Digital Tools and Emerging Technologies Ned Potter | PiCS, June 2017
EXERCISE 1: CREATING AN ISSUU ACCOUNT Issuu helps you communicate by making written documents more engaging. It’s also vital for getting people to read PDFs at all. For this exercise you’re going to set up an Issuu account and convert a PDF of this handout to a page-turning Issuu document (making it easier to access the various links for the rest of the workshop). The account can always be deleted after the session if you decide Issuu is not for you. Step 1: Creating an Issuu account First go to www.issuu.com – and choose ‘Sign up’. Put in some details as prompted (or log-in with Facebook / Google+), and choose your profile name and URL. You can’t change the URL later so you can either just use this as a dummy run and delete the account later before setting up an official Issuu account for your library if you like it, or you need to choose a profile name / link which you’re happy to keep! Remember we’re signing up as publishers rather than readers. After a few screens you’ll arrive here: Choose the FREE option when the different packages are offered – you do not need to pay to use Issuu for the kinds of purposes we need it for. Once you’ve completed a ‘publisher’s profile’ (where you’d put in the name and website of your library – or you can skip this step for now) you’ll have a chance to select a file to convert to Issuu.
In order to do this, you’ll first need to locate the PDF, which, if everything has gone to plan, has been sent to you in the Chat… Save it to your desktop or somewhere quick and easy to find.
Step 2: Converting the PDF to Issuu
Back on Issuu, press Select a file to get started (or Upload, and then Select a file to get started) and navigate to the PDF. Double click on the file, and it will begin to convert it, which takes a couple of minutes. A screen will eventually appear giving you the opportunity to name and describe your document. You don’t need to worry about this now – but it will be important if you come to use Issuu with your Library. Click Publish then Open Document. It may take a while to convert, then your page-turning version of the handout should now appear on screen.
EXERCISE 2: MAKING A GRAPHIC ON PIKTOCHART Presenting information and data in a visually engaging way can be an excellent string to your bow in marketing. First log in to Piktochart – at magic.piktochart.com. If you’ve not already created an account you can do so there, or log in via a Google account. Click the green Create New button in the top right of the screen. Choose Infograhic and you’ll see a selection of free templates to edit. You can choose whichever you like: for this example I’ve chosen one called Education Basic. Once you’re in to the template you can edit each section by clicking on the contents. Create a graphic that focusing on the benefits of your library service – for example take one aspect like space to work / read, or collections, or available technology and focus on telling users what’s in it for them. As you can see from this screenshot, you can search through the icons and pictures for something relevant with which to replace the default ones.
TOP TIP: If you decide Piktochart would be useful for your organisation and end up developing something on your own library’s statistics, try to think of interesting ways to present the data that mean the person looking at the chart has to process the data in their own mind. This makes it more likely to stick in their heads – for example by showing the library’s day to day use rather than annual stats, or by making comparisons (e.g. “if you laid all our books end to end they’d stretch from coast to coast”).
EXERCISE 3: VIDEO EXAMPLES For this exercise we’re going to use Padlet (the tool we discussed earlier in the session) at padlet.com/nedpotter/picsnz (case sensitive). Post examples to the wall of library videos – either good ones, or bad ones, for us to learn from. First find a video or two on YouTube / Vimeo, and copy their URL.
To post a video double click on the wall click any of the little picture icons as indicated by the arrow above – a screen will appear allowing you to paste in a YouTube or Vimeo video link, which will then embed the video on the board.
EXERCISE 4: TRYING OUT POWTOON Of all the useful tools for creating video, I’ve found PowToon to be the best combination of useful and usable in the free version, easy to use, and engaging to users. We’re going to create a basic PowToon today to try it out – if you feel it’s useful as a tool you can take it back to your institution and create some library videos for YouTube or Vimeo. First go to www.powtoon.com and log-in (setting up an account if you’ve not already done so, or logging in with a Google account). You’ll probably see a screen like this:
For the purposes of this exercise it will be easier to Customise a popular template than to start from scratch.
You can choose any template you like to experiment with (except the ones marked Pro Plan or Biz Plan which aren’t available for free): for this example I’ve gone into the Personal category and chosen Announcements - there’s one there called Grand Opening as shown above right. The purpose of this exercise is just to get a feel for PowToon and whether it might be useful at your library, so feel free to use this template to announce the grand opening of an imaginary library eatery! Editing a PowToon template is a bit like editing a PowerPoint presentation – click on the slide down the left to bring it up in the main part of the screen, then click on the text to edit it. On the right hand side are options to add things to the slide, or change the background etc.
You can change backgrounds, insert icons and images etc, here Choose which slide you want to edit here
Click on text to edit it here
OPTIONAL HOMEWORK EXERCISE: COMPLETE A POWTOON VIDEO If you think PowToon will be useful for your institution, it’s worth making the most of the momentum that comes from having used it in this session and actually making a video to market your library. If you’d like to do this, and have time to do so, have a go at creating a basic video and then email me a link before the end of Friday – I’ll then play the video at the start of Part 2 (as long as you’re happy for me to do so!).
EXERCISE 5: DIGITAL MARKETING ELEMENTS Think about your own library marketing. Visit one of the sites from the Digital Essentials and find a resource which you could put into an existing piece of marketing to spice it up – for example some engaging imagery, or a new font, or some stock video. The sites we talked about are: • • • • • •
labs.tineye.com/multicolr to search flickr by colour www.pixabay.com for a large selection of CC0 images finda.photo for a smaller but higher quality set of CC0 images www.pexels.com for CC0 images fontsquirrel.com for free to use fonts video.pexels.com for high quality CC0 stock video footage
Exercise 6: Checking Foursquare Foursquare used to be about check-ins but that’s no longer the case. Now it’s all about local search – FourSquare knows where you are, so it can provide you with contextual information (a bit like Yelp or Trip Advisor) on your phone. If FourSquare users are using your library it may already be on the site even if you haven’t put it there – generally speaking it’s a risky business to have a social media profile associated with your organisation that you have no influence over, hence this exercise in finding whether or not the library is already listed. If it is, then there are things you can do later to help FourSquare users get better information about your library – and it’s worth making sure the kinds of things people commonly need (the most obvious example being ‘free wifi’) are listed on your location, to draw new visitors in. Go to www.foursquare.com and search for your library. The search function on FourSquare is fairly annoying in my experience – it may be easier to just search for the word ‘library’ and put in the name of your town or area, rather than typing in the name of your actual library. Assuming you find your library, at some point soon (not as part of today’s session!) sign up to FourSquare and add to the information already provided by putting in some genuinely useful advice in the Tips section. It may also be worth trying to ‘claim’ your location when you get back to your desks tomorrow – be warned though, while this has been easy for some libraries, others have found FourSquare unresponsive and the process frustrating. To claim an existing location the link you need is: http://business.foursquare.com/claim. To register a new location as yours (i.e add your library to foursquare) the link is: https://foursquare.com/add-place . Once you’ve claimed a location, you can edit the information provided (for example adding in URLs, Twitter profiles, changing the description etc) and you have more control over which tips and photographs appear.
EXERCISE 7: FINDING REAL-WORLD USES FOR BEACONS, AUGMENTED REALITY, OR QR CODES The point of this is to shift from abstract discussion to potential real-world applications of the various geolocation technologies. We’re doing to post any ideas you have onto our Padlet wall so you can see everyone’s ideas in one place and potentially learn from them. If you see no use for QR Codes, Beacons, Augmented Reality etc in your area library, that’s absolutely fine – don’t feel like you have to find a reason to use them! To post to the Padlet wall, go back to padlet.com/nedpotter/picsnz (case sensitive). Double click to add a note with your idea.
EXERCISE 8: PLAYING WITH SWAY Sway has many potential applications in libraries. The idea here is to create a Sway now so you feel comfortable using the platform – it will serve as a virtual scrap-book for your ideas about how the tools we’ve discussed so far today could apply to your own organisation. If you feel comfortable doing so you could potentially share this Sway with your organisation at a later date, to cascade useful ideas. Here’s a step-by-step guide to starting off: 1. Go to sway.com. Click Sign-in in the top right hand corner. You can use a Microsoft account to sign in here – so if you ever sign into a home Windows PC, tablet, or phone, Xbox Live, Outlook.com, or OneDrive, it’s the email address and password you use for that, [If anyone doesn’t already have a Microsoft account you will need one for this exercise I’m afraid: go to https://signup.live.com to create one. You can always delete it after today if you decide Sway isn’t for you!] 2. You can view existing Sways and adapt them if you wish, but it may be easier today to bypass all the examples and go to Create New, which is an option near the top right of the screen.
3. From now on, remember there’s an Undo button topcentre of the screen if you need it! Give your Sway a title as indicated, Click the Background image icon to add a picture behind your title. You can then choose Flickr from the Sources drop-down: For now type ‘Nottingham’ into the search box and choose anything you want. Notice when you click on a picture it displays the licensing information at the bottom of the screen, which you’ll need for attribution when you’re making Sways for public use. Drag your chosen picture onto the Background thumbnail. You’ve now created your first ‘Card’ – which is how Sway describes each slide or page. 4. Click the little diamond shaped + icon below your title card and choose Text – this will add text without a picture behind it, so will take up less space. Add in a little explanation here for what the Sway is. 5. We’re now going to add a new section of Cards to cover the Publishing Online session from this morning. Click Cards from the taskbar at the top of the screen, and you’ll see various options down the left side of the screen:
The one we want is Heading – drag that into place below your existing cards. Write ‘Publishing Online’ in the appropriate space. We’re now going to create related content in a cluster below this. Sway likes to group content together until you next use a Heading – this is normally very useful but can sometimes be frustrating if you want to do something different! Drag a Picture Card to below your heading. Type some notes about Issuu into the ‘Caption’ section – can you think of a use for Issuu at your institution, and if so what? Then choose the Add Picture thumbnail - this time we’re going to choose Bing from the drop-down menu, and type ‘Issuu’ into the search box as shown on the left. Choose any of the pictures of the Issuu logo and drag it into position.
We’re now ready to have a look at our Sway so far! Click the Play button near the top right of the screen. Scroll-down to view what you’ve done so far. Keep in mind it doesn’t need to look good at this stage! This is all about learning how Sway works rather than producing a slick piece of work…
6. Click the little pencil icon in the top-right to go back into Edit mode. Choose Design from the menu along the top and click on any of the thumbnails to change the theme of your Sway. Experiment as much as you like – you can always press Undo. 7. Finally for now, click Navigation from the menu. Here you get to choose from the default vertical-scrolling format, or a horizontal scrolling format, or a more traditional slides format. Again, view your Sway in each of these to see which you prefer, then settle on one to use for the rest of the session. We’ll come back to Sway later on so keep the tab open!
To post a video double click on the wall (below all the earlier notes!), and click any of the little picture icons as indicated by the arrow above – a screen will appear allowing you to paste in a YouTube or Vimeo video link, which will then embed the video on the board.
If between us we find a video you think your organisation might learn from, add it to your Sway. Copy the URL, then add a Video card. When you click the Add a video thumbnail you can choose YouTube from the source dropdown, and then paste the URL into the search box. Select the video to add it to your Sway. You can add a caption explaining its relevance if you wish.
BONUS EXERCISE A: FINISHING YOUR SWAY There may not be time for this in the workshop, but if we do have a chance at the end try adding some more info to your Sway. It’s worth looking at the Options for each Card as they allow you to have control over how important the Card is in the overall presentation. For example in the screenshot below I’ve gone into my Video Card and clicked Options near the top right of it – here I can change it from the default ‘Subtle’ level to the ‘Intense’ level. This means the video will take up a full-screen rather than just a small section of one.
Another interesting Card to explore is the Stack Card. This allows you to choose several emails and then pile them up on top of one another in the presentation, then the viewer can click on them to cycle through the images with a nice animation. Like the embedding this is useful for allowing different levels of detail for those who want to see / know more they can easily sort through the stack of images to view all of them, but for those uninterested it only takes up a small amount of space and can be easily scrolled past. Also try out the Comparison Card to slide between two images: it’s a really nice effect. Of all the Cards I’ve found Tweet the least useful but it’s worth having a play with. It displays Tweets very nicely, but the difficulty is in locating them in the first place via the Search box. If you can find what you’re looking for it works fine, but the search is often sketchy in my (so far only limited) experience. We don’t time to explore Embed now but it’s so useful, it’s worth looking at when you’re back at your own desk. You can put Word docs, spreadsheets, PDFs and whole PowerPoint presentations, into your Sway.
BONUS HOMEWORK EXERCISE: CREATING TWITTER VIDEO Using either a tablet or smartphone, download the Twitter app and sign-in. Then click the quill icon in the top right hand corner, then the VIDEO icon. Twitter will record while you hold your finger down on the video icon at the bottom of the screen – when you take your finger off it will stop, then start again when you hold the button down. This way you can string together quick clips very easily. Your task is to create a mobile video that helps people use your Building in some way, It might be a summary of the services it offers, the way to physically reach a certain area, how to get on to the wifi, how the coffee machine works! Anything you like – as long as your video would help a library in some way, you can be as creative (or as functional!) as you desire. If you have any queries about using the app, let me know.
List of online tools and sites relevant to the session Online Publishing: www.issuu.com and www.scribd.com for making PDFs into browseable documents; www.slideshare.net for uploading PowerPoints, and www.prezi.com for zooming presentations like the one used in the workshop. www.sway.com for ‘dynamic storytelling’. magic.piktochart.com for graphics and visualising data. QR Codes: http://snap.vu to create QR Codes with built in statistics tracking. Padlet: www.padlet.com for the online noticeboard. Geolocation: www.foursquare.com to find and claim your location (see the Bodleian’s nicely done example at foursquare.com/v/bodleian-library/4b7aae05f964a520ed362fe3); www.estimote.com for commercially available beacons and software; www.aurasma.com/ for Augmented Reality software. Digital Marketing Essentials: For useful images you can legally use: www.pixabay.com, finda.photo (that’s the actual URL…), www.pexels.com and gratisography.com; for icons: www.iconfinder.com; for creating custom images: photofunia.com. For non-standard fonts: www.fontsquirrel.com. For high quality stock video footage: videos.pexels.com. Video: www.youtube.com/user/YorkInformation for the Library and IT YouTube Channel at the University of York; getvoice.adobe.com/ for Adobe Voice, the slides / video hybrid; www.powtoon.com/ for the animation tool; www.vimeo.com for another place to host videos apart from www.youtube.com.
Contact details The Prezi we used today is available athttps://prezi.com/onkncayz7do-/digital-tools-and-emergingtechnologies-for-libraries/ (case sensitive). Please feel free to share with colleagues within your organisation. Got any follow up questions? nedpotter@ymail.com or @ned_potter on Twitter. There’s loads more guides to online tools and emerging technologies at www.ned-potter.com too. Good luck!