Where will it all end? - Emerging Technology in the Library Part 1

Creativity and play - that's the message I got from the MMIT North West summer conference. Creativity and play are good and we need to do more of it. Sounds good to me.

The conference started with a very inspiring presentation from Russell Prue, ICT Evangelist, Inventor and Entrepreneur. I can see why he's an evangelist. I wasn't sure what to think when I saw a man in orange braces when I entered the room, but Russell is a very interesting man who is passionate about technology and the ways in which it can be used to great affect. Russell invited audience members to text him during the session and tweet using the tag #RPMMIT (check twitter out for snippets from the day). It was at this point I wished I had a better phone and had borrowed on the eeePCs from work - ho hum. I did do a bit of texting and did take part in the mobile phone survey (that's a survey using your mobile not a survey about mobiles). I thought this could successfully be used in a user ed session because the texting doesn't cost the user and you get immediate feedback.

Russell also talked about a number of gadgets -like the projector phone and the Zpen (which I now want). He talked about how brain training and using a Wii fit Balance Board can help your left and right brain activity. And he asked the question "Are we asking the right questions?" - passing exams is still about memory retention, shouldn't it be more about developing the skills to shift through the wealth of information that is at our fingertips.

How do you train kids for jobs that don't yet exist?

More on MMIT later....

NoWAL - Web 2.0 in Libraries

Well I am finally blogging about this. I have been so busy with the new job that I just haven't had time to get into this blogging business.

So Web 2.0 for Libraries. As I said before Karen Blakeman was taking the session and it was a really enjoyable workshop. We covered many areas of web 2.0 technology as you can see from Karen's presenation at http://www.rba.co.uk/web2 - just a note that this presentation is subject to change because Karen updates it regularly after she's run sessions or when there is new stuff to put on there.

It was great being sat at a PC doing this session as it meant I could take notes on the computer and save them to my memory stick, no need for writing up after. I don't think I put down too much unecessary stuff, which is always a danger when on training courses. I mainly focused on how I thought we could use some of the web 2.0 technology we were discussing and playing around with.

So we covered a multitude of web 2.0 tech, some I'd look at before some I hadn't. One thing I have decided to do as a result of the session is compare iGoogle and Netvibes as start pages. Haven't done too much experimenting since the session mainly due to time constraints (new job as I've said already), so no conclusions yet. Quite like the feel of Netvibes and it seemed a bit easier to use but early days yet.

Another thing I thought we could use is something like Slideshare for sharing our presentations within our service. At the moment we put things onto a shared drive and so people have to have permission to access that drive and it may be that you don't want them to access everything on that drive etc etc. To me this seemed a way to make presentations more accessible to everyone in our service, and not just those who can access particular shared areas.

Think that's enough for now otherwise this post will get too long

The weekend approaches

Oh dear have run out of day to do any serious blogging. Was going to do more of an update on the web 2.0 training not to mention the Learning and Teaching conference I was at last week. Guess I'll have to try harder next week, I am trying to get to grips with a new job afterall. Hopefully things will settle down next week, I certainly seem to have less meetings which is a good thing.

Time to go home, hope the weather holds whilst I trek across town twice to get my son then the train.

The beginning

Decided to start a blog. Having done 12 weeks of web 2.0 training which included blogs I have decided to start a blog of my own. Not sure what will go on it yet but I think it could be a good place to put information about things I've been too like conferences and stuff.

I am in fact sitting in a web 2.0 for libraries workshop run by Karen Blakeman for NOWAL. I'm enjoying this. Some stuff I knew about already, some I didn't but it's helping me to think about how we could use some of this web 2.0 stuff at work. The practical sessions are open for us to try out different technologies, hence me writing this. I like this free approach to training.

More later....