http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/02/05/timel

An AJAX based timeline that can be changed with different datasets. As well as examples, there is a guide for building your own. I like the fact that it’s possible to have a single line (band) with differing timescales in.

I can see the possibility for creating Gantt Charts from this - though clearly at present, when it requires hand coding, I guess that MS Project is going to be quicker.

If / when there’s a GUI though…

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/02/07/banni

The Guardian has an article about the fact that the History Department at Middlebury have “banned” wikipedia. Cyberspace reacted as one might expect, with a full range of views. InsideHigherEd’s report is worth reading, as they stress, (as does the Guardian), that the real objection comes when students see wikipedia as the sole source of information, not a springboard for further research.

This debate naturally enters the whole arena of the Internet for research - an Australian student in the slashdot article adds:

At the La Trobe University History department [latrobe.edu.au] (where I study), websites (including Wikipedia) can only be ‘freely’ cited in first year, first semester units.

From second semester of first year, all History students are required to get permission from the unit lecturer and/or tutor to use a specific online source (journals and books published online don’t need to go through this) and to also attach a copy of the webpage(s) used to the essay.

That seems like a very sensible solution! I would be interested to know, however, how they treat online journals? Are all online journals exempt from the rule? Or just those that the University also subscribes to the paper version? What about those (increasingly common in Educational Technology) that only have an electronic version - and/ or the University only gets the electronic version? What about eBooks through ebrary?

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/02/15/colla

I’m just starting to work on a shared project with other members of staff, and am therefore looking quite carefully at the way in which we (and I in future) can store references.

A bit of history!

When I first started working at the University, I used ProCite. I didn’t have any choice, but I discovered that I quite liked it - the fact that it had the ability to import data from a Webpage (as long as the browser was Netscape 4) was useful. Autoprinting Inter Library Loan requests was handy too!

Over the years, my use of it has varied; the pile of papers to be added varies from minimal to a rather large box.

However, I’ve also started using Web 2.0 tools far more; I’ve been using iKeepbookmarks for some time now, as a way of having access to all my bookmarks regardless of machine/ browser I’m using. When del.icio.us started becoming more popular, I was not particularly enthusiastic, I’d got used to iKeepbookmarks, and I wasn’t sure about the benefits of tagging. While I can see that it can be useful to see others’ bookmark lists, I was more worried that I’d mistype a tag I’d previously used, so be unable to relate them (a problem I’d had in the past with ProCite). Putting things into folders (as in iKeepbookmarks) was more me, (though I often ended up wondering why on earth I’d classified a particular reference in the way that I had!)

On other fronts, the University started moving towards EndNote.

Current Choices

• Del.icio.us Pros: Many users; can find related information. Cons: A lot of users aren’t academic - so a lot of references that aren’t going to be immediately useful.
  


• CiteULike Pros: Designed for use by academics; thus has links to journals, assorted options for export (including to EndNote)etc. Cons. Haven’t used it enough to know - other than the fact that it’s online - so have to be online to use it.


• EndNote Web Only found it today - so don’t really know, but it has links to a great many resources (not Portsmouth University Library, unfortunately), compatibility with EndNote etc. Very fussy about the password that you use though, has to have at least 8 characters, of which one is a number & one something that’s not a letter or a number. It’s not exactly a bank account!


• Zotero. Not quite the same as the others, as it is a Firefox 2.0 extension. Saves information (including screenshots of Webpages, which can be handy). Can export to Endnote (It also seems to be possible to import from Endnote, though I’ve not tried). Can be used off line.


• Academic Live. Again, not quite the same as the other tools, but can export references in a format for import to EndNote -and also links to the “Full Text @ Portsmouth” service.

Decisions!

I’ve definitely decided to make the move from Procite to EndNote - and also to start using Zotero more. However, it’s the online aspects that I’m still not sure about; I think though I have many references in iKeepbookmarks - and will maintain it - especially for non-work related sites. However, for work & shared projects, I’m definitely in two minds as to whether CiteUlike or MyEndNoteWeb is the better of the two…

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/02/20/secon

Beth’s Second Life: Literature Alive! and other Tales

We’re starting to work on a project looking at the possibility of using second life to teach programming. At the moment, we’re very much at the research stage, so I’m going to be adding random posts for useful URLs - which this blogs seems to be!

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/02/23/blog-

I’ve recently been taking part in an online discussion about blogging for learning. (You have to login to read/ take part)

Quite a significant part of the discussion was taken up with the discussion of different tools.

As I was singing Elgg’s praises, I realised one potential issue for users when they have Elgg locally installed.

Most Universities etc., are likely to limit registration to internal users, though readers can be external.

If one sets comments to be logged in users only, then the world can see, but not comment on particular posts. It also means that a student couldn’t set up, for example, a group for friends from home.

If there was an account type that just allowed commenting, possibly only obtainable through invitation from / request to the (student)blog owner, then, I’d have thought, the University will be statisfied that external users aren’t using up lots of server space, but the blog owner can extend her readership & community to those outside the immediate University environment.

I’ll post more about the discussion later, as many useful things came up, but I’ve just submitted this to the feature requests for Elgg, so it was on my mind.

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/02/23/googl

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google charges for web programs Hmmm… we’re currently using Google Docs for a number of joint projects; I use Gmail - I wonder if they will ultimately maintain the free versions.

This does raise the whole question of a business model. The free versions are ad-supported; many, like me, use Ad-blocking software to prevent the adverts being seen. Is this a form of “cheating”? Should we continue to expect to have freely available software? After all, someone, somewhere has to pay.

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/02/26/is-po

….or Will We Finally Teach that the Audience Matters? Christian Long makes useful points, in particular in relation to student presentations/ blogs/ podcasts - commenting

I suspect this is because our students have not traditionally been instructed in the ‘how to engage an audience’ side of the idea-sharing relationship.

He’s got some useful URLs to give guidance - it’s clear that many (probably me included!) need good ideas about how to prepare slides, so that they add to the lecture, but don’t negate the need to be there.

I have thought for some time that Powerpoint slides on their own ought not be enough to replace the lecture - i.e for students missing the lecture, they shouldn’t be “enough”. How, then, do I provide information - given that students may have a genuine reason for not being there?

I’m trying with one course to record myself - I’m not intending to go to the Rotunda and record things properly - that would take far too long, rather I’ll record as I go with the Laptop, straight into Powerpoint and use Impatica to compress. (Or, perhaps, capture with Captivate, so that I can grab everything, not just Powerpoint).

On a related note, there was recently an article in the Daily Princetonian about the use of technology - specifically students using Laptops and Lecturers (or should I say “faculty”) using Powerpoint. Tim Schamer gives his views of it - and several of his commentors have clearly had boring Powerpoint presentations - but they’ve not said what they’d like.

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/02/27/slide

I’m giving a talk for the library tomorrow, about Blogs and Wikis. It’s really just to get them going to start to think about how libraries are using blogs and wikis.

I put the slides up in slideshare, but have just discovered that if you want to have links in a slideshow, the link needs to be near the middle. If you have a look at slide 7, “Warwick” and “Penn Tags” are both to short to be clickable (though in the full screen, it’s only Warwick that is too short)

It was surprisingly hard to find examples of UK Libraries that have blogs - I’ve found several lists, but though they have lots from around the world, the UK lists are thin on the ground. As it was, I only found the Warwick ones, as I guessed they’d have some on their system. As it is, Innovating Research was a very useful blog (though library related, rather than library per se)

I’ve put all the links in the Presentation on the “Libraries, blogs and wikis” page. The presentation, by the way, is just a trigger … it’s not meant to be all the information; I’m hoping we’ll get a lot from looking at the different examples.