I’ve been MIA the past few days because I’ve been preparing and presenting a Continuing Ed class called Beyond Google: Using Web 2.0 Search Tools. I gave this class at the NAHSL conference in Lowell, Massachusetts yesterday. It was a long class, four hours, and while I was putting it together I was a little concerned that it might be too short, but it wound up maybe being a little too long (I breezed through some stuff at the end that I would have lingered on, but did end everything on time).
While the documentation for creating the class required me to prepare a “handout” I mostly made a slide show and then a corresponding page of every link I’d mentioned during the talk. It was time-consuming work, but ultimately more useful to participants than a printed page full of URLs. I gave out handouts that were mainly for note-taking in addition to some short lists that I thought would be good takeaway points. I’ve said it before but I really think empasizing handouts over web resources when we’re talking about the web is a smart way to move forward. That said, my handouts are downloadable in PDF format in case anyone wants to repurpose them.
The class itself was a mixture of some talk about Google and what sort of things they do besides their basic search portal, looking at what I think of as “2.0 search” and why I think some sites fit the description and a discussion of collaborative information tools like wikis, question and answer sites and “ask an expert” sites. I finished up with a talk about Firefox and why I think librarians should be using it. At least a few class members were unable to use any other browser in their workplace so I put in a plug for Portable Firefox as well as listing my favorite add-ons, themes and plug-ins. We even installed a script just to show how terrifically easy it was.
Hello! First I want to say that I love your blog! As a school librarian, I find your candor refreshing and necessary. Librarians need to be “rarin” these days! Second, I have used Firefox on my “old” MAC laptop. I have a new MAC laptop and want to know if the new version of Firefox, with the apps features, is available in a MAC version. If not, will it be and do you know when?
Hi camaralife — the best thing to my mind about Firefox is that it works on all the major operating systems — Mac, Windows and Linux — pretty much the same which is helpful if you have to go back and forth between computers for work.
Thanks for the presentation (as always).
I saw a copy of a preso that Andrew Turner gave on new mapping tools, which was very heavy with screen shots of the tools and applications he referred to along the way. The comment that someone gave after it that the presentation felt like following someone’s delicious tag stream. Given how rapidly web sites change (or die) there’s some affirmative virtue in grabbing a snapshot if only to make the presentation still make sense in a few years.