About the Programme

Kia ora and a very warm welcome to

‘Get With It... more Web 2.0 Technologies’

... a self-paced learning programme for North Shore Libraries staff that builds on the knowledge and skills gained from the NSL Learning 2.0 Programme. It explores how Web 2.0 is being used in libraries today and provides an opportunity for you to:

• refresh your Web 2.0 skills and knowledge
• have a look at what's new
• understand how the web can be used to enhance our library service

The programme runs for 8 weeks from 14 June – 9 August 2010. There are 6 modules to work through at your own pace. You choose how much depth you go into with each topic (depending on previous knowledge, interest, time, etc).

Each module explores a different area of the web relevant to libraries today. By working through the modules you will:

• get an understanding for the subject
• find valuable resources
• be able to practice and apply skills
• pick up some tips and tricks to pass on to patrons
• and maybe even experience be a few "aha" moments!

For some it might be an opportunity to look closer at something they are aware of but haven't had a chance to explore - while for others it may be a whole new learning curve!

Expect a time commitment of 25-30 hours to complete all 6 modules. While we would encourage you to complete all modules, there's no reason why you can't just do selected modules - especially if time (or motivation) is a problem.

A certificate will be awarded to those who complete the programme by 9 August.

More specific information - the when, where and why's - are detailed in How the Programme works.

You will need to register with the NSL Training Support team before you start this programme.

We hope you enjoy your learning journey!

NSL Training Support Team

Updated: 1 June 2010

Module 1 - Introduction

Module 1 looks at Online Life in the broader context and highlights some background knowledge and issues we should all be aware of when using the Web. As librarians, we can pass this information on to our patrons.

The module is broken down into 3 separate topics:

1. Online Privacy and Security
2. Open ID
3. Creative Commons

which gives a thorough explanation of what they are and offers some useful information, tips and advice to make your "online life" a simpler, safer and more enjoyable experience.

Given the nature of this learning programme this first module is a great starting point - even if it is just a refresher for some of you.

Module 1 - Topic 1

ONLINE PRIVACY AND SECURITY

The World Wide Web has provided us with myriad ways of finding information, communicating and collaborating, and many entertainment options. Social networks let you keep in contact with family and friends. But, it has also made it easy to give a lot of personal information out to the wide world, which, in personal circumstances, you would never give to ‘strangers’. Once you have published information on the web it can be found even after you have deleted it.

What kinds of personal information do people post online that can compromise their privacy?

• Names


• Addresses, including email addresses


• Photos


• Phone numbers


• Names of schools, sport teams, clubs and other social groups


• Personal details of family and friends


• Passwords

Safeguarding your privacy

Before posting information, think about who can see the information – friends, family, colleagues, prospective employers, anyone with an Internet connection. Picture yourself shouting the information to a world wide audience while a recording is made for posterity!

Have a look at these resources:

• Privacy and Social Networks - video.


• McAfee has a brochure with good basic online privacy and security advice for families.


• Netsafe gives cyber safety and security advice for New Zealand, including access to different websites for net safe information for parents and children. It also has lots of resources on computer security.

Online privacy tips:

• Be careful about what personal/private information you post online, including private information about your friends and family - ask their permission first.


• Read the website private policies and statements before submitting personal information.


• Use pseudonyms and 'disposable' email addresses for accounts where you don't want (or need) to give personal information.


• Make sure you use secure web connections for sensitive transactions such as online purchases or online banking. A secure connection URL usually starts with https, or you could also see a 'lock' icon in the right bottom corner of your screen.

Password security

Passwords are the security gates to your accounts. There are different levels of security depending on the type of account you are operating. Some accounts don't require personal information - it is just for fun or convenience - therefore you would not need a high level of security. A password that is easy to remember is suited to this type of account.

Other accounts which contain personal identification, financial transactions and personal whereabouts need a high level of security. Protection is necessary to prevent identity theft, financial fraud and cyber stalking.

The key to secure accounts are strong passwords and never giving out your passwords to anyone. General advice for creating strong passwords include:

• Use a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters, at least 8 digits long to create strong (more secure) passwords – a good practice as encouraged by our City Council.


• Do not leave your passwords lying around.


• Change passwords regularly, especially on critical accounts.


• You could use a secure password storage service, so only you can access them with a master password, e.g. Keepass


• You could also use a password generator

(If the Comments section below is not open .... click on the link to find participants' comments which could be helpful for this topic.)

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*** EXERCISES ***

*** FURTHER READING *** - optional

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Module 1 - Topic 2

OpenID

The web offers some neat services, but it can be frustrating keeping tabs on all those web accounts. (How many times have you forgotten usernames and passwords, lost the pieces of paper with all your accounts' details on it? Or, have it on a file on your computer, but not the computer where you need the information at this moment?)

OpenID offers a solution to the problem.


What is OpenID?

OpenID is an open protocol which allows you to use the same username and password for different web accounts.

This video explains how it works. (In the video My Vidoop is used as an OpenID provider.)

As you saw, it works like this:

Normally when you first open an account you sign up giving some details, including an email address, and choose an available username and password. A verification email is sent to the email address you have provided to verify that the email belongs to you. When you click on the link sent in the email to you (or use the code supplied) you are identified with the email address. This process is called authentication.

With OpenID you use a website address (URL) supplied by your chosen OpenID provider to authenticate yourself. The process is more automated. You sign in with your OpenID and the website goes directly to your OpenID provider for the verification process.

Why use OpenID?

You can now set up accounts and log in with the same username and password - quick and easy to sign up and sign in. No more creating 12 different usernames (because the one you wanted to use isn't available) and remembering passwords for all of them.

How to use an OpenID:

Not all web services make use of OpenID. When you see the OpenID icon (shown at top) or "sign in using your existing Google or Yahoo ID" it means that account has enabled OpenID authentication. So you can go ahead and sign in with your Google or Yahoo account details.














There are several OpenID providers :

• OpenID.net's list has examples of URLs of popular accounts.
• Wikipedia has a list of OpenID providers
• OpenID directory can be a bit confusing to use but it is interesting to read the discussion on people's experiences with the individual OpenID providers.

Concerns about OpenID

When OpenID first became available there were some security and privacy concerns mentioned. Privacy may be an issue for you if you feel uncomfortable with the idea that your activities on the Internet can be traced. A security concern around OpenID is that it may be more vulnerable to phishing attacks, but if you follow the security advice discussed earlier it shouldn't be a problem.

General advice is to use OpenID for accounts where privacy and security are not important, but don't use it for sensitive accounts where security is very important.

If the Comments section below is not open .... click on the link to find participants' comments which could be helpful for this topic.
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*** EXERCISES ***

*** FURTHER READING - Optional***
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Module 1 -Topic 3

CREATIVE COMMONS



We invariably come across copyright issues during our normal working day – patrons making copies from books, copying from websites and printing out database articles.

Copyright protects "original works of authorship", such as literary works, musical works, dramatic works, graphic works, audiovisual works and architectural works. It is very restrictive in that you first have to get the permission of the author/creator before you can use, reproduce, and rework the original work. In some cases this can be quite a mission, especially when there are several persons and corporations involved. The online medium has brought a new way of doing things and created many difficulties in terms of copyright.

Creative Commons licenses present another legal way in which authors/creators of original works state how they want to share their work and which rights they retain.

What is the Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation who provide free legal tools for anyone to grant copyright permissions to their creative work in a standardised way. There are six main licenses based on a combination of the four main conditions creators wish to apply to their work. These licenses grant the public permission beforehand in terms of use, distribution, reuse/remix and attribution. As the Creative Commons organisation states on their website:

“Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright and the public domain. From all rights reserved to no rights reserved.” (Creative Commons.org - What is CC)

Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but work alongside it to make the process of legally sharing much simpler and clearer.

More information on the Creative Commons:

• YouTube video: A shared culture (This can take up to 5 mins to download on work computers - right click and open in new window, let it download while you get on with something else then come back to it).
• Explore the NZ Creative Commons website - all the basic information on Creative Commons.
  

If the Comments section below is not open .... click on the link to find participants' comments which could be helpful for this topic.

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*** EXERCISES ***

*** FURTHER READING - optional ***

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Module 2 - Topic 1

TWITTER: AN INTRODUCTION

WARNING! You may become addicted! Proceed with caution. Evidence:

Have you wondered what all the fuss is about Twitter? Twitter has now become part of breaking news stories as reported in the wikipedia article on twitter.

What is Twitter?

Twitter describes itself in its FAQ as “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages". It asks the question: “What are you doing?” Twitter members write short posts /updates, often called "tweets”, of not more than140 characters (which is why Twitter is classed as microblogging).

These messages are posted to your profile (your Twitter page) and sent to your followers- people subscribing to your Twitter account. The messages can be published/sent through different platforms such as the Twitter website, cell phones, instant messaging (IM) and various web applications. Twitter accounts can be private or public and you can subscribe to the RSS feeds to keep up to date.

It has built-in social networking so that people can follow others’ updates in much the same way as with other social networking sites. Not only do people share what they do/think/plan, they also become part of a conversation with replying to tweets. As such it has become a huge information resource and communication tool. Businesses have already begun incorporating Twitter as part of their marketing and customer services strategies.

Twitter terms and conventions

When you first look at Twitter it can be very confusing. Nancy Friedman says that Twitter's Language Problem contributes to this confusion. Twitter's use of terms are different from what we usually apply to those terms. So, to help you make sense of the tweets here is a short list of terms and conventions used in Twitter:

tweet - a twitter message up to a 140 characters long - also called an update. It can be about anything and everything. Messages are public unless a profile is protected (or have a private setting).

timeline - this is your homepage on Twitter. It shows all the messages you send and messages that people you are following send. If you aren’t signed in you will only see the tweets sent by the tweeter. It also applies to any collection of tweets.

following - people you follow (similar to ‘friend’ in social networking) whose tweets will show up in your timeline. A selection in pictures of people/organisations you follow shows up on the twitterer’s page.

followers - people who are following your tweets.

@username - a reply to a twitter message, i.e. @jaycie622.

RT or retweet - a message that is repeated because someone thinks it particularly good, i.e. RT @RachelleGardner: If you think publishing is slow, be glad you're not in major motion pictures.

# - hash tags are used to tag tweets with a theme or event, i.e. Great Read About the Role of Music in Life #music

Note that url shortening services, such as bit.ly, tinyURL and Tr.im are used in Twitter because of the character restriction - e.g http://bit.ly/fb9Fg.

Why use Twitter?

Twitter is many things to many people. Anne Hadley asked this question in her blog MarketingProfs Daily Fix - here is a reflection of some of the comments given (check the link to the blogpost under Further Reading):

• It's a great way to keep in touch with your friends.
• It taps me into the shared knowledge of people I admire online
• I also use Twitter as a discovery engine … it flows new interesting things past me that I wouldn't have thought to search out on my own.
• I like the 140 character limit on what you can say and do with Twitter.
• I use twitter primarily for entertainment purposes and to find cool stuff.

Of course, not everyone is enamoured with Twitter, as reflected in these comments:

• I do worry though about return on time invested. I fear twittering can become a variation on voyeurism, an excuse to be not doing other more useful things. And yet, here I am, watching tweets in the early morning, and it was your tweet that led me to this post. Paradox makes the world go round.


• I personally find it rather unsettling to follow people I don’t actually know: there’s a voyeuristic quality to it, the sense of being a peeping Tom into someone else’s private life.

Other examples of Twitter use:

• Get advice and feedback on ideas, problems, etc.


• Taking notes: Twitter can be an ideal place to store your thoughts. You can send an update from any mobile device.


• Create and manage your ToDo list through Some ToDo services such as Remember the Milk which accept updates from Twitter. Tweeting via your cell phone makes this a convenient option.


• Send out notices about updates of your blog and website.

Interesting Twitters

Although there are a lot of trivial twittering going on in the twitterverse, there are some very interesting twitters to follow. Here is a small sample.

Authors on Twitter:
Note: It looks like some authors twitter themselves, while other authors’ representatives do the twittering for them.
Jodi Picoult
Clive Cussler
Elizabeth Strout
Margaret Atwood
Jennifer Weiner
Elizabeth Buchan
Dr. Maya Angelou
Meg Cabot
Laurell K. Hamilton
James Rollins
Nicky Pellegrino

Politicians & Governments on Twitter:
10 Downing Street
The White House
NZ Parliament
John Key
Barack Obama

Science and environmental topics:
NASA is one of the many organisations on Twitter.
An ecologically conscious Twitter
Greenpeace

New Zealand Twitters of interest:
All Blacks
List of New Zealand musicians / music groups
New Zealand media people on Twitter
Auckland City Council
New Zealand museums
Te Karere Ipurangi Maori News Online
NZHistory Online
Grabaseat

Media on Twitter:Time magazine
National Graphic
The Guardian

A few other interesting Twitters:
Grammar girl started as a podcasts, became famous and published a book.
Cookbook via Twitter. Recipes every day in Twitter speak.
Cooking tips and food facts for the foodies.
American Red Cross - alerts to disasters. The Australian Red Cross did the same during the wild fires earlier this year.
GenreStories
Frugal Living
Fitness motivation
HerbalCommunity

If you know of any other interesting Twitterers please share with us through the comments section of this blogpost.

If the Comments section below is not open .... click on the link to find participants' comments which could be helpful for this topic.

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*** EXERCISES ***

*** FURTHER READING - optional

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Module 2 - Topic 2

SEARCHING TWITTER

Twitter can offer a wealth of information if you know how to look for it. But before we look at the various Twitter search engines let's have a look at the kind of information you could expect to find on Twitter.

What kind of information will you find on Twitter?

Don't expect to find the results that you would find with a Google search because it works in a social networking environment. Points to remember:

• Posts (or tweets) are restricted to 140 characters. You will find minimal information unless there is a link to longer documents.
• You will usually see snippets of conversation so it lacks context.
• Results are in "real time" - from the last few minutes, hours, maybe a few days.

Always evaluate the information you find and the source of the information.

Twitter search engines

There are many search engines for searching Twitter. Twitter itself has a few search options. Third party Twitter search engines are developed all the time. Some have been established for a few years, others come and go. We are only going to look at a few search engines and other Twitter applications which use Twitter to find/get information.

Twitter's search options:
The video Twitter search in plain English gives a good basic introduction.

On the homepage: Search for words, people, places and hash tags. The Boolean operator AND is assumed between search terms. You can use OR , and minus sign for the NOT Boolean operator. Phrase searches and other search operators help refine your results.

Twitter's search engine: There are two options - basic and advanced.
- Basic search option: In the basic option you could use all the twitter search operators.
- Advanced search option: This option presents a form to make it easier to select your search specifications. The same search operators that can be used in basic search are presented in the form.

3rd Party Twitter search engines:
Unfortunately Twitter's search engine only searches the tweets and not the bio section of the Twitter profile but the search engines listed below do:

TweepSearch searches the name, screen name, bio and location fields of Twitter profiles. This makes it possible to find people with common interests based on keywords in their bio section. See the TweepSearch help page for more information.

Twazzup - Note: This will not work in Internet Explorer 6. On the results page you get related words and hashtags at the top. If you mouseover an avatar, a bubble pops up with another look at the avatar, a “follow” link to their homepage, and other information from their Twitter.com settings. Useful information displayed on the right is the most popular tweets, top trendsetters, related photos and most popular links.

ChirpCity - enter the city name in the search box. Results are displayed in two columns - on the left are the latest tweets sent from your specified city and on the right are tweets containing the city name in the tweets.

Tweetgrid - lets you do up to nine searches simultaneously and display results in a grid - each search result in its own block. The Howto page has videos to explain how Tweedgrid works.

The #hashtag site search only hash tags, which means you have to know which hash tag to use in your search. You could search tags (or keyword) hashtags and people hashtags. There is a directory under the tags- and people sections which you can browse.

Others: Twoogle and Twiogle searches Twitter and Google simultaneously. BingTweets combine Twitter and Bing searches.

Keeping track of tweets and trends

TweetMeme tracks and displays the most popular links on twitter. The links are also categorised in broad topics as shown on their All the top TweetMeme page. The Search guidelines page has more information on how to use TweetMeme.

Monitter: In their own words: "It's a twitter monitor, it lets you "monitter" the twitter world for a set of keywords and watch what people are saying". Tweets can be filtered by location.

Twitter directories

(What is the difference between search engines and directories? YahooKids gives a simple explanation.) Most of these directories can be searched.

• Wefollow: People add themselves to the directory using tags (keywords) and ranking is according to the number of followers.
• Twello - describes itself as the yellow pages of Twitter. Twitter users are placed in categories based on keywords in their bio field.
• Just tweet it: another directory where Twitter users can add themselves. It also has a Twitter tools directory.
• Tweetfind: Twitter users can add themselves. Clean interface and interesting sections to check out.

Question and answer services via Twitter

There are many places on the web where people can ask questions and anyone can answer them. Similar services are offered for Twitter users.

Twitter Answers - By following the Q&A twitter account you can send your question to them using the direct message. Your questions are then posted as a tweet on their account with a link to their website where you could see the answers posted (or post answers to questions you see on the account).

Lazytweet - Use Twitter to ask a question, just add "lazytweet" to a post/tweet with no need to signing up and linking Lazytweet's Twitter account. The Lazytweet About page has more information on how it works.

Similar question/answer twitter services: twitQA; twAnswers.net; AskOnTwitter; ToAnswer and Twitter Pigeon.

If the Comments section below is not open .... click on the link to find participants' comments which could be helpful for this topic.

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*** EXERCISES ***

*** FURTHER READING - optional ***

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