Sorry!

I was just having a look at some previous posts and for some reason a few paragraphs on a number of posts were illegible. For some reason the format had changed, making the background white, and with my writing being white, well you couldn't read it!

I will have to preview my posts now to double check!

My first video

Well here is my first video made using my stop motion software I got the other week.

I had to export it from the Hue Animation software as an MPEG-4 and then i uploaded it onto YouTube. The only problem I have is that the screen width is quiet small. I'm guessing this is due to the quality of the camera, or the way in which it is set up, but I will have a look see. Hopefully I will be able to get the quality a bit better. I may even look to see if using a different camera will improve the quality.

HUE Animation Studio

This week I bought an animation kit called Hue Animation Studio, which can be used to create stop motion films and such. I got it from Hue Animation, and they seem to work closely with a company called iCreate to Educate. I decided to get it as just before I finished work for summer Sandra at one of the other libraries was doing a competition for creating Black History films out of Lego, so it got me thinking too!

My plan is to create a few films, upload them onto YouTube and try and get my head around how to use videos on the various library and e-learning programmes I have mentioned in the previous post. And also try and get the videos to play on this blog! So watch this space for how I am going on!

So anyways, my package arrived yesterday and this is what I got in it when I opened it up.

Here it is, instructions and camera in the box.

Here it is all unpacked. the camera is set up, you get all the leads and software to attach it to your computer. They even give you some plasticine so you can dive right in! 

Having researched a bit more Hue Animation seems to be aimed at younger students and children, but I am looking forward to creating some films!

E-Learning and Library management : Tools and programmes

Sorry for my lack of blogging this weekend, I have been on a stag do to York races. Fun times indeed. Any ways...

I have been meaning to upload a list of E-Learning tools and software we have used at work, as well as those I have used at uni and in the past. At the moment it is just a list really, but I intend to go through some of them in some detail so that I can try to get my head around the best ways of using them.

As I seem to be going of on an E-Learning tangent, and with recent developments at work regarding a site catalogue merger I'll also include some of the management systems in the list. Hopefully this will get me thinking about how to use the programmes in more of a library based setting. Keeping myself from going off on extreme tangents is proving quiet tricky!

Well here is my list, and I will try to begin writing explanation blogs on most of these in the coming weeks. I'll probably start with the presentation software Prezi as I have most experience using this one, but we will see :)



E-Learning and Library Management Software


Presentation software

Slide rocket
Prezzi


Video/animations

Go animate


Diagrams and flow charts

Gliffy


Digital signage and displays

Xibo


Online voting, brainstorming and presentation

Tricider


For artful story telling

Storybird

Visibletweets

Visible Tweets is a visualisation of Twitter messages designed for display in public spaces.


Blogging tools

Blogger
Glogster
tumblr

Traditional social media

Facebook
Myspace
Linkedin
Twitter
youtube


Online surveys

Survey monkey
Fluid surveys
smartsurvey


Photo sharing

flickr


Library Management Software

Heritage
Galaxy
Talis

Kemu


Computer Monitoring Software

Icam
MyPC
LanSchool

E-Learning: Turnitin

The past few weeks at work have been full of training. It being the end of term and near the summer holidays there have been lots of sessions crammed in all over the show.

One of these sessions was a preview of a program called Turnitin and it introduced me to a very good resource.

Turnitin is a program where teachers can upload students coursework. It then searches the internet looking for any plagiarism and highlights this for either the student or the teacher to look at, depending how it is set up. Not only does it search the internet for sources, but it also keeps hold of the particular document in a separate database so that future submissions can be checked against previous work, allowing tutors to check if students have copied each other. AND it also searches the databases of other institutions which are using the software too, so it could tell you if students have copied work from further afield! 

How good is that! 

The only down side I have noticed so far is that it did not search our e-book catalogue, which is quiet easy to copy and paste things from. Could it be that turnitin only works with word documents and cannot search PDFs or any of the many other file formats used by e-books?

Maybe if there was some way to attach the e-book catalogue to the search parameters this could be fixed? Or it could be a case of copying entire e-books into the system as 'coursework' in order for it to be searchable? This would be quiet a pain to do. I will have to raise my ideas/concerns with the very capable people in our IT and E-Learning departments and see what they say!

Any ways here is a screen shot of the turnitin website and the link to it too incase you wanted to have a look see :-)

http://turnitin.com/

E-Learning: Moodle 1

Well this week at work I have been talking to Clare who works with elearning things and Sandra at one of our other sites, and it has become pretty evident that our Learning Resources Centre Moodle page is in need of a good going over.

For those of you who do not know what moodle is, it is a virtual learning environment where you can create course areas where tutors can upload course information and resources. It is also used at the college I work at to create a base page for all LRC resources and information.

So having spoken to Clare and Sandra I have been coming up with some ideas for the moodle page for the site that I am based at. First of all I am going to have a look at the other three LRC moodle pages in order to get an idea of what they are like. I am then going to style my moodle page so that it is visually the same, with similar resources and a similar feel. I think this would help us brand all the LRC's better and give the students a better expereince.

To be honest though the LRC moodle page for my site is a bit rubbish at the minute, I dont think it looks the best and the resources are not uptodate. Hopefully with some work this will change and it will become useful! A visit to Sandra on Thursday/Friday last week gave me the chance to discuss the moodle LRC pages with her, so I should now have access to the resources that are on Sandra's moodle page. This week will be a busy week with training and such, but I am hoping to have enough spare time to get my hands on moodle and have a play about with it.

First off I will be styling our LRC page to look like the others to create better LRC branding. After that I will try and add some resources and try to tidy it up a bit, so expect future moodle posts and maybe some pictures!

My New Blog Layout

Well after much deliberation and messing here is my current blog layout and colour scheme.

I have tried to make the background and text as different as possible to allow it to be read easier. I have gone for black and dark grey with an orange header and a white body text, as you can tell from my picture below (and my blog obviously!)

I am also looking at putting some gadgets on but watch this space.

Portfolio Building

I have decided that it may be a good idea to start building up a portfolio of work and evidence of the things I do in the library. I am hoping this will allow me to improve the way I work, help me create better displays and also allow me to run through any issues I have faced.

It may also help me in the future when I apply for more managerial positions and if I decide to work towards chartership with CILIP in the future, but we will see how I get on!


So over the past six months in the Learning Resources Centre where I work we have really tried pushing the enrichment side of our roles. We have tried to create promotional displays for events every week, I do a fortnightly DVD review for the student news and we produce some slides for the TV screens scattered across the college.

Amongst those I have managed to get pictures of are RSPCA Week, National Doughnut Week, and our student news display outside the LRC, see below :)

The plan is to use these pictures, build a portfolio, and maybe write up the event and the uptake and any feedback. But we will see :)

This is George the Giraffe. We made him for RSPCA week!

George likes eating leaves!

And this is our National Doughnut Week display. 

It was for the Children's Trust and we also sold doughnuts that week.

We made just over £40 pounds, and to say that we sold the doughnuts for thirty pence I don't think we did too badly!

And this is our display to try and encourage people to read different books.

It could do with some work in all honesty, but it was a late addition 

and has only been up the past few weeks and its almost end of term. 

But we can work on it for next year :)

And thanks to the lovely Jodi who i work with for helping me make these!

Blogger

Well today I have been sorting out the layout of my blog. As you can see its slightly changed with a new picture of an owl and some books with my blog description and titled overlaid. I also have the blog description in text box below this as I am yet to decide which one looks the best. To be honest I am having difficulty with my colour scheme, trying to get my blog title more visible over my new picture, and then trying to get overlaid blog description more visible. This is a bit of a minor problem though, and I think given a bit more thought I'll have the colour scheme down.

Here is a picture of what it looks like at the minute though for incase i decide to change my entire colour scheme and layout in the futre. Itll be nice to have a reference of previous blog incarnations

 :)

I like the owl though!





















I have also put a title on this particular blog entry, we will see if this fulfils my need for everything to be searchable and indexed!
I notice how my favicon at the top right is still the same as yesterdays, I had changed it. It must just take a few hours for it to be uploaded on to the most up to date blogger server.

Here's what it should look like. I've tried to make it a globe to reference my blog title of 'Phil's World'!

Well I've just been playing Minecraft and had got a load of diamond and gold and obsidian. Then I fell down a hole and got covered in lava and died. So that kinda ruined it for me :(
Still ill dust myself off and start again. Well not entirely again ill just pick up where I left off if you get my meaning.

But while I was drowning my sorrows in tea i did have a bit of a thought about my blog.
I wonder if I can tag certain posts, or label certain posts so all the Library based ones are together, all the e-learning and I.T based ones are together etc etc. Or maybe I should title my blog entries to this end? Any ideas?

The information management part of me is telling me that one of these is a must. I will have to add this to my to-do list after I have finished with the layout and blog description, so expect another post sometime this weekend detailing my adventures.

Who'd have thought this would turn out to be so much fun!

Well good morning all! What a dismal Saturday this is looking to be.

Oh well, at least I have Minecraft, Euro 2012 and my blog to amuse me.

So I checked my blog this morning and lo and behold i found where that favicon goes. now i just have to design one that fits my blog. Im thinking maybe a world or globe style picture? we will see what i come up with today.

Here is a screen shot of where I found my favicon though.

So I created my own favicon using http://www.favicon.cc/ and it just involved using the interface in this picture and creating a little character that is supposed to appear at the top of my screen.

Sadly I dont seem to be able to find it anywhere. Hmmmm how strange. I think more tweeking will deffinatley be needed before i have this blog looking any good, and actually being useful to anyone.

You also seem to be able to add functions to your blog, and I tried to get a feed up showing all the other blogs I am subscribed to. But it looked rubbish so that will be something else i can have a play with.Yay!

Well thats almost it for today, almost time to go home where sadly i dont have the internet.... I suppose ill play Minecraft!

Phil

So I have decided to go for an orange motif and have changed some of the background. I also found out how to make the banner at the top blue!
It did tell me I could add a favicon (what ever one of them is) but it wont let me :( bad times.

AND I put a moon on because it was orange and worked out how to put on a blurb about my blog at the very start.

Exciting times!

My First Blog Entry

Well this is my first blog entry on my Phil's World blog.

I've yet to put any descriptions on it as at the minute as I'm just messing around with layouts and colours and all the other cool and funky things you can do!

I'm thinking my blog will involve things about the wonderful world of libraries in which I work, together with recent tech and science updates, and my general musings on life. But who knows, in time i may end up using this as solely for my ramblings and creating another blog to focus on my library and tech passion and another for my geek stuff! hahaha