Thing 16 - week 7 - wikis

I really liked the SJCPL pathfinder wiki - this would be fun to get the h.s. departments to do together for their students and would really help kids and their research skills. The teacher-librarian wiki was simple to use, but I think I was missing something, I didn't notice much posted on the site past the first page of the topic (could be my fault, or maybe I had to register?). The library bloggers wiki - very neat and I could get lost for hours here reading some of the informational and entertaining blogs.

How to apply to school?

• Departments creating a wiki for students
• Classes creating wikis on projects - if done correctly could really improve research skills and eliminate some of the wasted time as students could see what their peers already found.
• Me - book talks, online book clubs
  

Thing 15 - week 6 - 2.0 thoughts

Hi all - after reading 3 of the perspectives on web 2.0 I have several thoughts - how do we encourage reluctant staff to go along with new tech ideas - or get admin approval for those teachers who you know will jump at the chance, even though some of those teachers are "those" teachers - the ones who are usually on the edge of something troublesome (although, that does beg a question - are they on the edge for not following protocol, or because they are on the edge of technology?) How do we work this into a public school setting, with filters, etc? I know other librarians do, but how do I make that transformation? On to the articles that led to these thoughts:
Away from Icebergs - makes the point that we should have, as libraries, a reliance on user education - I usually teach some research skills to whole classes, but there's always the students who's eyes are glazed with the been here, heard this before, look. I prefer to teach these research skills on a one to one basis, when you can see who "gets it." The author also lobbies against the "just in case" collection. Two words - school budget! What happens to me is that I'm told to make choices between things like a print encyclopedia set and the online subscription, and then that's most of the money allocated for new books that year. My collection is old because if I weeded properly, the shelves would look pretty bare (not that I haven't dreamed about it, but I'm reasonably certain that it wouldn't get me any more money).
New World Librarianship - The article makes the new world sound great, but where do I buy my ticket? again, all the points I made in the opening, staff, budget, filters, etc.
To a Temporary Place in Time... - Reinforces the need for me to change and that libraries should change certain things - collections and services - but that librarians are always needed. My favorite part - the discussion at the end: Library 4.0 is the LIBRARY - that perfect place of comfort and all of your information needs satisfied - something we all try to achieve.

Week 6 - Thing # 14 - Technorati

Advantages of Technorati - you can look at like minded individuals and read their blogs without search strings in google; the current posts are listed first
Disadvantages - there is a lot of information in the layout of the site and it's easy to get distracted

Thoughts about tagging:
I think that the social tagging of sites and blogs is interesting. It's a way to see what other people are looking at and how they think, but cultural differences, slang, and the fact that there is no uniformity (like in a catalog) can slow down the process of finding what you're looking for. It would be a fun lesson to show a group of kids the same list of websites and see what they tag them as - I'm sure that would be eye opening for the students too.

Week 6 - Thing # 13 - Del.icio.us

I played with del.icio.us and watched the tutorial provided. I think that the site is easy to use, and just as easily leads to off into the research void - by that, I mean that you can easily get sidetracked and off task - finding a lot of neat things, but not necessarily what you came looking for :) I think that students will enjoy the social aspect of it, but teaching kids about reliability of a source takes on a whole new level when you start to include what other people bookmark. Students of all ages have to be careful when looking at the authority of their sources and keep in mind that just because a site has been bookmarked by many doesn't mean that it's a good source for a report. All that being said, I think that to keep up on current politics and other current issues, del.icio.us is a very useful tool.

a quick note for my mentor and classmates

Hi all, our school server appears to be down, therefore, no access to school email. Sigh, I hope we hire a new tech person soon. In the meantime, here's my home address (remove words and replace with proper symbols):
johnamey at empireaccess dot net.

Thing 12 - week 5

Rollyo is an easy to use site that allows you to create lists of places to search. I liked this because I could include my list of web links from my library's site on myrollyo list. I think that this could be a very useful tool, especially with a pathfinder. My pathfinders are generally broken down into type of material - book, online sources, free web, images, etc. What a neat tool to replace the free web sites, and possibly the online sources. I try to distinguish the difference between free web and databases with students. I can also see this as something to help teach reliability of sources with students - what a place to create links of "fake" websites - a la the tree octopus - for students and teachers to explore!

Thing 11 - week 5

I have been interested lately in a way to organize my bookmarks. I have three machines at work and sometimes it's tough to remember which computer has which bookmarks; I also have some of the same sites marked on both machines. So, in an attempt to organize, I chose the social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia to join. It happens to be one I researched on my own before school was out and one of the big features for me is that I can mark some or all of my bookmarks private. I know, it defeats the social part of it, but for now I'm happy with it. You also need an openid, yahoo, facebook, or some other type of account to use it.

I like the fact that Ma.gnolia creates tags based on your folder names when you import the bookmarks. I'm excited to go back to my room this summer and export all of my bookmarks and spend some time tagging and organizing, which I know will help me next year. Ma.nolia also has an application that you can add to your browser so you can add sites while surfing. Sharing of sites with other group members can be an educational tool - one that I will explore further this summer. In the meantime this is cool! :)

Thing 10 - Week 5 - Image Generators

I think that students would enjoy playing with different image generators. I'm also imagining that many have without realizing it while customizing their myspace pages. The majority of generators that I played with have sections for myspace, facebook, and other social sites. The two that I liked the most were Image Chef (what a fun name) and the Confucius Says Generator. FD Toys was also easy to use, but somewhat more limited in what it can accomplish. This would be fun to create images for web pages as well as getting students to add better graphics to their power point presentations. Some of these sites allow you to work with video clips and webcams, which is wonderful as it allows students to create better multimedia projects.

Thing #9 - Week 4 - School Library Feeds

Hi there, I couldn't figure out how to set up the public part of my bloglines account (or maybe I did and didn't look in the right spot). I did add some feeds to the blog here, some things that I find interesting. I like the Shifted librarian blog, she makes some very good points and I like some of the ideas that she has for libraries.

I checked out Topix and Technorati, the latter being my preference for ease of use. The feed thing is one of the things I just need to play with more to get used to them, which I will over the summer. :)

Thing #8 - Week 4 - RSS Feeds

Ok, so I'm still feeling my way when it comes to RSS Feeds and I'm hoping my next posting will have the feed panel next to it. I set up an account with Google's Reader, but I didn't find it to be all that user friendly, especially when it comes to adding new feeds. I really didn't care for their search of blogs either, but that is probably my "newbie" status when it comes to RSS.

I then set up a Bloglines account, and I have to say that I prefer this site. It's easy to use and the option to add a button to my Firefox browser makes it more likely to actually use the feeder. I'm still feeling my way around this site, but it seems very friendly. I'm still searching for library related info, but so far have added Unshelved and Sheldon Comics. Sheldon isn't always library related, but there are some fun spreads involving Lord of the Rings, Wikipedia, and currently, a library summer reading program.

Week 3 Thing #5 - Flickr and Technology

Hi there, after exploring flickr I found this phenomenal photo of the Charles Bridge in Prague. http://www.flickr.com/photos/73491156@N00/2204453255

I would love to go back to Prague, we only had a 1/2 day before our plane came home and we didn't get to see any of the city at night. What my family and I did explore was beautiful, but I want to go back and see more.

As for the technology part of the blog, that's a bit more self-centered. I'm interested in learning more about Classrooms for the Future, as our school should be receiving word about the grant soon. I've seen some demos of the technology with whiteboards, but would prefer to actually use the technology to see if some of the ideas that I have will work with the teachers that have been chosen to receive the classroom set ups. I would like to see our students using Flickr and Youtube to create true multimedia projects, items beyond powerpoint. I'm excited about CFF and a little nervous about it, but I'm sure we'll get rolling, once the bugs are worked out.

Thing #3 - Discovery Exercise - strength and weakness

Hi all and good morning. After watching the 7 1/2 Habits presentation, the habit that comes easiest to me is using technology to my advantage. I really enjoy using technology and learning new stuff. I just think that it's all cool, even if I don't have a use for it yet! The habit that's the hardest for me is viewing problems as challenges. I have to shift my mindset and decide to learn from the "problems" - definitely something I need to work on as I'm tagged as the new Classrooms for the Future Coach if we get the grant.