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.

Technorati

Searching on Technorati was actually a pretty fun adventure.

Technorati has many different blog topics that people can search. The most popular categories discussed are living, entertainment, and technology. The sub categories in living include: health, religion, arts, pets, fashion, food, family, home, and travel. Of these, arts is the most popular. The entertainment category is broken down into the following subcategories: celeb, film, music, television, comics, anime, gaming, and books. Of these books is the most popular—a good sign for librarians—with music close behind. The technology category consists of info tech and gadgets. Info tech is the most popular sub category of the entire list. As I examine the list of categories, I notice that there are no categories for education or history.

The topic I chose to search was singing. I used the following search terms when looking for blog posts: "voice training", "vocal coach", "David L. Jones", "Kathleen Van De Graaf", and "voice teacher". Because I either found no information or information not related to singing, I kept trying different key words with and without quotation marks. What little information I found didn’t appear to be related to singing. When I changed my search to looking for blogs related to my topic, I used the following search terms: "voice training" and "vocal coach". These search terms brought up several links to blogs with information that will be useful to me as a singer and as a beginning voice teacher.

Below are some of the links I found that will be useful to me:

Voice Training

Music Teachers Helper

The Liberated Voice

Vocal Coach

Ask a Vocal Coach

Free Singing Tips

Tagging with Diigo

I think Diigo could potentially be helpful in a library or classroom. One way I could see it being used is for group projects. It could be useful for students to share articles and leave comments for each other about certain parts of the text on sticky notes. Students could collaborate together without having to be at school in the same room talking to each other. The optional education account that teachers can set up could be useful for group projects. A teacher can set up an account where all students in the class are automatically set up as “friends” in the group so they can communicate easily with one another. Students can then use Diigo’s group bookmarks, annotations, and forums. Also, a teacher has a way of managing students’ accounts. For safety, the account settings can be set so that only other students in the class and the teacher can communicate with them. Additionally, only education-related sponsors can show advertisements in the education accounts.

Another way that I could use Diigo as a librarian is when I am teaching.

-In a presentation using the web, I could highlight important information as I share it with students, as well as leave comments on sticky notes about the information.

-If I were trying to help students locate information on certain topics, I could compile, organize and save links to different web pages and websites in locations according to topic for the students to view and utilize.

-I could promote conversations among students relating to the materials they are using, right within the materials. Perhaps I could leave comments on sticky notes in the materials I organize for students to encourage discussion about the topic.

-I could collaborate and share information with teachers and other librarians.

There are some potential problems with Diigo. Once something is highlighted, it stays that way, with no way to edit or remove highlighting. It is easy to make a mistake or change one’s mind about highlighting. Also, students have a tendency to highlight too much, and there is no way for me to go back and help them remove the highlighting from information that is not so important. Another problem that I have with Diigo is that when I close out of a document I have been working in and then go back into it, it looks like my highlighting and sticky notes have vanished. It takes a few minutes to load and show that they are really there. I wish they would load more quickly. I also found that Diigo is not as user friendly as some other technology. I had to rely on the help page several times as I tried to figure out how to use Diigo. With my limited experience using GoogleDocs, I feel that GoogleDocs might be easier to use for group projects than Diigo. However, GoogleDocs does not save images of a webpage, so if the site goes down I would lose access to the information; in Diigo I would still have the image of the page I need saved with all my markings. If I became proficient with Diigo, I would probably use it in my library.

Rollyo Search Engine Experience

Visiting http://rollyo.com/ was quite the adventure. I tried getting to this website several different times over a period of a few days. I tried three different computers and different web browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome, to no avail. I also e-mailed Anne about it a few times, saying it didn’t work for me and asking if she could access it successfully. During class on Tuesday, I discovered that I was not the only one in our class who was not able to get to this website. That was a relief. So, in the end I was not able to access this website because of maintenance at the site.

 If I were to create a Rollyo search engine, I would call it Exploration and I would have my category be Education. To begin, I would include the following links in my Rollyo search engine:
      -http://www.wikipedia.org/
      -http://news.hjnews.com/
      -http://www.time.com/time/
As a librarian in a school setting, I would likely add other links that would help students with more specific assignments.

LibraryThing Experience

What is LibraryThing and what can I use it for?

Exploring LibraryThing was actually quite fun. Last semester JaDene had us set up an account, so I had already explored LibraryThing a little bit. I was able to further explore this site and see what it was all about. LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking sight where book lovers can add books to their collection, search their collection, sort books into different collections create new collections, edit information about the books, print a copy of their catalog, write reviews, and apply tags. LibraryThing gives quality facts about books. Each book pages shows members who have that particular book and their opinions of the book, as well as tags, reviews, and links to conversations about a book. A person with a LibraryThing account can write information about him or herself, which can be open for the public eye or kept private. In a person’s profile, he or she can list favorite authors, favorite bookstores, or favorite libraries; leave comments for other members; and see the interesting data about other people’s books. There are also “Talks” or discussion groups where people discuss different topics and books. LibraryThing also has a page where people can find out about different bookstores, libraries, and book festivals in their areas. Such activities as author readings, author signings, author discussions and other events are posted so a person can see what is going on locally. I think it is neat that a LibraryThing widget can be added to a blog so people can see what I am reading. Some other interesting things about LibraryThing are that a person can access it on a phone and a person can receive pre-published books for free if they read them and write reviews for them.

LibraryThing Uses

While observing at a high school this week, I asked the school librarian if she had ever thought of using LibraryThing in her library. She asked me how a librarian could use LibraryThing in a school setting. I proceeded to explain to her that in LibraryThing, there are book reviews. When someone looks at a review for a particular book, LibraryThing will recommend books that are similar to that one. A librarian could use this feature to help students and teachers find books.  A librarian could also find out about local events, such as book signings or author readings or discussions to advertise to students.  Additionally, the librarian could also help organize “book club discussions” for students via the “Talks” discussion feature. A librarian could add a LibraryThing widget to a library blog to make recommendations about books.

If students had their own LibraryThing accounts, they could read book reviews and see what sort of books they wanted to read. Also, they could see book recommendations that are similar to the books they are considering. It is also a way that students can link to their friends and see what different people are reading. They could join discussion groups about books or topics of interest.

Teachers could also use this site. They could write their own book reviews, which students, parents, or other teachers could read in LibraryThing. Teachers could use LibraryThing for book reviews and book recommendations while collaborating, perhaps via the discussion feature, with other teachers. They could also become aware of local events, which they could recommend to students when such activities tie into the curriculum.

LibraryThing for Libraries

I have not looked too far into this, but there is also a LibraryThing for Libraries that enhances Online Public Access Catalogs (OPAC).  Such things as tags, reviews, similar books, and lexile measurements can be added directly into an OPAC to help patrons as they search for materials.

Image Generator

Skype

I found setting up a Skype account to be an interesting experience. Before taking this class, I already knew that Skype existed, but I had never used it before. My grandparents are in the process of setting up a Skype account as well. I hope that I can share with them what I learn about Skype. While setting up my account, I learned that talking Skype number to Skype number is free. Instant messaging is free as well; but calling to a land line, cell phone, or even text messaging costs money.

As a librarian, I could use Skype in a variety of ways:

1.  Author visits via Skype

As a school librarian, I think it would be extremely fun and exciting to use Skype to talk with authors. The kids would love it and it would be a new experience for them as well. To Skype with an author would definitely be cheaper than an in-person visit, and it could still be a fun and unique experience for everyone involved. Prices vary, but they can range from free for a twenty minute session to $300 for an hour to visit with an author. These visits are also more convenient for authors. There are websites with lists of authors who are willing to use Skype to do author visits.

 I learned from Kate Messner’s site that using Skype to do author visits is more practical for her, an author as well as middle school English teacher. She can do a Skype author visit from school for about half an hour before school. Then when her homeroom class comes in, she turns off her laptop. This is more realistic for Kate because she doesn’t have time to travel to do author visits because she has to teach; Skype makes it possible to do virtual author visits and the kids love it! Since it is cheaper, perhaps students will benefit from more author visits. Using Skype to video-conference with an author not only gives students a chance to meet an author, but it gets them excited about reading, which we, as librarians, promote, so this is great.

There are a few problems with Skype author visits though. There is not as much interpersonal interaction. Also, glitches, such as losing connection, can take place when we are relying on technology. Additionally, some schools have certain privacy issues that do not allow for Skype to be used.

2. Skype in the classroom

There are many different ways that Skype can be used in the classroom. Here are some ideas I got from the link 50 Awesome Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom: history lectures, guest lecturers, virtual fieldtrips, after-school help, learning how to illustrate, interviews, classmate joining the classroom from home, foreign culture lessons, conference with parents, and teacher collaboration. In addition to using some of these ideas in the library, I could suggest them to teachers to help enhance their teaching through Skype technology.

3. Skype a reference librarian

In one library there is a kiosk where people can Skype with a librarian. The kiosk has a webcam that allows them to immediately hook up with a librarian and get their questions answered. Using Skype to talk with a reference librarian seems most beneficial in a long-distance situation, but it could possibly be done from an elementary, middle, or high school classroom or computer lab. It might be just as easy to walk down to the library and talk with the librarian though.