Information You Can Use in Business and Life

50+ Adults, Seniors, Older Adults Technology Resources

Eldercare has a guide on the basics of Facebook, email, texting,privacy and safety, YouTube, Twitter, Skype, instant message and blogging. Staying Connected: Technology Options for Older Adults

Google has a great comic book that teaches people about the web, fun to watch and informative. "Google Chrome's comic book was a great way to introduce to the world a new browser, but not everyone knew what's an URL or a web app." Google Chrome Comic Book Introduction the Web and What It Means!

There are some videos that are intended to come from a parents kids. Yet lets jsut cut to the chase. If you want to watch these videos to learn more about technology and using your computer you can select the videos you want to watch and send them to yourself  Teach Parents Technology

 

Searcher In Charge: Facebook for Adults 50 Plus and Seniors

An educational video for the 50+ crowd and seniors on Facebook.

Searcher In Charge: Facebook for Adults 50 + and Seniors

Critical Thinking in Classroom; How to Draw or Show What you See

The slide presentation below has a graph around slide #17 that shows different ways to draw or present what an individual sees when they think. Useful presentation for thinking skills.

18 formats for handmade thinking in the classroom

from Laurence Musgrove.

Information Literacy : An Example of How Not to Say You Are an Expert from Infolitnow.com

Information literacy teaches the individual to understand the sources of information they are analyzing and how credible the authors are who are writing the content. The blog Infolitnow.com (http://infolitnow.com/about-2/)  indicates they want to "bring information literacy to the masses using information literacy principals" as noted below in the purpose statement. Okay then do it correctly.

1. Give us your credentials, list your last names and your authority and expertise for us to take your work seriously. 
2. Make sure your links work, as currently the link for Melange Information Services, Inc. does not work! 
3. IMHO, you have a lot of ads on your blog which reduces your credibility for this type of content.
4. Check your spelling, as editor is spelled wrong. ("Infolitnow was the brain child of Senior Editior Scott...")    
   
   "We Ask the Right Questions and Give you the Answers. We are a site that writes about everyday issues that will affect your everyday life.

Infolitnow was the brain child of Senior Editior Scott and Editor Dr. Lana W. Our goal is to bring information to the masses using the principals of information literacy. Infolitnow is a subdevition ot Melange Information Services: Mélange Information Services, Inc. offers 21st century college and career readiness training designed specifically to prepare learners and workers to function at the top of their game in a 21st century world economy. We take those mind set and skills and bring them to this new venture Infolitnow.com."

 

I would like to understand the thinking of the authors of Infolitnow.com on the questions listed below:

1. Why are you promoting information literacy but not giving your credentials so the user can evaluate the worth of the content relative to your expertise as authors? 
2. Why is there a broken link into a website (http://www.melangeinfo.com/index.html) that is equally vague?  
3. Why are you using the concepts of the Big6 (http://www.big6.com/) without crediting the original authors?
4. What do you mean by the word "subdevition" as I find no definitions for this word anywhere. "Infolitnow is a subdevition ot Melange Information Services:...".

It would be good for our readers to understand how following your examples of information literacy put them at the "top of their game in a 21st century world economy".

Thanks.

Census Bureau Resources For Small Business and Entrepreneurs

The census bureau has a source that is useful for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs SMEs) and entrepreneurs. Here is the link. http://www.census.gov/econ/census07/www/conferences/ppt/ResourcesforSmallBusiness.pdf.

You are able to get industry snapshots and benchmarks, information on your local economy,  advice, industry updates, data to study your competition and notifications when new information is released relevant to your business. This is all "free" as paid by our tax dollars. The census bureau is a great source for information for business. Use it as a tool to help grow your business.

Searcher In Charge Health Information: Health Search for Consumers

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Over the past year I have been working on a series of videos titled Searcher In Charge: Health Information. They are findable by searching “searcher in charge” in YouTube. I have also provided the individual links to each video at the end of this message. These videos are produced by myself, Lark Birdsong, through the Information Literacy Initiative at the University of Washington, Information School.

 

The goal of the video series is to provide consumers who go online a way to find basic health information using an information literacy approach to finding, analyzing and evaluating quality health sources. The words “information literacy” are not used in the videos as they are produced for consumers, yet the concepts of information literacy are included. The target market is adults who go online for health information. Yes, that is a large market and some adults will be able to use the videos and others will not. The videos provide plenty of search examples for the health consumer and the videos can be replayed as needed by the consumer so they can gain the information.  Currently there are seven videos in the series with an average time of approximately 6 minutes and 50 seconds. Another video is provided as tips for viewing the videos and one more video on health sources will be added. A few key notes:
 

·         The video series highlights the importance of health care providers for finding quality health information

·         The use of libraries and librarians for finding quality information is highlighted

·         Tips for finding quality health sources are provided

·         Tips for analyzing websites and other sources of information are included

·         Tips for evaluating the quality of the results is provided

·         Search examples in Google and Bing are included that use MedlinePlus and the Mayo Clinic websites

·         The videos have some logic if played in order yet any video could be viewed as a standalone video

·         Production, images and other features improve as the video series progresses

·         The video series allows for embedding and credit is requested if embedded (Searcher In Charge Health Information, produced by Lark Birdsong, Director, Information Literacy Initiative of the University of Washington Information School, [lark@larkbirdsong.com or 303-884-8666])

·         Video #7 will include sources of quality health information; more details below

·         I also plan to use websites in video #7 that direct consumers to libraries that might have health information such http://www.publiclibraries.com/ (USA specific). I have other entry points into libraries beyond the USA such as http://www.123world.com/libraries/, http://www.worldcat.org/,  http://www.libdex.com/country.html, http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/  and will add other sources for this area if I receive recommendations.

 

I have not produced the last video on health sources for Searcher In Charge Health Information #7 yet. I have been gathering quality health sources that help a health consumer with more general questions find quality entry points. I am open to other health sources and  would like to gain feedback on quality health sources that might be good starting points with health questions. I am not sure how I will format this last video and what information will be included as it might depend on the number and type of recommendations I receive. If you have any suggestions I am appreciative of your thoughts. Also feel free to forward this information if you believe it would be useful to others.

 

 

Individual Links to each video:

Searcher In Charge Video Series Viewing Tips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t5NQyqh53g

Searcher In Charge Health Information #1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40U8ymsp3Fw

Searcher In Charge Health Information #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MDTkF8WglE

Searcher In Charge Health Information #3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bTHVUIYHAo

Searcher In Charge Health Information #4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzinjiYb3-w

Searcher In Charge Health Information #5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNJcTNlAzEQ

Searcher In Charge Health Information #5 More Details http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdhwL7hEIcg

Searcher In Charge Health Information #6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocz2Mo764es

 

 
Thanks for your time and suggestions.

What the Hashtag and Twitter: Live Conversations for a Hashtag and Transcripts for a Conference or Topic, Wow!

I learned about What the Hashtag?! (http://wthashtag.com/Main_Page) from Andrea Meyer of Working Knowledge (http://workingknowledge.com/. Andrea works a lot with Twitter and her expertise is valued by many companies.

I tested What the Hashtag?! and wanted to show one way I found it useful. First, from the website What the Hashtag?! they describe their services as "a user-editable encyclopedia for hashtags found on Twitter."

If a hashtag is setup (I tested #health) for a topic, type it in and you will see a description for the hash tag, contributions the last seven days, top contributors, area to have a live conversation with folks on this  specific hashtag and what makes me really excited, is a view transcript tab.

Click on it and you can get tweets for some time back. I went back one month for #health and received a transcript for 30 days worth of tweets on #health. 

If there is not a hash tag setup for your purpose you can set one up. Here is an example of one I setup for some work I am doing. I wrote the hashtag, description and have promoted this tag on other listserv's and social media sites as the one to use for this year's Race Across America. (http://www.raceacrossamerica.org/).

Lastly, and this is also really exciting, What the Hashtag is a place to get the transcript from a conference, if it has been setup. As an example, the Association of Information Professionals (http://www.aiip.org/) is having their annual conference starting April 28, 2010 and has designated the official hashtag for the conference as #aiip10. Since this hashtag was not setup, I setup one up for the hashtag (#aiip10) for the AIIP 2010 Conference and described how the hashtag can be used on What the Hashtag. I can now type this hashtag into What the Hashtag and have a transcript from the entire conference. This could also be used to have live conversations during the conference, from anywhere, as long as an individual is registered on What the Hashtag.  Here is how it looks now before the conference starts.

After I set the #aiip10 hashtag up, this is how it looks now. I tweet as lebird (http://twitter.com/lebird)and infoliteracy (http://twitter.com/InfoLiteracy) and they showed up about one hour after the tweet. You can also see the other tweets leading up to the conference. 

 

I believe this is a valuable tool to have live conversations on a topic plus gain a transcript on #hashtags. Thanks Andrea for bringing this to our attention.

What is the Difference Between a Web Browser and Search Engine. It is BS!

Web Browsers and Search Engines, What's the Difference? A bunch of BS!

At times the difference between a web browser and search engine has not been clear to the individuals I am teaching. I just thought of a different way and will try this explanation with the next class I teach on search. I am going to explain by order of use. The difference between a browser and a search engine is a bunch of BS! You need the B (the browser) before (or to do) the S (search).

Other ways to think about difference between browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Google Chrome and others) and search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc) are listed below.

Browser                                                                 
a. is a software program                                         
b. runs on your computer                                         
c. provides access to SE's so you can search
d. their are less browsers than search engines           

Search Engine (SE)
a. is a software program
b. runs on a server/internet somewhere else
c. stores, indexes, info so searchers can find it
d. more SE's than browsers