I don't think this is a "sandbox" anymore! I was blown away by the wealth of practical, interesting and inspiring ideas people posted as a result of this class. So, I bookmarked it on my Delicious page, and hope it stays up and continues to grow! As I posted in the last entry, I would like to create a wiki for our school staff to use, sort of a "collective mind" of our staff, where we can have discussions, add links, suggest resources, work on collaborative curriculum ideas, and not have to be all together in the library to do so!
I went in and added a couple of suggestions to the Raven About Web 2.0 wiki...I think if I do create a wiki for the Petersburg School District Staff, I would have to bribe our teachers/administrators to contribute, perhaps by offering a plate of brownies in a weekly drawing for all who contributed that week! Crazy how something that simple might work. I have looked at so many sites on line that were started as something like that, but just sat there, stagnant. We have a Google Docs site we tried to get going a year or so ago, as a collaborative tool that sprang from a great inservice we had, but nothing has been added since the second day of the inservice. It is just the nature of the crazy schedule of teaching!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Week 7 Thing #16 Wikis
I feel like I just hit the jackpot when I clicked on the third Wiki in the course list...(do we capitalize "wiki?")...anyway the Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki
is an amazing resource and I got lost in it for a looong time.
For my kiddos, I can see many uses for a wiki in the library. We are going to have a special collaboration with our public library this winter, originally planned as an extension of the "Guys Read" program, but we are expanding it to target all "reluctant readers" male or female. I think it would be wonderful to establish our own little wiki with the students and the adults coming in to read to go on and add comments, reviews, favorite book lists, etc. In addition, we are also doing a "Petersburg Reads" this year for our centennial celebration, and have chosen The Cheechakos, by our own Wayne Short, as a book we will try to get everyone in town to read--it's a book that will have wide popular appeal in this fishing town--not so much a literary masterpiece, as an easily accessible and local read. I can see a wiki having a role somewhere in that as well.
The CSLA2007 wiki, made specifically for the conference, is a brilliant idea for keeping people connected and organized at a large event in a paperless fashion. I love that they included all the links for services and offerings of the town as well. The wiki for the staff at the Albany library looks promising, and I have thought of trying to establish one for our school district staff, but it is something I just haven't gotten to yet...we need a more critical mass of staff to be proficient and interested in the web 2.0 world enough to make it more than just one or two people's online ramblings. I can see having a place to collaboratively work on developing curriculum, to post resources available in different locations for whatever subject teachers are addressing, to list on-line resources others might find useful, etc. At this point, I have just used my library webpage and lots of informative emails, but the wiki would enable everyone else to add their resources and ideas as well. I must say this example has me excited to try this idea again--I think the time is very soon for this to happen!
The school wiki from Westwood High School made me want to work in a high school again--I could see creating some really great things with kids in a Web 2.0 class--sort of like this class designed for/by current students...I think they would be the ones teaching the class--It could even be presented as such--a guide for the adults in their lives! Hmmmm. Only problem would be how many of the tools and sites are blocked/disallowed within our district.
Lots of exciting options here, and I think our staff is ready for this at the school.
is an amazing resource and I got lost in it for a looong time.
For my kiddos, I can see many uses for a wiki in the library. We are going to have a special collaboration with our public library this winter, originally planned as an extension of the "Guys Read" program, but we are expanding it to target all "reluctant readers" male or female. I think it would be wonderful to establish our own little wiki with the students and the adults coming in to read to go on and add comments, reviews, favorite book lists, etc. In addition, we are also doing a "Petersburg Reads" this year for our centennial celebration, and have chosen The Cheechakos, by our own Wayne Short, as a book we will try to get everyone in town to read--it's a book that will have wide popular appeal in this fishing town--not so much a literary masterpiece, as an easily accessible and local read. I can see a wiki having a role somewhere in that as well.
The CSLA2007 wiki, made specifically for the conference, is a brilliant idea for keeping people connected and organized at a large event in a paperless fashion. I love that they included all the links for services and offerings of the town as well. The wiki for the staff at the Albany library looks promising, and I have thought of trying to establish one for our school district staff, but it is something I just haven't gotten to yet...we need a more critical mass of staff to be proficient and interested in the web 2.0 world enough to make it more than just one or two people's online ramblings. I can see having a place to collaboratively work on developing curriculum, to post resources available in different locations for whatever subject teachers are addressing, to list on-line resources others might find useful, etc. At this point, I have just used my library webpage and lots of informative emails, but the wiki would enable everyone else to add their resources and ideas as well. I must say this example has me excited to try this idea again--I think the time is very soon for this to happen!
The school wiki from Westwood High School made me want to work in a high school again--I could see creating some really great things with kids in a Web 2.0 class--sort of like this class designed for/by current students...I think they would be the ones teaching the class--It could even be presented as such--a guide for the adults in their lives! Hmmmm. Only problem would be how many of the tools and sites are blocked/disallowed within our district.
Lots of exciting options here, and I think our staff is ready for this at the school.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Week 6, Thing 15, Perspectives on Web 2.0: Future of LIbraries
1. I'm reading the article by Chip Nilges at http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002 and am feeling alternately thrilled at the new prospects and form of what a library can be, and exhausted at the thought of having to virtually re-invent my job/career in light of that!
For my elementary library, it could be a very liberating thing to turn my reference budget almost entirely over to reading for pleasure and literacy enhancement--there is so much current information available on-line that I have hesitated to replace many of the standard book-form reference materials. Truthfully, the standard reference volumes just sit on the shelf, and our users' instincts are to go to the Web...truthfully, MY instinct is now to go to the Web! I think our job has changed from helping a student wade through the mighty print tomes, to teaching them to search intelligently on the Web, locate valid, authoritative resources, and use them with proprietary ethics. It is a bit harder for our younger kids, as most of the reference content found easily online is written at a rather high reading level.
One segment of that article discussed OCLC's changes, one of which discusses having non-cataloging professionals--ordinary users! post content to their resources. "...over the next year we are planning to offer a variety of “social” services to allow non-cataloging library professionals, library patrons and others to contribute to and use WorldCat. Services under consideration include tagging, list creation and sharing, citation management, personal cataloging, and the like." I think this is a brilliant move, and I can actually almost foresee an end to the sanctity of the Dewey Decimal System...or is that crazy? When I begin to teach how to search for books on our SIRSI online catalog, I am always frustrated by the limited search terms and how difficult it is to explain to students why some words (usually kid-type words) aren't search terms, so they need to think of synonyms. I am not saying that key-words/synonyms fluency is not valid learning, but just how nice it would be if the online catalog were more user-friendly...interactive, where kids could tag and add their own keywords to favorite series and such so they could find them more easily. My head is spinning from the possibilities!
2. Web 2.0 to me is a revolutionary way of looking at the world. It's almost like a parallel universe where time, distance and space are irrelevant...especially distance and space. It can become all-consuming if a person is not careful, as constant, real-time technology makes personal, private, downtime from being "connected" a more and more rare phenomenon. I personally don't want to be "connected" all the time, and I see so many ad's portray this as a desirable state of being. On the up side I can access any information I need, at any time, with just a few techie devices, a little know-how, and a fee to some communications company. I love that I don't have to leave my house and go to the library and hope they have the journals I need. (Ridiculous! Petersburg Public Library, great as it is, would never have had the materials I need to accomplish a class like this! I would have had to go to Juneau or Seattle to accomplish academic learning!) Instead, I can respond to the questions in these classes sitting by my wood stove, feet up on the sofa, gazing out the windows at the mountains while I formulate my thoughts. The challenge for all of us, and especially for librarians, is to keep it all organized, and to help our patrons learn to separate the wheat from the chaff, to be literate, conscientious, ethical, balanced users. What concerns me is the very human nature to only reach out and accept that which goes along with ones own viewpoint, and with whatever is the easiest to find. Where is the authority, the balance, the verity of information in a user-selected, user-moderated, user-created online world?
For my elementary library, it could be a very liberating thing to turn my reference budget almost entirely over to reading for pleasure and literacy enhancement--there is so much current information available on-line that I have hesitated to replace many of the standard book-form reference materials. Truthfully, the standard reference volumes just sit on the shelf, and our users' instincts are to go to the Web...truthfully, MY instinct is now to go to the Web! I think our job has changed from helping a student wade through the mighty print tomes, to teaching them to search intelligently on the Web, locate valid, authoritative resources, and use them with proprietary ethics. It is a bit harder for our younger kids, as most of the reference content found easily online is written at a rather high reading level.
One segment of that article discussed OCLC's changes, one of which discusses having non-cataloging professionals--ordinary users! post content to their resources. "...over the next year we are planning to offer a variety of “social” services to allow non-cataloging library professionals, library patrons and others to contribute to and use WorldCat. Services under consideration include tagging, list creation and sharing, citation management, personal cataloging, and the like." I think this is a brilliant move, and I can actually almost foresee an end to the sanctity of the Dewey Decimal System...or is that crazy? When I begin to teach how to search for books on our SIRSI online catalog, I am always frustrated by the limited search terms and how difficult it is to explain to students why some words (usually kid-type words) aren't search terms, so they need to think of synonyms. I am not saying that key-words/synonyms fluency is not valid learning, but just how nice it would be if the online catalog were more user-friendly...interactive, where kids could tag and add their own keywords to favorite series and such so they could find them more easily. My head is spinning from the possibilities!
2. Web 2.0 to me is a revolutionary way of looking at the world. It's almost like a parallel universe where time, distance and space are irrelevant...especially distance and space. It can become all-consuming if a person is not careful, as constant, real-time technology makes personal, private, downtime from being "connected" a more and more rare phenomenon. I personally don't want to be "connected" all the time, and I see so many ad's portray this as a desirable state of being. On the up side I can access any information I need, at any time, with just a few techie devices, a little know-how, and a fee to some communications company. I love that I don't have to leave my house and go to the library and hope they have the journals I need. (Ridiculous! Petersburg Public Library, great as it is, would never have had the materials I need to accomplish a class like this! I would have had to go to Juneau or Seattle to accomplish academic learning!) Instead, I can respond to the questions in these classes sitting by my wood stove, feet up on the sofa, gazing out the windows at the mountains while I formulate my thoughts. The challenge for all of us, and especially for librarians, is to keep it all organized, and to help our patrons learn to separate the wheat from the chaff, to be literate, conscientious, ethical, balanced users. What concerns me is the very human nature to only reach out and accept that which goes along with ones own viewpoint, and with whatever is the easiest to find. Where is the authority, the balance, the verity of information in a user-selected, user-moderated, user-created online world?
Week 6, Thing 14 Technorati and Tags
Hmmm. My first hour has been frustrating. I went to Technorati and searched for school library learning 2.0, and found no entries for both "blog" and "posts" searches. When I remove the 2.0 portion of it, I find quite a few entries: 562 posts, and 45 blogs. While I find this interesting, I have a hard time getting excited about it, since I can't even find time to read a book these days, let alone a gazillion blogs about what other people are reading/thinking/doing/dreaming, etc. There is just so much out there, and my time is so constricted by school, home & work. I just want to relax for a few hours with a book. I will now go in and try to get my blog posted and searchable, as mine did not come up even when I typed in the actual name of the blog! I'm trying not to take that personally:)
Most of the links on the page for this portion of the class are no longer valid. Looks like there was some kind of major shake-up at Technorati, and the pages have been eliminated. I can see how searching for blogs for various topics of interest to my teachers for units they are teaching would be useful, as the many library blogs to which I have subscribed are very enlightening.
Most of the links on the page for this portion of the class are no longer valid. Looks like there was some kind of major shake-up at Technorati, and the pages have been eliminated. I can see how searching for blogs for various topics of interest to my teachers for units they are teaching would be useful, as the many library blogs to which I have subscribed are very enlightening.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Week 6, Thing 13 continued
Oh, now that was too easy. I now have my Delicious bookmarks appear as an added line on my Firefox browser on this computer. I will do the same on my school computer, and for Safari on both as well. This is great to be taking a tool I liked to start with, and turn it into something truly useful and integrated into may daily work.
Week 6 Thing 13 Delicious...and it is!
I have a pretty well-established Delicious account from past conferences, and would like to explore it more deeply during this session. I find I still keep bookmarking on my personal computer, and forget to add to delicious. So, my goals are to add to my network on Delicious (I already added the SLJLibraryLearning2's bookmarks) and to add whatever tools I need to my browsers to make bookmarking to delicious a simple affair.
I already see the value in sharing bookmarks among professionals in the library field (or within any field), but I'm trying to think outside the box and imagine how I would use this with my k-5 critters...
I'm going to post this and see about including a Delicious Network Badge on this page...
I already see the value in sharing bookmarks among professionals in the library field (or within any field), but I'm trying to think outside the box and imagine how I would use this with my k-5 critters...
I'm going to post this and see about including a Delicious Network Badge on this page...
Problem solved already!
Okay, upon a little more exploration, I found the Identities option within VoiceThread--It is perfect for teachers, as within your account, you can create an unlimited number of "identities" and upload a different picture for each one. You can even use a class photo, and zoom in on each particular student to have their image cropped and made into their avatar. To teach them a bit about online safety, I might start out the year by having them create an art piece that represents them in some way, scan or photograph and upload those, and use those as avatars for these various on-line technologies, so if their creations are posted widely, their faces don't actually appear. I think it is important to remember and teach good online safety as we move into these technologies. I am very eager to get together with some teachers and create something with this!
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