Thursday, July 3, 2008

19. Put a photo of your pet on the wiki

A wiki is a type of web site which is edited collaboratively. That is, anyone with access can edit any page of a wiki, and add new pages.

It's great for sharing information between staff of an organisation, or for developing documentation. Wikis keep a record of all edits made to a page, so it's possible to see who added what, and even to reserse edits.

The most notable wiki is WikiPedia, an online encyclopedia. However, wikis can be used for a number of purposes.

Today you'll learn how to resize and save a photo for the web, and put a photo onto the wiki 'pet's page'.

Preparing your photo

When preparing an image for the web, it's important that you save it in the correct format, and at an appropriate size. Otherwise, someone may not be able to view it, or it may take too long to download on a typical home internet connection. The photos out of a digital camera or scanner will usually be too high a resolution for a web page, so they'll require reducing.

First, you'll need to find a digital photo of your pet (or someone else's, if you don't have one). If you have a digital camera, you can simply use a photo from that. If you have a printed photo, you'll need to scan it instead. Scanners are available at the library.

Note: You can use your favourite photo editing programs. I recommend MS Picture Manager.

To resize your photo

  • Open the photo you want to resize.
  • Click on File, and then choose Export
  • On the right side, choose Browse under "Export selected files to".
  • Now a new window will come up and you want to create a new folder for your web images (unless you already have this folder created). Click on "Create new folder" and type in name of your folder eg. "Web Images", then click on OK and Open.
  • Click on the down arrow under "Export with this file format", select JPEG file interchange Format (*.jpeg)
  • Click on the down arrow under "Export using this size", select Web - Small 448 x 336 px, then click OK.

Put your photo onto the wiki

  • Log into VU Wikibrary with your Google Account.
  • Locate the Pet's page on the wiki and edit it using Edit page
  • Click on Insert, and then choose Image
  • Click on the Browse button and locate where you have saved your photo
  • Click on Add Image and Save

OR

  • If you want to create your own page, click on Create new page and insert your image into it.

Note: If you are unable to login to the VU Wikibrary by your Google account, chances are that your Google account hasn't been associated with VU email address. Now you can have several options to choose:

  • Associate VU email with your Google account, or
  • Advise the 23things team your gmail address and we will invite you to the VU Wikibrary, or
  • Use the 23 things generic account.

Your task
  1. Add a photo to the VU Wikibrary
  2. Blog about your experience with Wikis

How to associate VU email address with your Google account

  • Sign in to manage your Google account
  • Click on the "Edit" link next to "Personal Information"
  • Enter your VU email address to "Add an additional email address" and click on "Save"
  • Once added, Google sends a confirmation message to authenticate that the address is actually yours.
  • Follow the link in the email Google sent you and log into Google again.

Resources

Alternate tools

Posted by Victoria University Library. at 9:21 AM 11 comments

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Week 10: Wikis and video sharing

19. Put a photo of your pet on the wiki
20. Watch YouTube videos people have made about libraries
Posted by Victoria University Library. at 4:53 PM 0 comments

18. Read about the Library 2.0 movement and explore new developments in Library related interfaces such as Encore and the new EBSCOhost 2.0 interface

Library 2.0 is term used to describe a new set of concepts for developing and delivering Library services. The Library 2.0 movement is about innovation, people and community building. According to Wikipedia the vision of the Library 2.0 movement is accomplished through trust and encouraging users to share ideas through writing, commenting, evaluating or rating about everything in the Library collection.

Watch this Web 2.0 video shows you how the web has changed and how it is connecting us, and changing us.



Read the following articles about Library 2.0

Listen to the latest in library 2.0 with Talis



Your task

Write a blog post sharing about your Library 2.0 experience.

Posted by Victoria University Library. at 4:51 PM 0 comments

17. Play with delicious

Watch this video introduction to social bookmarking


Categorise and share your bookmarks online!

is an online bookmarking manager. It allows you to add bookmarks and share them with others. It's great if you want access to your bookmarks from multiple locations, eg. home and office.
Just like Flickr where you can organise your photos using tags, using 'delicious' you can also organise your bookmarks with tags any way you want to.

What makes 'delicious' attractive to its users is the social aspect. You may think you have found some great web sites and then you tag them, but you are also able to see what other people have bookmarked and see what else they have tagged that may be of interest to you. It's a great way of sharing interesting links with colleagues or friends.

Your task

For this exercise, you need to visit 'delicious' and type something of interest to yourself into the search bar. Find another user's trail and you may just discover a new wealth of information. Let us know what you find and what you think of social bookmarking on your blog.

If you are really keen, sign up and become a 'delicious' user. It's a great way of keeping track of interesting websites, especially if you are someone that works from a few different locations or you want to share links with others.

Also, for those who have your own delicious account, you may wish to create a tagroll to display, like the example here on this blog.

How to create a Tagroll for your blog

  • Log into delicious
  • Click on the 'settings' link in the top right corner
  • Under the heading 'Blogging' you will see a link to 'Tagrolls'
  • The Display options and Preview are handily side by side so you can tinker and see the outcome
  • Copy the html script provided
  • Log into Blogger
  • Click on Dashboard
  • Click on Layout
  • Click 'Add a Gadget'
  • Find 'HTML/Javascript' and click the 'Add' button (which looks like a plus sign)
  • Give the element a title
  • Paste in the html code provided by the online app
  • Click on Save


    • Resources

    Alternate tools


    Posted by Victoria University Library. at 4:17 PM 0 comments

    Week 9: Social bookmarking and Library 2.0

    17. Play with del.icio.us
    18. Read about the Library 2.0 movement and explore new developments in Library related interfaces such as Encore and the new EBSCOhost 2.0 interface


    Posted by Victoria University Library. at 4:15 PM 0 comments

    16. Create you own iGoogle home page

    Welcome to week eight of 23 Things. There is only one task this week.

    Remember the list of Google products and services from last week? Imagine being able to access all of those products from the one website. This is what iGoogle allows you to do.

    Google offers the ability to create a personalised iGoogle page that gives you at-a-glance access to key information from Google and across the web. On this self-designed page, you can choose and organise content such as:

    • Your Gmail account
    • Headlines from Google News and other news sources
    • Weather forecasts, stock quotes, and movie showtimes
    • Bookmarks for quick access to your favorite sites from any computer
    • Your own section with content you find from across the web
    • Google Book Search

    Discovery Resources

    Before completing any of the tasks below, you'll need to log in to your Google account (ie: same login details as your Blogger blog).

    iGoogle

    Go to iGoogle (log in if you have to) and you'll see your new iGoogle home page. Now you can customise it.

    Try adding the following gadgets:

    • Google Map Search gadget
    • Google Book Search gadget
    • Facebook gadget
    • Google Docs and Spreadsheet gadget
    • Wikipedia Search gadget

    You can also search for a gadget to add to your home page.

    Create a post in your blog page about this exercise. If you don't know what to write about, think about these questions:

    • Do you like iGoogle?
    • What improvements would you suggest to Google?
    • Would you like to work at Google?

    Alternate tools

    Posted by Victoria University Library. at 3:52 PM 1 comments

    Week 8: Google home page

    16. Create you own iGoogle home page

    Posted by Victoria University Library. at 2:14 PM 0 comments
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