Monthly Archives: October 2012

Avoid disaster by backing up your data

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One of the great advantages of the internet is the convenience of cloud based services where you can store documents, pictures, bookmarks or notes and access them on any device with an internet connection. Despite this level of convenience it is still important to maintain backups of your data in the case of unforeseen circumstances, such as your account being hacked or a service shutting down. Here we will take a look at a few ways to backup your online data from some of the most popular services like Diigo, Google and Evernote.

Diigo

One of the most useful online tools that we recommend is Diigo, a cloud based service where you can conveniently save all of your bookmarks. Last week we saw the flip side to this convenience as the Diigo.com domain was hijacked and the service became unavailable. Fortunately the Diigo team managed to restore the site and all user data was recovered. But for those users who faced losing years of bookmarks and work it was a reminder of the importance of backup.

Diigo provides a couple of easy ways to backup your bookmarks and duplicate your library. To save a copy of all of your bookmarks, you can login to Diigo and select Tools>Export your library. You will have a number of options for export, but the best one to choose is the CSV format. This is a standard file type that can be opened by many other bookmarking tools and services, as well as spreadsheet software like Excel. Export the file and save it to computer in a safe place so you always have a copy. It’s good practice to back up in this way every few months so even if you lose access to your account you’ll still have your bookmarks.

Diigo also has another useful feature which lets you link to Delicious (another bookmarking tool). You can set up your Diigo account to automatically send all new bookmarks to your Delicious account as well. It’s a useful way of automatically backing up. To enable this feature login to Diigo and select Tools>Save to Delicious. You will be asked to enter your Delicious account name and password. Do this and then click Validate. Once this is completed then any new bookmarks added to Diigo will also be added to Delicious.

Evernote

This powerful service is a great way to store all sorts of data. Backup is quite a simple process. You can save all of your notes by opening the Evernote software on your computer, right clicking on the All notes button and selecting Export Notes (see below). Choose the ENEX format and save it to your computer in a safe place. For more information visit the Evernote support forum.

Google services

Many of us also have a lot of information stored in our Google accounts like Google Docs, YouTube or Picasa. Google provides a useful service for backing up your data called Google Takeout. To use this service visit https://www.google.com/takeout/ and login to your account. You will be presented with all of the services you use, and here you can choose to save All of your data or just the data from specific services by selecting Choose services.

Google Takeout lets you create an archive of your Google account

Once you’ve chosen the services you want to backup, select Create Archive and the backup will begin. The archive will be built and when it is ready you can click Download and save it to your computer in a safe place.

Cloud based drive apps

Several of the most popular cloud based storage options like Dropbox, Microsoft Skydrive and Google Drive also make backing up easy. All of these services let you install software that will sync all of your files back to a folder on your computer. In this way even if you lose access to the internet or your account you will still have your files. To download and install these apps follow the respective links below.

Google Drive

Microsoft Skydrive

Dropbox

Other services:

We’ve only touched on backing up from some of the most popular services, but many other web based tools also provide backup and export options. Take the time to explore the options menu of each service, look for backup or export options and make sure you read through the help and support forums of each site. If you’re feeling really adventurous then have a look at our posts on If This Then That or Wappwolf, two services that can be used to automate the internet and create backups across your services. A little bit of digital housekeeping today could save you a lot of heartache or hard work in the future.

Infinity Ring: Read the books and play the games

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Today our guest post comes from Joy Burlak, Education Resource Centre Manager at Sunbury Downs College. Joy explains how the Infinity Ring series of books and games is taking her school library by storm.

A poster came across my desk from Scholastic, promoting ‘Infinity Ring’ “Fix the past. Save the future. Read the book. Follow the guide. Play the game. www.infinityring.com ” 

Such intrigue! I could not let that go without further investigation. The poster had piqued my interest in the exact way we try to entice students – we want to stimulate their curiosity. I was curious.

I went onto the Scholastic website and read about the ‘New Multi-Platform Time Travel Adventure Series Infinity Ring.’ The concept is simple. There are 7 books in the series. Each book comes with a guide which allows access to a new adventure in the online interactive game ‘Infinity Ring.’ I was hooked. Then I saw the promotional video.

The pace and drama of that video was enough. I showed it to some of my students and they too were hooked.

All I had to do now was organise for the IT department to unblock the game, and then we had to allow permissions for Unity web player to run across the network.

In the meantime students were reading up a storm, making sure they had finished the book before the game became available. The day finally arrived and the first student started playing. Soon enough we had an audience to be proud of. Those who had borrowed the book (I bought 3 copies) ran off to get their copy so they could sit and read and then get onto the game. That first day created 6 reservations for the book.

The first book is called ‘A mutiny in time’ by James Dashner. It introduces our heroes and the premise of the series and then takes the reader on a wild adventure back in time to Christopher Columbus in 1492. The adventure continues with the first game when students are taken back to1792 and the French Revolution. There are 7 books in the series, to be published over the next 18 months. James Dashner wrote the first book and will conclude the series, however the books in between will be written by other authors. This allows for a shorter publishing run and ensures interest remains at fever pitch.

The graphics are amazing and the plot is complex enough to challenge Year 8 students. I would suggest Year 9’s may even learn something. The website comes complete with Teachers’ Notes and free Common Core whiteboard activities. Circulating whilst students play the game provides an excellent opportunity to challenge their curiosity. A comment was made about crossing to the other side of the river, so my natural question was “What is the name of the river that runs through Paris?” The name d’Artagnan came up, so again the questioning continued – is he a fictional character or is there an historic link? The answers had to be provided the following day, before the game could continue.

We have decided to have 1 day each week as ‘Infinity Ring’ day. Students will be either playing the game (after reading the book) or actually reading the book. The best of both worlds!

Thanks to Joy for telling us about the passion of her students for this new series of novels. We’re off to read the first novel and start playing!

 

ImageCodr: Easy Attribution for Flickr CC Photos

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Correctly citing an image with a Creative Commons licence can be a tricky task for both educators and their students. ImageCodr is a website that aims to help by providing a generator that will construct attributions for Flickr Creative Commons photos that can be embedded into blogs and websites.

Simply paste in the url of the Flickr image and click Submit

To use ImageCodr, simply copy the URL of the desired Flickr photo and click on the Get Code! tab. Drop the URL into box and Submit. There is also an option to install a shortcut in your menu bar which will automatically attribute any Flickr photo you are viewing. You are provided with a preview and some information about the CC licence as well as the image code with proper attribution.

Here is an example of a Flickr image attributed with ImageCodr. Too easy!

 

Integrated apps added to Google Drive

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Google Drive has been adopted by many schools and educators as a powerful and flexible cloud based documents editor. The service (formerly known as Google Docs) is now even more useful as you can install apps to create and edit a range of documents.

While Google Drive has always replicated the Microsoft Office suite in being able to create spreadsheets, word processed documents and presentations, now users can also install apps like image editors, mind mapping software or even graphing calculators.

In order to see a full list of apps that integrate with Google Drive login to your Google Drive account. Once you are logged in select  Create> More> Get more apps. (See below)

Install apps from the Create menu

If you are using any browser other than Google Chrome you will get a message saying that you need to download and install Chrome to use these apps. I’ve been able to install and use several of the apps in Firefox, but you will probably find the services do work more reliably in Chrome.

Now you will see a list of all of the apps that integrate with Google Drive. To install an app hover over the icon and click +Install or +Add to Chrome. You will also be asked a series of confirmation questions regarding what the app can access. As always, read these messages carefully and don’t give an app access to your data if you are not comfortable with the level of access it is requesting.

Once the app is added to Google Drive you may notice that some of the icons of your files will change. This indicates that the file will open in the related app or you can create a new file using the Create>More option. If you’d like to uninstall any apps you can return to Google Drive and select Settings>Manage Apps (see below).

You can uninstall any apps from the Settings menu

 

If that all seems a bit confusing, we’ve put together a short video demonstrating how to install, use and uninstall apps to your Google Drive account (3.08 min).

With this addition Google Drive is certainly becoming an even more tempting alternative to Microsoft Office. To get you started, here are some of the integrated apps that we recommend:

Pixlr Editor – a powerful photo editor with a number of features found in high end software like Photoshop. The Pixlr Express app is also a good option for adding simple frames, filters, stamps and text.

Mindmeister– a very attractive mind mapping tool, with lovely graphics and some powerful export options

Floorplanner– a fun but powerful app to plan out rooms. Includes 3D furniture and displays floorplans in both 2D and 3D. Just make sure you draw in a floor first!

Floorplanner lets you design your ultimate room

Google Cultural Institute

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With History Week kicking off in Victoria today seems like the perfect time to take a look at the new Google Cultural Institute. The project brings together a number of historical and cultural resources from cultural institutions around the world. The site features a range of digitised items, curated timelines and a number of interesting digital projects.

The Cultural Institute features resources from institutions such as the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Anne Frank House, along with photographic archives from organisations like Life and Getty Images. You can select the institution or decade you are interested in by clicking on the Explore button. Context is provided to many of the digitised items in the form of curated timelines produced by the relevant institutions.  A great example of this is the Imperial War Museum’s D-Day timeline.

Curated timelines provide context to the items displayed

The site also brings together a number of digital projects that you may already seen, such as the Google Art Project or  World Wonders (with streetview images of the Great Barrier Reef and Scott’s Hut). A particular favourite with library staff has been the Versailles 3D project, where you can help Louis XIV build his palace.

While the curated timelines and digital projects offer a great deal of value, you can also browse archives using a general search term. Items can be narrowed down with a date slider and modified by topics such as place, event or object type. It’s a similar process to a standard Google search and may suggest that soon the Cultural Institute will be a standard Google search option in the same way News, Images and Video are now.

It’s clear that Google aims for the Cultural Institute to become a repository for a range of artefacts from across the world, moving items from individual websites to a single archive. It is an interesting move to try and create a place where all cultural material can be stored and seems to continue Google’s attempts to position themselves as the holders of culture and knowledge (as they are also doing with their book scanning project). Whether their lofty ambitions are successful remains to be seen, while some may again call into question the true motivations of the company. But for the moment there is no doubt that the Cultural Institute is a useful site and well worth exploring.

SLVLearn 2012 resources now available

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Last week the State Library of Victoria’s Education team hosted the inaugural SLVLearn 2012 conference with two varied days of professional development and sharing. The first day explored the topic of information access, while the second day saw a number of Melbourne’s cultural institutions get together to show how Melbourne can be used as a learning environment.  Many of the resources and presentations from the conference are now available online.

The Future of Information saw a number of educators present on topics such as curation tools, digital citizenship, creative commons and accessing digitised resources.  The presenters have kindly shared their presentations and you can find links and a full summary of the day in this Storify- SLVLearn 2012 The Future of Information.

Kelly Gardiner, Cindy Tschernitz, Sandy Phillips, John Pearce and Cathy Hainstock explore the topic of Information vs. Skills

Learning in the Present: The Melbourne City Experience saw 22 of Melbourne’s cultural institutions come together to showcase their resources and school programs. A panel discussion explored the logistics of organising city experiences for students. Teachers also had the opportunity to go on a walking tour of a number of institutions.

The day also explored how technology such as Historypin, Storify and Twitter can be used to enhance the experience before, during and after the city visits. You can access a list of the resources mentioned in this Diigo list: The Melbourne City Experience.

 

Save quotes with Citelighter

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Citelighter is a free online bibliographic management tool. It claims to be a simple tool that allows you click on a ‘Capture’ button every time you want to add a resource to your collection. This will then allow you to automatically create a bibliography.

After downloading the widget to Firefox, I ran into trouble right from the start – the Citelighter toolbar didn’t seem to let me login and the ‘Capture’ button didn’t seem to work. I tried logging off and logging back on but that didn’t help.  But after a few attempts I managed to get it going. Using the toolbar in Google Chrome seemed to work better. Despite the way Citelighter lets you save quotes with one- click,  I still have a few reservations about the extent of its usefulness:

– The introductory video mentioned that it “grabs most of the bibliographic information”. Despite this, Citelighter will not grab details of books. In this way it is less powerful than tools like Zotero or BibMe. Citelighter is not as efficient if we have to source and enter the missing information.

– Citelighter seems to rely on the user to highlight the text and also fill in several bibliographic details. This can be problematic for people who prefer to read from the printed text. This indicates that Citelighter is only capable of recognising websites but not printed resources such as books and journals. And yes, sure enough, you will need to manually add all the bibliographic details yourself – how inconvenient!

Citelighter lets you highlight and capture quotes

Overall I would say that Citelighter and the toolbar is a useful tool for keeping track of online quotes, but it is not as powerful as a tool like Zotero. But if all you need is a service that lets you save quotes and produce bibliographies for online materials, then Citelighter could be useful. Have a look at our guide to using Citelighter to see how to get started.

Create Customised Resource Collections with Gooru

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Gooru is a search engine you won’t want to miss if you are a Science, Math or Social Sciences teacher. It is free to use and allows teachers to create customised ‘play-lists’ of resources for their students. Gooru’s library of resources is extensive, vetted by learning professionals and includes videos, games, interactive items, texts and quizzes.
Once registered, creating your own ‘play-list’ or ‘Collection’ is an easy search, drag and drop process. Teachers will also appreciate professional touches such as the ability to include key vocabulary and learning objectives in the collection overview, and being able to add voice narration to direct students or highlight points within the collection.
The collaborative nature of the site allows teachers to use and adapt collections that other professionals have created and shared. Initially, any collections you create will default to a private setting, but once the quality of the content has been checked by the site’s experts (they are stringent about inappropriate content), Gooru encourages users to share; it is part of the growing OER (Open Education Resources) movement.

Students need to register to access collections and resources too, but are not able to create content or edit unless collaborator status is shared with them.

Perhaps the most appealing feature of all is Gooru’s ‘smart quizzes’. Students can test their understanding as they learn via enriched quizzes that can offer hints and explanations during the process. Once a quiz is taken, students receive feedback, including suggestions for further resources to enhance their understanding if needed.

Gooru is currently in beta so feedback and suggestions are welcome as they further improve the site. The website promises:

Our machine learning experts are working hard to develop and improve our algorithms and performance and deliver a truly personalized and adaptive learning experience.

Sounds like things will even get better.

 

Explore Victoria’s history with Vic Heritage

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Today’s guest post comes from Tanya Wolkenberg, Heritage Communications Project Officer for the Heritage Council of Victoria. Tanya introduces Vic Heritage, an iPhone app that lets you explore significant sites across Victoria. 

Vic Heritage is an app designed to connect people to the history of the places around them. For years now I’ve been watching the development of mobile technologies with keen interest, thinking of how these technologies can connect people to the stories and layers of history in their streets and suburbs.

There are lots of apps out there doing this really well, Historypin probably first among them. As I work for the Heritage Council of Victoria and we have an amazing database of 2,200 places and objects of state significance to Victoria, that’s where my focus lies. Each place or object on the register has a Statement of Significance – a statement of why that place is so important it should be protected – and these reasons might range from architectural to scientific, to contributing to an understanding of Victoria’s cultural history.

I was also really interested in capturing people’s stories about those places. If we think of the Statement of Significance as the official history of the place, I wanted to know the unofficial history too. Maybe someone saw their first gig there, or their parents got married there…. I wanted the app to reflect the layers of personal and community meaning attached to places.

In order to do that, I worked with our developers, Outware Mobile, to create some custom functionality. This allows users to add their own content to individual places, either a comment or image. Once the content is moderated it is displayed on a tab attached to the place.

We also created some custom tour functionality, which allows users to create their own tours by adding places together and giving them a title (might be related to a theme or location). Users can theme places together by a type of place, style or personal interest (for example, silos, Art Deco or swimming pools) or by location. They can save the tours for themselves or chose to share the tours with others.

The tours functionality is particularly useful for excursions – students can individually or in small groups create their own tours of the city according to buildings on a particular route, by architectural style or era, or by a type of place (civic building, church, etc). They can share these tours with the rest of the class, or report back on the histories of some of the places they’ve seen along the way, having read the Statements of Significance. I’d be keen to get feedback from other teachers using it as part of their classroom or excursion activities.

There are also ‘Recommended tours’ – tours created by us. These include two audio tours – one of the housing styles and social history of St Kilda narrated by Radio National’s Peter Mares, and another on contemporary architects’ re-use of old industrial buildings in the city. The two other tours in this section include one on 20th century architecture, and another which explores, via the built heritage of the city, Victoria’s Framework of Historical Themes. Each of these are easily walkable and lend themselves to excursions.

The app is currently only available for iOS devices, but we plan to rebuild the Victorian Heritage Database with most of the app’s functionality in the near future, and a mobile version of this will be available to all smartphone users.

The Vic Heritage app can be downloaded from the Apple Appstore.

Thanks to Tanya for taking us through some of the features of the Vic Heritage app. Tanya has also recorded a brief video demonstration of the app’s key features.

PLN short course builds your research toolkit

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The next round of the Victorian Personal Learning Network has been announced, with the first ever Victorian PLN short course kicking off on November 12 and running for 4 units. The Research Toolkit course will explore reliable online resources, effective search techniques and tools for organisation and referencing.

The online course is self paced and will feature webinars with research experts. It’s a great way for teachers and library staff to brush up on their skills and keep up to date with new tools and techniques. Research Toolkit is also a good refresher for previous participants in the Victorian PLN course looking to reinforce and further develop many of their own research skills.

Image of research guide on census

State Library of Victoria Research Guides

Research Toolkit is a partnership between the State Library of Victoria and the School Library Association of Victoria. The course costs $85 per person, but group discounts are available for teams of six or more. For more information visit the State Library of Victoria website, or email learning@slv.vic.gov.au