ALT Conference September 2013

About to attend Day 3 of Association for Learning Technologies Conference 2013 http://altc2013.alt.ac.uk/ so am re-awakening my 23 Things blog to use for recording and sharing.

Blogging again! Thing 1

Ah, here I am again, back on the CPD 23 Things programme, 2012 this time, having started but not completed it the last time, but having learned loads and loads of useful things anyhow!

Have already done a bitta blogging, including as part of CPD23 2011, for which I set up the Veggie Haggis blog, so am not a beginner with this.

My background is, very briefly, I work in Academic Services Development within the Academic Services division at Warwick University Library. We run projects, the purpose of which, to quote our webpage as I couldn't put it better myself:

• Researching tools and techniques that might enhance the work of the division
• Developing resources to support the teaching and learning on offer to library users
• Evaluating the divisions's services and recommending strategies for the future

(thanks Karina and Sian!)

We are at present setting up an ASD team blog to help share what we are up to with the rest of the division, inviting comments and suggestions from the others in Academic Services.

The link given on the CPD 23 programme Ned Potter's Prezi 'Everything you always wanted to know about library blogs and blogging' is really useful; lets me know though I am not a beginner I am still not doing it right and there is plenty of room for improvement!  Thank you!

Talking about not doing it right (which I am particularly good at..), came across this link on @ergosocial on Twitter to what not to avoid when blogging: Neil Patel's 12 blogging mistakes to avoid at all costs, (NP must be a good set of initials to have..)

Anyway, back to what I hope to get out of the programme.  I hope to be able to build on what I have already learned, gain more knowledge from others on the programme to help with Things I am already using, and share experiences and knowledge I myself have picked up with others.  And hopefully this time I will get further!

New CPD23!

Have just signed up for the 2012 CPD23 Things programme.  If I get half as much out of it as I did from last year's one it will be worth it!  Looking forward to revision and practice, and to some extra Things hopefully.

Zotero, Mendeley, CiteULike - Referencing

Thing 14, Zotero, Mendeley, CiteULike

Long long ago, in a country far far north of here, I used to write essays which came out similar to this:

Thank you Chinaman88 for allowing use of this item.

My essays were much, much more illegible, and in addition had more scorings out, deletions, and thick gooey lumps of Tippex!  One Computer would fill half a large room (and we didn't have access to them anyhow) and I did not have access to a typewriter (not a problem as I couldn't type either..)  Pity the poor lecturers!

Anyway, back to the present day and the point in hand.  From a document looking very similar to that above, all of us students had to show what references we had used, and then create a bibliography manually. The result was almost invariably a mess.  My aren't you young-uns lucky to have all these referencing tools to work with! And yes, I am a sad old git....

Before going into my largely unwanted opinions of the tools being introduced here, I need to point out I have played around with Refworks and Endnote Web already, so am not a total novice, more like a toddler really. Also I personally do not really have any reason for using referencing tools as I no longer write essays, am no longer studying, however in my current post I need to help others using Endnote Web.  

Zotero looks well worth using.  It looks easy to use, more intuitive than Endnote, has lots of handy functions, and is free!  In fact, I do not see any particular reason to be using Endnote rather than Zotero, except of course many have been using the former for years and are happy using it.  Found an interesting article on a comparison between the two; link below.

Zotero versus Endnote

Now for Mendeley.  Fraid I don't like the look of it at all, do not think it gives anything extra which I would want to use, though willing to be corrected here of course.

Now for CiteULike. Like the way you can upload PDFs (though haven't yet taken the time to look at it fully), but the lack of 'cite while you write' seems to me to make it not a serious contender in this category, though may well be worth looking at in the context of other Things covered in the programme.

Wikis

Thing 13 and a bit

Have used wikis before to a certain extent - one of the many things I should be looking into further!  So here, in order to be able to remind myself easily about what they are about in future, I'll just nick the excellent Ladybird Guide to Wikis type YouTube video from the programme and drop it here and move on.  Thanks!

Ladybird Guide to Wikis

Video on using Web 2.0 technologies in education

Diverting a little from the programme, but thought this worth sharing (especially if I can get the link to it to work!).

Thanks to @rgardner on Twitter for sharing it.

Teaching with web 2.0 technologies: Twitter, wikis & blogs - Case study

Dropbox

O.K., so I am totally out of sync! Having already used Google Docs I thought I would move on to Dropbox to compare the two.  Took rather a long time to download, in fact I had just about given up and moved on to looking at Jing when it decided to open.

It seems to me that Google Docs has the advantage that a lot more people I know use it than use Dropbox, not that that is a reason to use GD if Dropbox is better. We in the team in the library are currently looking at Sharepoint as well, so that would also be added to the list.  I think Dropbox does look an easy to use and useful resource and will look initially at using it for saving documents which I regularly update both at work and in the house.