The last few years have seen a good amount of focus and research on mobile in libraries and education in general. In the last couple of years social in libraries and education has also been picking up steam.
I'm including a couple of my presentations from 2012 below on these two topics.
What I'm especially excited about of late is Google+ Hangouts, (see slide 24-36 in presentation below). What may be of specific interest to librarians/educators like myself, who work with students and colleagues in ways other than face-to-face, is referenced in slides 29-33. (For those not familiar with Google+ Hangouts, it is arguably the most popular feature of Google+, Google's social networking platform and more.)
Bottom line, in the same way that twitter has become my single most valuable professional development tool over the years, though I was skeptical at first, I'm hopeful that Google+ Hangouts will make certain aspects of my job a little easier. At the same time I hope to be able to provide superior research help to students online using this tool.
Tomorrow I lead a reference tips session at our weekly librarian's meeting on the main campus, which will be all about Hangouts. This Saturday I'll be teaching my second library research class to students in another state via Google+ Hangouts (you can read about my first session here, from back when it was named G+ Hangouts with Extras). A week ago I joined our librarian's meeting on the main campus for the first time from my Portland office with positive results and will continue to attend at least one meeting a month using this tool. There'll be another blog post here soon focused on Google+ and Hangouts with some entertaining screenshots so stay tuned if this topic is of interest.
Are you using Google+ or G+ Hangouts at your library? Are you an educator using Google+ Hangouts for office hours or in any other way? I'd love to hear about what others are doing with mobile and/or social, feel free to share in comments.
I'll end with a quote that resonates with me as I continue to follow mobile and emerging technologies "The most important thing we can do is to ensure that when the technology matures, we are ready to deliver content to it." -Jason Griffey, Head of Library Information Technology at the University of Tennessee and author of Mobile Technologies and Libraries.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
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