Reflections (RUDAI Thing #6)

When I registered to attend the new RUDAI online course, I was not sure I would be able to make it due to workload and limited free time on weekends. I gave a thought on the first post as to why I became a librarian and what it means to me to be in this profession after such a long time. And following the completion of  the first tasks, I can say for certain that I am glad I took the opportunity and stuck to the schedule.

The first task was about image banks. The instructions said to download one of the images on the suggested databases and upload it on our blog. I usually go to Google to look for photos, it comes first in mind and it is my first source of material. I have used Flickr before and had opened an account years ago. I was also aware of Creative Commons licences and how to use free images for coursework, social media posts, posters, etc. However, this task was a refresh of memory around the resources one can use to find photos for non-commercial purposes and it made me play around a bit and explore. Flickr has a very good search interface and a vast amount of images to choose from. I would say it is user-friendly and pretty straightforward. Some of the images that come up may not fulfil the professional standards one may look for in a photo, but most of the results are satisfactory. Pixabay is also a good option, I think it is easy to use as well. This task made me think again on copyright issues and how important it is to respect other people's intellectual work. A photo is not only a good camera, it also reflects the person who takes it. I have been an advocate of Creative Commons and I will be able to offer more information on free web images after this task. You can see the image I downloaded from Flickr on my blog - I used it as the cover photo :-)

Visual content was a bit new to me. I needed to download one of the apps suggested, create something visual and play with the settings. I have not made any posters/images using tools like Photofunia or Quik, but now that I know these two exist, I will certainly use them and recommend them. I tried to create an image on Photofunia for the book sale that will be organised by the public library for which I volunteer. Their October sale will be on Halloween and I wanted to create something for our poster. I was disappointed, though because of the non-flexible settings of Photofunia fonts. I tried different "catchy" phrases, but as I was not able to make the fonts smaller there was always a letter missing in the end of the phrase. My attempts were for a text template, especially the one of the cemetery gate. No text template could take the phrase as a whole. I do not think I will use it again, unless my phrase has only two words! My Photofunia attempt can be seen here.

I really enjoyed the video presentations task. I chose the option to open an account on Powtoon (which I already had!) and put together some slides either from scratch or using a template. The reason I opted for Powtoon was because I had used it some years ago for a presentation on one of the modules of my postgraduate course. I think it was just in its beginning then and it did not offer many options, like templates, cartoon characters, graphics and images. I hadn't used it again after that presentation and I was surprised to see how much it has changed. It has a whole new feeling and it offers presentations for a variety of purposes. I admit it was difficult to choose a template, but it was just experimenting so I chose one and started editing it. It was not difficult at all to use Powtoon. I like the cartoon feeling it has, the hands that come up and write something on the screen, the effects, the sounds. It is a bit complicated, though and it needs time to create a presentation as you want it to be. It is not as simple as PowerPoint, for example, however it is "funnier" to use. I certainly have not explored all the possibilities Powtoon provides the user, but now that I know how much it has developed, it will be my option to make something more creative than PowerPoint. I think it is highly likely I am going to use it for my volunteering job as well, e.g. to attract more volunteers or promote our activities. I made a draft presentation about these activities, which can be watched here. I also did not know about Screencasting. I was wondering how such videos are made and I think it is very useful that someone told me and gave me some instructions how to use this tool. It is certainly useful and I will give it a go in case I need to give instructions to someone.

I am looking forward to the next RUDAI tasks!