Refresher course

I learned how to do all these things this past summer but I haven't done some of them since. Guess I need to practice so I can help when someone else gets stuck. After dithering about the Flickr website, I finally remembered what to do: click on your picture, go to the Share tab at the top of it, select Grab the HTML/BBCode, copy the code, insert it in your post.

Here's a soothing image that I grabbed from one of my favorite webcams somewhere in Tennessee -

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Greyhound 2.0 - the next phase

In all my previous posts I was the student. I enjoyed working my way through School Library Learning 2.0 so much that I have volunteered to become the "teacher" for Classroom Learning 2.0. Lucky for me, the program and the learners do all the real work. I'm just here to encourage and smooth out the rough spots.

We have 33 Lyman teachers who will be going through the program from now until March. I expect great things!

Relaxation

A quiet moment in my greenhouse/back porch. (But not completely quiet - turn on your speakers.)

Google game

Guess the Google is promoted as a game but it could also be considered a test of how good you are a tagging things. It presents a montage of images and you have to guess what search term they all have in common. You might need to try terms as both singular and plural. Have fun!

Add this to your Delicious list

A site that is on my Delicious list and that others might want to include is All My Faves. They have gathered links to many of the most popular sites in a wide variety of categories and organized them for easy access. I like looking at the Weekly Faves where they introduce new sites, often related to current events.

It's fun to look it their international versions (Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, and United Kingdom); just click on the arrow by the flag at the top of the page or see the list at the bottom of the page. You will find that some of the resources will be the same for every country, some will be regional variations, and some will be completely different.

Thing 23 - Completion!

“Creative energy boost” would best describe my learning experience with Library Learning 2.0.

The need for a significant number of recertification points led me to it, a fortunate chain of events. The situation both forced me and allowed me to take the time to investigate a lot of things I had been hearing about but had not gotten around to trying. The format worked well for my learning style and for working when time was available. I like the way it guides without the pressure to use or adopt everything mentioned. I have found myself stopping anyone who happens to come through the library to share my latest discoveries. Each tool or resource has made me think of someone who could use it, even if I might not.

I would love to see SCPS Professional Development make Classroom Learning 2.0 available to our teachers. No matter how much we preach, model, etc., some of our colleagues just cannot be convinced that they have the time or need to explore new technology on their own. If we could lure them with points (the next best thing to money), we would have a better chance to convert them.

Thing 23 - Copyright

Convincing students (and sometimes our colleagues) that using information ethically is not optional can be a challenge. There is much food for thought in this last lesson, especially in the Lessig presentation and on the CTAP4 website. I have already added several of the copyright sites to my school Delicious and will try to direct our teachers to the rest of the site.

Print vs. digital - another view

A while back I shared my some of my thoughts on reading from a printed copy rather than from a computer screen. Today's Orlando Sentinel - the newspaper, although I'm sure it's in the epaper as well - included Kathleen Parker's take on the subject. (I used the link to the Sacramento Bee because I felt their headline was better.)

Thing 22

Although I know several people who love audio books and listen to them regularly, I must admit that I have not been one of them. This and the world of eBooks are areas where I need to spend more time exploring. Maybe I'll sign up for an eBook account at Winter Park Public Library. Other options are Kindle for PC or some of these free book sources that I could try using on my netbook.

Today I helped one of our teachers find an audio version of her daughter's required summer reading. Her daughter is one of our many "reluctant" readers and this may make the process less painful. How are other schools in Seminole County using eBooks and audio books?

As for the British Library Online Gallery, all I can say is WOW!

Thing 21

Podcasts might fit in the old category of "if you can't beat'em, join 'em!" We are constantly fighting the battle of the ear buds with many of our students.

Each of the directories that were listed has its strengths and weaknesses. The end result with all of them is that there are lots of interesting podcasts out there but it takes a lot of digging to find what you really need. I happened to come across one on Parenting Your Teen and added the RSS feed to my list; I may recommend it to our Child Development teacher and guidance counselors. I would like to help develop a "new students" orientation podcast for our school and maybe some library how-to's.

I recently noticed a new icon on Kate's library blog and discovered that it is now available as a podcast. When I looked up the source, I learned that Odiogo will convert your blog to audio for FREE. It's a computer generated voice but it's not too bad.

Thing 20, part 2

As you know from my previous posts, my super library sister-in-law has been ahead of me in the Library 2.0 game for some time. Yesterday I sent her the link to one of the videos that I mentioned in my last post and was surprised that it was new to her. Of course, she then sent me a link to her library's Delicious list of library-related videos. Unfortunately some of them require a GALILEO password (that's Georgia's electronic library resource), but several of them are from EBSCO and are accessible on their webpage (down at the botttom - click on Support).

Thanks Kate!

Thing 20

Online videos are another of those mixed blessings. Our students are increasingly visually oriented, so this might be the best way to reach them. YouTube has some very good, educational material, but it also has an abundance of junk. It is understandable that most school systems block access to videos, due to their combination of bandwidth consumption and potential for tasteless garbage.

I did enjoy the videos that were cited in this lesson, especially Introducing the Book and March of the Librarians. Here's a lovely little thing I found on Vimeo -

LIBRARY from singsfish on Vimeo.

Summertime and the livin' is easy

A visitor to Kitsilano Beach reads a book while taking in the summer sun in Vancouver, British Columbia July 5, 2010. (REUTERS/Andy Clark) #

I found this on the Big Picture website, one of my favorites.

Thing 19

LibraryThing will take more time for me to fully explore. My husband and I like to keep lists of our leisure reading, so I began my entries with what we have read so far this year. I may add last year's lists as well, since this should help give us a good variety of recommendations for what to read next.

There are a number of potential uses for LibraryThing in schools. I like the way the CSLA members used it to create their list with disabled characters; we can create lists with Horizon but this makes it easier to keep and share a list (and more eye-catching too). Teachers could use it for their classroom collections. I would love to see our Reading Coach create a catalog of all the resources she has!

Thing 18 - final thoughts

While trying to figure out how to post from Zoho to my blog, I checked out some of the blogs listed on the School Library Learning 2.0 home page. One person suggested that perhaps the problem she had with Zoho would be resolved when it was no longer in its Beta version. That post was from 2007 or 2008; Zoho still says Beta. Hmmm...

Google has introduced its Chrome version of its online productivity tools. Scanning the questions/complaints reveals that the "new and improved" version has lost its ability to post to blogs. At least it's not just me.

Thing 18, continued

Thought I was just cruising along using Zoho; I found a nice font, used some colors, set up some bullet points. Then I tried sending my work to my blog. Grrr! No luck while using Explorer, no better with Firefox. Copied my work to Google Docs thinking it might be more friendly to Blogger but with the same result. I'm beginning to wonder if the problem might be at the Blogger end, but I'm not going to mess with it anymore, at least for now.

Blogging aside, I do think that these tools have interesting potential. The most obvious way that our teachers and students might use them would be for collaborative projects. Several other reasons to consider their use -
* Many of our students do not have a computer at home, must share computers, or otherwise cannot depend on always having the same station available to them; saving their work to Zoho (or one of the others) might be a better option for them than a portable, easily misplaced memory devices.
* In the Library, we often encounter problems when students need to print the work they did elsewhere but the software they used is not compatible with what is on our computers.
* During this summer session a new issue arose - all the students must save to a shared drive instead of their individual accounts on the network and some entries were being sabotaged.

A missed opportunity

I'm sorry I didn't have my camera with me this morning. One of our summer school English classes was in the library today - the room was unusually quiet because they were all reading. I could have made a whole collection of mini-Read posters!

Thing 18 - a work in progress

I used Zoho to write my post for Thing 18, but I have had no success posting from Zoho to my blog. I tried the tried and true cut and paste method, but that lost all my formatting. Next I tried changing my Internet Explorer security settings. I'll keep playing with it, but if any one else has it figured out, please give me a clue.

Thing 15

When I first looked at the resources for this exercise, I was a little put off by the age of some of the articles. Now that I have attained the necessary levels of motivation and caffeine however, I find it is interesting that the opinions and visions in those articles are still so relevant today. We as librarians, educators, or just plain folks are still trying to get a grip on all the various technological advances and to figure out what to do with them.

There are certainly many truths expressed. We must keep up with trends, anticipate needs, and in Storey’s words “reach users in new and compelling ways.” We must continuously advocate for our patrons with the public in general and especially with the politicians who hold our purse strings. We must participate in “harnessing collective intelligence” and teach our students and colleagues how to do the same. We must dream with Dr. Schultz of Library 3.0, Library 4.0, and beyond.

And yet… We must not get so caught up in our dreams that we lose touch with reality. Just because it appears that everyone we see has a cellphone attached, that does not mean that all of those phones are “smart” nor does it mean that everyone has access to an adequate computer with good internet capability. We must remind both our colleagues and politicians that it is unlikely that our students who qualify for free or reduced price lunch have the option of working on Blackboard or taking a Virtual School class at home. We must balance our wishes as well as our budgets.

So what did I find in what I read that we might put into action sooner rather than later? I liked the “It’s a crime not to read” program. Perhaps we should look into partnering with our school resource officers on a similar project. I am also intrigued by the possibility of replacing conventional textbooks with electronic books. Part of me thinks that this would be a blessing for those of us who have spent years with the responsibility for processing and circulating textbooks. Another part of me wonders about the logistics for loading 2400+ readers with the correct titles in a timely manner. And then there is that lawsuit I read about recently claiming that some of the present generation of electronic books do not address all the needs of the visually or otherwise impaired – another hurdle as consider our diverse student population.

Things 16 and 17

Wikis are something else that I first learned about from my sister-in-law. We tried creating a family wiki where we could collect memories, the stories that you want to pass down to the grandkids, that sort of thing. I must admit I have not been a faithful contributor. Maybe that should be another summer "to do" thing.

I used PBWorks to create the LYMAN Reads wiki for our library. Its original main purpose was as a home for all our "If you liked..." lists, since there was no way we could put them on our school webpage. As you can see, we haven't done much with it since then.

The examples given in these discovery exercises may provide me with some inspiration to do more with our wiki. I particularly like the Library Bloggers Wiki and California Curriculum Connections wiki and will be going back to play with them some more. I'll also be sharing some of the more subject-specific sites with some of our teachers.

Although not technically "curriculum applications", there are a couple of other ways that wikis might be a good tool. One would be a "living" library procedures manual. With our whole library staff in DROP, it might be a good time to start writing down how we do things, the quirks of some of our equipment, where the software and owner's manuals are located (TIP comes to mind), etc. Another idea from my s-i-l, that she got from her tech support people and that I wish our guys would adopt, is to use a wiki as a record of what they do - what software was installed and when (by location or station), what repairs were made to a unit, what problems arose and how they were solved, etc. Everyone on the tech team could read and post to the wiki and a lot of wheel-reinventing could be avoided. We have had a lot of turnover in our tech support staff over the years and this could have saved a lot of headaches.

Not quite Thing 15

Several years ago I read about a study that found that people read from a computer screen at 75% the rate that they read from print material. It was a small study and I always hoped that someone would investigate this further. My thought at the time was that this reduction would not be a problem for good/fast readers but might be significant for those who already read slowly or poorly.

I still want somebody to do more research on this. My gut feeling is that the earlier finding is probably still true to some extent for those of us whose reading experience has been initially and primarily print. It would be useful to know to what degree it is true of our young people who have spent so much of their lives reading from computer screens. This could have important implications as we move into more online testing.

What made me think of all this? For this discovery exercise there is a lot we need to read. Maybe I've been spoiled by all the interactive things we have been exploring, but I'm having a hard time making myself just read. I've even resorted to printing some of the articles so that I can read them in my comfy chair instead of at the computer. So much for the "paperless society"!

Thing 14

Must be something about Mondays - once again reality doesn't quite live up to my expectations based on the lesson's description. Technorati's Discover and Popular features are not available, and the note about the "New Technorati" was posted in October, 2009. Other features seem to be functioning.

Using Technorati, I searched for "School Library Learning 2.0" and found nothing; I dropped the 2.0 and had better results, especially when I used their "refined search". I found more when I used Google's blogsearch feature. If you want to find blogs using the other search engines mentioned, you will need to add "blog OR blogs" to your search string. I'll probably stick with Google in the future.

There was a story on the evening news a few years ago where they were interviewing some people from Google; it was the anniversary of some significant date in the company's history, I think. Talking about how hard it can be to find what you want and how Google was developed to make it easier, one person said something to the effect that the internet would be a lot better if librarians had been in charge of it from the beginning.

I can't help thinking that whoever started promoting the use of "tags" was channeling the spirits of all those early librarians that we learned about in our first cataloging classes. Tags help to optimize the work of a search engine, just as subject headings in a MARC record enable us go straight to the library shelf we need instead of wandering through the whole room. The disadvantage to tags is that everybody has their own versions, so you miss things unless you use lots of variables when you search. Sounds kind of like what inspired Minnie Sears to make her List of Subject Headings, doesn't it!

Thing 13

Although I did not use the specific sites mentioned in this discovery exercise, essentially I completed it sometime in January, 2008, when I was introduced to Delicious by my sister-in-law. I love it! I use my personal Delicious as my homepage on my laptop. The Wordle on this page is based on my school page, LymanLibrarian. There is a link to it on our portion of the school's webpage. I have been promoting it to teachers and students since I created it, but I've realized recently that checking for broken links needs to be on my "to do" list for the summer.

It is helpful to have the "Post to my Delicious" button on your toolbar. Of course, this is easier to do on your own computer. Putting the button on your school computer may not be an option, especially since most of us use several different stations. The easy way around that is to have two browser windows open, sign in to your Delicious on one, find the website you want to add on the other, and then cut and paste the address, description, etc., into the "Save a new bookmark" form.

Thing 12

After playing with Rollyo for a while, I created a search roll called Book Ideas for Teens and put a link to it on this blog site. I found some sites to include on it by searching the terms library, teen reads, and young adults. Now that I've done it, I'm not sure how useful this will be to me personally. Maybe I need to "play" some more.

I think Rollyo might be a useful tool for teachers who want their students to practice search skills but want/need to help them focus their search to avoid inaccurate or inappropriate sites. This might be particularly useful in the lower grades.

The other sites were much more fun. I will recommend the Traveler IQ Challenge to our social studies teachers, and I expect my husband may get hooked on it as well. I need to get him to take a picture of me reading so that I can add a mini poster here. Lyman has the regular READ poster software, but the mini version should be fun and more accessible for our reading teachers.

Thing 11

The list of CNET Web 2.0 Award Winners has a lot to offer those who live with their smart phones or who need commercial applications. One of the most promising for educational uses, in my opinion, is Diigo. In the Library, it could be used to take "snapshots" of web pages for use in student orientation or lessons and for staff development. The potential for classroom use is even greater as teachers move to more collaborative research; the existing groups are a source for good ideas. I like the privacy controls.

I did not play with Ning that much after I saw a post announcing that it is no longer free. I noticed that some groups, such as ALA, have since chosen to move from Ning and created their own networking spot. Maybe I'm just not good at searching Facebook, but I really did not find many groups there that I could not access better through their regular websites or blogs.

Social networking sites are a mixed blessing. From the purely social aspect, they can be a wonderful way to keep in touch with friends and family - and a real blessing in times of illness or other family crisis. The down side has been illustrated all too often on the news when people cross the line of what is appropriate contact. For now, I think their use in education may not be a good idea.

Thing 10

I like the image generators that were suggested but I was in the mood for something a little edgier. Then I remembered the Funny Times Cartoon Playground.

If you send your cartoon directly from the Playground to Blogger, all you get is a link. I got around this by right-clicking on my cartoon, saving it, and then using "add image" to put it here.

Thing 9

It's hard to convince teachers to use things that they cannot access at school, so I've been checking the links for this course to see whether Websense will let them through. Everything worked until I got to this assignment. I can't get to Blogline or Feedster at school or home; Syndic8 gets hung-up and won't let me out of it regardless of where I try it. Websense blocks some content on most of them. Technorati seems to be the most straight-forward and easiest to use.

I tried searching "Lyman High" and found a touching Father's Day blog by a former student. My next experiment may be looking for alumni/reunion blogs. We have a big stack of yearbooks from other schools that our journalism program got as samples. I'd like to find good homes for them.

Thing 8

I set up a Google Reader account; it was easy to do but left me thinking, "Oh great! Now I have something else to remember to check." Then I figured out how to put my library-related feeds on my blog profile. Not exactly one-stop shopping but an improvement.

Thing 7

Digital cameras definitely make it easier to decorate websites, blogs, etc., although the "old" method of scanning your pictures is still a viable option, especially when you want to use pre-digital images. I like my digital camera because it's tiny and lightweight, easy to use, and the pictures are easy to share. Flickr seems like it would be a good option for sharing large collections, but email and Facebook work well for most of my personal uses.

What don't I like about digital cameras? Well, we own some really nice Nikon lenses but we can't afford the really nice Nikon digital camera that they might be compatible with. I'm also concerned about the lifespan of digital pictures. I have family photos that are over 100 years old and still look good, in spite of not being kept in archival conditions. Will the digital images that people are saving or printing survive that long?

Thing 6

I'll be telling lots of people, some who work in education and some who don't, about the Big Huge Labs site (http://bighugelabs.com/). It's easy to use and has a good variety of options. The trading cards look like a fun project for our Pre-K teachers or for the high school students who help them. Our journalism teacher might want to make new Press Passes with the badge maker and the possibilities for our art students are wide-open.

Thing 5 - Images and image

#98 - Librarian tattoos
Originally uploaded by domesticat

There are some for whom the term "librarian" conjures up a negative image, so they prefer to be called "media specialists". I searched both terms on Flickr. There were 741 results for "media specialist", mostly pictures taken at meetings [Yawn]. There were 90,062 results for "librarian" and these ranged from the old stereotypes (hair in a bun, sensible shoes, "shhh") to anything but - now you're talking!

I've never really liked the term "media specialist" - may have been a bad reaction to reading Marshall McLuhan in my youth. I am ready to go shopping for some of these librarian temporary tattoos!

Things 3 and 4

If you're reading this, then you know that I have created my blog and registered it. The title for my blog ties in with some things I was already doing on the Lyman webpage. Not sure yet how I might use this (in addition to or instead of?) but I couldn't see any point in setting up one thing for this course and then doing another one later for school. I'm not really the type to do a personal blog.

Thing 2

I enjoyed the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners and plan to share it with friends both in the education field and outside of it. At this point in my life these habits are pretty much second-nature to me, but I guess the hardest is "view problems as challenges". Especially at the end of the school year, I am more likely to view challenges as problems. Most seem to be of the "not again!" variety.

"Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner" may be the easiest for me, other than "Play" of course. I am able to figure out and learn about things like those we are exploring in this course because I know how to follow directions. After all the things I have been forced to teach myself (especially TIP), I know to look for directions, I know that most things follow some sort of pattern or sequence, and I can make educated guesses when the directions are poor. Seems pretty basic, but I believe it makes a huge difference.

Week Two

Maybe it was just that I started working on both this blog and my avatar at the end of the day, but I definitely did not find either of them as intuitive as some other programs that I have used. Having to sign up for both Google and Yahoo accounts did not thrill me either - more logons and passwords to remember, possibly (probably?) more promotional emails showing up in my mailboxes. At least now I have a "spare" email address to use when I have to create accounts to get discount coupons, etc.

Week One

So far, so good. Not as easy as Delicious but no worse than PBWiki.