A proper list !!

I guess that when I titled this blog Paul's Web2.0 list I had something in mind like the excellent list at http://mashable.com/2007/06/21/online-productivity-toolbox/ but tailored to the library environment locally. Mashable.com would be the site I would continue using if I was only allowed one

Still working away

Gosh. Cannot believe it's been a week and a half since I got back from the EDEN conference in Napoli. I've been hanging on hoping that I might receive a photo of me speaking from a Swedish delegate but nothing so far.....
Anyway, now that our Year 11 sessions are over for a while it's mostly been meetings and the JISC Emerge online conference instead. There have been a number of useful reports published recently such as that by Future Lab on the Digital Divide and some stimulating discussion on shifting user social networking preferences such on the Skrentablog

Events

Have spent a lot of this week online for the Emerge event. A lot of useful ideas and some good contacts.
Next week I will be in Naples for the EDEN Conference. Aside from presenting a paper on our work in the Tees Valley, finding like-minded contacts across Europe will be important.

Quiet again

Well we've been beavering away even if it doesn't appear so from this blog !
The latest JISC Capital Bid is due in on 21st June and assessing a possible bid theme has taken some time. Also there have been a lot of activities for JISC Emerge.
The very very last of this year's MLA North East / Aimhigher-sponsored Year 11s are evaluating MySpace/Bebo/Facebook. We have done this before a number of times but it's always a successful activity and increases our experience of evaluation. We've been increasing our use of the JISC UIDM development model and evaluation was an area of UIDM that our staff focus groups identified for enhancement.
The last cohort of Redcar College students still didn't like Second Life as an MUVE !!
The Web Messenger Olympics went really well. KoolIM won again but only narrowly from ILoveIM and then Meebo and then eBuddy. In the 'desktop' event radiusIM beat goowy and Mabber
We are VERY pleased that Brian Kelly is likely to be 'officially' inputting more to the MLA North East 'project' that will help libraries to identify the possibilities of Web 2.o and to give them support on explaining the facts and myths on risks.
We're still looking for a partner for some more trial ThinkFree collaborative use

Various bids & directions

Well, this blog was originally intended as a sort of list of current recommended Web 2.0 services/tools and a place for telling NE England partners about new / cool services and tools (something like http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/top-25-web20-productivity-apps or http://twopointoh.co.uk/2007/04/22/26-new-web-20-start-ups-another-web-20-showcase/) . Things have changed a lot since then with the promising idea of a MLA North East initiative and our JISC Emerge work that has strengthened our knowledge of evaluation.
We still believe there is the need on the ground for a 'branded set' of evaluated Web 2.0 sources backed by our own tested instructional material and by buddies who can help you get started and keep you going.

Working away

Last week was busy on quite a few Web2.0ish fronts here. I must find an image of 'script writer throwing scrumpled up pieces of paper over shoulder' as we try to write final draft of report for MLA North East. The Librarian in Black blog entry on talking to IT people about IM is another useful piece to stimulate us.
I've been part of two inter-related grants (with Redcar & Cleveland College) from Foundation Degree Forward and HEA/JISC on student skills. We used 'academic writing' as the pilot skill and it may be that this fits in well with the new Emerge community on academic writing.

Lee and Tom

Lee Hardman and Tom Mannering (shown in the photo Tom left Lee right) recently led two focus groups of Year 11s who identified themselves as chavs. This was the 16th and final Aimhigher-funded cohort. Lee and Tom will be the faces on forthcoming leaflets too.

Emerge

Last week was rather dominated by a trip down to London for the first Emerge seminar. Lots of good info and some very good potential contacts. It's back to reality this week.

Virtual world activity

We've had a pleasant small break from Communities of Development and Web2.0 this week when a new partner school asked for a 'general' activity in a virtual world. Second Life was too complicated in the time (and a bit 'last year'); Habbohotel (although an old favourite) had firewall issues; previous groups disliked Entropia (even if we could get it installed in time); I've had too much WoW at home and so we went back to a very old favourite TappedIn. Many is the time that as PaulBM I've had the whole server to myself while the USA slept. It still worked very well for our guest students and I enjoyed being back in my old virtual office.

Describing what we have ended up doing

Both secondary school and community learning classes begin again today and we start our last Web2.0 activities of this funding year. The latest activities reflect the circuitous route through which our 'community of development' has evolved. It contains all the benefits of a community of practice (sharing enthusiams, sharing tacit knowledge, identifying mind-focussing deadlines, etc) but with pre-defined outcomes in terms of materials or skills/knowledge levels and (in our case) wider benefits to the learners taking part in the activities.
Our work has grown from an original Aimhigher-funded project on the contribution of libraries to enterprise skills and thus this week with a new partner school each group of Web2.0 learners will compare search engines and IM services (comparing their results with JD Power ratings) but the learners will do it as a social enterprise business plan-based project. They may also gain pre-negotiated enterprise outcome rewards (money) or competence certificates. Next week's groups will compare wiki software and assess the sustainability.
Thus typically a quadplay of:

• partners across a range of organisations working together for mutual support
• shared advocacy role to other stakeholders in partner organisations
• outcomes in terms of written material or stored knowledge/warnings
• real learning and enterprise activities beyond using or testing Web2.0

I will need to articulate this much more clearly before describing it on wider and scarier stage at the EDEN 2007 Annual Conference

Community of development

I've been doing a lot of reading on 'communities of practice' in the last couple of days aided by blogs or blog entries that are appearing on the Emerge site. I guess what we are aiming for amongst libraries and community organisations in the Tees Valley (and the North East of England also) is a 'community of development' where we share information and help our customers but also cooperate in moving forward / enhancing our knowledge and services.
My work on the paper for MLA North East on 'possibilities and risks' for libraries will be much aided by a comprehensive new conference paper from Brian Kelly (with Mike Ellis) based in the analagous museum sector. I'll try to set aside my bitterness that he's delivering it in San Francisco.
Next week I'm meeting with Oliver Davy from North Tyneside Libraries. He has done a lot of work on developing Web2.0 services.

So much information.....

Well I'm back in the office and predictably there are loads of new information on Web 2.0 etc. Hard to digest. My college partners successfully used a very useful recent article last week as preparatory reading for a staff development workshop. This was Kassandra Barnes, Raymond Marateo and S. Pixy Ferris's description in Innovate of the learning styles and preference of Net Generation learners and the implications of these attributes for educators. Innovate is very worthwhile subscribing to.
It was also good to have contact with Sarah McNicol to improve our knowledge of engagement in libraries.

A short week

This is a message that, if nothing, else shows this blog is live and well. I'm away on holiday from Thursday night so there will be a break till 10th April.

In amongst writing the inspiring and inciteful paper for MLA North East, we've now finished for a while all our workshops with Year 11s. I was just writing up an evaluation on their use of web-based IM when I saw a nice BBC summary of Meebo at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6498223.stm . It is always good to have something readable in the 'resources' part of the evaluation notes.

I wonder if any of my many readers is interested in a buddying session on ThinkFree ? We have some notes from a first contact session with a local school but it would be nice to develop some more detailed notes.

Twitter

In amongst our more serious joined-up activities, one of our partner libraries asked us for a 'first contact' session on Twitter . We did this earlier this week. I wonder if any of the many readers of this blog have looked at Twitter? It did very well on the 'cool' rating (9/10) although this was noted as "massive waste of spare time" cool (especially in the Twittervision mode) rather than "useful" cool.

However, other first contact ratings were poor (2/10 for ease of registering; 2/10 for ease of use as rated by group relying on product / site information; 6/10 for ease of use as rated by group relying on first contact guidance notes produced locally for session; 3/10 for speed of operation / changes). Colleagues also separately trialled two plug-ins Twitteroo (3/10 overall feel) and Twitteriffic (7/10). If Twitter survives [ how Web 2.0 !!] and our partner library detects continuing use, then we will take it to 'established contact' level and ask Ian Hay if we could hire him as a 'mentor buddy'. He has already kindly commented on recent sustainability / outage concerns.

Useful sources

Whilst working away this week on the document for MLA North East and on our 'chavnet' project with local short-haired Year 11s, I revisited two very useful sources and found another. The first two are the Demos report Their Space and Paul Anderson's JISC report What is Web2.0 . New to me is the excellent article On the Road Again (on the next e-innovations for public libraries) by Linda Berube.

MLA North East

I am helping Neil Bowerbank of MLA North East and a focus group of NE librarians to look at the 'risks' of Web 2.0. A final document will enable librarians to be to counteract any misconceptions that IT managers may have. The first draft of a risk assessment list can be seen at http://www.freewebs.com/paulmayes

Wikis

Tomorrow we are having another workshop with some Year 11s (supported by outreach funding from MLA North East). This workshop is mostly about just engaging them in 'communicating' but we have decided to run a trial of PBWiki (currently the web-based service most liked by both our young people and older community groups) versus the Tiddlywiki-based web service Tiddlyspot. A sample Tiddlyspot site we did this morning is at http://paulmayes.tiddlyspot.com/ . The big possible advantage to us of a Tiddlywiki is the seeming ease of being able to use a downloaded version of the wiki on a memory stick. We very much believe in the power of web-based services but it's nice sometimes to be able to give a learner an off-line version.

Been away

A recent bereavement has meant I have been away from the University quite a bit. Anyway, hopefully this week I can post here the beginnings of a list of the various Web 2.0 technologies/services and some outline notes on 'brands' we have tried etc.
Had some good news in that I am now a member of the JISC Community of Practice which I hope will increase our knowledge of what's going on (there's so much !!).
Last weekend we had a successful Web 2.0 workshop with 'young men with short hair' (they haven't decided yet on their collective noun - it's much easier with moshers, goths, etc). I would post a picture but haven't mastered the well-known Blogger problem of photos changing the line-spacing of the message.

Welcome

In the UK there has been relatively little take up so far of Web 2.0 in libraries, archives, community groups, adult education, etc. There are leading UK technology evangelists (eg Brian Kelly who has helped me a lot) but in the USA and Canada there has been much more examination of the potential. These early Web 2.0 adopters (like with the Open Source movement) are enthusiastic and show a desire to help others. University of Teesside Library & Information Services (L&IS) has benefited tremendously from such buddying from the USA and Canada as it has started to use Web 2.0 in its Aimhigher and MLA North East funded work with young people and groups in the Redcar & Cleveland area of the Tees Valley. L&IS has started to buddy other libraries etc in turn (eg using Skype). However, sometimes enthusiasts can seem off-putting to organisations who are concerned about how to get started.

Also, the new ideas, the software and the brand names can change very often. Fashions amongst users (especially young people) can change rapidly also. For all these reasons L&IS has coordinated the idea of Web 2.tees as a structure to allow an alliance of libraries, schools and community organisations based round Redcar & Cleveland to experiment with using the various technologies in a collective way that allows mutual support, capturing of good ideas / materials / instructions and an organisational / evaluation underpinning from L&IS.

The main early thrust of the project involved developing a standard evaluation template for comparing available services (especially for ease-of-use, peer perceptions and commercial sustainability). Other one-off highlights so far in the project include a new scheme (sponsored by MLA North East) that financially rewards learners who identify new possible ‘cool technologies’ and this has introduced us, for example, to ArtPad which has proved very useful and popular for learners to produce and send simple graphics and to The Cloak for anonymous searching. The use of wikis with school groups (eg http://aimhigher.pbwiki.com/) has also been popular.

This blog (although maybe it could have been better as a wiki !!) is to be the place where local schools and libraries will further develop a list of all the main Web 2.0 technologies and within each technology there will be our current thoughts/preferences for different services. For example:

• a local University of the Third Age group preferred gather.com to MySpace or Bebo although we have had concerns about Gather's occasional bandwidth problems before today's transition to a new datacenter
  
• why our schools group chose pbwiki.com
• our use of Google (Writely) for collaborative authoring but recent interest in 37signals.com
• our current comparison with a community group of flickr with Our Story
  

Paul M
IM: paul_mayes@hotmail.com
Skype: paulmayes