Saturday, December 29, 2007

Week 6, Thing #15

I read three online articles for this task. In "Away from the Icebergs" academic librarian Rick Anderson uses the metaphor of a ship moving through icy waters to illustrate the risks libraries will encounter in moving their "boats" into the future. He identifies three "icebergs":
  • Spending a lot of time and money developing "just in case" collections. That is, trying to anticipate users' varied needs in developing our collections. I don't see this as much of a problem in the elementary school library. Our collections need to support the curriculum while at the same time offering students high-quality, high-interest reading materials to encourage independent reading. I don't have extensive resources on every topic students choose for their science fair projects, and never will. But I do lead the students in the right direction, with online resources and assistance in using the public library website.
  • Reliance on user education. Here the author is telling us that we can't rely on direct instruction to help library users master the research process. Instead, he says librarians should create library settings and online portals that eliminate "the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning." In an elementary school, the library is a classroom and instruction in the research process and in accessing information is what an elementary LMT does every day. I think the author's point here is valid, but he is an academic librarian working with a very different population (both staff and students).
  • The "come to us" model of library service. The author believes in using Web 2.0 resources to make it easier for library users to access information resources outside the walls of the library. I can't argue with his point here. This might be the first place elementary librarians could start in creating their own "Library 2.0" plans. I think we could do a lot to bring the information resources and interactive online learning into the classrooms and the homes of our students.
This last point was made very clear in another online article (from School Library Journal): "School Library 2.0: Say Goodbye to Your Mother's School Library". This article, from May 2006, also highlights some other practical uses of Web 2.0 technologies for the school library media teacher. Examples include book discussion blogs and ideas on how to use Web 2.0 features to get beyond the fixed/flexible scheduling problem.
The last piece I read was the Wikipedia Library 2.0 entry.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Week 6, Thing #14

Using Technorati
I started with the optional exercise of adding a tag to this post to then check on how well it would work. Let's see:

So it does seem to work. My impression is that when I select the tag it takes me to other postings that have the same tag, and from there I can see what other tags have been assigned to the posts so that I can come up with related keywords and subjects.
Next I explored Technorati using the suggestions on the CSLA Web 2.0 site, searching "School Library Learning 2.0" in posts, in the blog directory, and in the tags. I found I got more hits searching within posts than within the blog directory, which makes sense. Using tags is more serendipitous -- you never know where the clicking on tags will lead you. Sometimes it seems a waste of time, other times you come across something fascinating that you'll go back to and continue to use. I had to fool around with the authority settings to understand the logic of search results.
Playing around with Technorati features, I included a widget from the Technorati site that lists here on my blog the hot blog searches of the moment.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Week 6, Thing #13

All About Tagging and Social Bookmarking
I did quite a bit of reading and exploring in this area before I felt competent enough to be able to put my reflections here. I set up a del.icio.us account and eventually understood the concept and how to set it up. So I have just a few bookmarked sites in three different categories. I set up some of my own tags in addition to other tags I assigned from the ones others had already used.
The SJLibraryLearning2's bookmark site in del.icio.us was a good spot to explore the features of del.icio.us and also to encounter some great resources. I found a piece from the October 2007 School Library Journal about educators' experiences using Web 2.0 ("A Little Help From My Friends: Classroom 2.0 Educators Share Their Experiences") and read about a social studies teacher in Pennsylvania who uses a social bookmarking site called "Diigo" to have his students read, bookmark, and respond to their reading as part of an online group. I guess you'd call Diigo a combination of a social bookmarking site and a .ning. This particular teacher sets up groups on Diigo for the different sections he is teaching and has his students read online articles related to their studies. Using Diigo, the students can then make comments, highlight certain passages, and place "stickies" next to those passages, with their comments. He prefers Diigo to del.icio.us because of these features. I signed in to Diigo and played with it, looking at some articles just for fun and using the comments and stickies feature. The teacher, Dave Ehrhart of Central York High School, also has an impressive site on the Classroom 2.0 .ning: http://classroom20.ning.com/profile/dehrhart.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Week 5, Thing #12

My Rollyo searchbox follows:

Powered by Rollyo

We were asked to put in a topic that interested us, then place a searchbox on that topic on our blog. At least that's how I understood the directions! I completed a half-marathon in June and another one in October, and had so much fun and loved the challenge so much that I want to continue training through the winter months. So I created a Rollyo searchroll named "Running Tips" that you can access through this blog. I also created a Rollyo account and added some other searchrolls for topics of interest to me.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Week 5, Thing #11

I spent quite a bit of time looking through the award-winning Web 2.0 sites. I liked the way the awards site was organized by categories. After looking though a number of categories, I finally delved into the Furl.net website that is listed under the "bookmarks" category. It's a nifty website that allows you to keep a record of sites that you've visited that have been useful or of interest. It automatically fills in the URL, the title, and gives you fields to fill in such as opinions, ratings, keywords. You also put a "Furl It" button on your favorites bar, which you select if there's a particular passage or description of the website that you want to copy to your Furl.net page. Your results can either be public or private. I will continue to use Furl.net.
For the "ning" activity, I went directly to "Teacher Librarian Network Ning". I joined the network, but still haven't joined any of the groups within the network. I'll need to spend more time on the site to see what this social networking offers. But I did put the feed for the "Information Fluency Project" group here on this blog.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Week 5, Thing #10


Here's an image I "generated" though Fototrix, a comic book image generator. It was fairly simple. I browsed through some of the other image generators but really didn't find anything that sparked my interest. This one at least offered the option of uploading your own photos or images and then tweaking them. Again, I'm going to have to find something other than my photos of my Peruvian trip to use in these exercises. The photo you see was taken on my birthday in June, on my way from Cuzco to Lake Titicaca on a very slow train.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Week 4, Thing #9

I used the "Edublog" Award-Winning Blogs and found a link to a site called "K12 Online Conference 2007". The conference is still in progress as of today (Oct. 21) and the topics covered in the online conference parallel what I'm trying to learn in School Library Learning 2.0. The description:

"The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2007 conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries”. This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations."

I posted the RSS feed for the conference on my own blog instead of on my bloglines account. For me it's a little easier to access this via my blog and, besides, it gave me the chance to try out different features that can go on a blog.

Week 4, Thing #8

I did a lot of reading on this topic (RSS feeders) before I set up an account on Bloglines. It was all new to me. So I went to some of the sources recommended on the School Library Learning 2.0 blog and got myself caught up a bit on this Web 2.0 feature. Shortly after, a parent at my school approached me about updating our school website. One of the features she wanted to put into the restructured site was a monthly calendar with an RSS feature for parents and community members to select. I was glad I was able to follow what she was referring to, thanks to the reading I did online and to my own experiences setting up my account in Bloglines.
Bloglines is a site that's very easy to use. But what I'd really like to learn is how to set up an RSS feeder on my own website. Maybe my work with the parent who's helping with our school website will give me the chance to grow in that area.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Week 3, Thing #7

The assignment is to write about any technology-related issue that interests me. Right now, I'm most interested in improving my library's website. I've been webmaster for several years, but the website has remained essentially the same, with updates on certain school- and library-related events. I just ordered a new laptop and Dreamweaver software, and I'll be working with a parent volunteer to redesign the website and include more features for students and parents. What I'd really like to do at some point is create a website for the school for the "outside world", and an intranet for for staff and students when they're on-site. But at the moment we don't have the infrastructure to support that idea.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Week 3, Thing #6

Here's the postcard I made, then put into my Flickr account, and then transferred here. I had to read over the instructions and tips a few times, and then look over the different sites that have features that can be "mashed" with Flickr. But once I got on the postcard site, it only took me about five minutes to create the postcard, upload it to flickr and then post it here. I did it on a break between kindergarten story times. I need to get more photos available on my computer because all I have right now are ones of my Peruvian trip. But as you can see, you can't take a bad picture in Peru.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Week 3, Thing #5


bigsurcoast
Originally uploaded by docjones1980
This is a photo I grabbed from Flickr. It shows the Big Sur coast, just south of Monterey. This particular beach is well-known because it has a waterfall that plunges from the bluff directly onto the beach, and into the water during high tide. I am so fortunate to live near such beauty. People often think of California as the state of traffic and smog, but it really is the most breathtakingly scenic state of all!
Posting to your blog directly from Flickr is a breeze! I already had a Flickr account and didn't even know it! A friend of mine had been sending me photos of his family for years, so I have a lot of viewing to catch up on.

Week 2, Thing #3

My blog was set up a few months ago, and I created a blog for my June trip to Peru. I like being able to let people know that if they're so inclined, they can read all about my trip and look at some of the photos. If they're not interested, you don't have to bore them with travel tales or photo albums. Blogs are easy!
I just posted my avatar this evening. Are there other places to go to create avatars? Are there sites that allow you to be a bit more creative - such as being able to draw and paint your own avatar? The yahoo site was easy to use and the instructions on the CSLA blog were clear, but there's not much room for really expressing yourself with all the pre-set choices and accessories.

Week 1, Thing #2

I'm starting this process on September 19, a bit behind. But I set up my blog in June and created a blog for my Peru trip this summer.
As for the 7.5 habits of lifelong learners, I would say that viewing problems as learning opportunities would be the habit that is most difficult for me. I know that it's true that we learn by working through problems, and I've had that experience innumerable times. But it isn't fun or exciting for me. Problems, especially ones that bog me down for a time, are frustrating. But it does feel good when I've successfully worked through the problem.