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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.