Thing 23

What a joyous morning that I am blogging on Thing 23! I have enjoyed this online class. Many of the new technologies I had heard about but didn't know what they were. So, it all seems much less mysterious now. My favorite new "toys" are:

• del.ici.us--which is already on my home computer and will be on my school computer as soon as I get back there. I also have access to my friend's bookmarks, which will be very helpful as we are planning lessons this school year.
• flickr--especially the big huge lab and creative commons--already have my head swirling with ideas on how to use them in lessons this upcoming year.
• library thing--will use more as a personal site, rather than a school site, but it will help me keep up with my favorite authors and expand to new authors.
• I am toying with creating a library blog, but I do have some concerns with the possible contents of the comments so I am still undecided.

As a librarian, I feel it is so important to keep up with the latest technologies and to at least be familiar with what some of the web 2.o tools are even I may never master some of them. This program successfully helped to introduce me to many of these tools.

This program showed me that learning new technologies can actually be fun! I unfortunately usually go into a technology learning experience with a negative attitude, but this was a very non-threatening way to dabble with all types of tools, some of which I will use frequently.

I took the class with a friend so if one of us got stuck, the other usually could help. However, it would be helpful to have a "help" link with perhaps a dedicated email address to deal with concerns or questions we might have as we are working through these 23 things. It sure would have helped me as I was working with Rollyo and never could get it to work right!

I would most definitely be interested in taking another class in this format in the future,. My new knowledge greatly outweighs any frustrations encountered along the way!

Eye-opening, mind-expanding

Thing 22

This is the longest I have worked on this class at one time and I must say I am getting cross-eyed! But, I am going out of town next week (that is what summers are for in my opinion!) and the August 5th due date is looming large--so I am pushing on! Nings remind me of listservs--which I just read from an entry from Carol Simpson should actually be called email lists. She was responding on the Texas School Librarian Ning about the differences between this site and the TLC email list. The most obvious is that the TLC email list comes to you and you need to go to the nings. My favorite of the 3 listed was the Teacher Librarian Ning. I liked that they had an Elementary Librarian group, which the Texas School Librarian Ning did not. I actually printed out an idea under the topic Teaching Index Use and enjoyed reading the ideas of Starting the Year On the Right Foot. The Ning for Teachers wasn't very helpful for me at this moment without specific lesson plans in front of me. But, when I am planning a lesson with a teacher, I just may look on the site to see what others have done. I plan to share the site with my faculty because it is neat to see the lesson plans and it always great to get new ideas.

Thing 21

Finally something that I have used before and know a little bit about! It has been a while since I have made a podcast, but I remember that it was very time consuming. However, as I use the podcasting tools more frequently, that will hopefully no longer be an issue. I really liked using Audacity and the ability to delete all of the mistakes the narrator has made. I am very familiar with photostory and love having the students use it for final projects during research units. The kids are excited to use the laptops the district has provided for us and therefore are motivated to do excellent jobs with their photostories. As more and more teachers are going to want to use the set of laptop computers our school has, I think that there will be more issues in scheduling the use of them. For now, I use them frequently in the library! The following podcast is a tutorial for the students of how to turn in old books and reserve new books while I am with a class.

http://cfbstaff.cfbisd.edu/librarylandry/documents/PhotoStorycorral_1.wmv

Thing 20

I viewed videos on both YouTube and TeacherTube. First on YouTube I used the search term "librarians" and viewed 3 videos, none that I was thrilled with. The first one was called "Librarian's Guide to Understanding Academic Copyright". It had silly hand puppets with hard to understand English accents. The second video was "Librarian's Job Description". It covered the basic facts, but was dry and rather boring. The third video, "Librarian's Day is Never Done took a turn around the minute mark that I didn't want to see! I was much more successful with TeacherTube. I searched for anything to do with the man made wonders of the world to enhance a 3rd grade unit I co-teach with the classroom teacher. I found a video about the Great Wall of China that I thought would be a nice introduction to that.

Thing 19

What fun this was to see all of the Web 2.0 Award winners! I enjoyed playing until I realized how much time had slipped by! I mostly looked at sites that interested me personally, not professionally. I definitely agree that del.icio.us is an award winner. That was love at first site for me and it is already on my home computer and will be on my school computer when I get back to school. I also really love Flickr and have plans to use it personally and professionally frequently. Biblio.com was intriguing to me because on several occasions a frequently circulated book has been lost or loved to death and then to our horror it is now out of print and cannot be replaced. This site gives me the opportunity to buy a used, but hopefully in good condition, replacement of that well loved book. Im Cooked seemed interesting until I got into the site and realized that it was videos of others cooking--would rather just have the recipes. Urban Spoon however, is a great site to find new restaurants in my neighborhood. Upcoming.yahoo is great for finding events that are occurring withing the next six weeks, but not useful for long range planning. Finally I went to Yahoo!Answers--this was a fun site, but not authoritative answers for sure. It is in a blog format with people throwing in their thoughts on a particular answer. Fun to read, but not one that I would use for anything other than a good laugh.

Thing 18

I have been on vacation and now I must say it is hard getting back into the work mode! I have just explored Google Docs. I liked that the documents can be saved and pulled up again from any computer eliminating the need for a thumb drive. I also can see students using this site because it is a free site for the documents that they might need. Personally, I don't see me using this Google Docs frequently because it is easier to go straight to my microsoft office package unless I know for sure that I will be working on documents that will be collectively worked on and therefore easily accessible.

Thing 17

Well, Rollyo was a complete bust for me! I registered, and created a search roll entitled Library Links. I added 4 or 5 sites. I can see what I have done, but can't get the sites I added to open! I am sure for some this is a great tool. For me however, it is another password I must remember and then I am obviously not easily making the site work for me. At this moment, it is easier for me to go directly to my website or to use del.icio.us that I really like as a place to keep all of my favorite sites.

Thing 16

Wikis are an interesting concept to me. I can see using them professionally with committee meetings, book studies, or when doing collaborative work with other teachers or librarians. I am not sure how I would use wikis with my elementary students basically because it goes back to having only 2 student computers in each classroom and only 13 student computers in the library. I very much like Meredith Farkas' article Using Wikis to Create Online Communities. She mirrored my thoughts with the following: "It can be difficult for people to get used to the idea of a website that anyone is allowed to add to or edit. The notion of private property is so deeply embedded in our society that it’s difficult to imagine going onto someone else’s website and changing things, even when they want us to. We’re accustomed to websites where someone is the final arbiter on what can or cannot go into it. With a wiki, everyone is the final arbiter. If I don’t like what someone put into the wiki, I can change it. And if someone don’t like what I wrote, they can make their own changes." I do realize that you can make the wiki not open for all to edit, but I feel that defeats the purpose of the wiki. At home I plan to look at the Library Success Wiki because that site is blocked here at school.

Thing 15`

Lots to digest today! I am in total agreement that the web has changed dramatically from several years ago and has gone from a closed system to an open, shared network space that encourages user participation and collective thoughts. My favorite perspective about Web 2.0 came from Rick Anderson's Away from the "icebergs" http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/2.htm because I could more easily see my elementary school library through his thoughts rather than the others. The biggest obstacles now seem to be the reality of the school system with lack of student computers, lack of personnel, etc. etc. As much as I dislike having to agree with his thoughts on the "just in case" collection, I do see his perspective. The reasons I dislike this goes back to student computer availability and checking the authenticity of the sites the students use. I also liked David Warlick's 2 cents worth http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?s=Library+2.0 enough to tag it on my del.icio.us site.

Thing 14

I did not watch either video because it took waaaay too long for them to download. So, instead I read the FAQ page, which was very informative. I felt that Technorati could be useful for those that are a bit more tech savvy than me. My initial reaction is that it offers way too much information and I found it very time consuming to find anything relevant. I did several key word searches and the information that came back was a bit disappointing. However, it could be I did not input the information correctly in the search box. For the author I was searching I put quotation marks around her first and last name. In the first 5 results that popped up, only 2 were about the author. So, maybe quotation marks shouldn't be used here! For those that have the time, this site would be very useful since it indexes live web and blogs as well as sends pings if you add that feature. I chose not to claim a blog at this moment. I do not feel at this time that this site would be useful to me. However, I will save the address and in the future this may be one of those sites I can't live without!

Thing 13

I like using del.icio.us for my professional and personal use. It is very straightforward and easy to use. I like the list of tags and have decided that the fewer, more precise tags I put for each site, the better. I think I may have to add the buttons again on my home and my school computers since the computer I am working on now is not one that I usually use. I do like that once those buttons are added, I can get to my bookmarks from other computers which will allow me to work from home if necessary. I also really like being able to see my friend's bookmarks. However, I am not sure yet how to have the students use del.icio.us for their research. Again, as with other tools, I can see it being used with high school students more than with my elementary students. But, I may be underestimating my students' searching abilities.

Thing 12--part 3

The first blog I found on Google blog search was about the Grand Canyon and Sedona, which I will be visiting soon. It was neat seeing the beautiful pictures they took and posted.
http://ferventnomad.blogspot.com/2008/06/voyage-home-grand-canyon-part-5.html

The second blog I commented on, also found on Google blog search, was about the Cedar Rapids, Iowa flood. I have a very good friend who lives in Cedar Rapids and fortunately neither her family nor her extended family were negatively affected by the flood. However, like everyone else in town, they know several people who have lost everything. The blog I responded to was about a business that was lost and the secretary of that business that lost her home and everything in it. http://thetroupetheatre.blogspot.com/2008/06/prayer-request-update-on-heuer.html

Thing 12--part 2

I have now commented to 5 summer players' blogs. I skipped over several blogs because their blogs are too short to comment about or I couldn't reply with anything meaningful. The most difficult thing about commenting was find a blog that I could actually make meaningful comments about! The easiest part was making a comment once I found a blog I could relate to. Now I need to find blogs outside of the library2 site to post comments on.

Thing 12-part 1

After reading most of the comments about commenting--some were blocked on my current computer here at school--I feel the two most important to keep in mind were making the comments relevant and teaching students how to comment. I realized that phrases such as "I agree", or "great job" were not comments that were appreciated by most so I need to comment with more depth. I also really agreed with teaching students how to comment before allowing them to blog and reminding them that words can hurt and that they must be careful when posting comments. This is most recently evident by the Eagles' Read blog that is now down due to hurtful student comments.

Thing 11

I liked LibraryThing. I found 2 titles from favorite authors that have brand new books just published--off to the bookstore to get them! I can see this site as being very useful for my personal reading. I looked through several groups and the one I enjoyed the most is Librarians Who LibraryThing. I particularly enjoyed the postings of "Funny Requests from Patrons" and "Odd Things Found in the Library". I have had several similar requests, but fortunately none of the odd (and icky) things found in the library.

My favorite image generator came from Big Huge Labs, part of the Flickr site. I particularly liked the magazine cover option and can see the kids doing research projects using this as the final product. http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/magazine.php There were several other items that I also could see as being possibly used with the students. My next favorite site is the Image Chef. I found some fun things to make for me, but possibly not the students, like signs for the library. I played around with getting a wanted poster because every once in a while, something in the library is not where it is supposed to be and is not marked as checked out--can you imagine! So, I could see this as a fun way to let the students and staff know to be on the look out for or return the item. The comic strip generator was blocked. Custom sign generator, Happy Face generator and Kid Friendly Image Generator were very time consuming and I couldn't produce an end product.

Thing 9

I went to several of my favorite websites, but did not see the RSS feed icon, so I did not add any feeds to my RSS reader. I went to many of the suggested search sites and found that many were well laid out and would be very useful to use with high school students, such as Topix. However, I am an elementary school librarian and do not feel that I would use most of them with my students. I did not like Syndic 8--I felt that that layout was very confusing. I got frustrated with Google Blog because even though it was very straightforward and easy to use, (and I was searching blogs), I came to sites that were not blogs, but websites-- one site was a library's online catalog! I would love a way to search for a particular person to find if they have a blog, but as of yet, I have not been successful with that. I came up with many people blogging about the author or educator, but not that particular person's blog. Either I am not searching correctly, or the people I have searched for do not have blogs. I did add one blog on my blog list that hopefully will be useful. I was disappointed that the School Library Blogs on superglu could not be displayed this morning. Hopefully that site is only down temporarily. I can see how RSS feeder would be a useful tool make your life simpler with information coming to you, but I am still trying to see how I will have the time to read all the pertinent information during my professional day.

Thing 8

I must say I am not thrilled with RSS. I think it boils down to a time issue. I don't see how I can find time in the day to add this in with all of the other things that I need to do during my professional day. I look at it as more reading to do, not a time saver. My views may change--but this is my initial impression.

Thing 7

I have signed up for severe weather alerts from google alerts. Our school system blocks Google Earth because it is "shareware". I looked at the notebook, after much work, but couldn't find the icon to let me actually use it--it was not in my browser toolbar--so then I went on to google documents. It is easier to share documents using this than making a document, saving it, and then copying and pasting it into an email. I can see this as a tool to help with getting library patrons cards made from our computer genius at the main office --but I don't share that many documents so I don't see this as useful as the items I discovered in Thing 6.

Thing 6

Well lots of playing took place today. I did not feel that some of the sites were very user friendly and many times there were no buttons to lead us back to where we started! However, I did come across the magazine cover option on Flickr that I just love. Every year my 5th grade math teacher has her g/t kids to a research unit on a famous mathematician and in the past we have had the kids make a poster about the facts they have learned following a biography poem format. This year, I want to have each student create a magazine cover for his or her mathematician. The trading cards were interesting, as were the movie posters, but not as much information can be added. Also, it is a bit difficult because they don't give samples of the different fonts, nor do they allow you to change font size. But, I am sure the kids could figure it out faster than me!

Thing 5

I really like Flickr! I can see all sorts of uses for it with my students and faculty. The first thing I plan to make is a powerpoint to support a third grade lesson about international landmarks since I found fabulous pictures of the places we ask the students to research such as the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal and the Sydney Opera House. These wonderful pictures will give the students a better sense of what each landmark looks like. I do however have a question about how to cite the sources. How do we give each picture the credit that it deserve? Do we ask the students to make a text box on the picture to then state the source or is there a better way?

Thing 3 continued/Thing 4

Yesterday I set up my blog and created my avatar. I had to stop my blog because of the weather, so I am continuing my thoughts today. First of all, yesterday I was trying to complete two projects at one time--not a good idea. That made me feel rushed with trying to post a blog, and create the avatar. Being rushed in turn made me feel really grouchy when things did not go smoothly like Yahoo not believing that I really DID live in that zip code and after repeated tries having to back out and start all over again. Today, I am focusing on this one project only and that is the wisest way for me to work. I am a perfectionist, and combined with the completely new learning I am "jumping into"( hence the name of my blog), when things don't go smoothly I tend to get frazzled quickly. Therefore, my goals from now on are to work on this project by itself and not in combination of trying to get other things done and therefore, without being rushed, I think it will make the problems that will come up less frustrating--hopefully. Finally, yesterday I thought I had followed the procedure to register this blog, but as of yet, I am not an officially registered player--yes, another speed bump that I am trying NOT to get too frustrated about! So, I have re-emailed my information and hopefully by tomorrow I will be officially a summer player.

Thing 3

There were a few issues with setting up the blog--but I prevailed, and it is now set up, and hopefully registered! My biggest issue was finding a blog name that was available. After that, getting yahoo to agree that yes, my zip code truly is in the United States, was a challenge! Making my avatar was fun once I got the site figured out and attaching it the blog turned out to be easier than I had anticipated. Logging off quickly because weather is coming in and we need to get off the computers.
Erica Jean

Thing 2

The easiest habit for me is beginning with the end in mind. The hardest habit for me is viewing problems as challenges and not getting overwhelmed.