Thing #11 Check out Library Thing

I did do the tutorial on Library Thing. It was very easy to use. I did set up an account and put several books on it. I liked Library Thing very much as it did everything for me. A good feature was the people who had the same books as I did, it gave more books that they had and reccomendations for ones to read. How this could be used in libraries is book recommendations, ratings and reviews. Another thing that was suggested on the site was new or featured books could be displayed on our web page. One of the things that I need to learn to do is do edit books to make a new list. I know that it can be done, but how?

REFLECTIONS

One leg of the Journey is completed. Back in October, when we started this Learning20thru play, I thought that I would not do it. However, I did name myself learninglou, and I thought that I should at least give it a try. The journey has not always been easy, especially since the district blocked most access. Finally, I decided that I would do it on the PC at home. It works perfectly, but try to show it at school and that is a different matter. It was nice to have Sandy to help me with some of things when I was stuck on a particuar item. Renea helped me with MYSpace page. Also, I appreciated the staff developments that let us work on this project. I am excited about all of the information that I have learned, and hope to put some of it into practice soon. I really enjoyed Animoto, being introduced to Image Chef, YouTube and MySpace. I am not sure how much I will use the RSS feeds, but at least I know about them and when I see the RSS I will know what it is. I guess all that I can say now is that the Journey continues!

Thing #23 Creative Commons

This did not sound too exciting a topic when I knew that it dealt with copyright; however, it turned out to be very interesting. I am sure that it is going to be very helpful for me on the questions of what is fair use and what is limited use, etc. I really did enjoy looking and reading the graphic novel by the students at the Duke Law School. They were very creative! And of course that is one reason for unlimiting copyright. With all of the social networking that is online, copyright had to change. Creative Commons License Deed gives the license terms that you can reuse or distribute others works. This is a great development especially for librarians and teachers to allow students to be more creative and express themselves in a different manner. This link gives more information about Creative Commons. The attribution that I chose was the Article, Illegal Art. It was where Colin Mutchler submiited My Life an acoustic guitar song, to Opsound that is music registry that requires Attribution-Share alike licensing, and then a lady who did not know Colin layered a violin on to it to make My Life Changed. As a results, it was an all right process.

Thing #22 Animoto

This to me was the most fun of all of the other 21 things that I have done. The instruction were very specific and simple. I did my own pictures, but did their music. I wanted the song ON THE ROAD AGAIN, but did not take time to find it so use their song ROCK ON. I like very much how they put the video together. This was great.

Rocking to Alaska

Thing #19 Go with the Flow

I tried to view the demo on Gliffy, but never could get it. It kept taking me to setting up the flow chart, and I did not know what to do. I did set up an account in Mindmeister. The difference to me was that on the flow chart you have the ideas that you want on it, and the one mind map is that it is more like brainstorming. I did figure out how to use Gliffy and ended up using Gliffy. I think if you click on the highlighted one, it will show my flow chart that I hope to use in our staff development on February 1.

Thing #21 Podcasts: no iPLod needed

I did the PodGrunt series on the information about podcast, and did recall a lot of the info from our staff development on it. The two directories that I looked at were the Educational Podcast Directory and Podcasdtalley.com. The podcast that I really liked from podcastalley was the one on Hawaii as we plan to go in June. I know that it has nothing to do with libraries, other than information, but I want to include it Sandra and I are wanting to do podcasting with our book club, Pirates Read. We want to do student book reviews and hopefully this will stimulate reading for other students as we put it on our library web page. One that we may consider using is YA Bookcast.

Thing #20 You too can YouTube

I enjoyed looking at the many different videos on YouTube,. It was interesting to type in the web 2.0 and the first item that came up was a man telling how to make money, but as I looked at the videos, I realized that I needed to look at What is Web 2.0? In one o f these, the statement that "users are valuable" by Tim O'Reilly struck me as a very important statement. In the Library 2.0 Manifesto, to me one of the pictures was inappropriate. (personal opinion) The March of the librarians was cute and expecially the reference to the "tote rollers." Hopefully, I have add one of the videos, on the futures of libraries. I had tried to add The 2007 Campaign for America's Libraries, but they had refused to let be in embedded.

Thing#17 Web-based applications:

I created an account in Zoho Writer. It was very easy to use. The instructions were very good. I tried several things, and one that was really fast was the quick start ; however, it did not give all of the options as color background, margins, pictures, etc. When I tried putting this on my page, it did not keep the margins nor the indentions that were on the original document, and it came in as a yellow color and you could not really read it.

Thing #18 Discovering web 2.0 tools

I did the short cut to the winners and decided to do the Biblo under books. It was very easy to use; however, sometimes when I would click on one of the sites it would say that that page could not be displayed, but I would go back and click on it again and it would go right to it. It was interesting to see how reasonable the books were, and that they would work with the shipping costs. It was good that they had so many graphic novels since so many of our students especially boys seem to like them. To me this would be a good source, to get a quantity of them at a cheap price if we could find reviews for them. Several years ago, I was looking for Will Durant books for our son and it amazed me that this site had so many of his at a much better price that what I paid for them at a rare book store here in Dallas. They also had textbooks which I thought might help those still working on certification.

Thing #16 Add an entry to the Sandbox wiki

It was interesting to read the ideas in the Learning Through Play Sandbox. In fact, some that I saw there I had suggested in post 15. The one that struck me most was to set up a wiki for teachers and students to suggest material to purchase. I think that this would be a wonderful way to use the wiki. The wiki tour and video gallery were very helpful. With this being election year, I was surprised that there was not more information concerning how these could be use in the pro and con of candidates within a party as well as between the parties. What I liked most about this was how easy it was to use. Now, just get me to do it with the suggestions that I have and that I saw in the ideas.

Thing #15 Wikis and how libraries are using them

After looking at the articles on wikis, it seems that they are easy to use and that they do give the patrons the opportunity to add to them. It was interesting some of them have put passwords in place to keep scams and vandalism from happening to them. This seems like a good thing to have. There are numerous ways that a wiki could be used in a school library. Some of them that that were in the articles were like a summer reading program, social bookmarking, copyright issues, book list of all kinds, and book reviews, and of course the one from our library services on MISD Policies and Procedures. Also, I would think that a wiki could be set up for teachers and students to recommend materials to order. A wiki could be used in the research process as students, teachers, librarian find information on a particular subject that they would put the place of information on the wiki. I would not want it to be just a blanket of information, but more of a source of information. Some one else had suggested that for book studies that a wiki could be set up to share ideas and not have to meet in person so often. I think that these will be very useful.

Thing #14 Read some perspectives on web 2.0

I read all of the articles and what I received mostly from them was that librarians are to change and encourage users to participate in the development and maintaining of services offered by the library. One key principle that hit me was that "rigidity breeds failure." I liked the 2.0 manifesto, but I do have a hard time with some of things in it, for example, being willing to make mistakes. I am sure that this is the wave of the future in libraries, but it is still hard to completely accept. One thing especially is the idea of the library collection. I still am pretty much into some print material. I do know that these exercises are helping me to see some of the information that is available and that I need to know about them, and to be able to help students in the use of them. One item that hit in the reading was that not only do we need to read information in our field, but we need to be aware of other professions and watch for the impact of technology on those fields. I do agree that libraries are changing and will face more changes in the future, but am I ready for a barrier free, everywhere library? I don't know!

Thing #13 Tagging and Social bookmarking

It ws interesting to do all of the tutorials. I don't think that any of them are so much different from the other. One article that I read said that Furl was the most advanced, Netvoriz was the most powerful, Del.icio.us was the most popular, Ma.gnolia had the sleekist design and that Bluedot was for the MySpace crowd. I did look at the MISDLTP20 account and saw all the resouces that had been highlighted. I liked the way it told how many had bookmarked it and that you could read their comments. I do see that this could be a big help in doing research, and that it could be access from any where.

Thing#12 Explore Social Networking

I did the tutorial on How to Set up a myspace profile. I did set up a account with MySpace, and it is included on my profile in this blog. I have asked several people to be my friend. I did join a Ning network, Pink Colloar Club--a Chritian Life Style Communtuy. It let me go to the site, but would not let me go to any of the indidual items on their site. Many of our students have MySpace accounts and we do need know what they are like, and what good and not so good things that they can give to our students. In our book club, we have tried to get the students to blog, but all they want to do is use MySpace, and most of them will not even try the blog. The students seem to think that more kids would join the book club if they knew about it through MySpace. I do think that they are good for certian information, but like one of our students showed me his blog and he had too much personal information on it. Also, I went to the Ning for Mesquite librarians, and did join. The artcle on teachers in the library was pretty interesting.

library lady

Thing #10 Online Image Generators

This was fun! I looked at all of the generators, and some of them did have the same things in them. I liked the smiley faces, and tried to use the one with the big grin as you would have a big grin when you read, but some how did not get into my blog. I decided on using the Image Chef, and used the political button since it is election year. Ways this could be used in the library would be signs, notes to students, sharing book titles/information, even to start a project for a grade.
http://www.imagechef.com/

Thing #9 Finding Feeds

I looked at many of the search tools that could help me locate RSS feeds. I especially liked the Edublogs' award winners. Read some of the 2006 award winners, and looked at the nominations for 2007. Found the BestLibrary/librarian article on manadtory filtering in Australia interesting. The Google Blog Search was great to use to see all the information on school libray learning 2.0 and mesquite isd. Technorati was not good for me. I listened to the tutorial, but even in English it was difficult to understand, and I did not set up an account. I still like Blogline's. I did go to Yahoo just to see what they had. I set up an account in Pageflakes.

Thing #8 RSS

Two of the things that I did learn was what RSS meant,Really Simple Syndication, and that the little symbols that I had seen means that they have subscribe to updated information from the web. I thought Bloglines and Google Reader were very similar. I already had accounts with both so I used Bloglines to subscribe to the information that I wanted daily. I think that it will be good for me personally as I will not have to go through so many sources to get the news that I want, but the only way that I think that I could use it with students is just the suggestion that they could set up their own feeds.

Thing #7 Google-not just for searching anymore

I enjoyed searching all of the Google options, but picked Google Alert and Picasa Web Albums for my focus. I set a email alert on the Political canidates since they are so much in the news. However, I did not specify only US canidates and it has sent me some articles on Korea,Kenya. I think that this would be very helpful for students to use when they need current events. I upload photos of my house to Picasa. Click on my house to see them.