Web 2.0 & The JISC RSC

Those of you who went to the JISC RSC seminar on using Web 2.0 technologies in FE might be interested (hope springs eternal) in what we in the library have been trying to do over the past 2 years.

Blogging. You're looking at it. There is a perception that the blog is an online diary, a vanity project. Well, perhaps. Better to look at a blog as a medium which can deliver news, etc. to a audience (wrong word?) which may be interested in some of the developments we're trying in the library. Worth a try, even if this gets more hits from Tasmania than from Paisley. There are plenty of free services out there. This one is on Blogger.
http://www.blogger.com

Newsfeeds. Newsfeeds can deliver the news that you want (need?) from the sources that you identify at a time & place convenient to you. Unfortunately this has to be done beyond the firewall because the firewall / proxy server at present disallows newsfeeds. So, find an online aggregator. We use Pageflakes which is much more than just a convenient way to handle newsfeeds but can be used to set up a personalised home-page with a growing variety of bits & pieces. The library site (NewsBlast!) can be found here. Build your own.
http://www.pageflakes.com/

Social Tagging. If like me you've built a labyrinth of Favourites / Bookmarks over the millennia, social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us are a godsend. With del.icio.us you can bookmark a site (convenient toolbar plug-in for IE & Firefox available) & use keywords (tags) to organise these sites. There always online so you can access them from any computer anywhere. Library one is here, one being built for HN Social Care is here. Share them with your students, colleagues, the world.
http://del.icio.us/

LibraryThing. Got a course booklist? Why not whack it onto LibraryThing. This is free for up to 200 books. Book details are uploaded automatically from Amazon with cover pictures, biblio-details, your annotations, etc. Put the link into your blog, VLE, website. Not a library catalogue but, hey, we can't all be librarians! Social Care library at LibraryThing can be found here.
http://www.librarything.com/

Social Networking. Surprisingly we've yet to establish a web-presence on the likes of MySpace, Bebo & FaceBook, This is because I'm waiting for the word from Diamond Lounge, the "most exclusive online club in the world". For the moment I suppose that I fall under the banner "elite individual who has not yet been invited to join". If Web 2.0 was a sport, I suspect that this would be called "bringing the game into disrepute". Don't watch this space...

Internet Archaeology

Internet Archaeology is an independent, fully refereed academic online journal, which is published by the Council for British Archaeology and hosted by the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. The journal was founded in 1995 and publishes international research that utilise the potential of electronic publication.
So we don't teach archaeology in the college? True, but whatever happened to reading for reading's sake?
And, given the proliferation of new-build housing over the entire planet, construction companies are increasingly having to deal with the realities of recording archaeological sites prior to building some exclusive, 19 bedroom pied-a-terre for the unloved.
Oh, yeah, and it was free thanks to the JISC.

http://intarch.ac.uk/

Screenonline

screenonline from the BFI (British Film Institute) has been on the go for a few years now. Previously we've had problems accessing the media on the site because it needed a security certificate to be installed in IE & there were difficulties with the correct flavour of media player. But no more! IP address authentication means that the website & its media is available from any PC in the college.

Anyway, screenonline is the definitive guide to British Film and Televison in the UK, with over 300 hours of media clips. It also provides resources to support the curriculum across a range of subjects. I mean this is seriously good stuff, Mr. Media Studies Man. The current front page, for instance, carries articles on British documentary laureate Humphrey Jennings, Play for Today (1970-1984), Handmade Films & the Summer of British Film on BBC2 (British Film Forever documentaries on a library shelf near you (quite) soon.

And if you're not interested in the media studies angle, spending some time with Noggin the Nog & Bagpuss is a mite more rewarding that channel-hopping the shopping channels!

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/

New JISC RSC Scotland S&W website

The new look RSC Scotland South & West website went live yeaterday (August 1st). Have a look and see the changes.

It contains lots of new features, such as Learning Technologies, eAssessment, Forums & User Groups, Federated Access Management and more.

You will also find that all the features existing in the previous website are still there, including News, Events and Support Resources for specific staff roles.
What? You didn't use Joomla!, Fionnuala?

http://www.rsc-sw-scotland.ac.uk/

Michelangelo Antonioni, 1912-2007

Being the trailer from Blow-Up...



Further down the cinema trail, a new issue of Bright Lights has just been set loose.
Go there and check out a pretty wide variety of material: porn (Mitchell Brothers and Tom Lazarus); "queer looks"; The Night Porter; P. J. Harvey; Harry Potter; Children of Men and The Waste Land; 300; 28 Weeks Later; Ratatouille; the Tribeca Film Festival; the Queer Documentary Film Festival; Cattle Queen of Montana; Su Friedrich on DVD; Jack Nicholson; interviews with Michael Moore, Carlos Reygadas, Paul Verhoeven; Ocean's 13; Irene Dunne; [PAM]; recent DVDs; and god knows what else.

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/

Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007

Being the trailer from The Seventh Seal...