Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Team blog winners! Congrats to Team A!


Congratulations to winner of the "Best Team Blog": Team A (The A team).
Runners up were:
- Team G (The Part Timers)
- Team I (Team I: The I Team)
- Team N (Team N’s Blog)

All of these satisfied our basic criteria (see below) and also provided enjoyable, interesting and thought-provoking reading. The following two blogs are given honourable mention because they were also in contention, but we felt we could not select them because they were not legible enough. For example, Team Q's blog is fun as a design, but some of the colour fonts are difficult to read against the busy background.
- Team Q
- Team K

We should also mention that there were lots of interesting posts on blogs of the other teams, but the ones above brought the package together particularly well.

To remind you, we said we were looking for
"- Extent to which required blog posts are there (we gave a list)
- Visual appearance of the blog (both aesthetic - do we find it attractive - and practical e.g. can we read the text)
- Use of blogger design/layout functions (e.g. links, feeds; including are the 2 required links there (see list 2 below)
- Participation from the team i.e. is there evidence that most of the team have contributed (it is ok if some people have posted more than others, but e.g. it will not be seen as good if just about every post is from one person)
- Nature of the posts (e.g. are they responding to our questions; are they thoughtful; do we find them interesting)"
We also said we were looking for evidence of continued work on the blog.
Image (animated gif) created by Jason Hise, used under Creative Commons.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Digital Storytelling open course

For any of you that want to follow up the creative side of digital engagement, the open course Digital Storytelling sounds very interesting. It's free, online, you join when you want - no accreditation (except for those at the hosting university), but definite opportunities for interaction and skill-building. "In the end, you won’t have credit, but we hope you’ll still have learned something" It's run from the University of Mary Washington. http://ds106.us/

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Thing 16: Information interview: Information client / information consultant exercise

This is the exercise you will do after Pam's talk in week 8.

Every team will be both an information client and an information consultant. Every team will identify an information need; its partner team for this exercise will carry out an information interview to identify the need, and then find some relevant information. The information will be handed over and the teams must give feedback on the performance in identifying, scoping, planning, gathering and presenting the information.

These are the steps
1) Decide on who will undertake the following roles (everyone has to have a role: if there are 3 people in the group, share the evaluation role between you and allocate the other 3 roles; 2 people should take 2 roles each; if there is just one person then tell Sheila or Pam!)
- - a. Lead "client", who takes the lead in presenting, and answering questions, on the information need.
- - b. Lead interviewer; taking the lead in interviewing the client to identify the information need
- - c. Lead evaluator, who develops criteria to identify which information is most suitable
- - d. Lead presenter, presenting the information to the client team

2) Each team decides on a question that it wants the other team to answer. It does not have to be to do with your studies, and it must not be something that someone could directly use in coursework (i.e. you mustn't do someone else's coursework!).

3) Each team interview the other in turn

4) Whole team seeks information to answer the information need. Be prepared to explain how you found it and why you chose it.

5) Present the information to your client and explain why you think it answers the information need.

6) Have a review of each team's performance as an information consultant. In each case firstly the information consultant team should say what they felt went well and what needed improving. Then the client team should add any praise and criticisms they have.

7) Team blogs. Each team blog a piece of advice on what to do or what not to do when interviewing.

Thing 17: Evaluation: preparation

Individual assignment: reminder of a task for next week (week 9, 20 November)

As identified at the start of the semester, you need to bring along an article which is relevant to you negotiated assignment topic. This article must be a research article i.e. it must contain a report of original research (so it should describe the research aims or question, the research methods, and findings and conclusions). You should have read the article beforehand. In class you will be evaluating the article.
Therefore, if you have not already found such an article, you can use the “assignment” time in this session to find one.
You can increase your chances of finding a research article by e.g.
- Searching a source which contains large numbers of them (e.g. Emerald Library; Google Scholar; LISA)
- Using search features that restrict your search to research articles (e.g. on LISA you can just search for articles in “scholarly journals”; on Emerald you can search for “article type: Research paper” (a pull-down menu on the Advanced Search page)
- Where there is no such feature (e.g. on Google Scholar) adding words like “methodology” and “references” to your search(see example below)


You also may want to look at the optional reading for next week:
Booth, A. and Brice, A., eds. (2004) Evidence-Based Practice for Information Professionals: A Handbook. London: Facet.
Chapter 9, ‘Appraising the evidence’ is available online at
http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/downloads/file/sample_chapters/481.pdf

Thing 11: Documenting the exhibition



These are the winners of the most popular poster award: Team G! Thanks to everyone who participated. Other notably popular posters were those of Team O (see below) and Team E; followed by Team A and Team Q.




Thing 4 (again): Advanced Internet Searching

Another update of Phil Bradley's slideshare about web search: many slides with useful search tips.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Thing 14: Web 2.0 and wise use of wikipedia

In week 7 there is the seminar discussing an article on Wikipedia. Before that there is a session on Web 2.0 and social media more generally. As a starting point, there are some links etc. to explore on this page: http://www.netvibes.com/sheilawebber#Web_2.0_in_general
I haven't finished updating these pages - I should have done before the session on Tuesday! However, the links on this page do all work (at least when I tested them just now) and the material there is still useful.

Also, here is a useful powerpoint from Karen Blakeman