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.

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.