Wimba In Libraries

Colleagues/

On Thursday January 29 2009, I attended presentation about Wimba and its various features, functionalities, and uses, sponsored by Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT):

Adding Virtual Collaboration to Your Courses Using Wimba Classroom and Wimba Voice Tools

Wimba Voice is a web-based voice solution that facilitates and promotes vocal instruction, collaboration, coaching, and assessment. Wimba Classroom is currently being pilot tested for potential use by ISU instructors. All Wimba tools are fully integrated with the ISU WebCT

[http://www.celt.iastate.edu/events/homepage.html] .

I Was Quite Impressed Not Only By The Reps But With The Wimba Technology Itself

[http://www.wimba.com/] .

Wimba is a leading provider of collaborative learning software solutions and services to the Further/Higher Education and K-12 markets. Wimba’s Publishing Services and Solutions are widely adopted in academic publishing.

From its inception almost a decade ago, Wimba has been solely focused on education and committed to harnessing the most powerful element of teaching—the human element—so that facial expressions, vocal intonations, hand gesticulation, real-time discussion, creativity and passion can be conveyed in the on-line learning environment.

The Wimba Collaboration Suite™ of products, which includes – the Wimba Classroom™ virtual learning environment, the Wimba Pronto™ academic messaging platform, the Wimba Voice™ audio tool, and the Wimba Create™ content authoring tool –enables institutions to bridge the gap between technology and pedagogy by supplementing course management systems with the proven disciplines of in-person learning environments.

Wimba’s customers include hundreds of secondary, higher and further education institutions from around the world. Our development efforts center on empowering and equipping the teachers and students of these institutions with real solutions for teaching and learning in the 21st Century.

Wimba is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Cambridge, United Kingdom; and Atlanta, Georgia.

Source

[http://www.wimba.com/company/]

A Demo Is Available (Registration Required)

[http://www.wimba.com/demos/]

As Are Events

Meet Wimba at an In-Person Event near you or join us virtually for one of our Distinguished Lecture Series, Wimba Online Workshops presentations, or Live Product or CMS Integration Demo.

[http://www.wimba.com/company/events/]

And Archived Events

[http://www.wimba.com/company/events/archived/]

A Customers Page Is Also Available

[http://www.wimba.com/customers/]

The Quesion

I Am Greatly Interested In Learning Of Any And All Libraries That Are Currently Using Wimba (For Any And All Services).

I Have Created A Facebook Group To Provide A Forum In Which Current Users As Well As Interested Individuals Can Discuss Wimba And Its Actual And Potential Uses.

The Global Facebook Group Can Be Joined At

[http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60516806184]

In addition to library use of Wimba. I am also interest in the use of other Web Conferencing systems.

The Name Of The Facebook Group created for Wimba has been changed to Web Conferencing in Libraries but has the identical Group ID

[http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60516806184]

/Gerry

National Technical Reports Library

To further enhance accessibility to the NTIS collection,

[http://www.ntis.gov/]

NTIS will be launching the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) during early Spring 2009.

The NTRL will provide access to:

Bibliographic records of more than 2,000,000 technical reports
Downloadable full text of 500,000 of these reports in Portable Document Format

[https://ntrl.ntis.gov/login/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fsearch%2fIndex.aspx]

The NTRL operates on a subscription-based system interface that allows users to do queries on the large NTIS bibliographic database. The intent is to broadly expand and improve access to millions of bibliographic records (pre-1960 to present) and 500k full-text documents in Portable Document Format that are directly linked to the bibliographic database.

If interested in learning more about the NTRL in greater detail, please write to NTRLhelpdesk@ntis.gov.

TeacherTube: Teach The World

TeacherTube officially launched on March 6, 2007.

[http://www.teachertube.com/]

Our goal is to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos. We seek to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. It is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.

TeacherTube was the idea of Jason Smith, a 14-year veteran educator. Jason has been a teacher, coach, campus administrator and district administrator in public schools. He asked the question, "Why can't teachers, students, and schools utilize the power of the read/write web for learning?" To overcome barriers, he decided to just create a site and get started trying to help. He turned to his brother, Adam, who is a younger, digital native, with technical skills. Adam used his skills to develop the site and found a web host. Soon, Jason's wife, Jodie, joined the team to start populating the site with videos and help improve the communication. She too has 14 years of experience in education as a classroom teacher, campus technology integrator, and district curriculum coordinator.

With TeacherTube, community members can:

• upload, tag and share videos worldwide
• upload support files to attach your educational actvities, assessments, lesson plans, notes, and other file formats to your video
• browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members.
• find, join and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests
• customize the experience by subscribing to member videos, saving favorites, and creating playlists
• integrate TeacherTube videos on websites using video embeds or APIs

Make videos public or private - users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with those they invite.

Most importantly, TeacherTube community members are a major part of the evolution of the site. Members are encouraged to not only upload educationally relevant videos, but also to make constructive comments and use the rating system to show appreciation for videos of value to one as an educator or learner. Users also have the ability to preserve the integrity of the site by flagging inappropriate videos. [snip]. With more collegial commentary and discussion through messaging and responses, the quality of this resource will only increase.

The service is free for everyone. We always encourage our users to contact us with thoughts, suggestions, or other feedback. We do have a vision for TeacherTube to truly be a better alternative to other video storage sites. With the community's help, it can become more interactive and engaging for all teachers and learners.

We invite everyone to keep up with what's going on with TeacherTube by reading the TeacherTube Blog(s)

[http://www.teachertube.com/blog.php].

Please let us know if you need help using TeacherTube or if you have a suggestion.

Source

[http://www.teachertube.com/about.php]

LUTube: University of Leeds UTube

LUTube is the new service at Leeds that will allow staff and students to share and watch online videos. You can log in and upload your content in most standard video formats and it will automatically be converted and optimised for viewing on the web.

[http://lutube.leeds.ac.uk/]

You will be able to choose who you want to be able to watch your securely hosted video and embed your video into other websites such as the VLE or your blog.

LUTube's functionality includes:

• Video upload and conversion to Flash format from .wmv, .flv, .mov, .avi, .mpg/mpeg, .mp4, .3gp, .ogg
• Automatically generated embed code allows videos to be displayed on other sites
• Categorise content with tagging, description and copyright information
• Comment and reply to other users discussing videos on LUTube
• Create, develop and customise your own LUTube channel
• Subscribe to other user's channels
• Create and join custom groups (coming soon)
• Choose to restrict content to logged in users only, faculty, school, module or selected
• individuals or groups (coming soon).
• Browse schools and faculties for content (coming soon)
• Search for videos by tags, titles and users (coming soon)
• Collect selected resources from across LUTube and assemble then in one location (coming soon)
  

LUTube blog

[https://elgg.leeds.ac.uk/videosharing/weblog/]

Source

[http://lutube.leeds.ac.uk/info]

YouTube: The Reference Tool

New York Times / January 18, 2009 / Ping

At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool / By MIGUEL HELFT

FACED with writing a school report on an Australian animal, Tyler Kennedy began where many students begin these days: by searching the Internet. But Tyler didn’t use Google or Yahoo. He searched for information about the platypus on YouTube.

“I found some videos that gave me pretty good information about how it mates, how it survives, what it eats,” Tyler said. Similarly, when Tyler gets stuck on one of his favorite games on the Wii, he searches YouTube for tips on how to move forward. [snip]

While he favors YouTube for searches, he said he also turns to Google from time to time.

Tyler’s way of experiencing the Web — primarily through video — may not be mainstream, at least not yet. But his use of YouTube as his favorite search engine underscores a shift that is much broader than the quirky habits of children.

The explosion of all types of video content on YouTube and other sites is quickly transforming online video from a medium strictly for entertainment and news into one that is also a reference tool. As a result, video search, on YouTube and across other sites, is rapidly morphing into a new entry point into the Web, one that could rival mainstream search for many types of queries.

[snip]

And now YouTube, conceived as a video hosting and sharing site, has become a bona fide search tool. Searches on it in the United States recently edged out those on Yahoo, which had long been the No. 2 search engine, behind Google. (Google, incidentally, owns YouTube.) In November, Americans conducted nearly 2.8 billion searches on YouTube, about 200 million more than on Yahoo, according to comScore.

[snip]

As more video is added to the Web, the proportion of video searches that deliver satisfactory answers will grow, too. The question is, how far will video go as an alternative to text?

[snip]

Tyler’s father, Mr. Kennedy, who is a product manager at Nokia, said he has watched Tyler and his friends going from the Wii to the computer and back to the Wii enough times to understand how much the use of online video is changing. “All of us who are a certain age think of video as a medium associated with television, and not as a reference,” Mr. Kennedy said. “It’s another method of search that we don’t fully appreciate."

Source

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/business/media/18ping.html]

Best Careers 2009: Librarian

U.S. News & World Report / Best Careers 2009: Librarian / By Marty Nemko / December 11, 2008

Overview.
Forget about that image of librarians as a mousy bookworms. More and more of today's librarians must be clever interrogators, helping the patron to reframe their question more usefully. Librarians then become high-tech information sleuths, helping patrons plumb the oceans of information available in books and digital records, often starting with a clever Google search but frequently going well beyond. Librarianship is an underrated career. Most librarians love helping patrons solve their problems and, in the process, learning new things.

Librarians may also go on shopping sprees, deciding which books and online resources to buy. They may even get to put on performances, like children's puppet shows, and run other programs, like book discussion groups for elders. [snip]

[snip]

That effort to land a job will be well worth it if you're well suited to the profession: love the idea of helping people dig up information, are committed to being objective—helping people gain multiple perspectives on issues—and will remain inspired by the awareness that librarians are among our society's most empowering people.

A Day in the Life.
You work in a small municipal library, where you have to do a little of everything. You start your day by leafing through catalogs from online database publishers and book reviews in Library Journal to decide which titles to add to your collection. Next, it's out to the reference desk, where visitors regularly ask how to find something. Sometimes, it's esoteric; often, it's the bathroom. Later, you teach a class: an advanced lesson in Googling. Next, it's back to the reference desk, ... .

Smart Specialty
Special librarian. All sorts of organizations need librarians, not just public libraries. They work for colleges, law firms, hospitals, prisons, corporations, legislatures, the military, and nonprofit agencies. In fact, special librarianship is the field's fastest-growing job market. [snip]

Salary Data

Median ... $47,400
25th to 75th percentile ... $42,800-$63,700

Training

The American Library Association offers information and links regarding training, including online options.

U.S. News rankings of library programs

Learn More

[snip]

American Library Association

Medical Library Association

Special Libraries Association

[snip]

A Day in the Life: Career Options in Library and Information Science by Patricia Shontz and Richard Murray (editors)

[snip]

What's the Alternative: Career Options for Librarians and Info Pros by Rachel Gordon

And Dozens of Comments

Source

[http://tinyurl.com/9kxn9b]