Commoncraft "Plain English" video series

Maybe many of you have seen these videos and readers of my previous blog should have heard of them! They are an excellent introduction to many Web 2.0 tools. Here are some examples :

RSS in Plain English
Wikis in Plain English
Blogs in Plain English
Social Networking in Plain English
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
Photo Sharing in Plain English
Twitter in Plain English

Facebook apps and Libraries' friendly future

This presentation by Laurie Bridges and Cliff Landis at Computers in Libraries in April 2008 is available on slideshare here. They say "The line between social space and intellectual space isn’t blurring… It was never there in the first place," and "Library catalogs are social networks for ideas." and "How to not be left behind… • talk to your users & find out what they want • use the tools that they are using • broadcast what you're doing • "earn your audience".

Pay attention

This video on Teacher Tube has been around a while but it's worth highlighting as a wake-up call for teachers/educators in schools. "Since most of today's students can appropriately be labeled as "Digital Learners", why do so many teachers refuse to enter the digital age with their teaching practices?This presentation was created in an effort to motivate teachers to more effectively use technology in their teaching." Powerful stuff and apparently some American pupils are showing it to their teachers...

Ofcom report on Social Networking

Social Networking : a quantitative and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours and use, found "that just over one fifth (22%) of adult internet users aged 16+ and almost half (49%) of children aged 8-17 who use the internet have set up their own profile on a social networking site.For adults, the likelihood of setting up a profile is highest among 16-24 year olds (54%) and decreases with age." Much concern over cavalier or ignorant behaviour of privacy issues when using the sites. BBC News site has a good summary. Full document here.

Creative Commons images on flickr

There is a Creative Commons search here which allows searching a number of sites including flickr, all from one page. It might save you a bit of time.
Otherwise there is a new site here "fashioned by Ryan & Bryan with glue sticks and rubber bands, " (I quote) which is good for tag searches and limiting to Creative Commons material.

Free use flickr

Taking Creative Commons further, a Free Use group has been set up on flickr which has at the top "The photos in this group are available for use by anyone. There is no need to give credit or to fear rights infringement. These images are posted by their creators. By posting to this group, you're allowing freedom of use.We know that these images still have the "rights reserved" stamp on them. Frankly, we don't know how to get this removed yet. We're working on it. " There may be some images here which are of use in your teaching or presentations.

Three whacky videos

Here are three promotional videos which are a bit different from the stereotypes.
The first is Empty Pockets Library by the Australian comedy duo called Empty Pockets, selling you public libraries - great if you like slapstick!
The second is Need Information ! Contact your special librarian today. Okay, maybe they're exaggerating a bit.
The third is Need Information ! Contact your academic librarian today. Okay. maybe they're exaggerating a bit too.