Week 9, Thing # 23, Summary

So we come to the end...or the beginning? This has been a very entertaining and enlightening journey so far. Lots of things to learn and do. Some of my favorites were Flickr and the mashups (sounds like a rock band!), finding some library-oriented blogs that I enjoy, and the many creative suggestions of my colleagues on how to use what we have learned. The timing for this class was excellent, as these are the "things" I was planning to explore this summer on my own. And this program went so much farther than I would have done, since I lacked the knowledge to "know what I needed to know"! There are things I have already discussed with teachers as possibilities for projects for this year. My biggest surprise, probably, was how much fun and anxiety was had over the issue of avatars. I didn't expect we would all care so much! Would I participate in the future? You bet! I am hoping that there will be followups coming. I really liked the format of the "schedule" for the class...I do better with deadlines! and it encouraged lots of us to get a move on, rather than postpone. I wonder if there would be a way to encourage more "social networking" in the future? Joining some of the wikis will help. Hopefully I will make time to keep up.

Thank you to all of the CSLA members who helped create this fun endeavor.

Week 9, Thing # 22, eBooks

World eBook Fair collection contains letters, essays, etc. from the great philosophers. Could replace the rain-soaked collection of same that used to be used every year by a social studies teacher! Also the government printing collection... Even a collection of math books... And physics... Some music... The technical book collection alone would be personally worth seeing... Looks like a pretty good deal for 8.95/year.

Librovox, perhaps not so much, but Google's eBook search worked well on the "philosopher" test. (Did I mention Google and world ownership earlier in this blog??)

Week 9, Thing # 21, Podcasts

Interesting that I was able to find numerous knitting podcasts (actually, I sometimes think of things other than knitting!), but few concerned with reviewing books. I did find the "Hennepin County TeenLinks Podcasts", featuring reviews of books, movies, and other interesting tidbits done by teens. Hennepin County strikes again! Every contact I've had with their teen programming has been an eye-opener. You can find them here Check out in particular the "Eden Prairie Library You Tube Contest". I plan to see my video teacher as soon as I can corner him!

In the end, I did find the New York Times Book Review Podcasts and included it on my Google Reader. Now to find the time to listen!

Interesting note: talked to my tech person today and was describing this class. He has lots of questions, and has been thinking about trying to set up RSS feed for our school. I don't remember that we "learned" how to set them up, but I will return to that "Thing" to find out.

Week 9, Thing # 20, YouTube

YouTube, as we all know, contains tons of interesting video. Fun stuff, educational stuff, other... well. I don't know if it is my computer, cookies, cache, or what, but it seems excruciatingly slow to me. I don't get the buffer things where the vid stops for a few seconds to get a second wind. Explain, please. I found a fun video illustrating a knitting machine made entirely of Legos. Not really useful in terms of the knitted fabric created, I would think, but extremely interesting. Here it is embedded from YouTube...



The librarians' 2.0 manifesto was very thought-provoking. I have bookmarked it to easily return during the coming year. Living up to it may prove difficult...especially the part where others may "resist".

Exploring the other sites, looking for "high school library tour" or "library tour" brought very little of use. Either the Quick Time videos didn't work, or the "tour" was deadly boring! Still I persevered to finally find two possibilities:
one by students...



and one by Nick Baker, who made "March of the Librarians" (which was very fun, by the way)... Williams College Welcome Video

Nick also had a very fun video introducing the library staff:

Week 8, # 19, Library Thing

I explored Library Thing while checking out the Web 2.0 Awards. Just went back and looked some more, including librarians' blogs. They are also interesting.

Perplexing note: I went back to "older posts" to see what week, etc. I had commented on Library Thing. I had put a tag cloud into the post for Week 5, which showed when this post was not "older", but does not show now. Then I clicked on the title to show just that post, and there was the tag cloud again. I assume this is to save space on the page?

Also, I experienced the desirability of tags, which I had NOT put on earlier posts!

Week 7, Thing # 18, Zoho Writer, etc.

Somewhere in my explorations of Zoho, I saw a comment to the effect that this is an ambitious undertaking. I would certainly agree! So much power in one place... And if we are talking about creating documents, is this not a better venue than a wiki, as it can be formatted into final form here? I look forward to exploring the possibilities with the rest of our district library staff.

BTW, the "meeting" section completely lost me. Much that is here deserves more exploration time.

Technorati Tags sharing,documents,Zoho

No particular week, no particular thing...just Wikipedia

Interesting article in the local paper: A UCSC professor has developed a method of examining the accuracy of information in Wikipedia. Rather than authenticating the information itself, the method bases its evaluation on the number of times the particular contributor has been corrected in past Wikipedia contributions. Variegated colors of orange indicate the author's "reputation". Idea being...the darker the orange, the less likely the information is accurate. Interesting concept, but not without its shortcomings. Read the comments following the article. I guess the bottom line is still: verify any information obtained through wiki-type articles, blogs, etc. Same thing we library types are always saying!

Week 7, Thing # 17, Sandbox

Editing someone else's writing is always a daunting proposition. Will they like what you add? Will they resent the changes? Are your thoughts really as valid/good/smart as theirs? Will someone think what you say or do or change is foolish/dumb/stupid? Do I need a psychologist?...

Anyway...the sandbox was great. A totally safe place to try out this wiki stuff. I even made a change! And added an idea. I like the sharing of ideas. Just visited two of the categories so far, but got lots of mental stimulation.

I do think that in using this sort of tool we need to consider the shy student who doesn't feel comfortable putting thoughts in writing for all to see. Some way for adding comments that are anonymous, but also allow the instructor to know who did what. Can we do that?