Just wanted to pass this along:

http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/programs/cpd/Second_Life.html

Well, I found out something pretty neat about Second Life today (and if you read my previous blog post about it, my perspective about it wasn't a glowing one). The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is using Second Life to reach out to its members and is having a pretty big impact. According to the Nonprofit Technology Network, "...members from far flung locations can come together to talk and collaborate in real time. Judging by the response so far, ISTE members have been hungry for this kind of community. In just a few short months the number of members visiting EduIsland has grown from 17 to 630, and weekly events are packed to capacity." For more information on how ISTE is maximising Second Life to reach its members, please check here: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Membership/Member_Networking/ISTE_Second_Life.htm

Hello!

The past five weeks have been excellent! I learned more than I had imagined! The course greatly exceeded my expectations and was very well organised. The organisers were responsive to blog posts, students were actively engaged and the presenters were fabulous. Thank you to all!

What were your favorite experiences in the course?

I enjoyed the presentations the most. The selected readings provided great introductions, but it was through the presentations that I was "sold" on the tools. Being able to see "real" works in progress - these "living" tools - provided me with many ideas and made the tools seem more accessible.

I'm thinking of creating a flickr account for our organization and posting a number of photos relating to our green building capital campaign. I would like to use a flickr badge on our site, but am wondering if anyone has had any problems implementing the badge within a commercial website content management system. We are currently redesigning our website using Ektron CMS400.NET, but I'm not sure if it will work (and won't be able to test it out for about a week). In the meantime, does anyone have any experience with this?

Social Technologies for CIER Projects

Reegan D. Breu

Well, I've read over our readings for week 4 and taken some time to explore MySpace, Flickr and Second Life. 

Flickr: I really like Flickr, though I wouldn't rely on it too heavily for personal photos. In my mind, nothing quite beats sitting down with a photo album with someone and reminiscing. I do however, see some applications for our organization as a whole...not yet for our library. We are engaged in a capital campaign for a new green building and the photos that we have are clogging up our website. It would be great to move them to Flickr, and I plan to do that shortly. My final thought on Flickr - check it out.

Meebo has come up a few times throughout the course. Anyway, on the web4lib listserv, there is currently a discussion going on about security issues and IM. Here's the link for the discussion thread: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/web4lib/2007-March/043185.html

Reegan 

Recently, on the web4lib listserv, there was a discussion surrounding preferred RSS feed desktop aggregators. If some of you aren't into the online ones, this discussion might be useful to you. See http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/web4lib/2007-March/043150.html for more information (you need to move your way through the discussion thread).

Reegan

Explore the Library Wikis listed below and write a blog post about the different ways you could use wikis in your library.

To tell you the truth, I wouldn't start off by implementing a wiki for our library. As a non-profit organization with a small library, our programs, projects and campaigns are what we're known for. Our projects are highly collaborative and often involve our staff, along with members of First Nations throughout Canada. This can mean a number of people working together from a variety of locations in the country. If I was to implement a wiki, I would start off by piloting one for a project. This way, all project team members could bring their resources together in one place and add to it as they go along. It would also provide us with a unique opportunity to support capacity-building in First Nations, as each community member involved in a project would require training on wikis - what they are, how to use it, etc. Of course, this wiki would need to be password protected and adequate measures would need to be taken to ensure its security. We deal with plenty of confidential information.

Hi,

I'm currently managing a redesign of our organization's website. On one page of our existing website, we have a number of photos documenting a capital campaign that we are undertaking to restore a heritage building and incorporate green design. As an aside, our current office is a green office...we even have composting toilets! Check it out here (though this link will become a redirect in a few weeks): http://www.cier.ca/greenoffice.html - it is truly FAB! Flickr could be an option for us, where the public links into our photo gallery from our website. Two questions about this: Would members of the public require a Flickr account to view these photos? How could we protect our photos (copyright) given that we wouldn't want others using them without permission from us?