Shelfari

I just added shelfari to this blog. It's a bookshelf with books displayed on it. I don't like that it only shows one books at a time, although I think that is because of the configuration of this blog. Anyway, you too can have this cool widget.

Week 5 / Thing 11 Ning and Play

I've already joined several nings including Teacher Librarian Network, ASD Librarians, Alaska School Libraries. I've even started one for Dimond library, but haven't really done much with it. I haven't quite figured out the differences in blogs, wikis and nings as to how I would use them. So far wikis have been more useful to me than a ning, but I'm open to suggestions. I've been playing with Web 2.0 for about a year now and I find I've joined lots of these and am just dabbling, not really using any to their full potential. But I guess that's sort of what librarians do: provide information and resources so that our patrons can then choose how to use them.

My travel IQ stinks! I need remediation.

Week 5 / Thing 11 Web 2.0 Winners

It didn't take me long to find a great website for my personal and professional selves. Biblio.com is not only a great place to find rare and used books, a biblioholic like me can spend hours browsing titles, reading articles in their online magazine called Biblio UnBound. I love poetry and it didn't take me long to discover the May 2008 edition was all about poetry. I appreciate the short articles and love the reading lists.

While browsing the list & clicking links I found VuFind, an online catalog & discovered Zotero. Zotero is "a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself."
I haven't explored much, but intend to spend more time looking at this. I think it might be an excellent tool for students (and teachers) who have trouble citing sources, plus it offers notetaking and other research tools right from the website you are using. Here's the list of features:

• Automatic capture of citation information from web pages
• Storage of PDFs, files, images, links, and whole web pages
• Flexible notetaking with autosave
• Fast, as-you-type search through your materials
• Playlist-like library organization, including saved searches (smart collections) and tags
• Platform for new forms of digital research that can be extended with other web tools and services
• Runs right in your web browser
• Formatted citation export (style list to grow rapidly)
• Free and open source
• Integration with Microsoft Word and OpenOffice
• Saves records and notes in any language
• Integration with WordPress and other blogging software
• Remote library backup
• Advanced search and data mining tools
• Access your library from anywhere via the web
• Wide variety of import/export options
• Recommendation engine and RSS feeds
• Shared collections

I downloaded it (it is a Firefox extension) and plan to play around with this source some more and will report back. From what I can tell, you just click the zotero icon at the bottom of your window & you can then organize web based sources into libraries like in itunes or iphoto. Cool!

Week 5 / Thing 10: Image Generators

I made this at makebeliefscomix.
Very fun. I showed this to some students this spring, and they had fun.

I also made a license plate for Dimond Library.

Week 4 / Thing 9: Finding Blogs

I tried topix.net and searched “school library” which yielded 80,364 hits. Of the first 10 or so, none seemed to be of interest to me. I then tried “school librarian” and only got 17,318 hits. Again, nothing interesting. I continued with several combinations of school, library, media, teacher-librarian, specialist, etc. So for me, having someone recommend a professional blog or reading about it in a journal is a better way to find them. I did find some new blogs to look at, but not by using one of the tools listed. I used my peers in this class by looking at their responses.

I viewed the technorati tutorial (and must admit talked with a German accent for the rest of the day). This is more for adding tags to your own blog so that others can find it. I only found it somewhat useful.

I’ve noticed that blogs are often like listening to a running monologue or reading an extended stream of consciousness rant. I agree with Staci that I’d prefer to keep my blog reading to a minimum and focus on those that help me professionally. I was already reading Joyce V, Doug J, Teri L and for fun, Unshelved. I’ve since added Dangerously Irrelevant and rediscovered Jamie Mckenzie’s From Now On. I’m back to my same broken-record rant, “Where do I get the time to read all this?”

As for newsfeeds, I did have a feed from NPR for about a day, but there were hundreds to look at, and I was terribly overwhelmed.

This is a pretty interesting wiki I stumbled on:
Web 2.0 Unconference

Week 4 / Thing 8: RSS

I had already set up a Google Reader account last year and promptly forgot all about it. So when I went back, I had hundreds of unread posts. I guess I'm showing my digital immigrant status again when I question how I would use an RSS reader. I only visit a few blogs regularly and have them linked in my bookmarks bar for easy access. I can see the benefit of having a place to view several blogs at once and see what's new. However, by only viewing them one at a time, I can control my time better. If I'm looking for new titles to add to the collection, I go to Teri Lesesne's Goddess of YA Lit blog and input her recommendations right into Follett. If I'm looking for ideas for advocacy, Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk is usually great. If I want to push myself to try new things, I go to Joyce Valenza (and usually get totally overwhelmed). Google reader shows me all the new posts from the sites I've chosen which can lure me away from my purpose, and I'm easily lured. I do best with one subject or topic at a time, in fact I often get off track just reading one person's blog (ie Joyce V or Doug J). So for my personal life, I'd best stick to my system or I won't have a life.

I'm also trying to think about how I would use RSS at school, and I'm still coming up short. I'm looking forward to reading what the rest of the participants think.

RSS readers sort of feel like LM_NET. I have to have those come to me in digest form, and they go into a separate folder instead of being intermingled in my e-mail. Then when I have time, I go browse them & save good ideas.

More Technology

Week 3/ Thing 7: Technology Rant

This post is in RED because I'm feeling FIRED-UP. I've been reading Joyce V's NeverEndingSearch. Her latest post concerns Britannica's "wikification." http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/330027833.html

I've got to rethink wikis and their purposes now. It sounds like Britannica is going to vet the contributors and maintain high academic standards. I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes and if a reputable company like Britannica can compete with Wikipedia. The key will be getting students (and teachers) to buy in.

So I'm reading this post and look over at the list of posts from Joyce and see a link to The Adventures of Super Presentation Man which of course I had to click on and this led me to watch the video about improving student presentations. I LOVE it and can't wait to talk some of our teachers into letting me work with students on improving their PPTs. Next, I scroll down this page and see this link, 100 Free Library 2.0 Webinars & Tutorials. Well, that was hours ago. (Our 23 Things are #6, so I could skip that one!) I only visit a few blogs regularly (see my side bar), but even if I just clicked on those once a day (which I don't) I wouldn't have time to do much else.

Which leads me back to my RANT. Blogs are wonderful things, but they sure do take up lots of time. I love reading about all these new tools, but how do you have time to learn about them, practice them, apply them and keep up with the 40 new ones that have arrived while your technological immigrant brain is still get the hang of flickr? I let students loose this spring on a bunch of web 2.0 stuff, but keeping up was very difficult and figuring out where different tools best fit is not always obvious. Not to mention convincing teachers to come on board. Whew.

Week 3/ Thing 6: Flickr Toys

Here's a jigsaw puzzle of our cat Atticus. He loves to stretch out on the shelf when the heat is on. We call it his warming bench. I found this on Big Huge Labs: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/, part of Flickr. I have to admit, I'm getting off track again. I decided to add Joyce Valenza's Never Ending Search to my list of blogs, but then I had to go there to get the URL and then I had to read a couple of her posts and then I got some good ideas and that was all about 2 hours ago. I'm just now getting back to what I sat down to do!

Hmmm, Atticus showed up fine the first day and then disappeared. Any ideas?

I think I got him back.

Week 3/ Thing 5: Flowers on Flattop

Flowers on Flattop,
originally uploaded by eteela.

OK, I found a photo on flickr, in the creative commons section so I don't have to worry about copyright. Here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
I like that you can choose the type of license. I look forward to showing this to students & teachers.
I picked this photo because Wendy and I hiked part of Flattop (Blueberry Hill) on Monday and across from FT on Wednesday. We were so excited to see a few, small, brave wildflowers. It's been a cold, slow spring. The hiking was great, and yesterday we slid down a snow chute. Made me feel almost young again. Tee Hee. I'm posting in green in hopes that we will soon see more green on the mountains.
I figured out how to post to this blog straight from flickr. That's very nice and easy.
By the way, I also finally figured out that if you want to edit one of your entries, you click on new post and then edit posts.
I'll still look around flickr, but it overwhelms me so far. I guess I don't really get the point unless you are looking for a specific image.