Flybrarian 2.0

Thing 23 Second Life

2009-01-19T13:41:00.003+09:00

Here is an article written for an unnamed unpublished student magazine - it summarises my thougths about Second Life quite nicely.

The Law Library Goes to Second Life.
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The Vice Chancellor John “Yo” Yovich announced today that the Law Library (South Wing Level 3) has been completely uploaded to Second Life. All books, journals, computers and other resources including primary and secondary legal materials will be wholly and exclusively made available within Second Life Law Library (SLLL). Staff of the library are now Avatars based on known personality correlates. Anne GreenDragon roams the SL site as a fire breathing, statute burning dragon. Ian LeeChSlug appears as a misshapen troll who lives in the compactus and eats government publications and explanatory memoranda for breakfast, leaving a trail of slime. The now redundant physical space will be converted to a café and 10 minute massage zone. Shiatsu available by appointment. Pilates classes on the half hour. Equine horse chiropractic available Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Styling his own avatar after the Gangsta Rapper 50 cent (in an ironic tilt at his own salary) Yo had this to say following the momentous and historic announcement “Wass up Dog..if yo don’t study hard in d Second Life Lawbrary I am gonna slap yo silly and put a caplet of worming vaccine in Yo ass” (Although now a Vice Chancellor, Yo finds it difficult to completely dissociate from his veterinary roots.)

Really interact with your lecturers in Second Life Law Library. In real life you wouldn’t dream of dancing (Don’t ever confuse dancing with lap dancing or pole dancing. Not the same thing. But the goal can be the same.) with your lecturers. It could lead to all sorts of awkward legal discussions. (Including talks at the CSA)

In Second Life Law Library you can learn a lot while you dance with you lecturers. You can browse for books while you Boogaloo with Beven. Having thrown off the inane limitations of physical reality you can do the Mashed Potato with Mugambwa. And simultaneously and at the same time access digital journals and electronic periodicals and virtual serials.

It’s fun to do the Macarena with Moens and GoGo that extra mile. In SLLL check out the New Journals Display while you Shimmy with Shaw. Line dance with Lewins and learn lots about legal research. In a virtual law library doing the Hustle with Hall isn’t illegal, or even just in bad taste, it’s fun and educational. You can hustle and hunt through Hein-o-line. If you want, you can Tango with Thomas, whilst talking trash about legal citation technique. ChaCha with Charles while you certify yourself in Chinese law.

In a virtual Law Library virtually anything goes. But these things are off limits – uploading to Flickr any of the following photographs; sniffing a chair in the Law Library – sniffing your own armpit while reading case law (with the speech bubble saying “which one of these stinks?) – sniffing your mate’s armpit while thumbing through law reform commission reports – sniffing reprints of legislation and saying “Acts like Troy”.

In SLLL you can get a Facebook account. Spend a lot of time friending people you know, and strangers. Ignore some and stalk others to add spice to your relationships. Kudos (Kudos Scent Pour Hommes) to be the first to add Patty Chong as a Facebook friend. But remember if you ever do anything newsworthy, the West Australian will publish all of those things you wrote on friend’s walls drunk at 3.00am. Keep in mind, this is not UWA. You will need all the friends you can get when you want to get articles.

You know that peer reviewed journals are an anachronistic and outdated mode of publishing your thoughts. While in Second Life Law Library start Blogging. Let the world know your thoughts and more importantly your feelings. Blogging is a great way to prove to a wider audience not only what you know about law, but also what you don’t know about law.

In SLLL visit all of your favourite legal resources Lexist Sexist, Worst-A-Law, Hymn-On-A-line, Debased-A-Case, First-A-Punt, Dum-Law. These are all available 24/7 in SLLL.

It is all there is Second Life Law Library. No need to get out of bed. To paraphrase Timothy Leary, Turn on, Login in, Drop out.

Here’s two things you need to remember while in SLLL. Firstly, you can’t rely only on Wikipedia or Google to do your legal research. Secondly, even in Second Life Law Library, ironical is not a mineral supplement.

Thing 22 - Gaming - Gamizing Information Literacy

2008-12-23T11:03:00.003+09:00

How we might we adapt our instructional material to better engage digital natives?

Heres one idea. Change the language used to more closely reflect that which is used by hard core gamers. Here is an example;

Original (taken from Guide to Legal Research).

How do I carry out effective legal research? (Original and really boring)

In order to carry out effective legal research, you need to know what resources are available, and when and how to use them. This guide will introduce you to the main types of materials found in a law library, concentrating in particular on Australian Legal resources.

Legal materials are divided into two types: primary and secondary sources. When carrying out legal research, it is generally better to start with the secondary sources. These will lead you to the main goal of your research, the relevant cases and legislation.

How do I max out my Score on effective legal research? (Gamed Version)

In order to carry out effective legal research, you need to know what health, weapons and ammo you have are available, and when and how to use them. This cheat will introduce you to the main types of friendlies and aliens found in a law library, concentrating in particular on paramilitary tactics to take out and neutralize Australian Legal resources, plus trolls, Morlocks and Boogers.

Legal materials are divided into two types: primary friendlies and secondary hostiles. When carrying out legal research, it is generally better to start accumulating ammo so you have as much firepower as possible. These will lead you to the main goal of your research, which is to kill or be killed and have fun along the way. Remember in cyberspace no-one need hear you scream. The relevant cases and legislation, probably don't apply in an interplanetary jurisdiction..

Thing 21 UBIQUITOUS VIDEO

2008-12-23T09:46:00.003+09:00

Well UBIQUITOUS VIDEO is just about everywhere these days.

I did watch Jason Griffey bigwig showcase 2008 - video 2.0 which I thought was really quite clever in the style of presentation. Apart from the rather creepy background music that made me wonder if I was watching Darth Vader meets Silence of the Lambs. Sorry I'm so old.

So Blip.tv looks worth looking at.

Ustream
Well managed to drop into a basketball game by the Ouachita Christian Athletics... which was kind of weird. A lot of the content seems predominantly enter-tain-ment. Which makes for a big trawling job. And a lot of advertising. Nasty.

I seemed to have missed the Ustream tick off boat but am ticking off before I get ticked off.

Thing 18 Twitter

2008-12-19T14:50:00.002+09:00

Well I can't recall who coined the term - I wish it was me - but digital diarrhoea about sums it up.

I suppose you could use it to get immediate feedback about how well (or badly) your class is going or do stream of consciousness research - oooh bad choice of words.

Computer says NO!

Thing 20 YouTube and Slide Share (comment)

2008-12-19T12:55:00.000+09:00

Yes jolly good. That seemed rather easy - apart from having to squint to find the embed code in Slide Share.

In theory this should be really useful. In practice it should be really useful as well. But the key might just be well designed content, that is relevant and availablized to the right students. And finding a way to compete with the flotsam and jetsam of the internet. Information hides within itself.

Thing 20 YouTube and Slide Share

2008-12-19T12:41:00.000+09:00

Here is a ABS video I found on YouTube - gosh it's educational - should be more of that

OK now to find a Slide share and stick that in

Opening Up Government Data

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: abs statistics)

Things 16-17 - Join Facebook, add Facebook friends

2008-11-28T16:22:00.000+09:00

Facebook

I've had a FB account since the last 23 things. I don't have a lot of friends but a respectable number. Call me antisocial but it really doesn't do much for me. Perhaps I'm just not that interested in what others are doing. And as for being sent stuff - good grief!

It would however make a great sociology thesis.

Thing 10: PBwiki

2008-11-25T14:56:00.000+09:00

I must admit I really do like PBWiki - they seem to have created an interface that is quite intuitive. Nice. I am also a fan of the Google doc but can see how the whole Wiki file folder functionality might be super essential sometime soon.

Also the whole inserting - uploading image thing seems to just work ... or perhaps I'm learning something and there is a bit of generalization.

By the way here is a learning point - if you keep doing something over and over again - like inserting images into your posts it becomes second nature and sort of easy. Repetition lessons should be often repeated!

Thing 14 - Flickr

2008-11-25T13:15:00.000+09:00

Here's a question. How many of our library web pages use images? Not counting the banner my guess would be about 1% if that. Put another way what is the proportion of text to image? Very low? Why?

Now don't get me wrong love images and taking photos and would rather show a series of images as a user education exercise that show a single word or even speak. But...

Perhaps they serve another purpose. Perhaps they fulfill a social need.

Here's a photo I uploaded to Flickr and then put some notes on - which i think could actually be instructive.

Parliamentary Debates Western Australian Hansard

Thing 15 - Image generators

2008-11-25T12:59:00.000+09:00

I have a problem with image generators. I don't like them. It's as simple as that.

But here's an image that was generated.

Wow that was actually a lot of fun.

Now I love image generators!!!!

Thing 12 Delicious

2008-11-24T13:36:00.001+09:00

It appears that last year I was interested in alien abduction and dioramas. Well some things just don't change do they? Looks like I never really got ito the whole delicious thing. Although the tags - favourites - book marks - all in one place and accessible would be good - perhaps I will explore more later - until then away!

Thing 11 Tagging Socially and otherwise

2008-11-21T14:53:00.000+09:00

In our catalogue the subject heading for PTSD is Post-traumatic stress disorder

Really I must stop using acronyms. OK? Perhaps we could add to our synonym list or have a see also. But realy where would this all end up?

I even found Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder For Dummies [electronic resource] no subject heading - ebook - record - nasty

Here's a question - how would you create a delicious page for a Murdoch University Unit - the answer is no doubt easy - has it been done though and did any students use it? Or does it need to be more social than that?

Google - well whilst that which is familiar is often despised (source unkown) it does let you work fast and develop skill - it also let me restrict my search to title only and geographic area - which i doubt the others do - correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes there is many ways to do the same thing differently - actually what I would like is the usber application called "Integrates everything"

Zuula - now I'm not a fan of federated searching but this was kind of slick - domains and sources for easy comparison - demonstrated marked differnces in what was indexed.

Kartoo - errh no ... but I can think of some apropriate reverse alliterations ... some funny .... but all unflattering. Not that I hate visual representation of information. For a time I was a big fan of the Plumb Visual Thesaurus, until it went commercial. Now called Visual Thesaurus

You know web searching is addictive and its going to be hard to get off Google.

Thing 8 Zotero and LibX

2008-11-20T14:55:00.000+09:00

I did quite like this in the LibX tool bar that allowed higlight - drag and drop onto a Google scholar button

Zotero
Well having had a bit of a play around with it, it seems to do a lot of things. Without a bit more time to test them out it's hard to say whether the things are being done well or not.

Would students use it? Would you promote it as an alternative to EndNote? I imagine with time and skill it could be very handy if it wasn't locked to one PC.

Here's what happens when you just don't get it all a searh for

Actually what I'd really like if something that stopped me navigating away from pages tabs that I really want to keep open - sort of a lock tab function.

Also I would like a permanent notepad - I use notepad for lots of bits of text but I'm sure there is better.

Gosh this post is a really dog's breakfast. But that's want you get for being interrrupted!

Thing 13 Insert an image in your Blog (in Blogger)

2008-11-18T12:34:00.000+09:00

If I wanted to insert an image this is the icon to look for!!!

Thing 7 - cosmetic surgery for web browsers

2008-11-17T23:40:00.000+09:00

I add a theme

"I had a dream that one day web browsers will live in a Googleverse where they will not be judged by the color of their theme but by the character of their content". (apologies to MLK)

I add an extension
I discover the Hammer time web page down load stopper - it stops webpages with "hammer time (audio)"..... but I think you need a bit of time to find something that might be useful.

I add the 23 things toolbar from
Yes this is nice - and I mistakenly installed it on IE as well. Ooops

Thing 6 - Subscribing to feeds

2008-11-17T23:12:00.000+09:00

Thing 6 - Subscribing to feeds

Gosh it turned out I had done this one in 2007 and haven't looked at it since. That is probably a common occurence. If something is in my inbox I will pay attention to it, unless it sneaks really far down the list.

Any way one RSS feed I subscribed to was to an Australian journal called Behaviour Change. I particulary liked the title of this article

A Preliminary Investigation of the Efficacy of Disgust Exposure Techniques in a Subclinical Population With Blood and Injection Fears

Nice!

I'm afraid RSS feeds still don't do a lot for me.

Thing13 - the unlucky thing - uploading an image

2008-11-17T13:48:00.000+09:00

This is simply a test of Thing 13 - uploading an image.

Here we go uploading now

From the Ronald Wilson display.

Now that seemed much simpler than doing it in WordPress which didn't seem to have a browse function ......hmmmm

On talking to AH and AT it appears we have to add media first - which allows for upload and insertion.

And follow the steps.

Nice!

Thing 9

2008-11-14T14:08:00.000+09:00

Google docs

I used Google docs to have a single document to work on the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Display

Getting the other collaborators to use it was the main issue.

One feature that is really useful is the Table of Contents - apply heading formatting to your sections and it generates a nice TOC - good for long docum

One problem did seem to be getting some people onto the list

Here is a screen shot of how that looks image by Snagit

Thing 2

2008-11-14T12:19:00.000+09:00

Seven and 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners.

Goal
Finish the 23 things
Find ways to apply the tools to actual projects

Hardest habit
Not starting
Not seeing problems as problems

Easiest habit
Mentoring others - was that a habit?

You don't want to be in a hurry when you're learing to use an angle grinder (or chain saw)

Welcome to the 23 Things 2008

2008-11-14T11:47:00.000+09:00

I am stuck for words.