Author Archives: Arabella Holzapfel, Joseph Antonioli and Heather Stafford

Friday Links – February 14, 2014

The return-on-investment of reading from Forbes, or Why you should read books

Vermonter Bryan Alexander of NITLE “goes” to Educause via Doppelbot.

Cute and humorous video about data sharing, management, and preservation from the NYU Health Sciences Libraries –

He Said She Said – How Blogs are Changing the Scientific Discourse – Mainstream media always follows the same kind of ‘He said, she said’ template, which is why even climate change deniers get their say, although they are a tiny minority. The leading scientific journals, on the other hand, are expensive and behind pay-walls. But it turns out there are places on the web where you can follow science up close and personal: The many personal blogs written by scientists — and the conversation there is changing the very nature of scientific debate.

Cloudinary vs. Blitline: Cloud-Image Services Compared – As Web applications grow in number and capability, storing large amounts of images can quickly become a problem.

Did you ever wish you were an Olympian? Check out these interactive elements from the New York Times to get close to the action from miles away. (Thanks to our digital media tutors for this find!!)

Friday Links – January 24, 2014

With a tagline like this: “A spectacular historical atlas refashioned for the 21st century” who can resist? Check out the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States presented by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond to view a digital version of Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright’s atlas that was originally published in 1932.

 

Exciting! Students and staff at University College London serendipitously discovered a type 1a supernova in M82 on January 22. Read about it here!

Supernova in M82, before and after, by  E. Guido, N. Howes, M. Nicolini
Supernova in M82, before and after, by E. Guido, N. Howes, M. Nicolini, January 2014.

If you are very keen, check out the IAU Transient Object Followup Reports.

Research Desk Poetry (and more at the LIS Facebook page):

poem

Is your refrigerator running? Then it might be spamming people.

Google is pulling the plug on guest blogging for increased ranking.

If you put an email address in a Google Calendar event’s title, that person will get a reminder of the event, even if you don’t share it with them. This is “expected behavior” according to Google.

Friday Links – January 10, 2014

Hmmmm…it’s pretty snazzy looking but how do I know if I should I trust that infographic? Fast Company has some good tips here.  (Spoiler alert: the article title is “Infographics Lie. Here’s How to Spot the B.S.”)

Interested in a story for everyone? Check out the Big History Project and “explore 13.7 billion years of shared history…”

Speaking of stories – the New York Times has compiled “2013: The Year in Interactive Storytelling” Be sure to scroll down to view the Explanatory Graphics section. You can learn about the Higgs Boson or untangle the fast choreography of a successful field goal on the football field.

How do the Digital Humanities translate to the classroom? The Chronicle spotlights UCLA and Emory in “How the Humanities Compute in the Classroom”.

How many times do people switch devices in an hour? Quite a few, according to a UK study.

Friday Links – Nov. 15, 2013

For those of you with kids, this article “Teach Kids how to Code, Make Apps and 3-D Models With These Tools” lists some interesting possibilities. From School Library Journal and The Digital Shift.

Announcement: “Digital Public Library of America Launches DPLA Bookshelf

DPLA Bookshelf lets the user scroll a visual representation of a bookshelf… When a user of the DPLA site searches for books, the results are displayed as books on a bookshelf; the shelf is shown as a vertical stack so that the titles and authors are more easily readable on their spines. The width of the book represents the actual height of the physical book, and its thickness represents its page count. The spine is colored with one of ten depths of blue to “heatmap” how relevant the work is to the reader’s search.” Follow the announcement link to learn more.

3D Printing is a hot topic, but have you heard of 3D scanning? Lucky for us – the Smithsonian has, and has been busy scanning several artifacts that you can now view online! Their 3D exploration tool is in Beta so they are looking for feedback and bug reports. Load time is a little slow – but it’s worth it! (Check out the Woolly Mammoth!)

Smithsonian X 3D of a Wooly Mammoth, http://3d.si.edu/explorer?modelid=55

Screen shot of Smithsonian X 3D of a Woolly Mammoth

Curious about how 3D scanning works? Check out the video below.

 

 

Are you interested in learning more about infographics?

Lynda.com offers a collection of resources about creating infographics that can be found at this link: http://www.lynda.com/Infographics-training-tutorials/1462-0.html (after you log in using your Middlebury credentials). Not sure what an infographic is? Check out this example on the history of audio equipment via fastcodesign.com where the creators offer a mini-window into the work it took to pull it all together.

The Wilson Media Lab in the Library offers many multimedia tools that can be used to build infographics. Digital Media Tutors are available Sunday – Thursday from 1 pm – 1 am and on Fridays from 1 pm – 7 pm to assist users interested in using these tools.

 

 

The Technologies of Makerspaces

Below is a dispatch from The Technologies of Makerspaces workshop, attended recently by Heather  Stafford and Rebekah Irwin…

MakerSpace

Makerspace smack in the middle of a Connecticut library

But wait! Before you read on, it might be helpful to browse the following Wikipedia entries: Maker culture, DIY cultureHackerspaces, Fab Labs, Raspberry Pi3D Printing, and STEM fields (also sometimes STEAM[ref]Science, Technology, Math, “Art” and Math.[/ref] with an “A” for art).

So what’s a makerspace? Generally, a place where DIYers, Makers, and anyone else interesting in making things, designing things, or fixing things, rather than plain ol’ buying things, join together to fabricate, code, build, and collaborate. Makerspaces are also something of a theoretical ideal: a communal educational environment where kids and adults can use new, and old, hands-on tools in meaningful and creative ways.

Why were we at a Makerspace workshop? The article, What is a Makerspace? Creativity in the Library [ref]http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2012/12/what-is-a-makerspace-creativity-in-the-library.html[/ref] helps answer that question:

When most people think of libraries, they naturally think books. Anyone working in a library today, however, knows that we are so much more than just books. Libraries are places of community engagement. Recently many libraries have begun to develop spaces for design and activities that both teach and empower patrons. The learning in these spaces varies wildly–from home bicycle repair, to using 3D printers, to building model airplanes. Fittingly, they are called makerspaces.

So we went to learn how a makerspace, and the culture of designing, creating, and building, might fit into the activities that are already taking place in our library spaces and across campus. We learned about 3D printing from colleges and universities already doing it (like Williams, Yale, Colgate, Brandeis and Wheaton); we watched the blinking lights on our instructor’s handknit scarf thanks to an Arduino LilyPad microcontroller board and conductive sewing thread; and to top off our day, we hooked up peripherals and booted up the Raspbian operating system on a Raspberry Pi Model B.

Presentation materials were shared with all attendees and included this slideshare on the Technologies of Makerspaces as well as a Google presentation on 3D printing.

Thanks for reading.

Friday Links – September 27

Interactive Storytelling – There has been a lot of interest in the article “Snow Fall – The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek” as presented by the New York Times. (If you haven’t read it yet, be sure to check it out!) Bear 71 is another example of interactive storytelling. It is the “true story of a female grizzly bear monitored by wildlife conservation officers from 2001 – 2009.” The National Film Board of Canada presents this film as well as a variety of other interactive media which can be viewed here.

“Signals” help students graduate: “Signals … keeps track of how students approach class work. Taking in about 20 data points [from the CMS] such as whether or not a student has completed online reading or watched online lectures, it measures the data against test and assignment grades, and ‘signals’ students how they are doing with green, yellow, or red lights for each course. The signals are scheduled throughout each course by the instructor.”

 

 

Friday Links – September 6, 2013

The history of favicon.ico.

Progressive enhancement is dead but also progressive enhancement is faster. PE, by the way, is the idea of ensuring that a web application is usable across a broad range of browser environments, most recently (and in the linked articles) in the case where JavaScript can’t be used.

Kids can’t use computers” and why we should be worried. “Tomorrow’s politicians, civil servants, police officers, teachers, journalists and CEOs are being created today. These people don’t know how to use computers, yet they are going to be creating laws regarding computers, enforcing laws regarding computers, educating the youth about computers, reporting in the media about computers and lobbying politicians about computers. Do you thinks this is an acceptable state of affairs?”

Australian and New Zealand virtual worlds scoping study: Final report available for download – In 2010-12, with colleagues from Charles Sturt University (CSU), the University of New England (UNE), and the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), I worked on a project that involved conducting an Australia and New Zealand-wide scoping study on the use of virtual worlds for learning and teaching in higher education. The final report from the project is now available as an open-access publication.

MOOCs Meet the Zombie Apocolypse

How do you get thousands of people excited about an online course in math, physics, and public health that will not earn them formal credit or any kind of certificate?

First, make it a MOOC.

Second, make the central text a popular TV show.

Third, add zombies.

Down the Road, But In the Works: 3-D Video Calls From Skype –

Skype has confirmed it has developed 3D video calls.

The news was revealed by a senior executive in an exclusive interview with the BBC to mark Skype’s 10th anniversary.