created by the subject librarians there using the Springshare application LibGuides. The remakable thing about them is that there are 148 of them! Yes, 148! This is not unique either - Utah State University have 53. Many libraries are now using LibGuides as an easy way to store content (including RSS feeds, custom search engines, podcasts etc.) .This must be easier and quicker than some other methods being used around Universities.....Better still Facebook has now got an add-on so that students can access the guides through Facebook: they use this to set up their chosen guide. Very interesting.

How big is Wikipedia?

Nikola Smolenski has produced a visual of what Wikipedia would look like if it was printed in book format. Take a look at the 1250 volumes and how she's calculated it. Might be useful to show to students to give them some idea of the scale : then introduce them to how it's made up, and updated.

How to spice up your presentations

Why didn't I use these wonderful tips from i-Librarian over the past few days when I was preparing my latest presentation? It's so easy to fall in with what we know and are comfortable with.... but we all know what it's like at those one day conferences ; "Death by Powerpoint" I call it. It would make a nice change for someone to stand up and speak from the heart!

Don McMillan said it all so brilliantly in this little clip "Life after Death by Powerpoint"which I've just found again : it cheered me up no end.

Inquiry based learning with Web 2.0

Increasingly I keep coming across references to slide-shows which are in slideshare. This service is a wonderful example of Web 2.0 technology at its best - allowing you to share your presentations with others, and gaining ideas from others! This particular show by Paul Reid, a teacher in Western Australia, is about how social software Web 2.0 tools can be used in inquiry based learning. There are some interesting ideas in this basic introduction of only 39 slides.