Lately I’ve been thinking about my online presence. I have hundreds of photos on Flickr, a number of blogs, a discontinued podcast, a YouTube account (without video), a Squidoo lens, and numerous online profiles.
Wouldn’t it be nice if everything was in one place? Wouldn’t it make sense if there were an easy way to pull information together?
I think so, especially if you could pull together things on a theme. For example, I’m working on a hack to integrate several types of media for my student training program. Text, sometimes, is the best medium to convey a message. Sometimes photos are better. Sometimes a complex task is best shown through video. It’s a hundred times easier to show someone how to load film than to tell them.
For at least a year (maybe two?!) I’ve been using a wiki as a handbook for my student workers. I’ve added to this over time, with a Flickr account, YouTube, and now a blog (soon to be hosted by ZSR, I hope!). I’m presenting on the use of Flickr as a training tool for Five Weeks to a Social Library in a few months.
We do use traditional media, too. We have a listserv for trading shifts, we use Blackboard to store confidential information, and I’m available through IM, Facebook, etc. I intentionally don’t use some new technologies. I don’t use podcasting: the students work in quiet areas of the library, and audio would be disruptive. I don’t do training in SecondLife: our students aren’t big users at this point in time, and if I were them, I’d be tempted to get distracted in the virtual world.
I’ve been thinking about why I’m doing this. Part of it is that it is fun. Part is because it makes it easy for me to supervise, train, and monitor the departments when I’m not at work. But I think the largest reason is that I believe that it is important for any college graduate to understand how to interact, search, and add content in their information environment. These are components of the information environment today. I’ll probably incorporate any useful technology that comes up in the future into the training program, too. Hopefully, the govdocs and microtext student assistants will learn a few life-long learning and information literacy skills while working with us. Not to mention that the different formats appeal to different learning styles.
I want to stay current with new and growing technologies, too. So, look for different types of media on this site as well. I think I’d like to incorporate more photos, video, and audio than I have in the past; to keep myself current, and to keep things interesting.
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