Ok, I picked Twitter. I've been thinking about this Web 2.0 tool for awhile, wondering what all the buzz was about. I set up my account and found some people I knew to start following. Some tweets immediately popped up with posts from these friends and they were interesting. It gave me some ideas of what I can tweet about.
Twitter is special because it allows people to follow other people and find out what they are doing now with very few words. There is a 140 word limit with any post and I can see where they wouldn't all be used on a regular basis.
As I said before, Twitter has had me pondering about it for awhile. This morning I got on Gale and searched for recent articles in LMC and SLJ about Twitter, wondering how it is used in libraries. (I've begun to secretly want an iPhone but I figure I need a reason to have one. Could Twitter be a reason?) The articles I found were interesting and gave me lots of ideas. I think the idea of putting out really quick book talks is neat and could really work for my customers -- MS students! I think it could also be useful for really quick announcements like "Book fair opens at 7am today! See you then!" I think that Twitter is great for reaching my population! I also think it would be fun for my personal life, family and friends and all. I guess I would need two user names or accounts -- one for the librarian and one for the regular person.
I found some big name library people to follow like Doug Johnson and Joyce Valenza. There tweets came to my homepage as soon as I added them to the list of people I am following. Joyce Valenza puts links to other blogs that have something interesting. It can be used as a way to promote blogs and share ideas that are out there right now.
I am a loyal NPR listener and a few times now I've heard reports about Twiku and other forms of poetry via Twitter. That sounds fun and like a great idea for English teachers to use with students.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Thing #18
I played with Google Docs for my Discovery Exercise. I'd played with it a little bit before for Thing #7. But this time I took the time to go through their help pages with all kinds of explanations and how to's. They were very clear. Then I played around a bit with a document or two.
I think for my students Google Docs can be very helpful. It can allow them to work on an assignment at school, save to Google Docs and then open that same document and work on it at home. They don't need a zip or flash drive or any 'thing' to help transmit their data to and from school. The only draw back I see for students is that they may not have a Google account and I'm not sure about my district's opinion on requiring students to get a Google account.
I like the feature that would allow people to see your documents and even edit them. That could be very helpful for collaboration with teachers. I can see creating or uploading a document, maybe an instruction sheet for a research project, and 'sharing' it with all of the teachers involved, allowing them to edit the document. I think this could save time as well as paper, creating and sharing drafts over and over again until something is ready to be published. I think it would be helpful amoung my peers too for the same reasons.
I think Google Docs has some advantages over just using Microsoft Office because it is web based and allows for sharing and collaborating in a way that can be more efficient than emailing documents back and forth for editing purposes.
I think for my students Google Docs can be very helpful. It can allow them to work on an assignment at school, save to Google Docs and then open that same document and work on it at home. They don't need a zip or flash drive or any 'thing' to help transmit their data to and from school. The only draw back I see for students is that they may not have a Google account and I'm not sure about my district's opinion on requiring students to get a Google account.
I like the feature that would allow people to see your documents and even edit them. That could be very helpful for collaboration with teachers. I can see creating or uploading a document, maybe an instruction sheet for a research project, and 'sharing' it with all of the teachers involved, allowing them to edit the document. I think this could save time as well as paper, creating and sharing drafts over and over again until something is ready to be published. I think it would be helpful amoung my peers too for the same reasons.
I think Google Docs has some advantages over just using Microsoft Office because it is web based and allows for sharing and collaborating in a way that can be more efficient than emailing documents back and forth for editing purposes.
Thing #17
I created a Rollyo search engine on volcanoes based on a research project that my 6th graders did this previous school year. The video from another L2P player was so helpful! I don't think I would have understood the how to or the purpose of Rollyo without the video!
I hope this link to my search works! http://rollyo.com/index.html The name of my Rollyo is SMS-Volcanoes. I couldn't remember from the video how to get the page that has a search bar and the name of my search engine at the top. I guess I'll go watch it again because that is an important part of this tool.
I think that teachers and librarians should go wild about this tool! It is so frustrating when kids just want to Google for reasearch. They don't always understand how to evaluate the reliability of the hits they are getting and teachers don't always want a lesson on evaluating web resources.
I hope this link to my search works! http://rollyo.com/index.html The name of my Rollyo is SMS-Volcanoes. I couldn't remember from the video how to get the page that has a search bar and the name of my search engine at the top. I guess I'll go watch it again because that is an important part of this tool.
I think that teachers and librarians should go wild about this tool! It is so frustrating when kids just want to Google for reasearch. They don't always understand how to evaluate the reliability of the hits they are getting and teachers don't always want a lesson on evaluating web resources.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thing #16
I have a wiki that has my library's online resources on it. I created it this year when the computer literacy teacher asked me to visit her 6th grade classes and introduce our online resources to the students. I think it was a good first attempt at using wikis with students. I would like to create another wiki or two this year with assignments on them for students to follow.
I attended two great sessions at TLA this past spring that involved taking research online with pathfinders and presentations. One was Barbara Jansen's presentation on Collaboration 2.0 and the other was Mash It Up: Connect Students through WebQuests and 2.0. Both presentations left me with lots of ideas about how to put projects on websites or wikis. I got lots of ideas such as having the students create a wiki as the product for their research or putting the steps of a project including links to sites for research. These ideas helped me connect my research experiences as an elementary librarian where we used mostly print resources with very specific directions for students at different stations to the middle school where more electronic resources were encorporated along with print resources. Their ideas will help me morph the stations we used at the elementary level to the research needs of the middle school.
I attended two great sessions at TLA this past spring that involved taking research online with pathfinders and presentations. One was Barbara Jansen's presentation on Collaboration 2.0 and the other was Mash It Up: Connect Students through WebQuests and 2.0. Both presentations left me with lots of ideas about how to put projects on websites or wikis. I got lots of ideas such as having the students create a wiki as the product for their research or putting the steps of a project including links to sites for research. These ideas helped me connect my research experiences as an elementary librarian where we used mostly print resources with very specific directions for students at different stations to the middle school where more electronic resources were encorporated along with print resources. Their ideas will help me morph the stations we used at the elementary level to the research needs of the middle school.
Thing #12
Ok, I admit to being a fabulous lurker! As the articles mentioned, I don't want to just post an insincere "Great point/idea!" comment, so I haven't done so. The idea that commenting creates community is new to me. I don't know that many bloggers need that encouragement, but it is nice to know what the readers are thinking, kind of like fan mail to an author. I found 5 Library2Play blogs to comment on, focusing on blogs that seemed to be created by librarians and that had progressed to the same point I had. Thing #15 was so thought provoking, it was a good one to read other's thoughts about and leave comments.
The two blogs outside of Library2Play that I commented on were both blogs I just stumbled on. One was Barbara Jansen's blog. I had attended her Collaboration 2.0 presentation at TLA last spring and was looking for her website to add to a comment I was leaving on a Library2Play blog. She had a wonderful blog post about school districts filtering 2.0 tools that related to my thoughts in Thing #15. The other blog I commented on was Joy the Baker's blog where she posted about how to make vanilla extract! This was something that was just up my alley and I can't wait to try it! She has over 52 comments on this blog entry! Wow!
I see now that commenting does help create community and wonder if someone will comment on any of my blog posts! Hhhmmmm......
The two blogs outside of Library2Play that I commented on were both blogs I just stumbled on. One was Barbara Jansen's blog. I had attended her Collaboration 2.0 presentation at TLA last spring and was looking for her website to add to a comment I was leaving on a Library2Play blog. She had a wonderful blog post about school districts filtering 2.0 tools that related to my thoughts in Thing #15. The other blog I commented on was Joy the Baker's blog where she posted about how to make vanilla extract! This was something that was just up my alley and I can't wait to try it! She has over 52 comments on this blog entry! Wow!
I see now that commenting does help create community and wonder if someone will comment on any of my blog posts! Hhhmmmm......
Thing #15
I read all five of the articles from the OCLC link. The first few were the most relevant to me, I think. They related to how libraries need to change their thinking and what a librarian in the 2.0 world needs to be like. I agree with the three icebergs that Rick Anderson talked about. As a librarian and lover of books, moving away from the "just in case" collection can be hard. When I know a book and know that it is good, it is hard not to want to have it in the collection to offer my patrons just in case they need something I think is fabulous. The idea that user education has to change challenged me as a middle school librarian. The idea that our services need to be very easy to use or change and the idea that we need to eliminate the barriers between patrons and the information they need is a change of thinking for me. These ideas change my thinking in how I need to approach teaching information skills to my students. One challenge I find is that they are not in the same place in terms of their skill levels and access to technology tools on their own. This makes it difficult to find a good place to 'start' in group instruction.
Michael Stephens gave me lots of ideas for what a librarian in the 2.0 environment should be for her patrons. After reflecting on them, I think he is right. But I feel hindered by the filters in place in the school district. Many districts today seem to operate from a defensive point of view, suspicious of what is in the web and protecting students from what may be bad. This limits drastically what I am able to do to reach my students who are living in a 2.0 world. I also feel constrained by the generation of educators who are just learning about 2.0 tools and the 2.0 world and aren't proficient in it. The video posted on the Thing #15 page was very thought provoking in terms of the two generations education is dealing with: the older generation who isn't educated and proficient in the 2.0 world and the younger generation that is immersed in it daily. There seems to be a tug of war between these two groups and I am afraid of the outcome. If we as the older generation do not become educated in the 2.0 world and adapt the way we educate the younger generation to fit their 2.0 world, we are in great danger of becoming irrelevant.
After reading these articles, especially the first two, I am inspired to change but I am concerned that I may be one of the few and not the many. I am concerned that enough people aren't informed enough about the need to change and adapt in order to reach our students and patrons.
Michael Stephens gave me lots of ideas for what a librarian in the 2.0 environment should be for her patrons. After reflecting on them, I think he is right. But I feel hindered by the filters in place in the school district. Many districts today seem to operate from a defensive point of view, suspicious of what is in the web and protecting students from what may be bad. This limits drastically what I am able to do to reach my students who are living in a 2.0 world. I also feel constrained by the generation of educators who are just learning about 2.0 tools and the 2.0 world and aren't proficient in it. The video posted on the Thing #15 page was very thought provoking in terms of the two generations education is dealing with: the older generation who isn't educated and proficient in the 2.0 world and the younger generation that is immersed in it daily. There seems to be a tug of war between these two groups and I am afraid of the outcome. If we as the older generation do not become educated in the 2.0 world and adapt the way we educate the younger generation to fit their 2.0 world, we are in great danger of becoming irrelevant.
After reading these articles, especially the first two, I am inspired to change but I am concerned that I may be one of the few and not the many. I am concerned that enough people aren't informed enough about the need to change and adapt in order to reach our students and patrons.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Thing #14
I think right now I like Delicious better than Technorati. I did the suggested searches in Technorati and was unimpressed by the results I got for each search. I feel like I can better find what I am looking for by searching Delicious for various tags. I liked the Technorati video and the thoughts that the execs expressed, but I was not helped by the actual results as much as I thought I would be. Maybe I need to poke around some more. This is making me feel a bit old as things are not as easy to figure out as I thought nor am I as intuitive as I thought I would be in figuring things out. Searching both Delicious and Technorati require a bit of a paradigm shift in thinking to come up with the better search terms. It reminds me of searching our online OPAC. If a student searches for 'cars' they don't get much. They have to know that the keyword to use is 'automobile'. After doing some searches and looking at the categories and Top Blogs, News stories, etc., I've come to the conclusion that I need to be very thoughtful in the search terms I use and it may take me awhile to get the hang of it.
I think tagging in general is very useful to me in a few different ways. One, it will help me keep my Delicious tags organized, which is something I should be good at being a librarian and all. Second, it should help me find things of greater relevance for my students and find them faster if I search by tags. I like the idea of tags but the problems, I guess you would say, come from the fact that everyone can put their own tags on themselves. Flickr pointed out that if you search for a commonly misspelled tag, you may only find half of the things that are really out there and fit what you are looking for. I also noticed that one of my tags I used singularly sometimes and plural others. I need to go back and correct this so that I can better organize things, but I have to stop and think which would be the better tag -- blog or blogs; wiki or wikis; library or libraries. I didn't think of this at first, only after I had waded in, so now I need some re-thinking! So to sum up, I think tagging is great! But it is only as good as its creators, which is everyone in the world so there are going to be some 'mistakes'.
I think tagging in general is very useful to me in a few different ways. One, it will help me keep my Delicious tags organized, which is something I should be good at being a librarian and all. Second, it should help me find things of greater relevance for my students and find them faster if I search by tags. I like the idea of tags but the problems, I guess you would say, come from the fact that everyone can put their own tags on themselves. Flickr pointed out that if you search for a commonly misspelled tag, you may only find half of the things that are really out there and fit what you are looking for. I also noticed that one of my tags I used singularly sometimes and plural others. I need to go back and correct this so that I can better organize things, but I have to stop and think which would be the better tag -- blog or blogs; wiki or wikis; library or libraries. I didn't think of this at first, only after I had waded in, so now I need some re-thinking! So to sum up, I think tagging is great! But it is only as good as its creators, which is everyone in the world so there are going to be some 'mistakes'.
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