Week 9 Thing 23

I think I am going to get this finished before the deadline!

I don't know that I had a favorite discovery. Has it affected my lifelong learning? Well, no, I like to think that that was a habit of mine anyway. Would someone please offer to support my husband and me so that we could just spend our time on a university campus going to school?

There are some things that I was particularly glad to learn to do. I don't think I will become a habitual blogger, but I am glad I know how. I believe it is one of my jobs as a technology leader at my school to gently guide other staff members to tools that can facilitate their teaching and student learning. I would do this again, and would hope that "you" would continue to keep the rest of us informed about all the new stuff, and how to use it. For my part, I will explore all the new tools I read about, and will do my best to share them with my colleagues.

(What do I still need to do? I need to figure out how to get a picture on this thing. The "Add image" button is not working in Netscape. If I still had lots of time to do this I might persists and get it done, but for now, since it is close to the final hours, my blogs are just going to have to stand without pictures.

Week 9 Thing 22

I was not very successful with the World EBook project. I did appreciate the best places to get free books site. I confess, I am personally not a fan of audio books. I can read faster than I can listen. If it is fiction I like to skip ahead. Non-fiction I read with a pen in my hand to mark books.

I am a frequent browser in project Gutenberg and other online book places, and have found several books I read as a child and thought I might not find again. I have also found pieces by favorite authors that I had not previously read, but I confess, I printed them out to read. I suppose that is a sign of my age.

Week 9 Thing 21

Lots of very cool podcasts. Probably not something that I would personally make a habit of listening to, but clearly this the future for education. I can think of dozens of ways we can use podcasts in the library, and all through the school. I can't make a podcast yet, but I am going to learn. Our school's Blackboard website will soon support podcasting.
Plus, I am married to an engineer who thinks the idea of podcasting is just really cool. He is fascinated by all the new technologies, and is absolutely convinced that I need to learn to use podcasting. Even if I didn't already think it would be a good idea for me to use and lead the way for our staff members, there will be no peace for me at home if I were to ignore that technology.

Week 9 Thing 20

It is August 31, and I have to hurry to get this done.
I have visited all the sites in week 9 over the course of the summer, but I don't enjoy writing, so here I am.

I particularly liked the video Introducing the Book. And there are lots of other videos that were very well done. There were some interesting clips from Shakespearean plays that I think would certainly capture student interest and perhaps make them more open to reading the play.

My criticism of all those sites is that it can be a bit tedious to find something because things are not as well organized as they could be. Not to mention that one can get side-tracked by all the funny stuff.

The other problem is persuading the teachers in my school to use these video resources. I cannot sit down with them and demonstrate the possibilities because the sites are blocked. And it can be a bit daunting to figure out how to get something downloaded into a format that can be used in a classroom.

One of our teachers found a presentation she wanted to use, and gave up because she could not find a way to put it into a format she could use. (She lucked out--as it happened I had found that presentation on a different site, had it on my desktop, and I emailed it to her.)

Week 8 Thing 19

I like Librarything a lot. I can't wait to get started making my reader's advisory list. I have lists and lists, but I am always forgetting titles or authors when I am helping kids with "if you liked this try" situations. Librarything will help me do a quick search of the books I know kids will like, and the tags will make it easy for me to jog my own memory.

Week 8 Thing 18

Zoho.com is very cool. I am a "heroine" to the computer teacher at our school. I shared it with him. He was impressed with the site and saw lots of possibilities for himself and his classes. Plus, he was very impressed that I knew about zoho when he didn't and he prides himself on trying to stay up with new tools. Chalk one up for librarians, and thank you, creators of the 23 things for making me look good.

Week 7 Thing 17

PB wikis look like a cool tool. And there were a lot of good ideas in the curriculum connections section. We have several teachers doing laptop classes, and I can see several ideas we can incorporate into their curriculum.

Week 7 Thing 16

I am as bad as my students--I have not been putting the "thing" number in my blog posting. And I am also a lazy blogger in that I have been putting all the "things" in the same blog. But posting blogs has become easy enough that I have one for Thing 16 all by itself.

Wiki's seem to be one of the most useful things I have seen so far for my own library. To begin with, I am planning one for booktalking this fall. It was useful to find all those comparisons of different wiki services. However, since our students are accustomed to using Blackboard, I plan to post my book wiki there.

Week 6

It has been interestsing and enlightening looking at all those blogs and all those networking sites, but I am not certain about how useful they are. I guess I am comfortable enough with my searching skills that I did not find much I didn't already know about when I went searching in del.icio.us. And I have been successful enough in managing folders in my bookmarks that at this time I do not need those managing tools.

I am glad to know there is something like technorati, and probably some I share this with will be very glad to learn about it. What I can't figure out is who in the world has time to create and read all those blogs?

Which brings me to the future of libraries:
Libraries and librarians help provide information. The explosion of blogs and all sorts of personal postings make it even more difficult to sift through the mass of "stuff" to find "information" that is viable and credible. I spend a lot of time trying to teach students how to become critical users of the web. Unfortunately some of their parents and some of the teachers are just as intimitated as they are about all the stuff they need to sift through.

Week 5

Success! I got into this for posting the first time I tried!

I guess it is time to be grateful for small victories. I have a picture from flicker to post, but the insert pictures box will not open. I went back to the comic strip generator and post it from there, but there was an internal server error.

Lesson: One must sometimes be really persistent to make use of some of these wonderful new tools.

I am about to the point that I am really sorry you cannot see this wonderful cartoon of Bart Simpson wondering if he really needs to have an ID card to check out a book, but all my kids can, because I HAVE been successful in saving the image to my desktop and then printing it for use in my library.

There are some very interesting things in that Web 2.0 awards list. But who in the world has time to do all that stuff? I looked at LibraryThing, and am looking forward to playing with it more. I can see some use for that when I am trying to remember themes when I do reader's advisory.

As for rollyo, I guess I am successful enough with search engines that I do not find that to be very useful at this time.

This has been a VERY frustrating experience. I created this blog under one address, and it shows up in the 23 things with a different email address. I have spent more hours than I care to admit to trying to figure out how to change from one email address to another. Unfortunately I don't do this every day, so I don't remember exactly how I get this blog posted everytime.

I am not much of a blog reader. And I am not much of a writer. I rather doubt that I will be maintaing a blog, especially if it is this much trouble.

At any rate, I have learned something about RSS feeds. I have asked my "techie" friends what they were good for, and have gotten all sorts of information. I have now come to the conclusion that they have no idea what they are talking about.

BlipTV was the right introduction for me--short, simple, and to the point. I have already created an "aggregator" in my google account. Yes, I do remember which email address I provided. We have four of them at our house, and that can be a royal pain.