"Information Literacy in our future careers" poster winners

In week 11 we announced the results of the most popular poster at the Information Literacy in our future careers exhibition:
Winner:
Team M: Marc Muller, Brigette Lee, Foteini Karagianni, Chao Yu
An example of a comment on their poster was was: "Very creative approach - love the 'old-style cinema' theme and the black & white pics of the team! Integrated, clear, attractive poster". The poster is shown on the right.

Runners up:
Team L: Jin He, Chuxiong Zeng, Jie Zhang, Jun Zhang
Team A: Roisin Cassidy, Jayne Drew, Catherine Hoodless, Lynsey Shenton
The picture shows members of teams M, L and A after receiving their prizes.

Evaluation forms:
Random draw: Luqing Zheng
Best comments (special judges prize) Brigette Lee
The picture shows the two prize recipients

Congratulations to all the winners!

Feedback on each others' Team blogs

Today we want you to start by looking at your partner team's blog and giving them some feedback. Aim to give at least:
- one comment which highlights something good about their blog
- one comment which points out a way they could improve their blog.
We will give you a little time to examine your partner team's blog, and note your comments. Then we will ask you to give each other feedback.

Later in the semester (about week 10) the tutors will be announcing the "best team blog". This was the post that announced the 2012 best team blog: http://inf6350-2012.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/team-blog-winners-congrats-to-team-a.html

Today, please consider the following points, which are similar to the ones the tutors will consider when judging the best team blog:

How good is the visual appearance of the blog? e.g.
- Can you read the text easily?
- Is it easy to find your way round the blog?
- Is the blog attractive to look at?
- Have they included visual elements (pictures or videos), where appropriate, in the posts?

Have the team used Blogger design and layout features? e.g.
- Have they included a list of of links?
- Does it look like they have customised the blog layout to make it distinctive?
- Have they included other Blogger widgets (e.g. text box, followers, tag cloud)?

How much have they blogged?
- Have they done at least an introductory post, a post on the 7 Pillars, and posts on the Information Universe?
- Are the posts relevant and interesting?
- Has the whole team contributed to the blog, or do the posts seem just to be done by one person?
*Note with this section, please consider that some people are "beginner" bloggers, whilst others are more experienced. At this stage we do not expect perfect posts, but still we hope for the basic number of posts, and for more than one person to have blogged, so everyone gets a chance to learn blogging*


This is connected with the Present pillar of the SCONUL 7 Pillars of Information Literacy.

Blogs: what to do today

1. One member of each team should set up a blog using their Sheffield University identity (logging into MUSE, clicking Google Mail, then selecting More, then clicking on Blogger, then creating a blog).
At this point you may have to sign up for Blogger. Everyone in the team needs to sign up to Blogger, as once your team blog is set up, all team members have to be invited in as authors.

2. Firstly, invite in all the other member of the team, using their Sheffield University email address. This is on tab Settings, Basic, Permissions.

If there is someone who doesn’t have a Sheffield University email address, then use another Google-identity email for now. If they are using another email address, they will have to sign into that email account to accept the invitation and log on. When they respond, upgrade them to admin status so they can change features of the blog.

3. Secondly, email Sheila (s.webber@sheffield.ac.uk) or just tell Sheila, what the web address and name of your blog is, so she can link to it from this main blog.

4. Customise your team blog’s appearance (Template and Layout)

• Change the template first (Template tab)
• Change the background picture
• Try different typefaces and colours for the blog title, text etc.
• Note that if you change your template, you lose any changes you made in Layout, so decide on the template first. However, it is ok to make changes to the font etc. of your template at any time.
• In Layout arrange and add widgets
- - You must add a links gadget and include a link to this main Inf6350 blog, http://inf6350-2013.blogspot.co.uk/ and to the link of your partner team

- - If you have time add some more widgets e.g. a feed from another blog, a poll, features that allow people to subscribe to or follow your blog.
• If you have yet more time, add a page (by selecting Pages, New Page) saying a bit more about your team

5. Post to your blog.

• For your first group post, introduce yourselves
• For your second group post, find another blog you like, and write a couple of sentences about it, with a link

6. Label your posts, so that later on you can find all the posts on the same topic. You describe the subject of the post with words and phrases. Click on Labels (right of screen) and click done when you have finished.

Blogs: What are they and why blog?

Weblogs, or blogs, have some key characteristics:

• Blogs have posts which may contain text, links, pictures or embedded media. This (what you are reading) is a blog post.
• The posts are published one at a time, over a period of time.
• The blog entries are arranged in reverse chronological oder (most recent first)
• Blogs are often written by one person, but there are also collaborative blogs

If you are unfamiliar with blogs, you may want to watch this video: http://www.commoncraft.com/video/blogs

There are various kinds of blog, for example:

• Personal diaries
• Information or knowledge blogs (e.g. http://www.intranetfocus.com/blog, http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/)
• Corporate blogs (e.g. http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/)
• Opinion or issue-based blogs (e.g. http://www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk/blog/)
• Educational blogs (e.g. the ones for this class)

Here are some articles, and one book, that explain why and how blogging is useful for business and in libraries:

• Cohen, H. (2013, January 20). Blogging ROI: 15 Ways Blogs Make Money [Web log post]. Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://heidicohen.com/blogging-roi-15-ways-blogs-make-money/ (Short article from a consultant)
• Crosby, C. (2010) Effective blogging for libraries. London, England: Facet.
  
• Li, C. and Stromberg, C. (2007) The ROI of blogging. Retrieved 20 September 2013 from http://www.ieecho.com/pdfs/ROI-of-Blogging.pdf (A Forrester report on the Return on Investment of corporate blogging)
  
• Liao, Q. et al. (2011) Enterprise blogging in a global context: comparing Chinese and American practices. CSCW ’11 Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer Supported Coperative Work, pp35-44. Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1958824.1958831
  
• Potter, N. (2010) Everything you've ever wanted to know about library blogs and blogging! Retrieved 25 September 2013 from http://thewikiman.org/blog/?p=783 (Includes “thewikiman’s” seminar materials)
  
• Yardi, S. Golder, S. and Brzozowski, M. (2009). Blogging at work and the corporate attention economy. CHI '09 Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems ACM. Retrieved 20 September from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1519016

Blogging can also be a subject for your research. A number of Masters students in the Sheffield University iSchool have written Masters dissertations which include investigations of blogging e.g.

• Wang, J. (2011) Use of blogging, social networking sites and microblogging for knowledge sharing, focusing on Information Management students in group work. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 29 September 2013 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2010-11/External/JWang_100220696.pdf
  
• Bullingham, L. (2010) What would Goffman think about furries?: Persona adoption and identity masking in blogs and second life. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 29 September 2013 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2009-10/External/LBullingham_Bullingham_090125096.pdf
  
• Evans, I (2008) An evaluation of the user experiences of web 2.0 tools and technologies amongst NHS staff. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 29 September 2013 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2007-08/External/Evans_Ingrid_MScHI.pdf
  
• Rigby, A. (2007) Looking for freedom: An exploration of the Iranian blogosphere. (Masters thesis, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom). Retrieved 29 September 2013 from http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2006-07/External/Rigby_Alexis_MALib.pdf

Please do add comments if you have examples of useful blogs, or want to say why you blog.