Desert: A bittersweet morsel and the final "Thing"

Kia ora koutou katoa

He mihi tēnei ki ngā aumangaea 

ō CreATE 

mō ō koutou mahi, awhina hoki ki a 

mātou te kapa o “23 Things”

pai rawa atu ngā mea

 ia wiki ia wiki, 

heoi me mutu ngā mea pai katoa,

He mihi nunui, he mihi mahana, 

he mihi poto ki a koutou

Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa

Right at the beginning of these "Things", and in my very first blog post here I started with a mihi, and so I thought it only proper that I finish with one as well. Basically I am thanking the amazing staff at CreATE for all their work and support of us during our journey into using Social Media, and other online tools to help us with our research

  by  Gary Hayes                                                                                                                   

I have enjoyed this programme very much and have had colleagues from outside of the Faculty of Education frothing at the mouth to participate. 

Learning new things at a self regulated pace was awesome, and I pushed myself not only because I am a bit of a geek but because of the promise of a coffee voucher. 

   by  Edsel L 

I am a tutu which means I like to play with new things and figure out how to use them; so for me the 23 "Things" were another opportunity (and an excuse) to have a tutu. 

My blog has been an especially eye opening exercise for me, I like to think that as we have moved along in our programme that my blog writing has changed and that you are able to follow this change throughout the different posts within this blog. 

I intend to continue blogging and have decided that I will try and make this a regular weekly feature. I remember reading in a post or on a website that the important thing is to write, which immediately made sense to me after all...

How do you get better at doing something? 

You do it as much as you can (Practice)

I will continue using Twitter, Blogger, Academia.edu and Evernote. 

I think that as I have colleagues (from other faculties/ service departments) who are interested in being a part of this programme one thing that CreATE may want to consider is opening the course University wide perhaps with assistance from Research who put "Increase your impact" up with tips on using social media to get your research out there. 

So once again big ups 

   by  FACEBOOK(LET) 

to the CreATE team who have done such an awesome job preparing the material and supporting us throughout the programme. 

I guess my final words are watch this space and I should be posting a link to my new blog here soon.

Cheese Course: Things 20 & 21

Ki te kahore he whakakitenga

ka ngaro te iwi

Without vision or foresight the people will be lost

This week the rest of the things are now available, and I will endeavour to finish all 23 Things before the end of next week. 

Thing 20 is Data visualisation tools, which is where I thought that this weeks whakatauki fits in as these tools can provide a visual representation of

• trends over a period of time (giving us foresight and possible directions) 
• trends over a geographical region (demographic information) and so on.

Another use for these types of tools and the way that I used it for this blog is to give a visual representation of what is currently in the news on a particular topic so I decided I would use Tagxedo [Tag-SEE-doh] which is a great tool and extremely easy to use.

1. This is where you start 

2. You can now choose where you would like to get your chosen words from, I have chosen (4) News and my chosen words are Maori and Waitangi (to join two words use the tilde symbol ~ between them) and press submit I haven't altered any settings at this stage.

3. From the image below you are able to edit and alter the image as you like. The respins randomly alter the image by the chosen respin (Color, Theme etc) or you can choose all.

4. You can alter the image by using the options, here I have used "Shape" and decided I would use the bomb shape because it looks like a poi.

5. The image is now altered. Go to the Word|Layout options link.

6. This link provides a number of tabs. In the "Word" tab you are able to write (copy and paste) a url to harvest your chosen words. I did a search for Maori and Waitangi on the NZ Herald website then copied the url of the results page.

7. Under the tab "Skip" you are given the list of words within your image and you can skip (hide) these words in your image, after selecting the words to skip click on Accept.    

8. You now have your image, mine is a representation of words used by the media in regards to the words Maori and Waitangi 

Above is an image saved from Tagxedo. 

9. If you go to the website when you hover your mouse over 

 a word it is enlarged and comes forward. (See image below)Tagxedo has been used in real life situations by lskudder.














"Thing 21" is about tracking and analytics and the exercise is an analysis of the data from this blog. 

To date the most popular post was from my post Consommé  and the reason is possibly the comment from Steve and a number of tweets about the post. There was a peak on the 5th November in the viewer stats for the month.

"Kumara" by Sarah Licenced under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I uploaded the post Salad course on the 2nd which had some links that may have provided motivation for people to view well as a number of tweets about it as well.


I have looked at my Moodle statistics and found that All logs shows my usage statistics.

The graph shows me in a concise way my usage, which comes from the data in the table underneath. 

The graph shows that in the first half of the programme I logged in on Mondays, however after the 10th October I started to log in during the middle of the week and then again on the Friday.

The Outline report shows which links within the Moodle site you have looked at, how many times and when. 

Although I can see that both of these sets of information can be useful for students. 

• as a way of gauging their progress in a course 
• revision of parts of the course where there is one or no views
• their usage patterns and possible reasons for this so that they can use this for planning of study etc

I am going to make a sweeping generalisation by saying that I don't think many students would actually use the data unless it was a compulsory part of the course. 

I do think the data is extremely useful for the people teaching courses as it can be used to 

• show the parts of a course in Moodle that students are engaging with most
• the parts where students are not engaging at all 
• indicate the parts of a course which need redesign because they are either too easy or too difficult.
• show the behaviour patterns of the students both active and passive within a course

Gelee: Small Reisling inter-course palate refresher

Ka mate kainga tahi, ka ora kainga rua

With one house want, with two houses plenty

This whakatauki is similar to don't keep all your eggs in one Basket, I thought this an 

   by  jronaldlee 

appropriate whakatauki because of my habit of saving a copy of important documents on my desk-top and a copy using one of the many cloud storage options that are open to us and of which we learned in thing 18. 

   by  fifikins 

While studying a friend of mine had a file he was working on corrupted which rendered the 
disk he had saved all his files on inoperative. His experience highlighted for me the need to save often, save in multiple places.

Some of the uses I have had for cloud storage 

• Meeting minutes and agenda for different councils and committees I have been a part of. I would save all the attached documents to the cloud and could access them which meant no printing (Or carrying heaps of papers on the plane)
• Sharing and saving parts of my research for my MIS (Libs), less hassle carrying everything around with you and partnered with reference management tools (I had attached notes and the article or a scanned pdf to the items record) all I needed was a laptop or netbook, with some internet access I could continue working on my research report wherever I was in the world.
• Writing a brief journal while away at conference in a document and uploading to the cloud when I could, using either my phone or tablet. Very handy for those reports that you have to write on your return.
• Of course a lot of us now have smart devices which take pictures and these are quite often now sent to some space in the cloud, for easy access and use later on (also saves space on your devices memory)

I am sure there are many more uses that people can think of but this is the way I have used cloud storage to date. Scarily when I looked at the list that was in Thing 18 this week I was mortified that I have an account with all but one of those on the list, and I intend to keep them. 

Thing 19 is about Live communication, it has always been my preference for face to face communication. I found that even in my undergraduate lectures that if I couldn't see the face of the lecturer I would often leave the lecture and grab notes off a friend. New technologies now allow us to talk and see our friends wherever they are in the world either through our computers or any number of mobile devices. I have skyped a friend using my tablet, Video called my brother on my phone, Hung out using Google on my net-book at home and had a discussion with a colleague using Face-time on an i-Pad mini. I am sure that we can all see the significance of real time face to face communications with our colleagues via some form of video conferencing, especially if the programme you're using has other tools such as remote control and screen sharing of the device and using presentation software such as PowerPoint, Prezy or Slides.

The Main: Things 16 And 17

Kahore he tarainga tahere i te ara

You cannot hew a bird spear by the way

Bird-spear points.  From New Zealand Electronic Text Collection Taken from "The Maori as he was: A brief account of life as it was in the Pre-European Days" By Elsdon Best

Things 16 and 17 are entitled Productivity in research, what this weeks whakatauki alludes to is the need for preparation. Bird spears were not easily made and needed time and skill to be made properly. Productivity can be seen in this whakatauki in the making of the birdspears however I think that an essential part of productivity is preparation.

Reference management tools are a part of that preparation.

I am a fan of folders and sub-folders for organisation, I have stated this in my posts about things  5 and 6 The Hors' douveres  

For reference management I prepare myself firstly by using our own Library Search (Library Catalogue)

by  wlef70 


In Library Search we are able to check due dates, renew our 
books, and see what fines we have . There is more functionality in Library Search which allows us to save items from the catalogue. You are able to save your items in my beloved folders and even sub-folders.  If you wanted to you could also save your searches and set up RSS Feeds. 

"This is all good" I hear you say "but how does this translate into references and reference lists?"

Part of the functionality that I spoke of earlier is an ability to Select items (Click on the boxes next to the item) 

and Push them through to your preferred reference management tool 

I always suggest to first year students that they should start by referencing manually while their essays and assignments  are quite short, this is so that they understand why and how to reference. They also gain an ability to recognise an error in an in-text citation and/or reference list made by a reference management tool. 

I used Endnote and Endnote Web for my MIS (Libs) research report (Yes I know shameless self promotion)

 
 by  Mendeley.com 

I signed up for a RefWorks account as that is the current reference management tool promoted and supported by the UoA, and I also have a Zotero account as well. I don't think that there is one that is better than the other as I think it comes down to personal preference.

Thing 17 hmmm well I have had a look and also signed up for an Evernote account. In our Twitter "Thing" I admitted that  

   by  joe.ross 

I had only just realised what a hash-tag was and how they were used. Evernote, our own library search and a multitude of social media now allow tags/labels/hash-tags which allows the user to label items of interest to them. I have come to think of  hash-tags

by romana klee 


labels  

by Sarah Parrott 

and tags as a very effective access and organisational tool. 

The ability to make your own tags/labels/hash-tags helps to access your current resources and focus further searches. Also if other people have used the same label then you will see their resources as well.

Having multiple tab/label/hash-tags stops you having to decide into which folder a resource most belongs or having multiple copies of the same resource in different folders.

Looking at Evernote I would use the existing notebook structure in the following way

• Each chapter/section of my research would be allocated a Notebook
• Any search including key words and search terms would be noted in the appropriate notebook/s
• Results or the URL for the results would be noted
• Resources of particular interest would be noted
• All notes would be given tags as well as being placed in the appropriate notebook/s
• My own notes from seminars/conferences/courses if not added directly would be scanned, uploaded and allocated appropriate tags and notebook/s

Of course this is just a brief idea of how I would use Evernote in research. I would basically make it the central hub for the resources in my research.

   by  416style 

For more shameless self promotion follow this note from my Evernote account. I will try the personal smart device one a little later.

Salad Course: A warm Kumara salad with walnuts ohh and also Things 14 and 15

Kāore te kumara e kōrero mō tōna ake reka

The Kumara does not say how sweet it is

"Kumara" by Sarah Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This weeks things have been combined and I will put them under the term acknowledgement. The whakatauki this week is applicable not only because this is the salad course, but because it reminds us that it is our job as researchers and users of original materials, ideas and concepts to acknowledge the work of those that create the materials we are using. 

For this weeks exercise I found on the creative commons.org site this wiki which is about best practice for attribution and where I got the idea for how to acknowledge where I got the kumara image from. 

I have to admit that I didn't read our exercise for the week properly at the start and found a cheat from a website called ImageCodr where you put the flickr picture url into a box and it will generate html code with the image and the appropriate Creative Commons Licences. You then add the html into your blog and hey presto you get the picture below it is from Flickr and is a place close to my heart called Anaura bay on the East Coast of the country where my Nanny (Grandmother) grew up.

   by  mpeacey 

I was going to use the cheat until I read through our exercise and saw that we were to download, upload and acknowledge the original creator including the use of the appropriate CC licenses... Gosh lucky I went through the things again.

Fish Course: Things 12 & 13

He aha te kai ō te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero

What is the food of chiefs?. It is knowledge, it is communication

Kia ora koutou katoa, greetings to you all, this week is all about knowledge and communication. The translation above is not by any means a direct translation, however I believe that it is an appropriate one, kōrero in this context is not just about speaking, it is about being an active participant in the conversation, which includes listening, questioning, and taking on board any ideas or concepts from the information that is being shared.

Thing 12 is about making and sharing presentations and videos at the bottom of this post you will see the powerpoint presentation (now on slideshare) that I gave for my very first conference workshop entitled "Breaking the Barriers".  I am hoping to change the presentation on a regular basis, maybe monthly. I do however believe that more important than the presentation was the discussion and notes from each of the questions which I will post soon.

Breaking the barriers from Troy Tuhou

Sorbet: A refreshing palate cleanser and for the "23 Things" crew "Things 10 &11"

Naku te rourou nau te rourou ka ora ai te iwi

With your basket and my basket the people will live

The whakatauki this week speaks to the idea of co-operation and the joining of resources to achieve positive outcomes for all involved. I know I am reaching with this whakatauki but I can see how this could be applied to this weeks "Things" because it is by sharing what we have created and that which we have found to achieve mutual benefit for all parties. This week we are asked to share a blog from another of the "23 Things" crew. I decided that I would share this one by  Nicole Price

Digital exploration: Cyber Safety - Thing 2,3 & 4: Step one was to make the decision to undertake the journey, step two is to ensure that the boat and any equipment I might need is safe and ...

I have chosen this post because I enjoy the style of writing that Nicole uses and her use of images within the blog (which I tried to emulate in a couple of my last posts). I also like the links to other relevant sites that she includes within her posts.

I believe that to be able to reach our target audiences we have to ensure that our blogs, and the other social media platforms we use are written in styles that encourage engagement and I think that Nicole does a very good job of this.

For "Thing 11"  I have an embedded you tube video which is a short remix of a longer presentation Using social media to disseminate research outputs -- Melissa Terras which is also available on you tube. I decided to use the remix to generate interest in the original longer presentation. 

Although really superficial at 1:35 seconds there is still information of interest to the 23 Things "Crew" such as

• Use of multiple social media platforms
• Blog (write about your research)
• Twitter (Tweet links to your blog and your research
• Need to build a digital presence and then use of that to launch your research

This Link is from one of the databases that we are subscribed to called Alexander Street Press (ASP)., please have a look:  

How to Annotate and Share Research Using Online Social Bookmarking 

To access this video you will need to use your net ID and password.  The reason I added this was we just recently had a "Thing" that referred to bookmarks and RSS Feeds so I thought it appropriate for the "23 Things" Crew.   

• A basic how to use Diigo for organisation of your readings, research and bookmarks. (Looks similar to Delicious) 

• ASP provide very good transcriptions for most of their video and audio resources. 

Lastly I also thought that it would be an opportunity to shamelessly promote our own online databases  (both Education in Video and Counseling and Therapy in Video are provided by ASP.)

Note:  Nearly all the databases with titles that end in "... in Video" are from ASP.