6 Limits - A Haiku

The day slowly dies,

and I find myself saddened

by what could have been.

Inspired by Sunday Scribblings (#245 - Limits).

7 Lazy

I have been lazy this week and have yet to do any Web 2.0 study, and given I didn't get out of bed today until around midday, I think you can see how this weekend is going to go.

However.

In the spirit of keeping my blog somewhat up-to-date and for your viewing pleasure, I have three things to share.

1. My Christmas tree:

The tree is about 180cm tall. Note the red and gold theme, and lack of tinsel. Choosing a colour theme and omitting tinsel are techniques a seasoned tree decorator recently shared with me, to try and make your tree look more like a Myer tree. However, I have recently seen both Alethea and GozzieHoon's trees which have well-placed tinsel, and they look pretty fab. So, my advice is if you are going to use tinsel, I would suggest you use it sparingly.

I made the gold bows myself out of 5 metres of wired gold ribbon. If you want to do this yourself, I suggest using at least 10 metres of ribbon (or more) for a tree this size, as 5 metres proved to not be enough :P

2. Cool (and useful) little website:

The Literature Map   <-----  click here

The literature map basically shows "who writes like" author names, but in a cute and animated way. It's not as detailed as NoveList, for example, but you don't need a database subscription or library card to use it. Check it out!

3. Study like a scholar, scholar

You may have seen this before, as I "borrowed" the link from another Library's blog, but I love it so much I just have to share it here for anyone that hasn't already seen it. It's a play on the famous "I'm on a horse" Old Spice ad. Enjoy :)

0 Book Review - The Presence

The Presence: A Ghost Story by Eve Bunting


My rating: 2 of 5 stars


The Presence tells the story of Catherine, a teenage girl who is struggling with the tragic death of her best friend. She goes to visit her Grandmother for the holidays, where a ghost in the local church takes an unusual and rather sinister interest in her.


Publisher’s Weekly said that the “crisp writing and questions that remain unanswered till tale’s end will likely keep fans of ghost stories engaged”. If “crisp writing” is a euphemism for “shallow, with little character or plot development”, then they’d be right, but unfortunately I don’t think that’s what they meant.


This book is such a shame. The plot concept had the potential to be fantastic – there’s some mystery, some danger, some supernatural themes – but unfortunately, Bunting falls short on the delivery.


Perhaps if the book itself was longer (it’s only 195 pages), Bunting may have been able to flesh out the characters and the general story idea, but unfortunately, as it is, The Presence is like a plastic skeleton hanging in an empty room rather than the chilling, spine-tingling ghost story it purports to be.

If you’d like to read The Presence and make your own conclusions, you can find it on the City of Gosnells catalogue here.

View all my reviews

5 Wiki Wiki

With any luck, this will be a wiki wiki post, though once I get going one can never be sure when I'll stop!


The word "wiki" is supposed to have derived from the Hawaiian "wiki wiki" meaning quick or speedy. If you think about a wiki website, the name makes a lot of sense, given that a wiki allows multiple contributors to update information quite quickly.


If you've ever looked at Wikipedia (which would have to be the best wiki in the world) on the day of a major event - say, the swearing in of the prime minister - you will generally find that this new information about both the person and the nation has already been updated.


Apart from Wikipedia, the wiki I look at most often can be found here. Yes, it is The Vault, a Fallout wiki, and it is quite possibly the second best wiki in the world (though this has yet to be proven).

I have visited The Vault many times when I've been stuck on one particular part of Fallout, or if I can't work out how to do something (like make my avatar move the way I want, for example). If you take a look at The Vault, you can see it has over 11000 pages, meaning it has thousands of contributors and a plethora of information about the history of the game, it's characters, different cities in the Fallout universe and the best ways to play.


When I was a Library student, I remember we had a dreaded group assignment (in my opinion, group assignments are a kind of cruel, and unfortunately not unusual, form of torture inflicted on students so that Lecturers have less marking to do - am I wrong?). We found that the best way for our group to work on this - a group which included students who traveled a long way to the University, was through a wiki. At that stage, I had never contributed to one before and wasn't even sure what to do, but given that they are so easy to edit and update, I found working on that particular group assignment almost painless.


Well, this post is fast becoming very non wiki wiki, so I shall leave it for now. Suffice to say, I am a pro-wikiite and can really see the benefit in using them - they're the perfect way to share information, which is what I imagine the internet was created for in the first place ...


P.S. How awesome are those Common Craft videos by Lee LeFever? Here's one you won't see in the Web 2.0 training (it's a Youtube video, so you may not be able to see it at work):

5 Work and Play

It's not far-stretched to connect literacy and learning with games. When we're young, we're often taught games that are great fun, but that are also teaching us important skills that will carry us through the rest of our lives. 

As infants, we generally learn games that involve picking things up, moving things around and building things (all working on hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills). As young children, we start playing interactive games with others, perhaps pretending to be doctors, pilots or superheroes (all games teaching us social skills). Once old enough, we can start to learn games involving one of my favourite things - reading (think board games and of course, video games). Yay!

If you’re not sure about the connection between games and learning, why not take a look at this post by the Shifted Librarian.

How does this all relate to video games? I hear you ask. Excellent question.

Depending on the game, there are any number of skills the gamer is putting into practice at any one time. If you’re playing a racing game like Gran Turismo, you’re using hand-eye coordination, being involved in healthy competition and learning to deal with both success and failure, winning and losing (as opposed to the popular, but flawed, idea that everyone's a winner). 

Playing my favourite game, Fallout (3 or New Vegas, let’s not be picky here!) involves prioritising (deciding which quests to do and when), making choices (how you'll communicate with characters, whether you want to be good or evil) and living with the consequences (i.e. the game has different outcomes depending on what you choose to do).

A game like Singstar promotes collaboration, socialising and perhaps even stepping out of your comfort zone by singing in front of a crowd.

I could go on forever - but don’t worry, I’ll stop now.

The point I am making is this - I think games in libraries are a good thing, whether it be board games or video games. It's another way of getting kids and young adults into the library, and who knows? Maybe they’ll borrow a book on their way out! (Read, kids, read!)

The Amherst Village Library (part of the City of Gosnells’ Library Service) has Wii consoles that have proved to be very popular. After a little web trawling, I discovered the Brimbank Library Service in Melbourne also has Wii and Playstation 3 consoles. 

Does your library have video games? Let me know by commenting - I’d love to hear your opinion on how useful/fun/annoying/difficult you find them in libraries.