After thrashing around for a bit to actually FIND the SandBox, I found it rather fun. For those of you who, like me, felt fear grip your gut when the MSLA sandbox didn't have a link, go to the CSLA page where the link is alive and well. (Thank you Purple Glasses)
It was neat to see the comments made by my colleagues in this class. I did try the chat, but was unable to do anything without a microphone. Hmmm ... shall I start a search for it? The sandbox tools are so similar to the tools on Blogger that it was quite easy to edit the page and insert a photo.
I can see that wikis would be a very easy tool for my students to use. Not only would it get their creativity going, but I think it would force them to think critically about what should be posted as well. Used as a collaborative tool in class, it may even make them work as a team. Knowing that their work would have a presence on the Web would be a very powerful motivator - the students would become the producers of information for consumption by other students. And what student wouldn't rather learn from a peer vs. an adult? We see it all the time in reader's advisory. If I like the book, there's a bit of hesitation to take it out. When student A agrees with me, it's a foot race to the checkout desk.
On a tangent to this topic, I have been thinking a lot about the wiki vs. the Teacher Web tool I used. Teacher Web provides a place to design a page that can only be edited by the owner. It is a really simple tool to use - I was able to design an attractive page with multiple links in a very short amount of time and no web page design experience. There is a cost for using the service; but if you want your page to be your own, it is an avenue to that end.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Week 7, Thing 16 - Wikis
When I first heard the word "wiki" it was in combination with the word "stick." I discovered that a "wiki stick" was a malleable wax-like stick that occupational therapists used with students who needed to develop better fine motor coordination. I even got to try one out - and I loved playing with it. So when I heard the word ""wiki" in combination with Web 2.0 tools, I sort of figured that it wasn't something to play with, but guess what? I was wrong!
I immediately fell in love with the BookLoversWiki. I am forever looking for new reads and now I can get suggestions from other avid readers and post my own. I can also see my students getting excited about books they have loved - or hated - given the opportunity to express their opinion in this medium.
Ever the believer in laziness being the mother of shortcuts, it was very exciting to see the Library Instruction Wiki. Our district has been hoping to develop a comprehensive library curriculum K-12 for the past few years. This wiki can give us a place to start ... and wikis in general can give a place to collaborate without having to gather for meetings. It can also give students a place to research, post, or comment on information that is part of the curriculum. Instead of individual research papers which go nowhere beyond student and teacher, how neat would it be for fifth graders to develop an "explorer" wiki?
When I think about the adage, "Knowledge is power," I can see that developing a wiki gives the user the power to create and adapt a knowledge base. In another on-line course, I developed a web-page on Teacher Web. Not able to afford the paltry sum (long story) to keep it "up" for a year, I went to my various school tech people to see if the pages could be redeveloped with the district's "Dream Weaver" software. I was turned down - no one had the time either to do it or to teach me - and I lost the work. Oh if only I knew about wikis at the time!
In education today, there is a lot of talk about wanting students to "own their own knowledge" and to be responsible for "taking charge of their learning." Developing a wiki plays right into this philosophy. What's more, because it is on the Web, a wiki can create conversations between students across the country and throughout the world, accomodating varying opinions and schools of thought.
In our previous assignment, author Rick Anderson stated that we needed to eliminate barriers between patrons and information and that if services could not be used without training, then the services needed to be fixed. What addresses those issues better than wikis?
I immediately fell in love with the BookLoversWiki. I am forever looking for new reads and now I can get suggestions from other avid readers and post my own. I can also see my students getting excited about books they have loved - or hated - given the opportunity to express their opinion in this medium.
Ever the believer in laziness being the mother of shortcuts, it was very exciting to see the Library Instruction Wiki. Our district has been hoping to develop a comprehensive library curriculum K-12 for the past few years. This wiki can give us a place to start ... and wikis in general can give a place to collaborate without having to gather for meetings. It can also give students a place to research, post, or comment on information that is part of the curriculum. Instead of individual research papers which go nowhere beyond student and teacher, how neat would it be for fifth graders to develop an "explorer" wiki?
When I think about the adage, "Knowledge is power," I can see that developing a wiki gives the user the power to create and adapt a knowledge base. In another on-line course, I developed a web-page on Teacher Web. Not able to afford the paltry sum (long story) to keep it "up" for a year, I went to my various school tech people to see if the pages could be redeveloped with the district's "Dream Weaver" software. I was turned down - no one had the time either to do it or to teach me - and I lost the work. Oh if only I knew about wikis at the time!
In education today, there is a lot of talk about wanting students to "own their own knowledge" and to be responsible for "taking charge of their learning." Developing a wiki plays right into this philosophy. What's more, because it is on the Web, a wiki can create conversations between students across the country and throughout the world, accomodating varying opinions and schools of thought.
In our previous assignment, author Rick Anderson stated that we needed to eliminate barriers between patrons and information and that if services could not be used without training, then the services needed to be fixed. What addresses those issues better than wikis?
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Week 6, Thing 15 - Library 2.0 Thoughts
I admit it. I am an old-fashioned girl. I still get excited by the scent of new books, by the sound of the spine gently cracking as I open the cover for the first time, by the silk of the pages as they flow under my fingertips. Books are my little bit of heaven on earth and my communion with them is tactile as well as intellectual. I have never subscribed to the belief that "Someday there will be no books because everything will be on the web." There is too much joy in curling up with a good book. Try doing that with your Kindle or your laptop. So the first thing I did with this assignment was print out the articles (forgetting that I had the issue of SLJ) and retire to my sunny bedroom to curl up in a golden puddle and read with pen in hand. Ah, bliss!
That said, I do believe that librarians need to "find new ways to bring our services to patrons." (Anderson) To me, the whole thrust of Library 2.0 seems to be about choices. If I want to have a physical book, I can get it; if I want to research on-line, I can; if I want to create new content, it's there. I also found this assignment to be strategically placed in our learning continuum. We were exposed to just the right amount of new tools and challenges to be on the verge of overload - and then we had to think about it. Clever!
I was particularly struck by Anderson's "Away from the Icebergs" and Nilges's "To More Powerful Ways to Cooperate." Anderson's statement that we need to eliminate "the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need" seemed directed right to my elementary libraries. Our OPAC requires that students spell correctly, or get a title exactly right in order to find what they are looking for. This can be very frustrating for a little one so "if our services can't be used without training, then it's the services that need to be fixed." Of course, one of the biggest obstacles to eliminating barriers and fixing our service in the schools is the age and ability of our hardware. With that obstacle firmly in place for the time being, it becomes ever more important for us to move "into a new world of librarianship" (Stephens) to "find new ways of bringing our services to patrons." (Anderson) The delicious account that I created is a start toward bringing better service to my patrons. I want to find a way to include it on my various school web-sites (have to work with four different tech managers ...) so that students can research from home.
One of the goals of my school system has been to have a unified catalog for all twelve of our schools. The price of proprietary systems is well beyond anything we can hope for in our current fiscal climate. As I was reading Nilges's article, his idea of building new services with Web 2.0 technologies started that hamster turning the wheel in my brain. Could we possibly upload our school collections into LibraryThing and access them that way? Certainly something to investigate.
In my previous life I was a technical writer who had access to cutting edge technology and was well versed in "Project Life Cycle," you know, the business plan that takes months and months to get through and you still end up with updates. The whole idea that we must now go forward in an environment of perpetual beta testing is both exciting and scary. In an elementary school, I will need to pick and choose among the new technologies that are available without getting caught up in Stephens's "techno-lust." (Well, no chance with our budget!) But if what we are going to enable in the end is a way for our patrons to get what they need, when they need it, in the best format for that user, then there can be no down side.
That said, I do believe that librarians need to "find new ways to bring our services to patrons." (Anderson) To me, the whole thrust of Library 2.0 seems to be about choices. If I want to have a physical book, I can get it; if I want to research on-line, I can; if I want to create new content, it's there. I also found this assignment to be strategically placed in our learning continuum. We were exposed to just the right amount of new tools and challenges to be on the verge of overload - and then we had to think about it. Clever!
I was particularly struck by Anderson's "Away from the Icebergs" and Nilges's "To More Powerful Ways to Cooperate." Anderson's statement that we need to eliminate "the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need" seemed directed right to my elementary libraries. Our OPAC requires that students spell correctly, or get a title exactly right in order to find what they are looking for. This can be very frustrating for a little one so "if our services can't be used without training, then it's the services that need to be fixed." Of course, one of the biggest obstacles to eliminating barriers and fixing our service in the schools is the age and ability of our hardware. With that obstacle firmly in place for the time being, it becomes ever more important for us to move "into a new world of librarianship" (Stephens) to "find new ways of bringing our services to patrons." (Anderson) The delicious account that I created is a start toward bringing better service to my patrons. I want to find a way to include it on my various school web-sites (have to work with four different tech managers ...) so that students can research from home.
One of the goals of my school system has been to have a unified catalog for all twelve of our schools. The price of proprietary systems is well beyond anything we can hope for in our current fiscal climate. As I was reading Nilges's article, his idea of building new services with Web 2.0 technologies started that hamster turning the wheel in my brain. Could we possibly upload our school collections into LibraryThing and access them that way? Certainly something to investigate.
In my previous life I was a technical writer who had access to cutting edge technology and was well versed in "Project Life Cycle," you know, the business plan that takes months and months to get through and you still end up with updates. The whole idea that we must now go forward in an environment of perpetual beta testing is both exciting and scary. In an elementary school, I will need to pick and choose among the new technologies that are available without getting caught up in Stephens's "techno-lust." (Well, no chance with our budget!) But if what we are going to enable in the end is a way for our patrons to get what they need, when they need it, in the best format for that user, then there can be no down side.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Week 6, Thing 14 - Technorati
If I thought I was confused before, then just call me "Alice Through the Looking Glass." Perhaps I am congenitally uncurious, but I am not all that interested in seeing what others are saying about a particular topic. My main concern with this whole tool is that there is no authority that what's being put out there is valid. Technorati gives an authority rating, but it is just the number of others who link to a blog. That number doesn't make the information viable or useful.
I found the site somewhat confusing - perhaps the effects of antihistamines and cough syrup punctuated by hearty sneezes - or perhaps just cyber overload. I did finally manage to search by posts, tags and directories through the advanced search option. I never found that lovely drop down box in the "Technorati Tour." Using the term "School Library Learning 2.0" I found 1,857 blog posts, 13 tagged entries and 18 blog directories. I even found one of MY posts, but then couldn't find it again after I navigated from that search. (sigh)
One thing that I did like about this site was that a search returned not only text, but pictures, videos, DVDs, books, news, etc., all related to the entered term.
I do see advantages to tagging. It's nice to use "natural language" to describe a topic and not be locked into something that Sears dictates. In some ways, I've been "tagging" my subject headings in our OPAC for a long time. If you are using this tool in a school and there is a certain way that things are referred to regionally, then the tag can be used in a meaningful way for that area. (hoagie/grinder & seltzer/soda come to mind)
One of the disadvantages is one that I encounter with my less-than-sacrosanct way of entering subject headings aka "Oh darn, what did I call that last time?" I wonder too, how many people will use a perfectly innocent tag to pull users into an inappropriate site - but that is a worry for all these tools, not just Technorati.
I found the site somewhat confusing - perhaps the effects of antihistamines and cough syrup punctuated by hearty sneezes - or perhaps just cyber overload. I did finally manage to search by posts, tags and directories through the advanced search option. I never found that lovely drop down box in the "Technorati Tour." Using the term "School Library Learning 2.0" I found 1,857 blog posts, 13 tagged entries and 18 blog directories. I even found one of MY posts, but then couldn't find it again after I navigated from that search. (sigh)
One thing that I did like about this site was that a search returned not only text, but pictures, videos, DVDs, books, news, etc., all related to the entered term.
I do see advantages to tagging. It's nice to use "natural language" to describe a topic and not be locked into something that Sears dictates. In some ways, I've been "tagging" my subject headings in our OPAC for a long time. If you are using this tool in a school and there is a certain way that things are referred to regionally, then the tag can be used in a meaningful way for that area. (hoagie/grinder & seltzer/soda come to mind)
One of the disadvantages is one that I encounter with my less-than-sacrosanct way of entering subject headings aka "Oh darn, what did I call that last time?" I wonder too, how many people will use a perfectly innocent tag to pull users into an inappropriate site - but that is a worry for all these tools, not just Technorati.
Week 6, Thing 13 Del.icio.us
Yummy, yummy. I've just spent several hours with del.icio.us. At first it seemed pretty impenetrable. I was very sad that the 12 minutes tutorial was unavailable. Okay, okay! I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to figure it out, but after viewing posts by my cyber-colleagues I took their advice and hit the help button. Voila! Not perfect, but certainly doable.
While prowling around the site my mind was busily working on how I could use this with my students and then I realized that this was the perfect way for elementary students to use the sites that their teachers and I have preselected. Sure, some of the sites will bounce them to other places, but many of them have been screened by librarians and others to be appropriate for students.
I also created an account and added the del.icio.us link to my blog. It is right under my picture. It's a collection of sites that are appropriate for elementary students to use as ready reference, ask an expert, kid-friendly search engines and homework help. Feel free to check it out.
While prowling around the site my mind was busily working on how I could use this with my students and then I realized that this was the perfect way for elementary students to use the sites that their teachers and I have preselected. Sure, some of the sites will bounce them to other places, but many of them have been screened by librarians and others to be appropriate for students.
I also created an account and added the del.icio.us link to my blog. It is right under my picture. It's a collection of sites that are appropriate for elementary students to use as ready reference, ask an expert, kid-friendly search engines and homework help. Feel free to check it out.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Week 5, Thing 12 Rolly-O
"Rolly-O oh Rolly-O, Wherefore art thou Rolly-O" And if you think this tool is kinda weird, then just know that I could NOT remember what came afer "Romeo, oh Romeo ... " UNTIL I did a seach on Quick Quotes. Very cool.
Ah - my experience with Rolly-O started out much like the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. There was no love lost between us. I could see both the value and the ease, but I was darned if I could make the darn thing link to my blog. Duh ... until "what light through yonder window breaks, It is the east and Rolly-O the sun" I realized that the link brought me to the search page of my new searchrolls and all I had to do was copy the URL. Sometimes it's just TOO easy.
In a non-technical way, I've been Rolly-o-ing forever in my little elementary libraries. Everytime I come up with a "list of good sites" for x-y-z's assignment, I've limited my students to searching sites that will have age-appropriate, readable and accurate information. This tool is awesome for helping students search quickly and easily without being overwhelmed by a million or two hits. (And they won't have to type the URL which can always be fun.)
So wanting a little fun in my life, and needing a boost from my sadness for the Patriot's loss (though it was an INCREDIBLE game), I created a Searchroll of Red Sox sites.
And then figuring that I should probably make this a LITTLE bit about being a librarian, I started editing the Reference Rolly-o and will be making more additions now that I know this tool exists and can use it.
Ah - my experience with Rolly-O started out much like the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. There was no love lost between us. I could see both the value and the ease, but I was darned if I could make the darn thing link to my blog. Duh ... until "what light through yonder window breaks, It is the east and Rolly-O the sun" I realized that the link brought me to the search page of my new searchrolls and all I had to do was copy the URL. Sometimes it's just TOO easy.
In a non-technical way, I've been Rolly-o-ing forever in my little elementary libraries. Everytime I come up with a "list of good sites" for x-y-z's assignment, I've limited my students to searching sites that will have age-appropriate, readable and accurate information. This tool is awesome for helping students search quickly and easily without being overwhelmed by a million or two hits. (And they won't have to type the URL which can always be fun.)
So wanting a little fun in my life, and needing a boost from my sadness for the Patriot's loss (though it was an INCREDIBLE game), I created a Searchroll of Red Sox sites.
And then figuring that I should probably make this a LITTLE bit about being a librarian, I started editing the Reference Rolly-o and will be making more additions now that I know this tool exists and can use it.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Week 5, Thing 10A and Thing 11 Web 2.0 Applications
I had so much fun with the image generators that I had to go back and do it again. This is the view of Fenway from "The Voice of Fenway Park," Carl Beane's window. He's from my hometown and was gracious enough to give us a tour which I then had to turn into a puzzle with this assignment. Very cool!
I explored LibraryThing from the award winner list. I have said it before and I'll say it again, I just get overwhelmed by everything out there, so I liked the whole idea of a short list. (I even get overwhelmed in a large library. Boston Public sets my teeth on edge!) One reason I chose LibraryThing was that a cyber-colleague recently used it to rescue Marc records from a two year old backup CD of her collection. I expected to find a tool that made it simple to export records. I found a lot more than that.
LibraryThing allows a user to simply and easily catalog a personal collection of materials, get reviews, suggestions and anti-suggestions, and to join groups of those with similar interests - like Elementary School Librarians. It was as simple as ZMarc cataloging, and I did like the reviews and suggestions features. It is important to note that if I searched for suggestions based on a children's book title, I got all children's books back. Obviously, when I searched on a tag, I got a mix of children's and adult materials which would not be acceptable in an elementary school.
I could see this tool being used to introduce students to new materials, i.e., "read-alikes" and to reviews written by their peers. It is simple enough to use so that they could add titles to a school account and add their own reviews to the database so they are not just consumers of information. A big concern is that this looks like a tool mainly used by adults. It would be neat - and more useful - if there were a way to "partition" a children's area.
I have four K-5 elementary schools and it might be very fun to create a group on LibraryThing where the students could interact with each other in all my schools to see what they are reading and enjoying as well. Now if I can get my "other-half" to jump in with her four schools, then we could involve all eight of our schools. Something to think about.
Aside from school time, I can see some of my students cataloging their own libraries at home. I confess, when my dad brought home some Nancy Drew books from a defunct church library, I cataloged them - pockets, cards and all. They were some of the only books I owned as a child. I wasn't allowed to BUY books. I had to go to the library because I read too fast. Oh my gosh ... and look what I grew up to be!
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