Two and a half hours of my life that I will never get back.
That's what I just spent poking around YouTube, looking at silly videos with, shall we say, minimal production values. An awful lot of bandwidth is being used to show the world jerky amateur films of college boys doing bad Paula Deen imitations. And worse.
And yet. It had never occurred to me that I could use YouTube to view a clip of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech. Now THAT could be useful, and I really haven't ever used the words "useful" and "YouTube" in the same thought or sentence before. I'm thinking about my student days as a history major and marvelling at how easy it would be now to view certain kinds of primary source material. No chattering projector required!
Other things I like about YT: it's kind of fun to find clips of live performances (although picture and sound quality are frequently dreadful), and to search for things like the name of your high school and see what you get. Fun, but not all that useful.
I don't like how there doesn't seem to be a great way to improve the precision of your search results. At least for the searches I did, there is always a lot of noise, and no obvious ways of whittling down your results, except by adding more search terms of course. Like all of Web 2.0, there's tons of dreck mixed in with the gold nuggets. Just because YouTube "doesn't allow" gross-out videos and porn doesn't mean I feel confident that I (or my kids) couldn't stumble across something icky that flew under their radar. And please, save me from the inane comments and vulgar language that seems to pass for discourse in much of the Web 2.0 world.
So I guess YouTube gets a mixed review from me. Of course we'll all be using the technology at work soon enough. But cute kitty videos, stupid human tricks, and flatulence wear thin after a while and all the silly and stupid stuff dilutes the power of YouTube, IMHO. Maybe the Google people could split YouTube into two sites: one for the America's Funniest Home Videos stuff and another for clips that perform a function other than making people laugh so hard they pee their pants.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close up
Obviously I was not thinking clearly during week 6 when I opined that podcasts would be a good way to release me from having to teach people how to set up email accounts. Booktalks, OK. To The Best of our Knowledge, I'm there. Talking someone through a process, not so much.
I am struck by the wide variations in quality in the screencasts I looked at. Some had a lot of annoying microphone noise, which was very distracting. The tutorial on setting up a Gmail account? Bleahhhh. If you aren't computer savvy enough to do it without a tutorial, I doubt it would help much. Some, like the University of Calgary, were just awesome. It is very apparent that having a script makes your screencast sound worlds more professional, and less like something you did in your garage or basement.
How would I use screencasts? Well, obviously, I was jumping the gun a few weeks ago with my email tutorial idea. Something I do a lot of at the desk is demoing how to search and place holds from home, as well as how to use some of our databases, especially EBSCO. Invariably I wind up showing the patron and writing down the steps on a piece of paper so they can replicate the search at home. How much better it would be for me to give them the URL and say, There's a tutorial embedded right there that will walk you through it as you're doing it, instead of handing them a scrap of paper covered in my scrawly handwriting that they will undoubtedly lose anyway. I think I would still show them while they were with me, because it goes against my nature not to demonstrate things when asked about them, but I would totally stop writing down the steps for sure.
I'm not sure if I'll get to the optional assignment or not. I'm doing pretty well to complete this assignment before we get the next one. It's nice to know how to do it, though, so that Frenzied Librarian and I can get together and whip out useful screencasts in our copious off-desk time.
I am struck by the wide variations in quality in the screencasts I looked at. Some had a lot of annoying microphone noise, which was very distracting. The tutorial on setting up a Gmail account? Bleahhhh. If you aren't computer savvy enough to do it without a tutorial, I doubt it would help much. Some, like the University of Calgary, were just awesome. It is very apparent that having a script makes your screencast sound worlds more professional, and less like something you did in your garage or basement.
How would I use screencasts? Well, obviously, I was jumping the gun a few weeks ago with my email tutorial idea. Something I do a lot of at the desk is demoing how to search and place holds from home, as well as how to use some of our databases, especially EBSCO. Invariably I wind up showing the patron and writing down the steps on a piece of paper so they can replicate the search at home. How much better it would be for me to give them the URL and say, There's a tutorial embedded right there that will walk you through it as you're doing it, instead of handing them a scrap of paper covered in my scrawly handwriting that they will undoubtedly lose anyway. I think I would still show them while they were with me, because it goes against my nature not to demonstrate things when asked about them, but I would totally stop writing down the steps for sure.
I'm not sure if I'll get to the optional assignment or not. I'm doing pretty well to complete this assignment before we get the next one. It's nice to know how to do it, though, so that Frenzied Librarian and I can get together and whip out useful screencasts in our copious off-desk time.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
(Pod)casting the net a bit wider
Oh dear. More goodies to keep me chained to the computer. I fear that podcasts will become like library books for me: "That one looks good; oh I need that one; whaddya mean I can't renew it anymore, I haven't started reading it yet!" My Bloglines feeds keep growing and growing, just like the pile of books on the floor next to my bed. Gotta get that iPod.
Once again, TMI. Maybe if I just stop sleeping, I'll have enough time to read, listen and fool around with the computer. Nah, I'd probably have to stop working, eating and raising my children too. Thanks a lot, Project Play.
The thing I like about podcasts for libraries is that there are so many different ways to use them. Booktalks and book reviews. Teen applications. Stories for kids (though I must say, I'm having trouble with the idea of plopping a kid down in front of the computer to listen to a story, however artfully it is told by Disembodied Children's Librarian Voice. Parents, there's just no Web 2.0 substitute for plopping the kid down on your lap and reading the book together).
Maybe podcasts could take over some of the one-on-one computer training we currently do. If I never had to walk someone through the process of setting up an email account again, I wouldn't complain. And syndicating programs for people who just couldn't make it to the library that day? Sweet. What a great way to reach beyond the walls of the library. And if only two people show up to your program, you can tell yourself that it wasn't a dismal failure after all, since undoubtedly hundreds more will listen to the podcast.
I have to stop now. My computer chair is in serious danger of permanently molding itself into the shape of my posterior, and my kids are starting to tell me that I've really had enough screen time.
Once again, TMI. Maybe if I just stop sleeping, I'll have enough time to read, listen and fool around with the computer. Nah, I'd probably have to stop working, eating and raising my children too. Thanks a lot, Project Play.
The thing I like about podcasts for libraries is that there are so many different ways to use them. Booktalks and book reviews. Teen applications. Stories for kids (though I must say, I'm having trouble with the idea of plopping a kid down in front of the computer to listen to a story, however artfully it is told by Disembodied Children's Librarian Voice. Parents, there's just no Web 2.0 substitute for plopping the kid down on your lap and reading the book together).
Maybe podcasts could take over some of the one-on-one computer training we currently do. If I never had to walk someone through the process of setting up an email account again, I wouldn't complain. And syndicating programs for people who just couldn't make it to the library that day? Sweet. What a great way to reach beyond the walls of the library. And if only two people show up to your program, you can tell yourself that it wasn't a dismal failure after all, since undoubtedly hundreds more will listen to the podcast.
I have to stop now. My computer chair is in serious danger of permanently molding itself into the shape of my posterior, and my kids are starting to tell me that I've really had enough screen time.
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