‘The Dish’ from Trish

Of all the professional development I have taken, this one has taught me the most, both in terms of new skills and also new philosophy.  I know I will refer to the 23-things website lots of times for ideas, inspiration, and hands-on tips.

My position as media specialist often requires that i be a  ’jack of all trades, master of none’ — More important than knowing everything about everything is that I know enough to point students in the right direction.  We have dipped our toes into so many pools (23, at least!!)  What I hope to do now is to use some of the ‘things’ in my curriculum, and to open students’ eyes to what’s out there…  Can’t wait!!!!

I skipped this Thing for a while, putting off what I figured would be timeconsuming and confusing.  But between the clear instructions and helpful videos, I had no problem recording and publishing a podcast.  Will I do it again, for school or anything else? Who knows, but at least I got through it once!!!!

Except for lurking to find out the scoop on what my kids are up to, I have little experience with Social Networking sites such as Facebook. In fact, my son told me he’d disown me if I got a facebook page. I guess he hasn’ t come to terms yet with the reality of sites like Facebook connecting EVERYONE, not just college kids! 

I enjoyed looking around Ning.  I browsed around the forums, clicking on interesting topics and searching for the ones on libraries.  A couple of interviews (panel discussions, actually) I listened to and enjoyed were library media-centered: The Future of Librarians     and The Future of Books !  They are part of the Future of Education series. All I got was an audio feed (.mp3) but I think there may have been other interactive features I couldn’t get.  At any rate, I am reassured to know that there is indeed a future for both books and librarians — but taking courses such as Web 2.0 will ensure that!

This is one of those Things that I could have gotten completely immersed in that it would be September before I’d come up for air!  So many fascinating and useful customized pages!  Of course, I especially loved the one from the Creekview HS Library .    Why didn’t I come up with the nickname “The Unquiet Library” ?!?!?  When I watched the training video and learned how to ‘copy’ someone’s page and use parts of it, I was thrilled!

So I forced myself to keep to a reasonable amount of time looking at pageflakes and designing a (very rough) page of my own, since I am starting to feel the time constraints of this class and since I am leaving for 2-3 weeks of boating to places that may or may not have alot of internet access.   But when I come back, I hope to customize a pagecast that just might work as a library front page!

One month from yesterday we are back to school!!

I am definitely getting the hang of Google Reader.  No, I don’t check it as regularly as I should. But when I do check it, I am pretty efficient at scanning thru it and starring anything of interest.  Sort of like checking my voice mail. I don’t have to listen (or read thru) every bit of every message, but I can scan thru quickly to get the jist of each.  One of my recently starred items deals with inclusion tips and techniques.  It was valuable for me to read (and star for future reference) as I will definitely refer to it again and try out some of the recommended strategies.

Google Docs is cool — a great way to collaborate, brainstorm and edit as a group!  I sent a document in the form of a list to my coach, who immediately edited it and returned it to me — i have to admit, it was a bit startling to see the changes appear on the screen so unexpectedly, a ghostwriter!!  I played with the features of the presentation and spreadsheet sw, which are a stripped down version of what MS Office offers, but for simple, straightforward documents, etc., it’s fantastic!!!  As far as applications are concerned, there are many:  collaborative reports, such as book reviews; group presentations by students (and the teacher gets to peek at who has and hasn’t shared in the work by looking at who was responsible for the writing and edits).  Also, for teachers, imagine the collaborating for all those NEASC reports we have to do every ten years!

Alos enjoyed the forms feature, esp how easy it is to create, distribute, and collect data!

In my youtube scavenger hunt, I located several videos describing how to use Destiny, our library’s new online catalog/circulation system.  Neither the quality nor the emphasis of the videos would make them practical for me to use in class, but they gave me lots of ideas for perhaps making my own video!

For my ‘how to’ video, I searched for onan marine generators, which my husband is trying to repair on our boat. I found one that might help, and sent him the link!  I hope that youtube can save us some money by giving him some tips on repair so we don’t have to call a mechanic!

For my ‘fun’ video, I searched and found lots of great videos on Block Island, where we’d like to take our boat (with a fixed generator!!) later this summer. I even saw the marina we’d like to stay at!

This scavenger hunt showed me how much ‘good stuff’ can be found on youtube. I must admit that most of my youtube experience has been peeking over my sons’ shoulders looking at the stupid ‘jackass’ sort of junk that youtube is loaded with…altho I do use on youtube video when I cover career planning….so this was a valuable thing to explore.

Here’s a youtube video of A Sugarland song I love!

My experience perusing podcasts was interesting. I first focused on library/media/technology podcasts on Educational Podcast Network (EPN)  http://epnweb.org/index.php

The setup of EPN was Ok (except I couldn’t find out how long any particular podcast was AND there was no seach capability beyond their directory).  I readily located podcasts in my areas of interest, then clicked away to listen.  The first podcast was Open Stacks, published by a library techie. I randomly chose one (they are only numbered, no topic) and had the dubious pleasure of listening to a guy talk about attending a ed tech conference, including the fact that his flight came in so early that they had to sit in the airplane for awhile before disembarking, and then the hotel (gasp!) didn’t give him the king size bed he requested AND no longer offered free wifi.   Not much educational value in this.  But then I located some David Warlick podcasts, which were much more to the point and well worth listening to.

Then I visited Apple’s itunes store and hit the jackpot!  Lots of targeted FREE podcasts from some well-established sources such as NPR and the How Stuff Works folks.  Very strong offerings in Social Studies. 

I could envision using podcasts for career planning, and also could see the value of creating podcasts for targeted individual instruction, such as how to use the circ database or our collection of periodicals databases.

librarything is a great example of how the internet works well in bringing together people with a common interest, in this case, reading, sort of like a  book group on steroids!   I had fun playing around with this.  As a school librarian, I can think of a few ways I would (and would not) use librarything:

I would certainly suggest it to the readers among our students, especially to the kids with more unique or esoteric tastes in books — they are sure to find kindred spirits on LibraryThing!

Our school’s book group could use it to supplement (but NOT replace) our meetings, especially in the summer months when we are not in school. (My mon’s-night-out book club might benefit from it also!)

I would add it to my collection development resources (but NOT a  substitute for the sources I currently consult, as those have lots of editorial reviews rather than reader reviews.

I enjoyed browsing thru the Librarians Who LibraryThing group~and discovered how libraries use LibraryThing and LibraryThing for Libraries to supplement their reader services and collection development.  Is it gonna substitute for a ‘real’ library catalog with all its circulation and reporting features?  No, but it does have some fun tools, and as a social networking site for bookies, it’s fantastic!!!

Can’t say that I am delighted with delicious.  First of all, I had difficulty creating an account. You know those anti-spam words you have to type?  These ones were so swirly and glued together that I obviously didn’t translate them correctly (is it an “n” or an “r” attached to the next letter???)  So delicious threw me out, but kept my username so I had to recreate yet another persona, and when I did THAT, and it finally let me install the sw that adds the buttons, it closed all of my internet windows.  So by then, I went from merely being suspicious of delicious (why do we really need this?) to wholeheartedly despising delicious. 

That being said, I am getting over my first impressions disaster, and do have some positive things to say about delicious.  Our school’s operating system does not allow students to save favorites — well, they can save them but they disappear when kids log off and then log on.  So delicious is a great tool for teachers to use, then have students access for class websites. Will save alot of fumbling around the internet to direct them to the websites.  Also, I am gonna use it to save and tag all my favorites when I get back to school.  For some reason, my account doesn’t let me delete my favorites (they mysteriously reappear, probably because I and my account use multiple computers in the building). So I can start to bookmark favorites from scratch using delicious, and manage them to my specifications.   Another advantage to delicious is that I can view my favorites anywhere, on any computer, no matter where I am .  But the advantage of peeking in at other folks’ favorites?  Minimal at best….just cuz people save a favorite, it doesn’t necessary mean it is a worthwhile website, just one that served a need at a certain time for someone….