Friday, May 2, 2008

eFolio

I have been dabbling in getting my portfolio set up in eFolio Minnesota. I only have the most basic information in yet, but I'm hoping to add some of my best work as I am able. I had to do some things over a few times. The Save button is marked Finished I found out. I also was trying to delete and then add things again in order to get them to come up in the right order. Then I decided to look in the Help and of course there is another way. I'm glad the fields fill in with previously used information.
If you want to take a look so far, it's at http://jacquelinemeyer.efoliomn2.com/.

Monday, April 28, 2008

What I learned today

Today I "tuned in" to a webinar that Atomic Learning did on Web 2.0 tools. (I can't say I participated very actively, so I used "tuned in." I was a little disappointed in the beginning since it felt like advertising for Atomic Learning. But then they got into the philosophy behind teaching with Web 2.0 tools and it was more interesting.

The two speakers they featured were teachers using many of the read/write web sites that we learned about in 23 Things on a Stick. I could even follow the jargon since I had been introduced to these tools. It sounded like these teachers were out at the forefront in their use of wikis, ning and blogs. Their students they felt were much more engaged and actively learning. It was interesting that one of the teachers has his students teach teachers. What a great learning experience for both.

I couldn't help but notice that both were at high schools that supported one-to-one computing. One teacher has a class of senior that are issued laptops to use their entire senior year! They did say that these ways of teaching could work in a classroom that only has a few computers and students just take their turn during the week. Even that level of technology seems out of my reach right now. We still have labs that teachers schedule and as far as assigning a blog entry, many of our students don't own computers. It makes the digital divide look like it's getting wider.

It seems it still takes some personal experience using these tools to have school board members or teachers really understand what they could mean to their students.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

What I learned today

I read in an email from a listserv that the Center for Intellectual Property is having a symposium on "Reimaging Copyright in a World of User Generated Content." Concerns surrounding copyright brought on by Web 2.0 capabilities are coming to the forefront. I'm glad that people are discussing it. It always seems that advances in technology or science are ahead of the discussions of the ethics surrounding those advances.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Thing 23 - Reflection

This was a fast and furious introduction to many cool tools that Web 2.0 offers. Some were very easy to catch on to and incorporate and others I will have to go back and learn again when I have a use for them. The trick will be remembering what’s out there when an opportunity presents itself to apply any of these tools. There are at least two I want to implement in my job right away.

I’m glad I signed up for this or I never would have made the time to investigate these Things. It would be really neat if teachers could go through this and learn about the opportunities the Web provides for integrating technology into their lessons. I suppose we would have to have administrators experience the power of some of these tools first, so we could have a discussion about how much is blocked.

Thank you for a very worthwhile experience. It was a great use of technology to create a self-directed learning opportunity that is perfectly tuned to adult learning theory.

Thing 22 - Keeping up

Participating in the 23 Things on a Stick program brought home to me the importance of keeping current with Web tools. The tools one knows about and uses with facility are only a fraction of the ones out there. They’re a little like products in a grocery store: there are brand name sites (like MySpace and Flickr), but there are tons of other less known sites that do many of the same things. And there’s always someone trying to improve on what’s been done before.

Since striving for improvement is always a worthy goal, I pledge to keep up-to-date with Web tools that can help me be more productive and improve my library. I have plenty of links on the 23 Things on a Stick blog to investigate. I also plan to monitor WebJunction and maybe even post something. I tagged Go2Web in Del.icio.us already. I spent about 45 minutes looking at a few crazy things you can do and want to go back when I have more time. I learned you can use your computer to play guitar chords and sing along to songs (a little like DDR or guitar hero, but more sedentary) on Songsterr.

I wonder what I will learn tomorrow?

Thing 21 - other social networking sites

My kids all have MySpace or Facebook pages and I worry a little about what is public for them. Yet, exploring other social networking sites has made them more familiar to me and not so strange. Their appeal to people is more understandable to me now.

I joined WebJunction when it was fairly new, but have not used it much. I can see I did not take advantage of the opportunity to interact with other library professionals. Now that I understand more how these sites work, I will be more comfortable joining the discussion.

Ning was fairly easy to navigate and use. I am amazed at the number of librarians doing the 23 Things on a Stick program. I don't have to feel so alone in my position. I did have to look a little while to find the badge, but it was easy to add to my blog. I put it on the side at first, but some of the words got cut off, so I moved it to the bottom. I thought about changing the html to adjust the width, but decided it would look funny.

While exploring the Library 2.0 networking site, I discovered a video tutorial on Diigo, another social networking site. It looks very cool, though, as it incorporates a toolbar into your browser that lets you highlight things on webpages, share bookmarks, and email contacts without leaving the webpage you are reading. Many of the things I come across on the web, I intend to send to colleagues for their information. It would make it much easier using this tool.

I'm not totally convinced I need to join a social network, but I am seeing more and more benefits. It can be confusing to remember so many passwords and tools, so it is appealing to have the tools you want to use all in one place. I might check into diigo.com this summer when I have more time.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Thing 20 - Facebook and MySpace

Thank goodness for snowstorms. I’m getting more Things done.

Library sites on MySpace offer the content they think teens will be looking for directly from their MySpace page. It would be interesting to know if they can tell how many use the databases from the link on MySpace. Denver Public Library used warnings about following an external link that seem kind of unnecessary when it opens in another window. Hennepin County Library opened in the same window and only had warnings sometimes. Denver’s links sometimes came up with errors. A library supporting both a webpage and a MySpace page has many links to check and keep up-to-date. The integration of YouTube and Flickr shows exactly what we’ve been learning about in these 23 Things. I also saw plenty of slideshows on pages. The music, videos, and artwork all work together to appeal to that age group in a forum they are apt to use. I noticed, though, that most of the “friends” listed were authors or other library groups.

I only was 20 minutes into investigating MySpace and I stumbled on something exciting: book trailers. Since I have my elementary students giving booktalks every class, I have drawn the parallel to movie trailers and that booktalks are an advertisement. I felt that there must be something like book trailers out there in cyberspace. Now I’ve found some on Book Divas. The video of Jodi Picoult I’m sure would interest my high school students. I just have to figure out how to get them there. This is why Denver Public library has a MySpace page!

I read the article on using Facebook professionally. It still seems that it is something a private person, an introvert, would never feel comfortable using. I guess such a person still might create a profile with limited information. The biggest asset I can see is to organize all those nifty things from the Web in one place to make your life easier. My feeling is, though, that it would be a greater timewaster than any useful purpose it would serve.

Thing 19 - Podcasts

I listened to a few podcasts from NPR. One interesting one was the Grammar Grater, but then linguistics is interesting to me. Podcasts, like magazines, offer a wide variety of subjects for the diverse people that inhabit the world. It was surprising to me that NPR had podcasts in a variety of formats. I noted one that was only available as an MP3 and another played with Real player and still another played with Quicktime. I suppose how it is uploaded depends on the creator’s choice of format and platform.

Some of the directories seemed large and unwieldy. You can see that they are growing since some offer search boxes now. Although I didn't really like Yahoo where it was all searching. Podcast.net was kind of slow. I would guess that has to do with all the files being large. The educational podcast network had large lists that didn’t give a specific enough description to know what you were getting into. Podcastalley was pretty good. It allowed you to search as well as narrow your topic through the directory. Learning a language in short sessions is a neat idea. I wanted to listen to one, but it was only available as a feed and I’m not sure I can keep up with that right now. What a great idea though!

For myself, I found it much faster to read the transcript available (as on NPR’s site) than to listen to the podcast. So a podcast would make more sense if you could listen while you were mobile or doing something else. Having an iPod or MP3 player would make podcasts more usable. Of course, listening to a podcast while working in another window on the computer is also possible, I guess.

As I explored this Thing, many uses for it came to mind. The Media Center could certainly offer a word a day that would link to the podcast from Dictionary.com. Author interviews and book reviews by students could be recorded and available as a podcasts. I’m not sure about rights there, though. Many teachers could incorporate this technology into their assignments and it may make the students take a project more seriously if their work would be publicly available. It also is a way to incorporate primary “documents” into lessons. An interview with an Oklahoma resident on the dust storms is one example I came across. I could use such podcasts in connection with books we read in the library.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Thing 18 - YouTube

You certainly can waste a lot of time watching YouTube videos. We have them blocked at school for that reason. There are also many great videos that would be worthwhile to use in the classroom. I have seen some before (forwarded through email) using the sand pictures. It always amazes me! I found a great one I would love to show students. It's called Read a Book.



I've made use of YouTube one other way personally. My son suggested we make a video for my daughter's birthday since she was studying in Thailand at the time. We sang Happy Birthday and gave her a few short messages and then he uploaded it. Within minutes, she could see it half way around the world!
As with any of these Web 2.0 tools, there are uses and abuses. It will be interesting to see how far the Web takes us. Programmers certainly have made it easy to share and embed videos. I didn't have any trouble at all.

Thing 17 - ELM productivity tools

I did the RSS feeds in Thing 3 with only the blogs and news sites that offered the feed buttons right there. I was lost when I was supposed to subscribe to a feed for my search in InfoTrac and couldn’t find a button. I tried just copying and pasting the URL of my search results, but Google Reader wouldn’t take it. I looked in all the help topics I could think of but never did figure out how to set up a feed that would alert me to new content in the search I did in Student Edition. Normally I like the clean interface of the Student Edition, but this time it frustrated me.

I was glad to see the task to create a webpage in EBSCO. I saw this at the CMLE meeting last fall, but didn’t remember exactly how to do it. It seemed very easy to do. I need to remember to set this up for teachers who could use it with their classes. Proquest has the same feature, too. At first my recent searches got included in the page in Proquest, but then I found how to delete them, so my next emailed results were cleaner. This would be a great boon to saving research. When you click on the articles from somewhere else, though, you still need to enter the password for EBSCO or ProQuest.

The NetLibrary task posed a larger hurdle. I had not used it for some time and didn’t have a clue what the password was any more. The instructions on 23Things on a Stick talk about a free account, but all the directions on NetLibrary mention that your librarian can hook you up. When I am the librarian, I’m stuck. I read a couple of other participants blogs to see if any offered how they did it, but didn’t gain anything that would help. I will have to investigate this at school.

I only batted .500 on this Thing. I know the tools are there, but it is a challenge for me and my students to keep access viable when they are not used often enough. Many of these tools are more appropriate for older high school students and these are the kids I no longer have much contact with as a result of budget cuts.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Thing 16 - Research Project Calculator

The research Project Calculator is a great tool. I had a little experience with it before. Earlier this school year, I told a Senior Comp and Lit teacher about it and encouraged her to look at it. She was busy, of course, and did not get to do much with it. I pulled a couple of great resources from there to use in the introduction I gave to her class. I really liked the “What’s my angle?” graphic organizer.

Both calculators spend a good deal of effort on helping students create a strong thesis. This is a big reason why students have trouble writing papers; they don’t do enough with the thesis to make it control their paper.

The other very helpful suggestion I was impressed with was keeping a record of your searches – databases, keywords, etc. I never took the time to do this as a student, but now as a librarian, I’m always telling students to do this. Luckily, I can also tell them that many databases make it easy. There are so many online tools to help track research.

Very cool for college students! The Research Quickstart actually suggests databases based on the subject area you indicate.

There’s so much information to help students with the process. It’s a shame that most often, students are so focused on the topic that they rarely spend their “precious” time reading these pages of help on the process.

I am a little curious why the Research Project Calculator was constructed with 5 steps when the Big6 has been touted so highly. I suppose it might be a copyright issue.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Thing 15 - Libraries and games

My jaw dropped when I first started reading about Second Life. The more I read, the more incredulous I became.” How can this be fascinating to that many people?” I wondered.

Then I began to consider my son who loves to do funny things with pictures using Photoshop, and my daughter who would create Powerpoints in the summertime to summarize a family vacation. I know my oldest son plays Dungeons and Dragons online. I thought about all the digital natives that do things like these and more as recreation, and it seemed perfectly logical that a virtual world has been created where people go to virtual events and meet people (avatars) and never step outside their house.

I feel kind of weird about the whole thing, like I want to turn and run the other way.

The other thought I had was that buying land and building something in Second Life seems a little like settlers coming to the “New World.” Instead of physically clearing land and building a homestead, people create what they want virtually. The best part is, now when the land runs out, they create more.

Then I read about Ohio University making use of Second Life. They are offering classes “in world.” Now I’m confused! Why do you have to be a librarian in Second Life? Can’t people be themselves and ask librarians questions like they always have – even if it is through IM and email? Why is this distance from themselves necessary?

It’s kind of cool to showcase students’ work in the galleries in Second Life, but again I have to ask, what is there about that experience that is different than putting it on a web page? Watching your avatar teleport to different galleries? Grants are being awarded for the creation of such things in Second Life to disseminate information. I must be missing something. Is this an April Fool's joke?

I think I prefer to entertain myself with word puzzles, sudoku, and novels. I guess I am not a gamer.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Thing 14 - Library Thing

LibraryThing is really a neat concept! If every time I finished reading a book, I spent a few minutes summarizing and then reviewing it, I could add it to my Library and track my reading and relate books to one another. Better yet, I could search tags for books I felt were similar which would be a great help in advising readers. I can never remember the titles when I need to recommend them!

I like the idea of setting up an account so it could be a tool for reviewing and recommending books for young people. Of course that would only work in my school environment if this is a site that is not blocked. It really helps students to see the covers of the books. LibaryThing uses Amazon conveniently for that. I will have to see that our new circulation software does that.
LibraryThing was very easy to set up and add books. I did find that I couldn't add another book without resetting the screen. I had problems getting the customized widget to come up and so I had to settle for a preset one. I was trying to make a shorter list so it wouldn't take up so much of my page.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Thing 13 - Online productivity tools

I entered some events in the calendar on Yahoo. Rather than create more accounts, I thought I would explore tools I already “have.” Yahoo Calendar is easily accessed from My Yahoo and was very similar to the electronic calendar (part of our email service) we use in our school library to schedule classes. Compared to the video I watched about Scrybe, Yahoo Calendar is much more cumbersome. I don’t really want to create an account with Scrybe so I’ll stick with what I’m familiar with. (Do you detect overload here?)

I like that search feature on Backpack. I have a personalized page with all my online tools in one place and then there are so many of them that I need to search my page for what I need! That seems a little ironic.

Backpack and Scrybe both seem to offer a lot to keep you organized as do all the nifty tools introduced in this Thing. The objection I have to all of them is that it is assumed that you are always at a computer. Yes, there are features to help you integrate your life offline such as the synchronizing feature and the ability to print a neat little fold-up piece. Most of the time, my to-do items come up when I’m talking with people, not when I’m at a computer. I can jot a note on a paper, but I don’t carry a palm pilot. When I go home, the family computer is used first for homework by my teenagers. There are plenty of times I wouldn’t effectively have access to a computer or these tools. And if I have to note them all on paper, or carry them in my head until I can list them electronically, then I don’t see how that helps very much.

The tool I am most excited about is the converter. We are encountering many students who have the new Microsoft Office product Vista and are not able to read their files at school. I am anxious to see if this can help. I had a use for a pdf conversion just the day before I found out about this Thing. I tried it on Zanzar and was not pleased: the document had random capital letters when converted from a pdf. I do want to test it again though when I have a need for it.

I know I do not work in the most organized or productive way and I am maybe being negative because I find it difficult to change. As life moves on, I will in all likelihood adopt some of these tools. They say it takes three weeks to form a new habit and that a large change is easier than a small one. Maybe I need to make a resolution and just start out the new quarter at school with an electronic calendar.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Thing 12 - Social media sites

So much sharing going on! While the lack of editors seem to democratize content, it also is quite a detriment. Some of the most inane things are near the top of the list of things people want to share. I’m also a bit appalled at the language. The article I read from Reddit was a diatribe on inventors who stole the inventions they are famous for. We face an uphill battle trying to teach kids to support their opinions when such items are commonly dispersed. I know the internet allows all kinds of people to put in their two cents, but these social media sites seem to spread opinions quickly and easily, like viruses.

It definitely makes for eclectic reading! I chose to scan the list of stories from the last 24 hours on Newsvine and read about an 11-year-old that died because her parents believed God would heal her. They didn’t realize she had diabetes. Another article predicted the fallout Microsoft would experience dropping Windows XP. Still another commented on the cover of Vogue and people’s reaction to it. I thought Newsvine’s color-coded barometer of most voted on and most commented on articles kind of clever. Mixx just sorted articles into categories right away so a reader could read in an area of interest.

I think these sites would be a productivity detractor. I kind of got sucked in and followed link after link as interesting titles caught my eye. I can see, though, how it would be helpful to be aware of what is considered “popular” reading since people would be talking about it and wanting to find out background information. It also could alert you to coming issues.

It was extremely easy to share an article. News sites can only win as people read articles and then end up exploring other content on the site. I was glad I didn’t have to create an account to just share an article. I suppose what happens is that once my comment is posted, I will follow the discussion that could follow on Newsvine and then want to eventually become a member. I have emailed articles to targeted people in the past, which in some ways I think it more useful to me. It starts a conversation on the topic, but with people you know and with whom you share a vested interest. The whole democratic public sharing of ideas the social media sites are promoting is good in a way, but I don't see it being for me.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Thing 11 - tagging and Del.icio.us

I set up a Furl account 4 or 5 years ago and then never kept it up. I’ll see if I can get organized now with Del.icio.us.

I see two very useful applications for this site for me personally. First, I could have access to my bookmarks wherever I am. I often find sites at home that I bookmark, but then I also have to email myself a URL and bookmark it at school also. Now I could cut out one of those steps. It also would be great since I’ve lost all my bookmarks at school at least twice this year when the computer was re-imaged. I have an export file on my flash drive now of most of my bookmarks. Second, I wouldn’t have to decide which folder a site should go in, since I can add all kinds of tags so it can be found in multiple ways. What library site wouldn’t contain information in more than one area?

I also can see how great it would be for research or to create a reading list with a group of people. Because you search the tags that everyone has assigned, you are magnifying your researchers exponentially. Of course, the podcast made a good point in knowing the source and using bookmarks from someone you respect.

There were some interesting uses of social bookmarking by the libraries. I was surprised that the San Mateo Public Library used the Dewey system for tags. I would have thought it would be counterproductive for patrons young enough to be using Del.icio.us. I also noticed that Menasha’s Library did not bookmark Wikipedia under their encyclopedia tag. ;-) I’m glad that Web 2.0 tools are making it easier to catalog websites. Instead of arduously adding them to the catalog, a librarian can simply notify users of their webpage of their Del.icio.us account so they could look there. Of course, I will have to see if our filters at school block Del.icio.us as a social networking site. Then, of course, that wouldn’t work at all.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Thing 10 - Wikis

I am excited about the concept of a wiki. I am thinking how useful it would be to set one up for our Staff Development Committee at school to work on revising our plan. (Something we need to do and can never find enough time to get together on.) A wiki seems the perfect answer.

The appeal is in the amount of collective information we can amass. Booklists grow and huge amounts of advice on the various components of librarianship are all at my fingertips! It’s easy to get lost in all the things I want to read about. I can see a wiki getting so large and unwieldy that it could lose its usefulness.

From the ones I looked at, my head is buzzing with ideas. My son is a beekeeper and a digital native – I need to tell him about the beekeeping wiki. I want to let the Geography teacher at school know about the MN150 wiki. I know he is doing some staff development for the sesquicentennial. It would be neat if his students contributed to the people, places and events that have shaped our state’s history. I may also send a link for the Educational heritage wiki to the ESL teachers.

There seems to be a great variety in wikis. The Educational Heritage one looks like it’s very limited as far as contributions. The beekeeping one looked like there was hardly anything there and it needed some interested people to start pages. Many look similar to Wikipedia in format. It brings home the fact that the information is editable. I was a participant in the KVSC trivia weekend last month. One of the teams was disqualified for changing the answers in Wikipedia so teams accessing it later got the wrong answer. Now I see how going into the edit history could help.

I found it quite easy to log in and edit the 23Things on a Stick wiki. I was a little confused after I added my entry and went back to the page to see that there was a LOT more on it than I saw originally. It must have loaded very slowly.

I’m thinking it may not be that hard to set up a wiki for the Staff Development Committee.

Thing 9 - Collaboration tools

I was intrigued by the article suggested by fairpan in a comment following this Thing. The person in the article claimed they liked using the online documents better than their desktop versions and using flash drives. Now that I’ve had a little experience (very little), I don’t agree . . yet.

The link to the Google doc brought up the page and I was able to type and save in it only if I was very quick. It reloaded the page every 15-20 seconds and then I lost whatever I had done and not saved. I resorted to capturing a portion and pasting it in a Word document, changing it and then pasting it in the Google Doc. I wanted to shake that person in the article! I don’t think it should be that difficult. The ZOHO writer had me baffled for a moment, when I couldn’t access it the same way. I did figure out that I could sign in and then it was under my shared documents. This looked much more like a word processor that I am accustomed to. So, after my first attempt, I favor the ZoHo writer.

I have had issues with my flash drive losing documents when I work with them on the various computers in my two libraries. Since I want to be able to work wherever I am, I depend on my flash drive. I can see the lure of using online documents. I just may try it with something important in the future.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Thing 8 - Share your photos and presentations

Here is my slideshow that I have running during Open House at school.

Open House


From: jacmeyer, less than a second ago





SlideShare Link

I am excited about these sharing tools. Slideshows in school are becoming essential, but students often have issues with compatibility and portability. Accessing shows online would be a boon to teachers who want to have students present with slideshows and are worried about the technology working.

The slideshow I uploaded is one I use at a kiosk station during open house and conferences to publicize the library, since not too many parents come to talk to the Media Specialist. Since the slide tranisitions are not available, it does not work as a running show from Slideshow.net so I will still have to use it as I have been from our school's server. This site did seem to upload slowly, but then it could be the nature of PowerPoint files that makes it slow.

I browsed quite a few efolios at efolio Minnesota. This is a neat idea, but I did have trouble with the browser timing out at least twice. Electronic portfolios have been touted for quite a few years, but it seemed a bit daunting to teach students how to link documents and get all the technology working. This tool lets you (or students) concentrate more on the content and choosing what to include, which is the aim of a portfolio. I would like to work on my own efolio this summer when I have more time.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Thing 7 - Web 2.0 tools

Finally, some Web 2.0 tools that I'm a little familiar with!

Email

I don’t “live in my inbox,” as I have never used the auto check feature. But I do regret not having accustomed myself to using folders in my email. There always seem to be emails that don’t fall neatly into the categories I made, and I may need them someday. After reading the tips on handling email, I will try again to get organized. I do only check it two to three times a day, though, and that seems sufficient.

Email has become a primary way for me to collaborate with teachers and Staff Development committee members. There just isn’t always time to meet and using email is a good way to bounce ideas around whenever they pop up. My pet peeve is people that think you live on email and try to use it to call a meeting for later that day or some other such nonsense.

Online reference

I work in a school setting, so I don’t have any firsthand experience with online reference. I see the reasoning for libraries, especially college libraries, to offer virtual reference through IM and text messaging. It does meet the kids where they’re at. It seems they are either on their cell phone or their computer. And once they’ve had a good experience with reaching a librarian and getting what they need, they will use the service again, I would think.

High school kids though seem to use texting and IMing for too many other uses that conflict with school purposes. Some examples:

My own kids would always do their homework on the computer with MSN messenger on a side channel. This would always prompt a motherly message about getting your homework done faster, better, etc. without the distraction. And the lingo! It’s like a second language that I just couldn’t keep straight. I could totally identify with the parents of the girl in the video.

A friend’s daughter claims her friends send almost 10,000 text messages a day. Being in constant communication with many people must take quite a bit of time. I’d say it’s a good bet some of this is done instead of listening in class. My own daughter gets annoyed when her boyfriend is texting others when she’s talking to him. Since when does the person you're with physically take a backseat to someone not even there?

Clearly, there are uses for these services and there’s also etiquette that should be taught and observed. I really believe, though, the pendulum is going to swing the other way when this generation carries their love affair with technology tools too far and turns again to face-to-face interaction to fill a hunger for human socialization. I am not an active user of either IM or text messaging and given the abuses I’ve seen, I don’t want to be. Instantaneous gratification in modern lives is causing other side effects that are not positive.

Web conferencing

My last experience with web conferencing a few days ago was just short of disastrous, because of the technology. We had a group of teachers in our elementary library for some training on Accelerated Reader since we went to the web version Enterprise lately. Having to wait until just beforehand to plug in a different phone (to use the speakerphone) and using a slightly older computer made for a half hour delay in starting the presentation. We never did get the computer to connect to the site right and ended up just using the printed slides and other materials in the packet sent by email. I was impressed with the presenter’s poise in working with us. She could not be sure we were on the same page as she was (literally) since she wasn’t controlling what we were seeing.

I have also participated in very smooth-running webinars where I felt I got all the information without having to travel and spend the extra time. I appreciated that. It can be difficult to avoid distractions though, when done during the school day. Web conferencing is a very nifty tool and it seems companies are making easier to set up all the time.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Library sign









ImageChef.com - Custom comment codes for MySpace, Hi5, Friendster and moreImage Chef


Here are a couple of things I created using tools I found out about in this program 23 Things on a Stick.

Thing 6 - Online image generator

This is the trading card I made of my kids. I didn't use the icons because they didn't fit and I didn't want them on the picture itself. I know this isn't exactly how you would use trading cards, but I have an idea for using them in school.
I would really like to use the trading card maker with a second grade class where we talk about superhero powers after reading Anansi and The Seven Chinese Brothers.

I also just had the idea a few days ago to have my third graders create their own catalog card as a way of teaching what information is included on the card. From the comments under Thing 6, it seems there is a library catalog card generator that may work. Whenever you incorporate technology, the kids are so much more enthused. They also can get so much more frustrated, though, so I have to proceed carefully.

There are so many cool things out there and ideas! I will have so many new lesson plans I want to incorporate when I get done with these 23 things!

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Thing 5 - More fun with Flickr


I uploaded this puzzle from within Blogger. I thought the puzzle maker was going to be moving the pieces into place, but this is just a jpg. I will try another API when I have more time.

Now it is March 15 and I have been playing with Splashr and do not like any of the results, so I won't post them. I am a little lost with many of these mashups. I am going to leave them for now. I can see the possibilities for creating usable images for advertising and getting students' attention, but I am going to need some serious time to look further into them. Right now I need to move on to the next Thing.

"The Library"


"The Library"
Originally uploaded by The Department
I thought this photo of shelves bulging with books in disarray was a good representation of my mind most days.

It was taken by Kate Andrews of Sydney, Australia. I had a hard time finding it again on Flickr even knowing that it is named "The Library." That amazes me. Her tag cloud doesn't include either the tag books or library in the top 150!

"The Library"
Originally uploaded by The Department

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Thing 4 - Flickr

I had heard of Clemens Library's use of Flickr to promote books in their library. What a cool way to encourage let patrons know what's new.

The concerns I would have with sharing things on the internet seem to be handled well by Flickr. The usage license lets the person choose how much of their copyright privileges they want to retain, and the terms clearly tell users to link back to Flickr when they use a photo from it. I was very glad to see that they moderate the publishing for safe searches. It is really neat that the community involved helps keep inappropriate content off the site. I'm sure there must be a community somewhere on the web where they share such pictures!

I was slightly familiar with Picasa already. A teacher I used to carpool with used it. It was very handy for her, since she didn't own a photo-editing program and could then work on photos at home and at school for the yearbook. As with most freeware, the free version does not do all the cool things the programs you pay for do, but it does enough.

The point the common craft video made about at least backing up your photos is a good one. The tags available would make finding photos so much easier! It sounds like a lot of work to begin with if you have 3-5 years of digital photos to back up, but to maintain your albums after that should be fun.

Online communities are great for sharing things and I'm sure that more photos get shared when you can send a link and make comments online. But it doesn't hold the same fuzzy feeling as seeing a knot of people clustered around a photo album laughing together about a picture there.

I had a little trouble getting a photo from Flickr to upload, but eventually realized I had to follow the links/directions on Flickr. I still have not figured out how to put the link back to Flickr on the blog post and give credit to the photographer. The line and the html are shown on the draft, but not when I publish it.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Thing 3 - RSS feeds

RSS feeds. All I could think of when I heard the term was the novel titled Feed by M. T. Anderson. The characters in the book are all hooked up to the Feed. Everything comes to them by plugging the internet of the future directly into their brains. The novel is a commentary on the mind-numbing, individuality-stealing consequences of today's teen society becoming so dependent on the internet and TV. Hopefully RSS feeds won't be that bad!

RSS feeds seem to be a good way of dealing with the explosion of information on the Web, if one keeps a rein on how many feeds one subscribes to. As one article described it, it's a little like creating your own newspaper to read. What topics do you want to know about. What's being written about them. I have a brother-in-law who sends me emails of cute or funny pet pictures every once in a while. I always figured he must have too much time on his hands that he searches the web for such things. Now I'm wondering if he is on top of such topics because he subscribes to a feed that caters to that interest.

Setting up my RSS feeds took very little time. Now, when I check I can easily read a good joke every day, see what a trusted colleague has written recently, and see the latest job postings in the library world.

There were many pages where the RSS icon was readily apparent, but there were also pages where it was just tiny words at the bottom of the page. I used Google Reader and it was very easy to find feeds from the search it provided.

I can see this tool being extremely useful to teachers trying to stay abreast of news in their subject area in the education arena. I can only imagine the hours it saves graduate students on research. Now I just have to remember to check it often enough so I am not inundated.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Thing 2 - Perspectives on Library 2.0

I've already felt the frustration of lacking a connection to many of the teens in my high school library. I'm a book lover, but they could care less about reading a book. At the least they peruse magazines. For research, they grab the bibliographic information from a book without ever reading a page. For them, Google is all you need to research a topic. It seems like I'm swimming against the current in trying to get them to use databases and "old-fashioned" books. Maybe I am a dinosaur.

I've seen libraries already using some of these exciting tools, whether to make themselves relevant, or simply as a applicable way to achieve a time-honored function. Virtual reference is one good example I can think of. When I first read about it, I recognized its usefulness, but could not see it within my high school culture, because of a lack of personnel and time. Public libraries or a college setting seem more likely to be able to handle it. Web 2.0 may offer all kinds of "toys," but librarians need to take an honest look at those "toys." Some may be a better way to deliver services they always have, but some may not be feasible either.

Schools in general are lagging in policies for allowing library 2.0 tools to be used. Our internet acceptable use policy prohibits any two-way communication tools for students. Being afraid of controlling such communication, we block it altogether. I've seen some discussion on the topic in professional journals and on list-servs. Many feel we are doing students and ourselves a disservice to totally block social networking sites and IM. We ignore the reality of the lifestyles students lead and how they are getting their information. School library media specialists will have to be at the forefront in leading change in this arena. The trust issue brought up in "The Ongoing Web Revolution" resonates with me. It is at the heart of schools' reluctance to allow such uses of the Web.

I applaud the multitypes for this 23 things on a stick program to help us all take the first step in experiencing some of these tools. It will be up to us to decide which ones make sense to use in our settings. It's all exiting, challenging, and terribly frightening.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Thing 1 - Set up your blog

No wonder there are so many people using blogs. It is definitely easy to start one. I wonder how easy it is to keep up with posting to one. I would venture to say it depends on your blog's purpose.

The avatar was a new experience for me. I noticed the prompt on Yahoo to create an avatar some time ago but never took the time to investigate what it was. Thanks to this program, I found it rather fun. It felt like playing paper dolls when I was little. I don't think I will spend much time changing it, though. There are too many things in life that are more important than appearance. The directions given for exporting were clear and easy to follow. It went without a hitch.