Captivate 3

I am currently trying out the beta testing of the latest version of Captivate from Adobe. I have worked on two projects. One is a basic searching module for the database, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts. The other is a mock Information Literacy pre-test. I did not add any sound to these, as I did not want to invest too much, as I am not sure all the features will be available in the final version. It also did not look like adding audio was difficult or much had changed from version 2. For those of you familiar with Captivate, you will not find a whole lot has changed visually. Still fairly easy to navigate and adjust the working area. I did try a few new features. I like the Zoom, which allows for you to focus and enlarge a specific area of the screencast. I used it when I was typing a search term. I also used several highlight boxes, though this is not new. With the highlight box you can now “grey out” the rest of the screen, which is kind of nice. I did not really have a use for it in this project, but again, that could be a great way to focus in on something that you want to highlight.

As for the test, this was the first “quiz/test” I have ever created. Setting up was fairly easy. Insert a Question Slide and it will ask you what type of question you would like to add: multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blank, short answer, matching, etc… It also asks that you specify if the question will be graded or it is just a survey question. I did not see an option, maybe I am just blind, for setting up a question that allows or several answers. Kind of like a “check all that apply”. Anyway, I will continue to try out some of the new bells and whistles. I would love to hear what people think of the ones above.

Zoho Notebook Beta release

Via Read/Write Web, Zoho has released it’s Beta version of Notebook. You can watch a quick demo there as well. I have not used this type of application before, like Google Notebook or Microsoft’s OneNote. Though as a proponent of Zoho I will obviously have to check it out and see if it can be integrated into the work flow.
Some of the highlights:

With Zoho Notebook, you can create many different types of content – such as text, image, audio, video, drawings, RSS feeds. It’s also a content aggregator (including HTML content from web, Zoho Writer doc, Zoho Sheet spreadsheet etc) and has impressive collaboration features. While content aggregation and collaboration are almost mandatory these days in a Web Office product, it’s the variety of content you can aggregate and collaborate over that is impressive in Zoho Notebook. Also the ability to mash it all up.

latest readings

7 Things You Should Know about…RSS. (2007). EDUCAUSE . Retrieved from http://educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7024.

Bennett, S. (2007). Campus Cultures Fostering Information Literacy. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 7(2), 147-167. Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/v007/7.2bennett.pdf.

DaCosta, J., & Jones, B. (2007). Developing students’ information and research skills via Blackboard. Communications in Information Literacy, 1(1), 16-25. Retrieved from http://www.comminfolit.org/index.php/cil/article/view/Spring2007AR2/12.

Should also report that the last article is from the new journal, Communications in Information Literacy. Just became aware of that from the ILL listserv

E books

I recently caught this article form Computerworld.com, ” Why E-books Are Bound to Fail.” through Librarian In Black. The conclusion of the author is that E Books will fail to replace print materials because people will not want to “‘curl up’ with a battery-operated plastic screen.” Coming at it from an academic librarian point of within a library that subscribes/owns/shares at lot of E Books, I think his conclusion is a little misguided. I really doubt they will “fail”. BTW, I always hate it when authors speak in those types of absolutes. Will E-Books dominate like print books do? Probably not, but then again, book readership is down generally. As for the world of popular literature, the rise of audio books/books on cd could be seen as making an indent into print sales. I would also say this is part situational. Will the general public be buying e book readers in droves? Maybe not. I can tell you and with statistics to back me up, that at Bush Library, an academic library, e books are well used and uses continue to rise every month and year. Of course students do not have to use a portable reader, but they do know where they can “get their hands” on the e books from our web site. It also helps that we have interested faculty and some vibrant research intensive online classes that “scream” for these materials. Thus, we have focused on certain disciplines: education, language and linguistics and business materials. Do I think that students are sitting down and going through an entire e book? Probably not and I would imagine that a lot of people use them as supplemental reading. I think the only thing that will kill e books at the moment is the vendors themselves. The pricing structures are fairly outrageous and the interfaces still needs some work.

Authority issues

Marc at ACRLog had a piece on questioning the authority of sources. A lot of libraries, including Bush Library, usually have web pages like this (Scholarly vs. Popular articles), or this (web site analysis) in which “helps” students determine the authority of resources in their research. What these checklists usually don’t tell you is to also “question the authority”. I agree that we need to make sure students are much more aware of how to determine quality in their resources and become more information literate. I also agree and I would imagine, that most professors like us, hope that students use more than a couple sources to corroborate their research. Getting students to understand the facets information as a whole is our biggest challenge. What I find ironic, is that we “need” to have, according to some librarians, “radical trust” for wikis, blogs, and all things web 2.0. In my classes, I do bring up that it is better to go with “scholarly” articles, but I always talk about what’s behind those articles. Who wrote it? What journal published it? How many times is it cited in a particular database? I do this for ALL types of information. Yes, students…heck everybody, should question authority. I would also add that those checklists are just stop gap measures. We need to be having a real discussion with students about these issues. A dialogue if you will, where they can respond with questions and ideas.