Category Archives: mobile devices

23 Mobile Things everyone should know

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Holiday time or not, the time is right for you all to go and investigate 23 Mobile Things – a wonderful professionally delivered opportunity to learn a few important life-skills for working and living in online environments!

The background

I’m sure most of you have heard about 23 Things for Professional Development - an open-source program for librarians. There are many variants of this course which was first developed in 2006 by Helene Blowers and the team at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County, and now the newish kid on the block is 23 Mobile Things, a course revolving around digital and mobile technologies.

Who created this course?

“The first version of 23 mobile things was developed in Danish by Jan Holmquist. This version of the course is an international collaboration, Jan Holmquist from Guldborgsund-bibliotekerne (Denmark) and Mylee Joseph and Kathryn Barwick from the State Library of New South Wales (Australia) are working together to build the English language version of the course. You’ll learn more about this excellent initiative and how you can learn more about the potential of mobile tools at 23mobilethings http://23mobilethings.net/wpress/

In Australia we have had a few derivatives of the original 23Things program, some of which charge hard cash to participate, which is not in the spirit at all of the 23Things model that was openly shared with the global community.

So it’s a real pleasure to see this latest initiative! The course is open to anyone with a tablet or smart phone. It is a self-paced learning course, with the 23 things providing a framework of resources to look at and information to consider. It can be done at anytime; there are no time-limit or deadlines for the course.

So it’s time for you to consider getting started – jump on into the self assessment survey, then head on over to investigate The Things.  Great for anyone working in libraries, and schools.  This new 23MobileThings is a fantastic initiative. Thank you.

23 Mobile Things …. the list.

  1. Twitter
  2. Taking a photo with a mobile device:  Instagram / Flickr app / Snapchat
  3. eMail on the move
  4. Maps and checking in
  5. Photos + Maps + Apps: Historypin / What was there / Sepia Town
  6. Video: YouTube and screencasts
  7. Communicate: Skype / Google Hangout
  8. Calendar
  9. QR codes
  10. Social reading: RSS / Flipboard / Feedly / Goodreads / Pocket
  11. Augmented reality: Layar
  12. Games: Angry Birds / Wordfeud
  13. Online identity: FaceBook and LinkedIn
  14. Curating: Pinterest / Scoop.it / Tumblr
  15. Adobe ID
  16. eBooks and eBook apps: Project Gutenberg / Kindle / Overdrive / Bluefire / Kobo, etc.
  17. Evernote and Zotero
  18. Productivity tools: Doodle / Remember the Milk / Hackpad / any.do /  30/30
  19. File sharing: Dropbox
  20. Music: last.fm / Spotify
  21. Voice interaction and recording
  22. eResources vendor apps
  23. Digital storytelling

Image: 23 cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by erix!

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Learning without frontiers – social media and beyond

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I am really enjoying participating in the ASLA National Conference in Sydney. We have had the most amazing presentations and workshops, which together show the way forward for teacher librarians keen to participate in 21st century learning and library services.

The keynote presentations will be available as a video as well as slideshare presentations, and I will post about these when they have been completed.

Today I started the day off for the crowd with some ideas and provocative thoughts to set the scene for the second full day at the conference. I really want school librarians to embrace social media, and become  builders of knowledge in new media environments by drawing on their passion and their love of culture and learning.

Ultimately we should be Learning without Frontiers!

It isn’t about learning how to use a particular digital tool.
It isn’t about social media.
It isn’t about new media, augmented reality, immersive story-telling.
It is about our ability to understand when and how we move across the everexpanding
meta-literacy environments.

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Still more free eBooks from the Internet Archive

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A group of libraries led by the Internet Archive have announced a new, cooperative 80,000+ eBook lending collection of mostly 20th century books on OpenLibrary.org, a site where it’s already possible to read over 1 million eBooks without restriction.

According to the Internet Archive post/release, any OpenLibrary.org account holder can borrow up to 5 eBooks at a time, for up to 2 weeks. Books can only be borrowed by one person at a time. People can choose to borrow either an in-browser version (viewed using the Internet Archive’s BookReader web application), or a PDF or ePub version, managed by the free Adobe Digital Editions software. This new technology follows the lead of the Google eBookstore (which we don’t yet have in Australia!), which sells books from many publishers to be read using Google’s books-in-browsers technology.

Openlibrary.org is worth a visit, if only to see some of  1,000,000 free ebook titles available.

The World’s classic literature at your fingertips!

How about Down with skool!  A guide to school life for tiny pupils and their parents published in 1953. That’s one I have to check out – should be funny or perhaps frightening, depending on what’s inside!

But really – this sort of development is exciting. While the books are ‘old’ – they also include some quality literature. Lot’s of  good reading to while away the time, or expand the mind.

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QR code infographic

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According to Nathan King at QR Code Awareness, mobile devices have changed the way consumers access the Internet as well as the way marketers are trying to reach customers. QR codes – which direct you to a website, phone number, SMS or other call to action when scanned with your smartphone – are showing up everywhere.

Although QR codes and mobile barcodes have been around for several years, the explosion of the smartphone market allowed barcode scanning to grow 700 percent from January 2010 to July 2010.

I’ve started spotting them on the back of  new books that we are buying for students!  I haven’t spotted anyone scanning the QR code as yet :-)

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Bump your next PD!

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Have your ever been to a conference and ‘bumped’?  I have – and it was so much fun to quickly share information. Funnily enough this App does not seem to have taken off with educators as you might expect – didn’t bump at ISTE2010 at all! Perhaps I was in the wrong room. But ACEC2010 earlier in the year in Melbourne was very bumpy!

Bump 2.0 is now out for the iPhone, with Twitter and LinkedIn integration. Powerful!

Bump 2.0 has had a major redesign for its iPhone app, changing the look and adding some very important new features, including Twitter and LinkedIn integration, as well as unlimited photo and contact sharing.

Other major new features include a chat function that lets connected users chat after a Bump, as well as calendar feature where you can compare calendars, invite each other, and automatically save to each calendar. Adding one of these new features would be news – putting them all together basically redefines the app.

I’d like to see this being used more amongst people in the education industry.

via The Next Web Apps

Did you know what’s happening to the Internet?

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This is another official update to the original “Shift Happens” video. This completely new September 2009 version includes facts and statistics focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.

Thanks to Wes Fryer for the tip-off in his post Can you Imagine So Much Global Sharing?  My answer is – I never could, even though I’m an avid reader of SciFi. Dreaming and doing are quite different things!

Also in the same post – a peek at the state of the Internet. 

2010 is one amazing year!

more about “JESS3 / The State of The Internet“, posted with vodpod

Mobile Medline Plus ~ shows us the way

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So why haven’t more libraries adopted mobile tools? asks Eric Rumsey as he considers the advantages of mobile friendly design on iTouch/iPhone or like devices.

I agree -  we do need to get on the mobile wagon as quickly as we can. There are many popular mobile compatible sites these days, and blogs are well-optimised on the mobile too. WordPress is a great platform for achieving an integrated look in relation to this, and the mobile-based management tools for WordPress is also impressive.

So it was most interesting to read  Mobile Medline:Plus: A Great Example for Libraries. The mobile version of MedlinePlus that was released by the American National Library of Medicine last week is an elegant example of  libraries making their sites mobile-friendly. Eric gives a good run-down of  MedlinePlus on the mobile.

Eric is on Twitter @ericrumsey

photo910772

I confess – I access a lot of things via my iPhone instead of on a regular computer. The portability and immediacy of access is irresistibly convenient.  Whether this is a good thing or not is vaguely irrelevant – the mobile is embedded in youth behaviours.

Anyone got a good example of this kind of application in schools or school libraries?

Better get our blogs and information services mobile minded soon!