Toys for All Ages

by Val Harper

“There are toys for all ages.” (French proverb)

Bill Ross has just announced a play group. Play is good. Play is especially good with toys. And everyone likes toys. Trouble is, we can’t always buy the toys we’d like to play with.

So let’s try something … We’ve been allocated $1,500 from Claudia’s gift fund (money donated to the library in honor of Claudia when she retired) to purchase some equipment for us to play with. This gives us the opportunity to try out some new things without affecting our regular equipment budget.

Have you been eager to produce a podcast? Then let’s buy a good microphone and give it a try. Want to shoot a video? You provide the script and talent and we’ll provide the camera. What else can you think of? Make a suggestion and let’s see what we can do.
Here are the rules of the game:

1. I’ve started a discussion forum in Blackboard (“Exploring Technology”) to take suggestions – here’s where you can make your case for what we might purchase.

2. We have $1,500 – we can spend it all on one item, several smaller items, etc. – but that’s it for this fiscal year. We’ll purchase something from your suggestions.

3. Whatever it is we buy, we’ll store it and sign it out to interested users from Loan (we may ask for a little time before we make it widely available so we can get the basics and can help troubleshoot). We’ll sign it out to you for a reasonable amount of time, and if no one else is waiting for it, allow a renewal as well.

4. If you use it, we’d like you to tell us about it – good or bad, productive or not, wave of the future or flashy trend – whatever you discovered. You could present in a brown bag lunch, post it to a blog or web site, write about it for the newsletter, etc. Whatever we get will be a share toy, in every sense of the phrase!

5. This doesn’t have to be strictly for library use – you may take it home, use it around campus, whatever – the idea is to explore technology. Of course, if you find a library application for this, so much the better!

See you in the sandbox!

Val

Common Craft: Technology in Plain English

by Rachel Gogan

Website to check out: Common Craft

Our product is explanation.

We use video and paper to make complex ideas easy to understand.

We present subjects “in plain English” using short, unique and understandable videos in a format we call Paperworks.

Here’s a little more information on their About Us Page.

Common Craft does the vidoes that I’ve been using often to explain technology concepts “In Plain English”.