Week#9 Thing#23

My thoughts on CSLA 2.0
I feel as though I have completed a marathon! Up and down the streets with twists and turns everywhere and unexpected difficulty and picking up some downhill speed. My favorite was setting up my blog and avatar. I have added her to my web page and the students love her! It's important for them to know that I'm keeping current on the technology and not getting old and stuffy, which unfortunately, is sometimes the first thought when you mention library and librarians. I know now that I CAN continue to update my technology skills - and those words, terms, and programs that sounded somewhat foreign when I began, are now at the very least familiar. I feel as though I have a working knowledge of the web 2.0, and even may be ahead of some of my students. And - the best part - many of these tools - like Google Reader and podcast subscriptions are going to help me to continue to be informed and updated on anything that I want. Talk about lifelong learning - you just can't help it. Now I just have to schedule time to read, read, read, all those entries.
I was surprised at how well many of these tools interact with each other - easily. I can incoporate You Tube and Library Thing into my Blog, and by doing that I know I will continue to use those tools. The whole signing up for the free tools and keeping track of user names and passwords is the worst part, uck! I tried to stay consistent, but wow, way too many. Other than that, I think the program is very good. It has a good variety of tools, all applicable to the library world and its easy to see where they can be applied to school and students. Some of the links are dead, so some updating might be necessary. I would indeed participate in another program if offered.
CSLA 2.0 - In one word: Inspiring.
Thank you to those who put in the time and hard work to create this tutorial - it was time well spent!

Week#9 Thing #22

E-bo0ks. I love them. But they vary greatly. From copyright free books that can easily be downloaded from the web, to those purchased from your online book store, or downloaded into by Destiny for student use, to the e-reference collection from Gale that I have linked to my library web page. I really like those Gale books, they have unlimited use - every student in the school can be reading the same book at the same time, unlike the Follett version of e-books that only allow one patron at a time to have the book, and it remains on the computer it is downloaded to, regardless of user.
I see the future of books, and it's easily accessing all of our reading, news, non-fiction, and yes, fiction and pleasure reading via a reader similar to the Kindle. Instant gratification for those of us who can't wait to get to the bookstore to get the latest release from our favorite author. The new readers are SO improved, it really is almost like having the book in your hand, with perks. Annotations, no water damage, torn pages, etc. Of course, we have to keep those readers in good working order, or a small netbook, or laptop, or the iPhone, Blackberry, or... the choices are almost endless. And talk about taking the library to the student, this is exactly what that means. Library closed, no problem, just login and download. Perfection!

Week#9 Thing#21

Podcasts. Some of the links are broken and some are blocked from my school, but it was still extremely easy to search and find podcasts. I just did some searching with the keyword "reading" and came up with a wide variety of results. The NPR has lots of podcasts, easy to view without any additonal download of readers or software. Of course iTunes is huge, and I could search for "teen reading" and get several good results.
The problem, of course, can be bandwidth and blocking by district filtering services. This can be solved by downloading at home - which isn't a problem. I subscribed to the NY Times Bestseller Podcast to by Google Reader, now every week I will hear authors, poets and storytellers read their own work. Fantastic! And I found a "Best of.." list by Nancy Pearl and... so much to see and hear, and so little time.
I can see teachers assigning students to view a Podcast, then writing their response in their blog or teacher's wiki. Yes indeed, the times they are a changin'. I'm not sure I'm up to creating a podcast yet, but it is something I will consider for the future. I like knowing the steps involved and can take my time planning what it might look like, before jumping in. Maybe next year.

Week#9 Thing#20

YouTube. Finally. What is unfortunate is that it is blocked from our school computers (sadly for some obvious reasons and content). But, there is a great deal of good "stuff" here too, and I can't believe how easy it was to add the entire video clip to my blog. Great for adding to websites, introducing concepts, PR clips for the library etc. This Reading Rainbow clip brings back fond memories indeed.

Week#8 Thing#19

Library Thing. All right, I admit it, I absolutely loved this! I guess that says something about me being in the right profession, because the tool I loved the best is the one that deals with books! I will definitely use this to catalog my personal library. I found that I read books that pretty much are read by other people out there. Some - more than others. The two brand new books I read didn't have much activity yet, but I'm sure that's just because they are very current releases. I plan on adding reviews too. I know some students will like this too, my avid readers who gobble up all the new books as soon as I can get them on the shelves. It really does help provide a reading record of the books they have read, and still has that social aspect of sharing that so appeals to teens today. Awesome!

Week#8 Thing#18

Zoho Writer - Online Word Processing.

Here is my sample document. It was easy to post to the blog - I think that's the thing I like most about these programs, the flexiblity to move seamlessly from one to the other.

Week#7 Thing#17

Sandbox: I still have reservations about the freely editing of the wiki's. I logged in and added a post to the Learning 2.0 Sandbox Wiki and I was amazed at how easy it would be to change someone's posting. Sorry - I have to admit I find that scary!

Week#7 Thing#16

Wiki's. They are very similar or rleated to blogging, but more powerful. Of course, I'm familiar with the world famous Wikipedia - which somehow with the evolution of wiki's doesn't actually seem like one at all anymore. When I'm working with classes and ask them if they know what a wiki is, they never refer to Wikipedia. To them, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia - just like World Book or Britannica. They really don't see any difference until it is pointed out to them by someone.

I enjoyed looking at several of the wiki's that are linked to CSLA 2.0 It's amazing to me that there are many public libraries with wiki's. I did especially like the St. Joseph Subject Guides.

As for classroom or school library applications - Yes - I can definitely see the possibilities. Book Reviews seem to lend themselves most prominently to this web tool, and classroom postings by teachers with individual responses by students is great for cooperative learning situations. When our school began going through the WASC accreditation review process a few years ago, we could definitely have used a Wiki. We had an attempt at that - provided by a company - but it was awkward and difficult to navigate. With today's technology it would be much easier to just have our own Wiki - and at no cost!

Week#6 Thing#15

Library 2.0 - the future of libraries. We have had much discussion on this exact topic in my district. How do we change to keep the library a viable resource for our students and staff? The traditional mode will not continue to work - and I found the three iceburgs that we need to avoid to be very aptly described. "Just in case, reliance on user education and (especially) come to us model" to be exactly what most school libraries would still look like. We are however, trying hard in a time of record budget cuts, to move forward. That's what this whole project is about - trying to predict which trends are "keepers" and which will fade away in a very short time, to be replaced by the new best thing. How do we allocate those precious few resources to best serve or school community, to provide the best resources where they need them most- and that isn't sitting in the library which now may have reduced hours of operation. It's from home, or a friend's house where they are collaborating together on their group project. It's making the library available to them 24/7. It's assuming a completely different role as a librarian. One who welcomes the chaos of change and reorganization. That's what I see as the future of libraries and librarians - someone who can help tame and harness the energy of that chaos and make valuable meaning out of the unlimited web resources. I think I'm up for it!

Week#6 Thing#14

Technorati exploration. So here finally is the tool to locate all of the blogs. A search engine if you will specifically for this portion of web 2.o - and it is very efficient. I like the way it includes video, , photos, etc. And yes, searching different portions of Technorati does get you different results. Each search gave me different results, and it seems it all has to do with the Tagging.
Tagging, of course - is very much like subject headings, and they are very effective. However, the one drawback is that people have to know the correct headings or tags to use to be successful in their searching. And right now, those Tags seem to be up to the individual user, there isn't a great deal of uniformity, although I can see that some organizations and groups are making an effort to do that.
This is one of the most useful resources so far. I like it!
SJLibrary2.0

Week#6 Thing#13

Del.icio.us isn't a new idea, I have a vague memory of setting up bookmarks on the web that could be accessed from any of my computers many years ago. It is however, much improved. The capabilities have increased dramatically. You can view other's recommended sites, and the tagging and organization of the websites is just awesome!

So, I like the concept and will create my own account. I will demo this with my studentst when time permits - isn't that one of the most common problems in education today - too much to teach and not enough time to do it. It certainly applies to library instruction and collaboration as well as the regular classroom. I have some teachers that I know will love this for their students and we will incorporate it into our teaching. Many others will not be interested YET. Soon, maybe. I think students will like it, because of that social aspect - sharing with friends. That's the trend right now, and we might as well take advantage of that eagerness and use it as a valid tool for organization and research.

Week#5 Thing#12

I learned about Rollyo today, and I'm not sure how much I liked it. I do think the idea of customizing searches to specific sites is awesome. I'm promoting the Step Up to the Plate ALA summer reading program at my school and I loved the idea of directing students to specific websites for the answers to the trivia questions. However, once the Rollyo was actually made and I viewed it, I found sites had been added with advertising and selling - aimed specifically at the topic - in this case baseball. Some of the sites were actually blocked from my school, which doesn't seem good to me. Why would the library put sites on their page that the district doesn't approve of for students. Why do I need to promote the sales of these web sites. I will investigate further, but I didn't see any option in the edit mode to remove those sites,and when I looked at other examples, those same types of sites were included as well. So - in short - I don't think I will be linking this tool to my website any time soon.

Week#5 Thing#11

Web 2.0 Awards - Library Thing
I loved this site for personal use. Isn't it just the thing for librarian's to catalog their own home libraries? Cataloging is a breeze, and there are so many options to personalize the use of the site. I'm always lending books to people, then forgetting who I gave them to and trying to track them down, so this solves that problem quite easily.
As for work uses - looking for the cataloging of those hard to locate items is so much easier to do from here, than creating original cataloging from scratch. I just did a couple of preliminary searches, but they were both successful.
So, to sum it up, Library Thing is useful to librarians at home and at work, free and easy to use. I don't think it would be of much appeal to teenagers, but adults will love it!

Week#5 Thing#10

July 09 Calendar
Originally uploaded by bbclmt2

Made with FD Toys http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/

Week #4 Thing #9

As I began exploring some of these links to RSS feeds, I found myself stumbling along from site to site without any real idea of what I was looking for. I was just sort of blindly moving from site to site. I had to make myself slow down and actually LOOK carefully at each site. I made myself a list - what to look for and what kind of things didn't I want to see on these sites. It's such a learning experience to go through these exercises, and realize how little direction we give to students some time. WHAT am I looking for? What SHOULD be here? What SHOULD NOT be on the page?
So, after getting myself organized (very librarianish) these are the sites I liked or did not like
Google Blog Search - Yes - easy on the eyes and easy to navigate. Good responses.
Syndic8.com - No - too busy looking - overwhelming. Probably very extensive - but it just turned me off at the beginning. Just like the cover of a book, I judged the site without much further exploration.
Topix - Yes - News instead of blogs - I liked that a great deal. Again - easy to navigate and attractrive.
Feedster - link broken. A pet peeve. Yes, I could search for the broken link, but by now I'm moving on to something else that actually works.

Week #4 Thing #8

Wow! Who knew so many RSS feeds were available. I was vaguely aware of this - but had no idea it had grown so much. I subscribed to the RSS feed of my local newspaper, as well as the suggested feeds in 2.0. I feel so knowledgeable already. And informed. I'm not wondering what's happening out there in the world while I'm sitting at my desk cataloging, etc. I can take a short break and catch up on the real world in one easy step. There definitely is an advantage to placing all of these items in one simple place. I can't wait to show some of my staff how this works, and how easy it is to set up.

I can see how teachers can keep students informed on new data or information on their subjects by having them all subscribe to certain feeds, then discussing the information within those feeds during class time. Pairing this capability up with blogging responses could provide powerful learning opportunities for students.

I explored the Google Gear component or add-on and I love that! It's great to be able to read without connectivity, which can be a problem sometimes. I'll never be without RSS feeds again.

Week #3 Thing #7

I recently purchased one of the new "mini" netbook computers. It is so small and handy to carry around, I love it! I can search the web, access my email, and still get travel info this summer when I take it on the road with me.

I can definitely see application for schools. They are much less expensive than the traditional laptop, the batteries last longer, and they fit right in the backpacks. I'm actually seeing students bring them to school and using our wireless network to access the internet, etc.

It would be interesting to experiment using these devices as ebook readers in comparision to the Kindle or Sony reader. They would have more flexibility as to uses, and the price is very competitive with the readers. At some point in the near future I see all of our textbooks being distributed digitally, and of course, our library collection has already moved very much in that direction.

Week#3 Thing#6

This week I tried out the Trading Card application from Flickr Toys, and created my own card - overloaded librarian at textbook collection time. I was also able to make a card about the original search engine ASK the librarian. The cards were easy to do, the only problem I encountered was the clarity and resolution of the pictures. The cards could then be easily added to my Flickr account.
I can easily see where students would enjoy creating the cards. In the past I have had students create Author and Character Trading Cards - the old fashioned way - card stock and colored pencils. This new application will update that assignment and spark new interest and appeal. I'm really anxious about presenting this idea to some of my teachers, and our Computer/Career classes are looking for ways to update their curriculum - this is terrific!