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Today we talked about quantitative data via surveys. The two papers we discussed were John Bertot’s paper $Web-based surveys: Not your basic survey anymore$ from Library Quarterly and ‘survey research and libraries: Not necessarily like in the textbooks$ also from Library Quarterly. A couple of interesting topics were brought up: survey question changes in longitudinal studies, advantages of web surveys, and importance of quantitative vs qualitative. One of the things I$m going to try to do in this reflective journal is to relate what we talked about to my previous and future research. I have not had to do surveys yet for my research. Most of the ones I planned for the Qualitative class were just academic practices. I could see myself using a branching survey for my research on co-designing educational video games especially once the game is designed and it is being $tested$ with groups. A generalized survey could give me data on what kinds of video game systems are in the house hold, hours playing games, computers, economic data, etc. A post-play survey would give me some quantitative data with Lichert scales on the opinions about the game play. ...

I think this is my longest post ever: BOSTON, MA - November 13, 2008 -The International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) (www.childrenslibrary.org), which is the world's largest collection of children's literature available freely on the Internet, today announced that it has signed an agreement with Google to augment its vast collection of public domain children's literature with public domain titles digitized using Google's state-of-the-art scanning technology. The result will be the addition of potentially thousands of scanned, searchable children's books to the ICDL. As part of the agreement, the ICDL and Google will share their public domain titles making them available via the ICDL and Google's Book Search. ...

I updated my CV.

This video illustrates why I didn’t get to sleep until 3AM early Sunday morning. I think it is great that we have the rec center and that it gets used. But, I’d like to see the city rent it out to groups that respect the neighborhood. For some reason, Baltimore City Parks and Rec rents out the Virginia S Baker Rec center to groups that stay until after midnight. Usually, the bass from the music is so loud that we can FEEL it in each room of our house. It makes sleeping hard and earplugs don’t work because it is bass. ...

I found this while looking for a new ring tone for my phone: See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Screenshot of new blog, originally uploaded by gregwalsh. Here’s the new look for the blog. It is 90% Messy Desk by laptop geek. I’m slowly changing the pics at the top to be more personalized. I had a Newton Messagepad 2000 up there but took it down…I didn’t like its angle. UPDATE: I actually made a portfolio for my web site that looked similar to this. I might re-update that with a look like this. ...

Small Craft Advisory 2, originally uploaded by gregwalsh. We were supposed to go on a sailing trip this weekend. Unfortunately, there was a small craft advisory with winds gusting up to 25-30 knots. That is entirely too much wind for our boat.

This is a test. Sorry to the two people that read this.

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As part of my doctoral funding, I work for the International Children’s Library. I’ve been doing a lot of community building by answering the very interesting e-mails we get as well as answering and contributing to the forum. This week, I posted a How-to on making a scary mask. It is a tie-in with the New Zealand book Sydney and the Sea Monster by David Elliot. It’s a fun book…you should check it out. ...