Monday, October 23, 2006

Internet Librarian: Creating Online Tutorials

The last few days I have been attending Internet Librarian and attending some sessions on teaching web searching and creating online tutorials.

I learned that many librarians and researchers were interested in this subject, mainly, because, they needed a different tool to push out their training ideas.

Greg Notess, reference librarian, for Montana State University, shared some excellent examples of online tutorials on what worked and what did not work for institutions, depending on the learning environment. He has created a list of tutorial software posted on his blog.

Training Tutorial Tours & Tips
http://www.notess.com/screencasting

Some notes from the session:


SOFTWARE NOTES
Wink is a free software but people reported having problems with the audio (even in the 2.0 version and there is a rumor of a patent case against Wink)

Demo Builder has problems catching anything that has java scripting on a website

Microphones. Don’t go overboard in buying expensive microphones. USB microphones are inexpensive and work well

Audio clicks are okay

Don’t be afraid of using your voice on the audio

LET YOUR VOICE BE OUT THERE!

OTHER NOTES
When creating a video, use a small resolution (631x500)

Frame rate should be around 1-5

Duration of simple videos should be under 3 minutes

I also met with some other law librarians and they were creating 10-minute tutorials that they were posting to their Intranet. Their sessions included general information on the library to how to find something in the online catalog.

Other examples: How to fill out a form, how to play a DVD, asking a reference question.

HINT: if you are a solo librarian or working in a small library and do not have the broadband to publish your videos/audios, you can publish them on YouTube.com and create a link to them on your site. Now, there might be a security issue. If so, you might think of tagging the tutorials by giving them a unique tag that no one could bring them up in a search. For example, when you create a session and post it to YouTube, tag it with a name like Go123BB or 1288ABC. Maybe someone can get created and use a mixture of KF scheme!

I can see this topic as a DALL session in the future!

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