Tell a story in 5 frames - Visual story telling with Flickr

Flickr is probably my favorite Web 2.0 application. A previous post on this Blog covers Flickr’s basics, but there is a clever use of this Web tool related to storytelling. A group exists for Flickr users who want to meet this challenge: can you tell a story with just five images?

The guidelines for having your story accepted for inclusion in this group state:

A good story has characters in action with a beginning, middle, and an ending. Fortunately a lot of information can be given in a single photograph, enhancing the limitations of five photographs for your story. Location, time, and atmosphere aid viewer imagination. Keep standards of pictorial beauty, but pack as many story telling elements in one photograph as possible to develop an action.

1st photo: establish characters and location.

2nd photo: create a situation with possibilities of what might happen.

3rd photo: involve the characters in the situation.

4th photo: build to probable outcomes

5th photo: have a logical, but surprising, end.

This is a real challenge – the brevity and succinctness of the stories that are accepted into the pool are truly impressive. Sure, there are some that are lame, or at least puny, but try it yourself. Teachers might consider this as a possible student project.

The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

OK, this isn't really a Web 2.0 application, but it is a very interesting site that is reflective of the massive effort underway on many fronts to digitize books and other writings. In addition to the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalog ever published; through Darwin Online you can access Darwin's complete publications and thousands of handwritten manuscripts, such as 1st editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Zoology, Descent of Man, all editions of Origin of Species, and Darwin’s Autobiography.

Darwin Online is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and is managed by the University of Cambridge.

http://darwin-online.org.uk/

http://darwin-online.org.uk/

Flowchart.com

Flowchart.com offers a way to create your flowchart online. Like a true Web 2.0 application, there is no software to install and no download. Basically you simply register and then start. Flowchart.com has an interface that is generally easy to use, so you can be up and running in a short time. A team can collaborate in real-time when creating a flowchart as all collaborating parties can chat and design at the same time.

With Flowchart.com, you have the use of simple drawing tools (lines, arrows, and Bézier curves) and a selection of objects (flowchart objects, clipart) to work with. You can also upload your original art and use it in your Flowchart. Flowcharts can be shared with the community. You can even sell your flowchart creations. The final output of your Flowchart as a PDF or PNG format file The PNG is a relatively high resolution format that works well for Power Point and other Microsoft Office applications.

To see how it works, you can view their demo here View Demo

or you can visit their main site and get started here

Web Resources for Clinical Medicine

Langhorne Waterhouse, manager of the Erlanger/UTCOM Medical Library, is contributing some useful Web resources. While perhaps not exactly Web 2.0, these are very good Web sites.

DavidRothman.net: List of Medical Wikis

Wikis can be problematic and their information can be suspect, however, many examples (e.g., AskDrWiki and Ganfyd) are written by clinicians for clinicians. As such, they can prove invaluable in finding nuggets of clinical information.

http://www.davidrothman.net/list-of-medical-wikis

Centre for Evidence-based Medicine

This recently revamped Website has a large collection of resources related to answering clinical questions, from asking a focused question to finding and appraising the evidence.

http://www.cebm.net

ClinicalQuestions Collection

This large collection of “real” questions posed by health care providers in clinical settings is funded by the National Library of Medicine. Unfortunately, no answers are provided, but the site offers a list of real-world clinical questions. The intention is to generate a rich set of questions, thereby fostering research in these areas.

http://clinques.nlm.nih.gov/JitSearch.html

Database of Uncertainties about the Effects of Treatments (DUETs)

This database is an interesting attempt to record clinical uncertainties with a view to improving both primary and secondary research procurement. Created and run by Iain Chalmers, one of the founders of the Cochrane Library, it identifies research studies that are relevant to a question.

http://www.duets.nhs.uk