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.