There have been a number of Things recently that have been very useful to find out about but at the moment I don't have an immediate use for. These include Things 14, 17 and 18.
Thing 14 Organising References
At work we support and promote the use of RefWorks as the preferred tool for organising and storing references; it is mainly used by students doing dissertations or working towards their PhD as these tools usually require some effort and perserverance to be of any use. Thing 14 has highlighted some different alternatives which are useful to know about in terms of increasing my awareness and also it might be useful to be able to recommend a different option to students who find RefWorks difficult to use.
Thing 17 Prezi and Slideshare
Prezi is something I have come across before and is a much more creative tool for presenting information than PowerPoint. I think we have all at some point in our life sat through a PowerPoint presentation where the presenter has just read out the bullet-points on each slide, therefore Prezi maybe a way of getting away from this. I don't do any teaching as part of my job but both of these tools could be extremely useful for those that do.
Thing 18 Jing and podcasting
I know that some university libraries use podcasting in various ways including as a way of introducing students to the many different sources of information available to them. Where I work we have not gone down this route and have instead just launched subject blogs as a way of providing specific information to targetted student groups. I think podcasting could provide this information in a different way but wonder how many students would actually make use of them when they are already suffering from information overload.
