Week 8 / Thing 18: Online Productivity

I'm using GoogleDocs to create this blog post. I also played with Zoho writer. I can't tell you how excited I am to discover these online production tools. I will share these with teachers and students asap. In fact, this may be the first thing I share. I will be the hero(ine) of those kids working on projects together who are passing around a flash drive or sharing their passwords so they can work on the project that's only available in one student's elocker. I will make the students who do their work on the newest .x versions of microsoft products or that antiquated wordperfect or other obscure word processor, but can only open them on certain computers in the school. I will show them how they can share their documents with their teachers and fellow students so they aren't in the library panicking and asking me to write a note to Ms. So&So that they did try to access the document. I really can't wait to play more with these products. As far as I can tell, the two I looked at (Google & Zoho) both have all the tools one might need for school projects: a variety of fonts, color choices, numbering and bullets, spell check, tables.

Writing Tools	Spreadsheet Tools
Presentation Tools	Sharing

I made that table without using help. It's very simple, but was so easy to set up. I also looked at making a presentation. Here are 2 slides I made in about 5 minutes:


I can't tell you how easy this was. Just a couple clicks and I published this post to my blog. I'm doing a little happy dance this rainy morning.

Week 7 / Thing 17 RAW wiki posts

I started posting on the RAW wiki. Not many posts there yet, but I can see the potential format to get ideas from others and share good ideas I have. We have a wiki for ASD librarians and it has been a good resource especially when there are "hot" topics. I think as more librarians discover the power of a wiki, more will contribute which will make it a more valuable resource.

Week 7 / Thing 16: Wikis

I've been looking forward to this exercise because I do have some experience with wikis and I like them. I know I'm supposed to be learning new things, but many of the new things need more exploration and time than I have to really get a grasp of their usefulness. Wikis, on the other hand, I can talk about.

I browsed some of the wikis the RAW team suggested and found several of interest including Library Success, Blogging Libraries and Teacher Librarian (this last one created by none other than Joyce Valenza, sigh, what doesn't that woman do?). I'm looking forward to having time to really explore these resources.

I'm reminded that one of my goals this past year was to move my pathfinders to wikis. I'm not there yet; maybe this year. I did start a wiki for my student library aids to write book reviews. I hope to open this up to English classes and maybe the whole school this year.

Robin Turk and I created a page on a wiki about wikis for a presentation we did at Conference this year. (http://akaslweb2-0.wikispaces.com/Why+Wiki%3F)
Some ideas for using wikis at school include:

• Find and summarize articles on the Internet.
• Plan and post group projects.
• Peer reviews.
• Post Book reviews.
• Collaborative writing, planning.

Week 6 / Thing 15: Web 2.0 and the future of Libraries

I read Tom Storey’s OCLC article: Web 2.0: Where Will the Next Generation Web Take Libraries? (http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/1.htm)
I think it’s noteworthy that the OCLC articles are from 2006. Tom Storey’s predictions that the web is changing are pretty accurate. The web doesn’t just provide content, it connects us and not just with our computers, but using our other many toys as well. Consider the recent run on iphones. With an iphone, one could leave the computer at home and do most of the tasks you need to do: email, surf the web, play music, watch videos, oh, and talk on the phone.

I don’t think that libraries will be the cutting edge necessarily since in this class we’re playing with every tool the 2-year old article lists: Flickr, MySpace, FaceBook, del.icio.us, YouTube, LibraryThing. Storey calls these the first traces. I’ve been aware of many of these tools, but my patrons are far more adept at using them than I.

I was thinking about this idea of how to keep up with my patrons and apply these new tools to library services so I can best serve them in the world they prefer, I read Michael Stephens article: Into a New World of Librarianship (http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/3.htm). Stephens lists some traits of Librarian 2.0. The first trait, plan for your users is universal and should underlie every decision a librarian makes in any century. We should include our users in any plans we make, our policies should be based on improving access and providing for our patrons’ needs.

Trait 2 is to embrace Web 2.0 tools. We should be using them to promote our libraries and to communicate with our patrons. Stephens suggests creating Library MySpace accounts. This of course is not feasible in a school district that blocks myspace, but we should be looking for other ways to engage and woo patrons.

Traits 3 – 5 include good advice. Control tehnolust and buy technology that fit into your mission and goals, not just for the sake of the latest, cool stuff. Making good, fast decisions that provide for ease of use and user involvement is just good advice in any service industry. Being a trendspotter can be valuable if you don’t get overwhelmed and can pull out and apply those trends to your particular library needs.

Finally, Trait 6: Librarian 2.0 gets content resonated with me. Stephens writes that content is a conversation and patrons will want to “create their own mash ups, remixes and original expressions and should be able to do so at the library or via the library’s resources. This librarian will help users become their own programming director for all of the content available to them.” We have to let go of this idea that the collection is contained within library walls and is static. This is exhilarating and terrifying. I hope I’m up for it.

Week 6 / Thing 14: Technorati & Tagging

I searched for “School Library Learning 2.0” in blogs and in tags. The first time I searched blogs, I found the RAW site, the second time, I got no results: interesting. When I searched tags, I got 11 results. Interestingly enough several were links to blogs from participants of the original Web 2.0 class, 3 were for bikini girls from Japan, and the rest I only found mildly interesting. There were quite a few videos to browse. Clicking on Web 2.0 in the directory yielded many blogs.


I looked at blogging central and browsed the top few of the top 100 by authority. The Huffington Report was number 1? I didn't expect that at all. Many of the other top blogs focus on technology of one kind or another, and that didn't surprise me at all. I would think that many people go to the internet for information on technology since it tends to be the most up-to-date.

Boing Boing (number 1 by popularity) is like reading the headlines on the magazines in line at the grocery store: sort of fun with a little guilt mixed in; you know you'd never buy the things, but what's the harm in reading them? And I think Boing Boing is more legit. It's number 5 in the top 100 by authority.

The top tags were an interesting mix, and I'm not surprised that sex and technology are both there as well as Eva Longoria.

The internet is this big unruly mix of everthing, and tags reflect that. As a librarian, my tendency would be to want to standardize it all, but I know that even if the tags are all standardized, the quality of a search depends on the search terms. I can't even remember how to search WWII in our catalog, how can we expect millions of internet users to become standardized? So tagging is a good thing, but only as good as guessing what terms people will use to search.

I decided not to claim this blog.

Week 6 / Thing 13: Tagging

If you're like me and need remediation or extra help in Web 2.0, then here's another video tutorial for del.icio.us. As with some of these other tools, I had a del.icio.us account that I had forgotten about. I even have the buttons in my browser and have just been ignoring them.

I must say, I'm really excited about social bookmarking. My bookmarks on my browser are a mess, unorganized, outdated, hard to use. By adding them to del.icio.us, I can use them both at school and at home and organize them in a way that makes sense to me. I do see one area that needs some work and that is tagging. I'm not consistent in my tags and sometimes I think I've added too many tags. I need to practice more with sorting and bundling. Have any of you bundled your sites? I'm trying it out with a bundle called YA lit. I think you can go to http://del.icio.us/suzmet and click on YA Lit on the sidebar to see my first attempt.

To create your own bundles, click bundle tags on this same sidebar. I think this will be one more way to organize and sort because I can group sites with more than one tag. Gosh, will the catalogers of the future be using tags instead of Sears to organize?

I also created network badge.

I also like browsing other people's lists. Here's a very cool site I found while browsing: Classroom 2.0. Once again, I got very off track because I found this site and had to spend and hour or so playing around with it. YIKES. And if you want to be so overwhelmed you have to just get out of your chair and go for a walk try the Go2Web2.0 directory. And off I go, I'll be back after my walk.

Week 5 / Thing 12: Voice Thread

We learned about Voice Thread last summer when Joyce Valenza was here. I can see lots of good uses for this tool, many of which other participants in this class have already mentioned: book talks, art criticism, historical perspectives, character points of view and so forth. I enjoyed viewing some of the examples.
Here's an interesting discussion of the classroom of the future (http://voicethread.com/#q.b42094.i220636) using voicethread as the medium. The many comments bring up such issues as the roles of teachers and students, structure (and lack of), and digital equity. I like the irony of the tool being used to discuss the value and relevance of the tool.


As with much of this technology, from a secondary librarian's point of view, there are challenges:

1. We have to get our teachers on board so will bring their students to experiment and explore the tools. This means working on collaboration and creating relationships with our teachers.
   
2. We have to have the hardware available, and there has to be enough so that students have access.
   
3. We have to have enough expertise to be able to instruct, troubleshoot and understand how to optimize the tools. That said, if we wait until we are experts, then we'll never get anything done.
4. We have to be able to let go of control and let those teachers and students explore and experiment.

I get really excited about all the new stuff, but if I don't apply it right away, I either forget all about it or forget how it works. (This could be a result of a 50 year old technology immigrant's brain.)