Week Nine - PODCASTS, VIDEO AND DOWNLOADABLE AUDIO

Thing #23 - Copyright, Creative Commons and Congratulations

OK, so for this discovery exercise, I'm going to need a hint. Maybe it's obvious, but I'm not quite sure what is being asked about finding the example or attribution about the program being altered. Anyway, I totally get it about attributing credit for work cited, used or otherwise referenced. I actually spends lots and lots of time making sure any idea, wording or information I reference is properly cited through my SJSU classes.

I also sat through the Disney video about copyright which was fun for a a minute or two, but hard to watch in its entirety - so that's got to count for something!

I did enjoy working on the 23 things, and have definitely taken away some useful tools that I can use in my personal, academic and professional life. The importance of continuing to learn and apply the things I learn to what I do is critical. Keeping up with technology only serves the purpose of working in the field of libraries and information.

One of my favorites is the delicious bookmarking site. I even journaled about my LIBR202 tags that gave my professor good laugh (that LIBR202 is a delicious tag!) and me full points on my journal. I also really liked learning about the free audio books. If I start going back over all the things I take away from this, it's hard to pick a top 5 or even 10 list. I guess I can say that I take away a renewed sense of continuing to learn be it on my own, through school or through programs like this one.

I look forward to SchoolLibraryLearning3.0!

Week Nine - PODCASTS, VIDEO AND DOWNLOADABLE AUDIO

Thing #22 - Explore eBooks and Audio eBooks

Well this was an eye opener. I did not know how much was available for free online as far as eBooks go. There were some really interesting links to podcasts that were more appeal ling than the ones I found in the previous discovery exercise on podcasts - I can see how it all comes together!

I can see putting a link to say Peter Pan or The Wizard of Oz on my libraries website, especially in conjunction with a "Spotlight on the Classics" link I have on the site that gets changed every month or so.

I also explored some school catalogs who had their catalogs available on the web, and several I checked out do have Audio Books. I know for my own children, we have checked out audio books from the public library occasionally to listen to a book. The most recent time comes to mind when my 9 year old desperately wanted to read the Percy Jackson and the Olympian series but it was a bit over his reading level. Well, come to find out its out there in audio book form and our public library had a copy of each book in the series. My son became an expert in utilizing his library and reference librarian who helped him put his audiobooks on hold. Pretty great.

In the previous library I worked at, we did have a good collection of audio books that did get checked out. I can see the appeal for a car ride and ELL and special ed students.

I have been watching the introduction of Playalongs this past year with interest. I'm hoping the price comes down a little. They seem like a good thing and I would like to buy a few for next year to try out (if we get any money to buy books with due to the budget crisis). We'll see! Maybe I can stir up some interest with eBook links on my website and get some funding from Parent's Club.

Also, I like the Library 2.0 team's suggestion from my last posting about having the kids come in to make a podcast say a couple of times of month. It would be great exposure for the library. This is definitely something I can work on logistically during the last couple of weeks before I leave for summer break and inventory is done!

Week Nine - PODCASTS, VIDEO AND DOWNLOADABLE AUDIO

Thing #21 - Podcasts

I was looking forward to this part of the 23 Things as I have only listened to podcasts as they pertain to my favorite shows on NPR and my iPod. I had no idea how to access all that there is out there.

Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places, but when I looked for library related podcasts, I found them, but they weren't current, that is the most current one was 2 years old. I did subscribe to one, but I'm not sure if I'll get an alert to a new podcast since the most recent podcast was from 2006.

I think with podcasts, it seems that they would be something that would be fun to make, but I think they require time, planning, and more than just a half an hour a week to produce. In order for something like this to be worth listening to, one has to put in the time to make it good. I'm not sure many of us have this time. Perhaps that's why anything that looked interesting to me on the podcast directories were out of date. For me, listening to a program that is already produced with decent funding like This American Life or Fresh Air is what I'll continue to use podcasts for. I don't see myself using them for much else. The amount of effort required to find something interesting doesn't seem to give the payoff I'm looking for. As far as making one, the time issue is definately a factor.

Week Nine - PODCASTS, VIDEO AND DOWNLOADABLE AUDIO

Thing #20 - Discover YouTube

So OK, I have to say I have watched way more than my fair share of YouTube videos in the years since YouTube has been around. This one cracks me up though. I can see my life flashing before my eyes as it progresses!


THE EVOLUTION OF DANCE



There was one video that I remember from a year or two ago that is set to techno-music like Kraftwork or something of that nature that is whiteboard animation. It is trippy and well worth the viewing.

WHITEBOARD ANIMATION


So I have also played with GoogleVideo at school since it is NOT blocked at our school site. It helped me show the kids a segment of "A Trip to the Moon" when I was talking about The Invention of Hugo Cabret after it won the Caldecott Award earlier this year. I shared the information about GoogleVideo with a 4th grade teacher who was frustrated she couldn't find the "I Have A Dream" Speech anywhere to show her students (with YouTube being blocked).

I like the idea of embedding videos on a blog posting, or even on a website. My son has had fun posting videos of himself and his friends. You do have to be careful though that those whose videos are posted, have consented to the posting.

I watched the March of the Librarians when it was first posted and got a total kick out of it.

My kids show me some pretty funny things on YouTube that wouldn't be appropriate for the blog. I'm a big fan!

Week Eight - ONLINE APPLICATIONS AND TOOLS

Thing #18 - Take a look at online productivity tools

I guess I did thing #18 and #19 in reverse - oh well!

This is a post that I created in Zoho and published from Zoho into Blogger. Easy enough!

Well, I'm down to the wire in finishing up my WinterFun2.0 blog.  It's been fun learning about all the various Web 2.0 tools available for free!  There's lots of great ideas out there as well.  This is all so easy as well.  I've had some experience in playing with Google docs with some of my colleagues as we've played around with an agenda before a meeting.  In a time when so often those whom we need to meet with require travel time to get together, working in an online word processing capacity can make things happen quickly, whether people are working on a document at the same time, or on their own time. 

It will be fun to see how this type of document can be imported directly into a blog.  We'll see how well the formatting holds up when exporting a document to a blog.  Anyway, it seems like Zoho Writer has some great possibilities, although, I have to admit, it's not on my top 10 list.

Week Eight - ONLINE APPLICATIONS AND TOOLS

Thing #19 - Check out LibraryThing


It was a lot of fun learning about LibraryThing. I'm not sure if I'll have time to catalog all my own books, but I like the idea about finding out how others have reviewed books I like, and to see what other books people with similar tastes to mine are reading.

I also liked seeing the tagging element of LibraryThing and the tag cloud that certain tag words create. Users can tag their books in whatever way makes sense to them. In this way, we again see how tagging creates a great way for personal classification and organization. It's data organization in the hands of the user. Quite powerful.

LibraryThing provides services for both personal and professionals needs. The ability of the site to organize and categorize books based on user likes has unlimited applications. Members can organize their own collections, seek recommendations for similar books to the one they like and join anyone of a number of social groups and discussion boards. The user also has the option of creating a profile to share with others in the LibraryThing community. The ease of use and accessibility of the data makes it a site that will continue to grow and chance with the needs of the community who uses it.

So I added a widget to enable you to search my library. You can find it to the right of the postings on this blog. Since I only have 6 books in my library, you probably won't get much information, but I love putting widgets on my blog - what can I say!

Here's the link to my catalog, as with many things in my life - a works in progress!
My Library Thing Catalog

Week Seven - WIKIS

Thing #17 - Add an entry to the sandbox wiki

OK, so I found the sandbox and added my entry. Easy as pie! And I realized as I did this that the best way to engage teachers into the fun of wikis, is to invite them to play in a sandbox of their own. This time of year is a stressful time for teachers as they prepare students for STAR testing and feel the pressure of finding a way to teach the rest of the standards they have yet to hit while dealing with kids restless for summer and the gearing up for the end of the year activities. So I am definitely thinking about this as a fall activity so as not to overwhelm the teachers and spin my wheels for nothing.

So - I am thinking about the fall and how we can start planning now for making use of the Web 2.0 technologies that are available to us. I think that wikis can be a great way for grade levels to share projects and research.

In looking at the California 2.0 Curriculum Connections I took a look at photos and images. What I saw were some great ideas for fun displays in the library, ideas to share with teachers for annual projects, and ideas for slide shows to make reading lists for reading programs more engaging. Definitely a resource I have bookmarked.
I like the idea of having a stream of ideas that can be added to and modified - always a works in progress!

Week Seven - WIKIS

Thing #16 Learn about Wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them

I went to checkout some of the wikis that were in the discovery exercise: the book lovers wiki from Princeton, the library instruction wiki and the school wiki were all different but interesting to look at. There are so many different ways that wikis can be used, I think that as a collaborative tool, it's a great way to share and build on information.

I like that the student wikis are password protected. That provides an extra layer of protection to the students' work.

Wikis seem to have a place in school libraries and I think that students would really respond to using this technology and working collaboratively within their classes to share and expand upon their research. I think the hurdle would be in getting the teachers to buy into using this technology. I think that kids would get excited about doing research projects this way. It would also teach them an additional web 2.0 skill. It seems that baby steps are the ticket to moving forward with this type of collaboration within school libraries and classrooms.

My midterm for my class at SJSU required my group to create a wiki and work collaboratively on a topic and research from there. I was a little unsure of myself at first, but once I got the hang of creating my part of the wiki, it was actually kind of fun. Our main topic was social networking and I think we did a good job on our research. I will not post the link to this wiki because it has not been graded yet and do not want anyone to edit any of the content (yet!).

Week Six - TAGGING FOLKSONOMIES & TECHNORATI

Thing 15 - Read some perspectives on Web 2.0 Future of Libraries

In reading these snapshots of perspectives, I'm struck by the reoccurring theme that things in Libraryland are moving quickly and libraries need to get on the bus or get left behind.

In Rick Anderson's article Away from Icebergs, I was also struck by his reference to the "just in case collection" that is, building a collection of books with the thought that someone might need them, and that this type of collection needs to be reconsidered.

With the ubiquity of the Internet, and our need for timely and instant information, using a book on say endangered species that was written even five years ago is not going to give the timely information that we are now accustomed to finding at the click of a mouse. It seems that having access to or knowing how to access "good" information is just as if not more important than trying to maintain a collection of books even 10 years current.

This is not to say books are not important, of course they are. Students need to know how to use a print source. What we as information professionals need to do though, is utilize, teach how to utilize and spend time keeping up with different types of technological data. Empowering ourselves and our students with the ability to access good information, both in print and cyberspace, is a large part of what we are entrusted to do.

We must remember though, that in an elementary school library there is still the importance of promoting literature. This cannot be forgotten. Libraries need to serve their users in a broad way, but it is counter intuitive to resist the wave of technological advances. It's a balancing act. As Anderson infers, it is not about getting on board with every new technology that presents itself, but it is about evaluating these technologies in terms of relevancy to one's own library and user base and incorporating them into the library.

As far as what Library 2.0 means to me and school libraries, it is a wave of technology that targets libraries. Web 2.0 technologies are sweeping the country as everyone is getting on board with some many user driven technologies. Library 2.0 is a way of looking at these Web 2.0 technologies in relation to libraries and how they can help to serve the user. What is Library 2.0 to me? It's everything we've been working on in these tutorials. It's coming to a head though - are we geared up and ready for Web (and Library!) 3.0?

Week Six - TAGGING FOLKSONOMIES & TECHNORATI

Thing 14 - Explore Technorati & learn how tags work with blog posts

So in going into Technorati and searching "School Library Learning 2.0" under blogs and then under tags, it makes sense that there were more hits under blog searching than tags. Not everyone has created tags for their blogs, so it stands to reason the only blog posts that would come up in the search would be those people who tagged their posts. It also stands to reason that the posts that we find would be for later weeks (after this particular lesson). So that's that.

As far as checking out most popular blogs, searches and tags, it takes me back to earlier posts, where I find it almost overwhelming to be presented with large amounts of information that I am just unable to absorb right now. Maybe it's because the amount of reading that I have to do for my course work is pretty substantial and finding the relevancy of some of these blogs seems to require a lot of reading. I think I'd much prefer to read a book!

As far as tags go, I think they're great. Using a natural language to search as opposed to controlled vocabulary puts the power driving the searching in the hands of the user not the creator of the data structure. Tags create a whole new way of organizing and finding information that makes more sense to users of the data structure.

The downside is of course because there is no controlled vocabulary being used, there will always be information that users may never see if they search with the wrong tag.

In terms of being able to organize one's own information though once it's collected, I think tags make information organization much easier.

SJLibrary2.0

Thing 13 addendum

Hard to believe someone would be interested in websites that deal with information retrieval vocabulary and database design, but since someone has requested, here's the link to my del.icio.us site with these websites - enjoy!

LIBR202 Bookmarks

Week Six - TAGGING FOLKSONOMIES & TECHNORATI

Thing 13 - Learn about tagging - discover delicious

OK, it's been a while. I was going fine on my blogging, but then school started, and between work, school and family - wow - I haven't had too much of a chance to work on this!

I did start a delicious account when this past semester at SJSU started. I am currently taking LIBR 202 which is database design and information retrieval behaviors - so much information too manage - not unlike the information problems we face everyday!

Delicious is a great way to organize information. Each week we are given a list of readings, websites and other various pieces of information. It is up to us to keep it all in order. Although there are links in various folders on our discussion boards, I find that keeping a list of websites on my delicious account with the tags of LIBR202 for the various sites that offer definitions and general overview of IR helps me keep these sites readily available. I use the tag LIBR202searchengines for another group of webpages that I will need to access as the course progresses. I even wrote about delicious in one of my journal entries that we must post on a discussion board . It's a great tool.