One Last Thing

This semester has been a great adventure. I have loved all that I have learned, both from class and the 2.0 activities. Here is a little bit about what I learned:

-Week 1: Life-Long Learning

It was enlightening to pay attention to my strengths and weaknesses as I wrote about my 7 1/2 life-long learning habits. During week one, we learned about setting up a Gmail account and how to have a strong password. I discovered it is fairly difficult to make a strong password, and I have been working to make my passwords stronger.

-Week 2: Blogging

I discovered that I love blogging. It is fun to post information that someone out there will read and learn from or be affected by in some way.

-Week 3: Photos, Images

Playing with photos and images is so much fun! I love how I can upload an image onto the Internet and create a calendar, a frame or matting, a card, a pocket album. There are many fun and creative ways to use photos and images and I would love to learn more about this!

-Week 4: Wikis

There are many fun and informative wikis out there. I think it is a fun idea for a librarian to create a wiki that students can learn and get information from.  As I have created my own library wiki, I have discovered how important it is to make sure information is well organized and that links function properly. It has been fun to try to insert ideas from the learning 2.0 activities into my wiki.

-Week 5: Skype

This was actually pretty fun! I used instant messaging with a few people from our class and that was fun. I also used Skype with Anne for our Spring Break meeting, just for the experience of using Sky for something official.  Before this meeting, I wanted to make certain my Skype was working, so my sisters and I Skyped with my cousins who live in Kansas. It was so much fun. My little sister Erika, who is 6 and is in kindergarten this year, still cannot believe that we saw our cousins on the computer.

I think it would be fun to Skype with an author. This also would be less expensive than bringing an author in, but it still gives the students a chance to learn.  I also think it would be interesting to set up times with students and/or parents of my students and Skype with them if they have questions.

-Week 6: Play!

It was fun to play with the image generator and to be creative. It was also fun for me to add more books to my LibraryThing bookshelf and explore LibraryThing in a little more detail than I had before.

-Week 7: Social Bookmarking

Working with Diigo was a new experience for me. I had never heard of Diigo before this class. I think Diigo has some useful tools, but I also found that there are parts of Diigo that I don’t like. For example once people highlight something, they can’t change their mind and un-highlight it; it just stays that way. Diigo could be useful for young students working on class projects and assignments.

-Week 8: RSS, Newsreaders

Finding blogs and websites with the RSS sign and getting the feed to deposit information into my GoogleReader account was a neat experience. I spent time finding links that I thought would be beneficial to me. As a librarian, if I included an RSS link to my blog or wiki, parents, students, and teachers can subscribe to the links and be notified when I update information.

-Week 9: Twitter

Setting up a Twitter account was simple. I found places to follow, such as School Library Journal, Children’s Bookshelf, ALA Booklist Pubs, and The Horn Book, which I can use for educational purposes in my library.

-Week 10: Spring Break

-Week 11: Online Video

There are great movie clips out there that can be used for educational purposes. YouTube and TeacherTube are great places to look. Educational movie clips or instructional clips are great, both for students and teachers. I am glad to know that help for most technology issues can be found on YouTube. One problem is that YouTube is often blocked in schools. In the future, I think it would be a good idea for schools to look into allowing these types of clips to be used without a complicated process.

-Week 12: Podcasting

I found the idea of teachers using podcasting to be a fascinating idea. Librarians can record discussions and post them so students can listen to them again. I think this is a great idea. Also, I believe that discussions on different books and genres could be of use and interest to students.

-Week 13: Tag Clouds

I enjoyed the chance I had to be creative and make my own tag cloud with my own ideas. There are many topics that could be put together to make into a tag cloud.  Tag clouds seem to be popular now and quite visually appealing.

-Week 14: GoogleDocs

In GoogleDocs I was able to create a survey to attach to my blog. It was fun for me to figure out how this works and to get it posted to my blog. Also, GoogleDocs is a place where students can save their work and allow others to view and edit it without having to make a bunch of copies to e-mail back and forth. A problem with this set up is that once someone changes something in the document it is changed for everyone; the previous version is gone. This can cause frustration, so save copies before revising.

-Week 15: One Last Thing

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the 2.0 activities. I learned many ways that technology will help me as a librarian, as well as fun ideas that will help me be creative.

-Week 16: Future Exploration

I love learning, so I will continue to gain more knowledge on these topics as I continue with my education.

Google Docs Survey

Survey Results

Favorite Authors:

Marcia Lynn McClure, T.A. Barron, Jane Austen, Megan Smolenyak, J.K. Rawling, Tyler Whitesides, Kim Harrison, Shannon Hale

Favorite Genre:

The favorite genre that appeared most frequently was historical fiction, with 9 votes. Here are the rest of the results:

Historical fiction 9

Science fiction 5

Realistic fiction 4

Poetry 2

Biography 1

Autobiography 1

Non-fiction 2

Fantasy 5

Fairytale 4

Mystery 6

Short story 0

Myths and legends 2

Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes 2

Romance 2

Tag Clouds

Podcasting

I listened to a podcast called ABC BookReview. Two librarians, Beth and Cari, working at Twinsburg Public Library, discuss books on a specific genre or topic for each episode of a podcast. These podcasts are strictly the opinions and ideas of Beth and Cari. In the episode I watched, Beth and Cari discuss animals/pets. Each woman discusses her own pet—one has cats and one has a dog—and experiences with those animals. They also discuss different books, both fiction and nonfiction, about animals. Sometimes just book titles are mentioned, while other times the book is discussed a little more in detail. I found this podcast entertaining, and it would be a neat way to spread the word about different books in the library. I think this is a fun way that a school library could also get students interested in different books in the library.

On iTunes, I subscribed to a podcast of "Grammar Girl." This gives quick tips for various problems people encounter in writing. 

Online Educational Videos

The online video I chose is entitled: The 21^st Century Media Center Program. This is about a study done in Michigan relating to the importance of school library media programs.

This video shows ways that librarians can be helpful, suggesting ways that teachers and students can use the library and librarian to the best advantage. This 8-minute video discusses the why, what, and how of a school library media program. It states that a strong program with a certified media specialist does increase the likelihood of students performing well academically. This shows just how important school libraries and media specialists really are in a community. A school library media specialist should collaborate with teachers for classroom projects, as well as help students to use computers and the Internet safely, efficiently, effectively and ethically when doing research. Teaching information literacy skills—selecting, evaluating and using materials—is essential for students to be successful in school and careers in the 21^st Century. A librarian should also provide students with opportunities by purchasing quality books and information sources and encouraging them to read, both for information and pleasure.

Twitter Experience

I have not been overly excited about the social networking sites, such as MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook, which have come about over the past several years. I feel like people waste lots of time seeing what other people are doing that they are not doing, making them feel left out. They appear to be big gossip columns as well. Also, there are so many different ways people can find when their friends post that it is distracting. People can be alerted via e-mail and/or phone every time someone new makes a comment on their page, etc. I find this can divert people’s attention so they cannot focus on other important aspects of life. I also believe that these sites are leading more and more people to see what other people are doing via these social networking sites instead of developing interpersonal skills with others, especially the people they should care about most.

In spite of my feelings about social networking sites, I set up a Twitter account. Setting up a Twitter account is not difficult. To sign up, you give your full name, your e-mail, and a password. Adding people, libraries, or other places that I wanted to follow wasn’t hard either. All I had to do was use the search box to locate who or what I wanted to follow. After I added a few places, Twitter suggested a few places that were similar to what I was following. Some of these places I added and some of them I did not; it depended on whether they were of interest to me or not.

Although I am not that “into” using social networking sites, as a librarian I could see Twitter being useful in helping me reach people who would not otherwise know what is going on in the library. When I Tweet, messages I post will go out to everyone who has chosen to follow me. I could Tweet about activities that are going on in the library, such as a book club or author visits. I could also Tweet about new books that students might find interesting. If students are following my Tweets, they will know what is going on in the library and may be more likely to come to the library to get books to read for fun, or to find something of interest that could be used for a class assignment. Students could also recommend books, share links, or ask questions through Twitter, as could teachers. I could also provide Tweets that could be helpful to teachers, such as information about equipment, technology, or publications that teachers may find useful. Teachers will also be aware of what is in the library and may be more willing to use what the library has to offer.  As a librarian, following different libraries, librarians, and places such as the ALA book list and School Library Journal on Twitter could help keep me updated on what is going on with books, book lists, and libraries, which could be useful.

RSS and Newsreaders

Creating a Googlereader account was an interesting experience for me. I didn’t even know such a thing existed. It was fun for me to experiment and add different sites and blogs where I can find information on topics of interest. This way I can be informed when new posts are put up on the blogs or news is updated without actually having to go to the site to find out.

I explored several blogs before deciding which ones I would like to blog about. The first blog, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I found that is both fun and interesting is The Daring Librarian. It is colorful and fun to look at. This blog was nominated, as well as a finalist for, the best librarian/library blog 2011 Edublog Awards. This librarian shows that we librarians do not have to fit the “norm” of what people think a typical librarian is. We can create fun new ways for students to learn, actually enjoy the learning process, and want to come to the library. This site has links leading to other places where this librarian has information on this site that leads to Flickr, electronic portfolio, various learning and technology wikis, a school library blog, or 2.0 tools. This blog shows that the librarian is keeping up with technology and using it to help her students. If I need ideas on how to do wikis, blogs, etc. I can look to see how she has created and implemented these.

The second blog I chose to explore, which I found useful, was 025.431: The Dewey blog. This blog has all the Dewey Decimal Categories and explains what is in each. It also posts information about new books and which categories to place them. As a librarian, I would find this blog helpful because I want to see where other librarians are categorizing their books and learn more information about the Dewey Decimal system. This is not the most exciting website, it’s technical with mainly just text, but it is necessary information for cataloging.