The end is in sight......

Or so it would seem.....

All we have let now are hand in's and to complete our Wikis.

When I look back to my first class I realise how much I have learned. Yes, I am familiar with ICT tools, I use them constantly at work and my personal life. Yet there were certain aspects of ICT I was not familiar with, new tools that have since come to the fore, new ways of doing things, unlearning old ways, new websites, new terms...new new new.....oh so much.

In reflection I know for sure, I enjoyed blogging. I wish we had more time to do this and not intermittently posting in-between essays, powerpoint presentations, and one's day at work.

I also enjoyed working on my essay on Altmetrics, learning so much from this new kid on the block.

The interaction with my classmates is priceless and something I will treasure. In a short space of time we got on so well, we respect one another's opinion about the Wiki's, for example, we are able to sit and discuss, bring to the table ideas and comments without anyone shooting down the ideas. We see how best we can make it all work, together. I am indeed blessed to work and study with such awesome humans.

So for this course it is adios....

Wikis...

The class was given a collaborative assignment to work on a wiki....

We started the wiki page in class, each person had to sign in as a user. We met on Saturday and had an awesome brainstorming session. I was very pleased for this session because we had our own ideas of what was required in the wiki. Dr Zinn explained to us exactly what was needed. We then got down to some serious work, the ideas and  comments were very encouraging.
 Let see how this pans out.....


For more information on wikis....


http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/what-are-wikis-and-why-should-you-use-them--cms-19540

The idea of a "Wiki" may seem odd at first, but dive in, explore its links and it will soon seem familiar. "Wiki" is a composition system; it's a discussion medium; it's a repository; it's a mail system; it's a tool for collaboration. We don't know quite what it is, but we do know it's a fun way to communicate asynchronously across the network.

To present or not to present.....

Suffice to say, I enjoyed working on my essay, Altmetrics, the new baby on the block. Presenting for me is easy, maybe it stems from years of lecturing. We had 15 minutes to present to the class on our topics, including question and answer sessions. My presentation had to be cut down considerably. I mean there's only so much one can talk about in 15 minutes. I had to sieve through all the pertinent issues and include that in a powerpoint.

Normally my powerpoint presentations are very simple, one word or sentence or picture. Having attended and facilitated powerpoint presentation workshops, "less is more" is the official mantra of any facilitator.

So the day or in our case afternoon dawned for presentations. I was taken aback to see how stressed the rest of my classmates were. My heart ached for them. The good news is we all rocked our presentations. It was very interesting to listen to each one presenting on a different topic, it was indeed a learning curve..


 For more information on do's and dont's of powerpoint presentation, check out this link on slideshare....http://www.slideshare.net/sudarsansahu/powerpoint-do-dont

Turnitin (or nail biting) anticipation

I have successfully completed my +5000-word essay. Super amped. No!....wait I have to Turnitin.....

What was so funny for me was a reversal of roles. I often had to get my students to Turnitin. This is a software package to detect plagiarism. One has to turn one's essay or assignment to this site and you get a print out showing how much you have plagiarised. I would often hear the complaints, "Oh God I have to do it again"; "Damn this Turnitin" and some too sensitive to mention, but you get the picture.

I remember the morning I turned my essay in, I sit waiting in bated breath, fingers, toes and anything else crossable was crossed. 17%....
Not bad right.That's what I thought. Anyway, I worked on the essay some more and brought my Turnitin percentage down to 11%. Yeah, that more like it.

So.... essay submitted, I was happy with Turnitin now to prepare for presentation......


For more information on Turnitin....click here

http://turnitin.com/en_us/features/originalitycheck



What the Turnitin report looks like.....

Digital Literacy Tools on Pinterest

Check out this board on Pinterest about Digital Literacy tools....



https://www.pinterest.com/amandarhae/digital-literacy-tools/

Some humour

Enjoy....

Digital curation

Digital curation is the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection and archiving of digital assets. Digital curation establishes, maintains and adds value to repositories of digital data for present and future use. This is often accomplished by archivists, librarians, scientists, historians and scholars.

The Digital Curation Centre (DCC) had this to say, "For research teams to enjoy the full benefit of the research data that is produced, institutions must put in place skilled digital curators and effective curation lifecycle management. This will help to ensure that important digital research data is adequately safeguarded for future use.

By learning how to preserve and share digital materials so others can effectively reuse them, you will maximise the impact of your research – and inspire confidence amongst the research councils and funding bodies that invest in your work".

We had a guest lecturer on the subject, Mrs Sally Witbooi. Personally the subject matter was of interest to me. My dissertation is on preserving indigenous knowledge. I see this as a platform I can use extensively. Thought provoking lecture by Sally.

Sally recently travelled to Finland to present a paper on Digital Curation.

How we have evolved....

Five things you can do to help improve your article’s Altmetric score

Before promoting your article, we recommend that you create (and subsequently use for various promotional efforts) a short summary of your work. This summary should include your key research outcomes (i.e. we did this study on X and got Y results) as well as links to useful additional resources such as videos. This then allows a wider audience to understand and appreciate your research.

1. If you run a blog, add a post about your article. If you have a contact who runs a blog, ask them to help promote your work.
2. Tweet about your paper – either through any existing accounts that you manage or through any society/institutional accounts.
3. Contact your institutional press office to see if your article is relevant for any publicity opportunities.
4. Talk about your paper at your next conference and personally raise awareness of your research within your own community.
5. Create an account with Mendeley and share your work with thousands of fellow academics.

Phil Wright

Phil Wright 
Senior Marketing Manager, Author Marketing

What the dougnut means

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/2014/03/04/altmetrics-emphasizing-the-plural/

How to use 'Simple Article Metrics' (Google Chrome extension to get altm...

There are many videos on the internet explaining Altmetrics. I watched an awesome video presented by Jason Priem, (he coined the term Altmetrics). This video, however, was not suitable to upload because it was very long and was aimed at professionals in the field.  I was on the lookout for something simple for the layman to understand. Hope this video helps you make sense of Altmetrics......

Altmetrics

We had a guest lecturer, a PhD student, talk to us about Altmetrics. This was the first time I heard of the term. Suffice to say I was very interested in this lecture, so much so that I am doing a 5000 word essay on the subject. Natasha Langdown was very knowledgable on the subject. She patiently answered questions and explained concepts until we understood.

Altmetrics or 'alterative metrics' is a new and emerging field for measuring the use of scholarly articles.

What does this mean?

Intially (with metrics) if I wrote an article and had it published in a journal. Each time someone cites my article in their paper, thesis and so on, this would be physically counted. Often times this process has lost a lot of important counts because it is done manually and in the time it takes to publish the count, more people would have cited the article. Nowadays we can use Altmetrics to do this. 

More and more scholarly literature is published every year, so it can be a challenge to keep up with the developments in the field, much less the developments in other fields that might be of interest to you. Scholars have always used filters to choose what to read, perhaps preferring certain journals over others or taking the recommendations of colleagues. However, new ways of measuring scholarly output, called “altmetrics,” might provide better ways of picking out the most influential and important new scholarship.

Altmetrics, or “alternative metrics,” are an emerging field of new methods for measuring the use and importance of scholarly articles, particularly in the sciences. As opposed to more traditional bibliometrics, such as Impact Factor, altmetrics provide article-level data and are based on new electronic sources of information, such as number of downloads and page views from a publisher, repository or online reference manager like Mendeley, or the amount of discussion generated in online venues such as Twitter or blogs, video sites, slide shares, facebook and so on.

ICT, Web 2.0 and Library 2.0....explained.

In first few lectures, we discussed ICT's, Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. The adoption of these applications in our everyday life has transformed the way we live, work and shop. Personally, I cannot live without my phone, laptop and tablet. I facebook, tweet, blog, Pinterest, and various other folksonomy sites. This has become a way of life for most people. No one knocks on doors anymore, instead a text, WhatsApp, or a phone call to announce, "I am here, please open"
Our lives have become so consumed by technology.

"In this fast-growing global information society, technology has had a profound effect on every aspect of society and each individual's life. Importantly two distinct technologies: information technology (IT) and communications technology (CT) have gradually become integrated to form a new technology – ICT (information communications technology). Looking back at the development of ICT, one of the most impressive events is undoubtedly the emergence and rapid adoption of iOS and Android smart mobile terminals, and the increase in value of the mobile Internet which has been boosted by the popularity of mobile terminals"
Report -  ZTE ICT Development Trends (2014): Embracing the Era of Mobile-ICT ZTE CORPORATION 

O'Reilly (2005) coined the term Web 2.0. Davis (2005) refers to Web 2.0 as an attitude, not a technology.

Web 2.0 applications encourage patrons to be an integral part of the virtual community by sharing ideas, thoughts and content. with this application, patrons have now become consumers and contributors to library services. Tripathi & Kumar (2010) says the term Web 2.0 refers to second-generation development and design of the web that aims to facilitate communication and to secure information sharing, interoperability, and user-centered design.

Examples of Web 2.0 applications in libraries include social networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs and folksonomies.

Libraries, in my opinion, need to latch on to this discovery and explore novel ways of communicating and attracting users through Web 2.0.

The application of Web 2.0 tools can easily help libraries to survive and flourish in the internet age.

 Web 2.0 in libraries and information centres is, popularly know as Library 2.0.
Library 2.0 is a concept that operates to meet the changing needs of the users.


Davis, I. (2005). Talis, Web 2.0 and all that.
http;//blog.iandavis.com/2005/07/talis-web-20-and-all-that

O'Reilly, T (2005).What is Web 2.0?.
http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html.

Tripathi, M & Kumar, S. (2010). Use of Web 2.0 tools in academic libraries: A reconnaissance of the international landscape. The International Information & Library Review. 42, 195-207.

Reflective Writing - A Very Brief Guide

I deliberately used this particular video, for me it is killing two birds with one stone. This piece very simply, explains pros and cons of reflective writing.

This video was created by PowToons. This is an awesome way to teach or lecture as well, most especially for creative students and to keep the boredom at bay in class. I use this tool often and get my students involved in creating PowToon videos (as projects). This is a perfect example of using ICT in the classroom environment, in school or university level.

Enjoy!!

Reflective writing

What is reflective writing?

Reflective writing, in my opinion, is something you reflect upon, think about, experience; then you write about it. 

The experts, on the other hand, define reflective writing as…..

"Looking back at something (often an event, ie. something that happened but could also be an idea or object)

"Analysing the event or idea (thinking in depth and from different perspectives, and trying to explain, often with reference to a model or theory from your subject).

 Reflective writing is thus more personal than other kinds of academic writing. We all think reflectively in everyday life, but perhaps not to the same depth as that expected in good reflective writing at university level.

Maughan, C. & Webb, J. (2001) Small group learning assessment. Retrieved 16 March 2015, from the Higher Education Academy website www.ukcle.ac/resources/temp/assessment.html 

Ok, so this puts things into perspective for me. It is academic writing, with a twist. 

Let the writing begin......

Unapologetically me.....

"You are going to keep a blog", says our lecturer.

Yes!, I mentally fisted my hand, while the mind is frantically thinking about all the things I want to write. Excited much.

Then the bombshell, 'it's going to be an academic blog."

I have never before blogged about academics, so this is going to be different for me.

Let's see how it pans out....

Suffice to say it’s not easy to type this, I had an operation and my right hand is in a sling. Typing with the left hand, one finger at a time is hilarious, yes pun definitely intended. 

I love writing, words are fun and expressive. What I like about writing is the play on words. How I can make it mine, how it can convey exactly what I feel and see. Academic writing is anything but fun. 

This is my first entry and it’s going to be totally off subject. I will reflect about my lecturer and my fellow classmates.

Dr Sandy Zinn

Before going to my first class, as I would normally prepare for anything, I read the bio on my lecturer. Dr Sandy Zinn, head of Library and Information Science department. Holds a doctorate degree and is well published and travelled. So in my mind’s eye I see this librarian who is a no-nonsense, strict lady.

How wrong I was. What a pleasant, beautiful, articulate woman. Humble to the core. She introduces herself as Sandy. Yes, she is no nonsense when it comes to class work but she also makes the lectures fun and lively with participation and some laughs. I am indeed honoured to have Sandy as my lecturer.

We are a small, intimate class of five, myself included. The attention we get as a group is personal and one feels included in the many discussions that takes place. 

Rachel

Friend of many

Student of five

Daughter of some

Mother of two

Wife of one....my best friend

That is the sum total of me

It is the people in our lives who shape and ground us and make us who we were meant to be.....

Thuleta

Easy going person
Funny
Likes making jokes and making people laugh
Friendly
Easy to work with

Linon

I am Linon Taurai Magana. Born on the 19 January 1988 in Zimbabwe. I did my primary and secondary education in Zimbabwe before emigrating to South Africa. I attended Walter Sisulu University where I pursued my BSC in Computer Science. I worked as an Automated Systems Librarian where I developed a passion for Librarianship. Three years later I enrolled for PGDLIS. I am currently pursuing my Masters in Library Science.

Hana

And then there's me. I am quoting my son, as he describes me (at a CHEC course I attended last year).

So that's us, our Masters class doing ICT Trends and Applications.