Infographics

Easel.ly

I must admit I don't know a whole lot about infographics. Sure, I've seen them everywhere on the Internet, but I had never tried to create a document using them, or read about their history.

I really liked reading the link posted for today's "Thing". It gave me a great understanding of how they came about, and how infographics are helpful for learning, and for making documents easy to digest.

I decided to go with Easel.ly for no apparent reason, other than the name sounded cool.
I spent about half an hour playing with their site.
I created a fun page called "Redheads vs Blondes".

My feelings about this tool are twofold:

A) it would take a while to get the full functionality of the site mastered

BUT

B) it seems really useful for professional or academic purposes.
I can actually see myself using this for an assignment or a staff presentation when I become a librarian. It's interesting, eye catching, and a great way to sum up complicated information in a one page format.


Here's the link to my partly done infographic:
My Easel.ly

Videos: 15

Vine & Animoto: A Comparison

When I saw the post for today, I knew that I would just have to check out Vine. My husband (and all other men it seems- my brother, guy friends, cousins) love this app and checks it on a semi-regular basis. I've heard a bunch about it, and how some Vine users are hugely popular, with thousands, or millions(!) of people following their video accounts.
A lot of the popularity of Vine comes from the humor involved in the posted videos -6 seconds of silly, stupid, ridiculous, bizarre videos that are often intended to entertain/surprise/disgust.

So I made myself a Vine account and checked it out.

My thoughts: I LOVE it! I can already tell I will be a regular user.  The "Animal" category alone is worth the app - short videos of adorable kittens and puppies and more. The comedy section is good too.

I feel like this app is right up the alley of young people - it captures the attention of those who have the attention of a fly - most 10 year olds to 20something year olds currently.

I see this app being popular if used irreverently by the library - a fun, silly way to gain the interest of young library users. I envision Vine being used by a marketing department or a hip young librarian who knows how to connect with teens.

So, for Animoto, I think this app has an entirely different feel. This app is not one for quick entertainment - it is used for creating 30 second videos that can be shared.

This app is ideal for presentations, assignments, and staff slideshows.

It takes a while to upload, but the functionality of it is pretty good.
I'd recommend it for sure.

Thing 14. Presentations.

Prezi.

I'd heard about this from classmates, and wasn't disappointed.
First off, this app is absolutely excellent for creating a professional, high quality looking presentation.
There are multiple formats that you can choose from, which range in detail and colour and number of slides.
I played around with it for a while and was very impressed with the functionality of it. I could add slides, delete slides, add photos, add text, add transitions, add videos and audio. All of this for free!

I think this presentation app is great for both professional and my own school use. I can quickly operate it and add content that makes any topic look good.

Using Prezi makes it seem like you've spent hours creating a fantastic presentation, when really it's already set up and ready for you to insert your own material.

I'd definitely recommend this app for others to use!
(PS you do have to create a Prezi account, and there is somewhat limited functionality compared to the full version which you pay for. I think the free version is good enough, personally).

Virtual Meetings and Video Chat: Thing 13.

Medeo

For this blog post, I thought I'd switch things up a bit and talk about an app that wasn't suggested on the list.

The video conferencing app that blew me away recently was Medeo, a health care related app. Basically, to sum it up, once you have Medeo on your phone or tablet, you can meet with a doctor anytime, anywhere. It really amazed me the first time I used it. I know that technology is evolving rapidly and that university students are the most likely to be able to adapt and utilize the new methods of communication with few fears and inhibitions (plus the technological capabilities), so it makes sense that my University of BC health care program would support Medeo.

I had a renewal coming up for my asthma inhaler prescription and instead of going to a physical doctor's office, I signed up for a Medeo "appointment".

I'll walk you through how it went on my video conferencing app.

First off, I got a text message, prompting me that my 'appointment' time was about to start.

Once I had logged in with my username and password - which I had created prior to this meeting - I was met with a second message saying that the receptionist would be with me shortly and to not leave my device.

Within a couple of minutes, the video portion of the app came to life, with a nice lady in an office saying, "Hello Claire, welcome to your appointment".

I then started my side of the video conference and had a little introductory chat with the receptionist.

When we were all done, she put me on "hold" - which is essentially a blank screen, until the doctor was ready.

When the doctor was ready at her computer in her office, she started her video and began speaking with me.

After approximately a 2 minute conversation, my prescription was filled and being transmitted to my local pharmacy.

The doctor wished me well and logged out.

It was both bizarre and incredibly useful.
I was sitting in my living room, on my couch, in my old clothes, and had just finished a doctor's appointment.

All I can say is I'm totally in favour for videoconferencing. It's handy, efficient, practical, and useful.

12. Ebook Apps + Zinio

Part I -Overdrive

 

What did you think about the setup experience?

Initially, fine. Downloading it, no problem. But when I went to log into my account for the first time, it sent an error message about needing to change my 'cookie' setting. So I followed their link to the 'how to change the settings on iPhone' and the photos displayed in their instructions were
A) not ones that matched the layout of my phone
B) not easily figured out.

SO... I gave up. If it doesn't work pretty easily the first time I upload it, I can't be bothered. I'll try it on my tablet and let you know later.

Part II- 3M Cloud Library

What did you think about the setup experience?

Great! Super easy.

How easy was it to download content?

Very easy. No problems. I specifically chose a really large book - "How to Cook Everything" that has over 1000 pages and it downloaded in maybe 8 to 10 seconds on the FVRL public wifi. I was impressed.

What do you think about the options for changing views, fonts, narration speed, and navigating within the books?

I liked it. I thought it was fairly intuitive and simple to navigate. The buttons were easy to find

Do you think library customers would find this app intuitive? Useful? Fun to use?

Yes, Yes, and Yes. I thought it was well designed for a smartphone app and could imagine it would be quite nice on an iPad. I liked the ability of downloading a 1000+ page book on to my handheld device.

If you ran into challenges using the app, do you think that the freely available library content is enough of a trade-off to make it worth persevering to use the app?

In my opinion, yes. Once you get it to work, the whole world of library material becomes available to you in the palm of your hand, for free. It seems too good to be true. So that's when you realize you have to place holds on new books, etc and you can't get everything you want right away, but hey, it's still worth it.

Part III - Zinio

I like Zinio but to be honest, I still like leafing through a physical magazine. I enjoy flipping the pages manually.
However, I appreciate it for specific articles that I see in the newstands at the grocery store that I'd like to read but I can't be bothered to read the whole magazine.
For example, this month's Esquire magazine had a fantastic article about space travel and I could easily download the issue and flip directly to the article.
Worth it for that feature alone.

Thing Eleven: Library and Ref

Part I - Mango Languages

• What did you think about the setup experience?

Creating a separate account with Mango is always a little tedious but it is worth it, in order to track your progress and save your learning courses. The set up wasn't too bad in comparison with other apps, I didn't mind it.

How easy was it to access content?

Because my phone runs on the LTE network and is pretty new technology, I had no problem running the software and accessing content. However, if I had an old phone, I would imagine this app would be pretty slow and not run as optimally as it does on mine.

Do you think library customers would find this app intuitive? Useful? Fun to use?

As far as being being intuitive, I would say it is middle of the road. As for being useful - yes of course! Any learning app that is free and helps language learning is universally useful. Even learning the basics of a language for a trip to Italy for 2 weeks could be worthwhile for a library user. Plus, I recently learned from a co-worker that there is the option to learn English - from a selection of about 12 native languages (French, Polish, Spanish, etc). I can see this being an excellent ESL tool as well.
As for it being fun to use - it does a pretty good job! It's colourful, interactive, and keeps the user's attention. Not bad for a language app.

If you ran into challenges using the app, do you think that the freely available library content is enough of a trade-off to make it worth persevering to use the app?

Definitely. People love free stuff and are willing to sit through a couple of minutes when it doesn't upload properly or takes too long or crashes. I know I would persevere myself!

Part II - VPL & Bibliocommons

What options does the library app user have?

To search new items, search the entire catalogue, access their account, see suggested materials/recently returned/award winner lists, etc.

How far can you get with the app without logging in with a library card?

You can search a fair amount for titles and search within lists but in order to place anything on hold or look at your account, you must log in, even while the app is already open.

Can you tell how it provides eBook access?

From what it seems like, the app is set up with the existing web browser options for downloading eBooks - Overdrive for example. You request a book, it shows you that it's an eBook and you follow the prompts.

What do you think of the interface? Would library customers prefer it over the traditional, full-site catalogue or the mobile catalogue FVRL currently offers?

Personally, I really liked it, but anything is an improvement on full web formatting being squished onto a mobile device. I always get ticked off when websites I would assume to have a functioning app are still running their website instead. The only thing I didn't like was how the search results were displayed. I typed in "Harry Potter" into the main search bar and over 300 results popped up, with the beginning couple in other languages (Russian or something I guessed). It wasn't perfectly intuitive and only with refining your search significantly (oh and there was no option to refine by language- which seems silly to me - or at least that I could find quickly) can you get at the right material you are looking for.

If you had to choose an FVRL app, which one would you like?

This one seems good to me, as long as there were some basic modifications. More efficient search results for example.

Thing 10 Sharing Photos

As I mentioned in the previous post, I already have Instagram and Snapchat.

So, I will just state my opinions of these two applications.

Instagram:

• Good for instant posts
• Fun for Throwback Thursdays (posts of old photos from last week to 10 years ago)
• Increasingly commerical
• Can discover and creep on literally thousands of people
• Celebrity accounts can be fun to look at
• The fashion accounts are interesting to me
• I keep my followers private
• searching hastags (#) can be informative and time wasting and amusing all in one

Snapchat:

• perfect for sending quick pics to close family and friends
• very limited to no advertisments
• not for a broad audience unless you add many people you don't know
• smaller amount of users than Instagram
• longer video uploads than Instagram
• short term appeal vs Instagram that keeps your photos

OVERALL

I prefer each app for it's own merit. I like looking at random Instagram accounts for fashion and decorating ideas, and seeing friends' photos of their personal lives.
I prefer Snapchat for fun, sassy photos that I see for a couple seconds and then forget about.

I see Instagram as being the photosharing tool that would be applicable for a professional library setting.
However, if we had a savvy media department that could get Snapchatters to add the library, it would be pretty neat. I doubt that would happen anytime soon though! People like having only their 'real' friends on Snapchat. Snapchat feels like a more intimate app than Instagram.