December 11, 2007
Report on Sakai Newport 2007
Report on Sakai Newport 2007
Last week I attended the Sakai 2007 conference in Newport Beach, and boy, it was fabulous! I saw some really awesome stuff and met some really dynamic and creative people.
https://sakai.educonference.com/conference/admin/draft_schedule.php
I learned:
Lots of institutions are using project sites for a variety of things. We in the libraries are using it for managing library content and work group information (like the Science Library and Library 101 sites, as well as the Library Staff site), which are common trends. Other academic institutions find the wiki a wonderful collaborative tool to coordinate work outside of meeting times. One school is using a Sakai project site to manage their disaster and emergency preparation information.
Archiving the Sakai content is becoming a thread of discussion. Some are thinking of Institutional Repositories and others are thinking of Digital Libraries. There are concerns that content produced, from research to administration information, should be preserved. What are we thinking of here? Perhaps there is a way the SAT team and the CCDL should work to archive important data currently housed in Sakai.
Lots of schools have migrated course reserve content off eres servers and into Sakai. There seems to be three trends:
1. House objects identified with metadata on a server, and link to the objects in resources
2. Enable staff to have admin access to course sites' resources folders, and populate objects there
3. Enable staff to have admin access to the users' My Workspace resources, and instruct them on how to move content into desired course sites (this could also be an option for document delivery)
The Library at Michigan modified their Web Content tool, titled the 'library help' tool, and made it point to a Meebo widget that then links users to library service desks. Faculty add it to their course sites in the 'site info/edit tools' area. They've had 230 sites add it this semester and have noticed an increase in chat reference traffic.
http://www.lib.umich.edu/help/ctools/library_help.html
It was REALLY cool seeing all the techie gadgets, phones, cool software, cool hardware, and nearly everyone but the vendors in jeans with their 'moffice' (mobile office/backpack) plugged in and working. I felt at home with my ilk.
I'm REALLY glad I don't have to drive to Newport Beach everyday. Omg, that's exhausting.
The Sakaibrary Project is creating a subject guide tool that will enable the assigning of metadata tags to resources and then dynamically building a list of resources relevant to those tags. You can tag anything from a document to a database to a journal to a webpage...
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/projects/sakai/
I got my first text message reference question to my phone while at the conference.
The citation tool integrates with open URL technology to incorporate objects found using open URLs from library tools and Google Scholar into the resources of Sakai sites. We would need to turn on open URLs in Blais for us to use this effectively with our books at Claremont.
Wimba is a really neat web conferencing classroom tool that enables virtual online classroom sessions with cobrowsing and all kinds of fun features.
http://wimba.com/
My presentation on Integrating Library Resources into Sakai http://tinyurl.com/24uma9 was well attended, and I felt honored to speak to such brilliant and creative people. The Claremont Colleges participated in a total of 6 presentations. http://tinyurl.com/3dovy5
We had a fabulous discussion with a selection of users from small schools. Among other things, we think that small schools are good places to beta test tools as our user base is smaller facilitating discussion, trials and new ideas. We would ask for new tools from the larger developer bases from the larger schools. We also discussed the thought that smaller schools would be a good place to try new pedagogies and teaching strategies that can be shared back to the larger community. Pedagogy is a large, upcoming trend in the Sakai community.
Want to see pics? Go to http://flickr.com/ and search for sakainewport07
Posted to news by jez at 10:56 PM
August 14, 2007
Search Blais From Firefox!
Want a shortcut for doing a title search in Blais?
Candace, our Blais coordinator, has created a Firefox add-on that makes it possible for you to search for titles in Blais without first having to open Blais and select the title search option.
What is the Firefox Search Bar?
This is the box at the upper-right-hand-side of the Firefox browser window that usually has a little “G” on the left hand side of it.
When you type in words in the Search Bar box and click Enter, your browser will automatically search for those words using the search engine selected and then show you the results in the browser window. For example, the “G” search will search Google. You can change the search engine by clicking on the arrow just to the right of the G, which will give you a dropdown menu that shows what search engines you have loaded. By default, Firefox comes loaded with Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Answers.com, Creative Commons, and eBay. Just scroll down to change the search engine.
How do I add Candace’s cool, new Blais title search engine to my search bar?
There are quite a few steps, but they are all quick and easy—promise!
1. Open Firefox
2. In the upper right corner of the window, look for the Search Bar. This is the box just to the right of the address bar:
3. Look for the little black arrow just to the right of the “G” and click on it.
4. You will now see a drop-down list of search engines.
5. Click on
7. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and under Additional Resources, click
8. In the Site Name/URL search box, type Blais and click
9. In the center of the page, click on the
10. When asked if you want to add this search engine click
11. The Blais Title Search has now been added to your Search Bar. Happy Hunting!
Posted to blais | cool search tricks by jez at 03:06 PM
May 21, 2007
Alternative Energy Blogs
I am pleased to announce the establishment of two new alternative energy blogs
***The Geothermal Energy Blog***
http://thegeothermalenergyblog.blogspot.com/
AND
***The Wind Energy Blog***
http://windenergyblog.blogspot.com/
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***The Geothermal Energy Blog***
The Geothermal Energy Blog is devoted to the documentation of key literature relating to all aspect of geothermal energy, most notably its nature, applications, and technologies. It is focused on non-technical issues as well.
The Geothermal Energy Blog was formally established on May 20 2007.
http://thegeothermalenergyblog.blogspot.com/
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***The Wind Energy Blog***
The Wind Energy Blog is devoted to the promotion of all key literature relating to wind energy and wind turbines and related technologies. It will also focus on non-technical issues as well.
http://windenergyblog.blogspot.com/
The Wind Energy Blog was formally established on May 9 2007.
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Posted to useful information by jez at 03:08 PM