Nebraska Learns 2.0: Word Clouds & Being Alone Together

Nebraska Learns 2.0 is the Nebraska Library Commission’s ongoing online learning program. It is a self-discovery program which encourages participants to take control of their own learning and to utilize their lifelong learning skills through exploration and PLAY. Each month, we offer you an opportunity to learn a new Thing (or lesson). You have all month to complete that Thing and receive one CE credit. You may choose which Things to do based on personal interest and time availability. If the Thing of the month doesn’t interest you or if you are particularly busy that month, you can skip it. * The Thing for December is: Tagxedo According to Wikipedia, a tag cloud (word cloud, or weighted list in visual design) is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text. Tags are usually single words, and the importance of each tag is shown with font size or color. This format is useful for quickly perceiving the most prominent terms and for locating a term alphabetically to determine its relative prominence. This month we’ll be using Tagxedo to create a word cloud. Another facet of Nebraska Learns 2.0 is BookThing. Each month we pick a single title that we feel has relevance to librarianship and/or information theory. Some of the titles will be very obviously related; while others may not seem so on the surface but there is a connection. Your assignment will be to read the book and create a blog post answering some questions about the title. * The BookThing for December is: Alone Together by Sherry Turkle If you are new to Nebraska Learns 2.0, your first assignment is to sign up to participate at: http://nlcblogs.nebraska.gov/nelearns/sign-up-2/. This program is open to ALL Nebraska librarians, library staff, library friends, library board members and school media specialists. We hope you’ll join your library colleagues in the fun as you learn about new and exciting technologies!