Sunday, April 26, 2009
One Last Thing
As far as Anne's class goes, I greatly appreciate learning about search engines and search engine strategies. I learned so much that I did not know about Google. The only drawback is that there were so many other search engines that I would like to have studied but of course, we couldn't get to them all. I also enjoyed the class on digital libraries as so many ideas for lessons came to me through that study. Although the wiki was frustrating at times, I still feel as though it was valuable to learn how to collaborate with each other from across the state and to have the knowledge of what it takes to create a wiki of our own. I'm actually quite proud of the one that Jullie, Brittany and I did on biographies. I feel as though we actually made a valid contribution to the ITLS site:)
Overall, I think that this class has greatly contributed to our study of technology and I will use so much of this information within my future career. Thanks Anne for a great class!
Tagging, Folksonomies & Technorati
At first, I couldn't encompass how either of these sites could be used in a library/ or educational setting. It seemed like so much trouble to teach students about these services when most students would just add it to favorites on their toolbar. But then Anne had a suggestion to gear the instruction towards the teachers that you would be collaborating with and that made alot more sense being that they would have many more sites to keep track of. Before learning about these sites, I had previously constructed my own form of folksonomie- it worked like this. I would simply create a main topic folder under my favorites tab and categorize each website under specific topic folders. Old school? Maybe but available on my toolbar at all times without having to log in to another site. I find it works fine but I agree, it is good to know that these sites exist in the case that one might find use for it in the future.
I actually found alot more useful information in reading the perspectives on Library 2.0 and the futures of libraries. I even jotted down some thoughts that would be perfect to reiterate in an interview for a library position. For instance, on the subject of acquisition of technology within your library, it was suggested that a librarian should not buy technology for the sake of technology. Without a firm foundation in the mission and goals of the school, new technologies are not implemented for the sake of coolness and status. New technology should be put to the test: Does it meet the users need in a new or improved way? Does it create a useful service for pairing users together with the information they seek? When budgeting for technology, these are some questions to consider. Previously, we had an in class assignment in which we were asked what types of technology we would have available in our dream library. I remember Melia and I requesting all of the coolest technology just for the sake of having it, but not necessarily questioning how we would use it. I see how that could be a mistake budget wise. Another recommendation by Library 2.0 is to focus on using the interlibrary loan service (ILL) as much as possible and to provide access to a variety of databases where users can access information. This helps to cut down on the cost of print versions while still providing users with the most up to date information.
The Library 2.0 article really made me think about how best to "serve" my clientele - the students- and really motivated me to start questioning the ways in which I could create a technology plan that works.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Play- online image generators
Now, how to connect it to the library? I could certainly see using an image generator to advertise for your library, specifically using the @ your library logo we learned about in a previous reading. For actual instructional use though, I kind of come up blank. Hang on, let me think...Well to support technology and writing an assignment could be to have students create a comic strip with a comic strip generator or I did see one where you could enter a poem and it will generate into different shapes. That one might be fun to have students create and then hang up for display during a study of poetry. All in all though, a totally fun 2.0 this week!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Wiki's
At first, I didn't understand the concept of a Wiki. I didn't like that you could spend all this time creating a post and someone could just come along and edit it. Now that we have conducted our own class Wiki on references, I understand that there is a common Wiki etiquette that is followed. Even within our own class site, I didn't dare to edit anyone's work out of respect for what they had posted. Now I see the usefulness and how many different ways Wiki's can be used instructionally. Many people complained about the class Wiki assignment- indicating that it was too hard to format, etc. I disagree. I thought it was pretty easy if you created in Word first and then copied it in. Also it was so easy to add a hyperlink! I felt like a genius for being able to figure it out myself.
After visiting the suggested sites on 2.o, I liked the Best Practices for Librarians Wiki and the Book Lovers Wiki could have been much better if more people would post to it. A couple of ideas that I had were to create a Book Lovers Wiki for your school library. The librarian could introduce the technology to a particular class and each student would be required to post a book review. I also think it would be a great instructional tool to have a Wiki for class homework questions. Students could post a question and anyone in the class could respond who knew the answer. That might take some maintenance though because it could fill up quickly but would allow parents who had questions to log on to discuss. I'm glad we had this introduction to Wiki's because I can certainly see ways that it will be useful to me as a librarian or teacher in the future.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Happy Birthday Wordle
This is a tag cloud for my beautiful cousin Melissa who turned 27 (I think) on April Fools Day. Tag clouds are really easy and fun. It was the subject of our 2.0 this week and, as posted in the discussion board, I can think of alot of uses for them and even more thanks to the article from Anne's dad! I certainly will use wordle in my library or classroom in the future! I just wish I could figure out two things, how to get phrases to stay together and how to save it to my computer for my own use. I guess I will have to play with it more but what a fun way to teach a variety of subjects or to use as a design technique. I used to work for County Parks & Recreation and part of my job was to design the t-shirts for the youth programs. This would have been so helpful back then.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
www.youtube.com
I'm scared to go to YouTube.com because last weekend, I downloaded a virus that I think turned off my firewall, and despite how I try, can't turn it back on. So I am sketchy about going to MySpace or youtube or anywhere else for that matter. I have been to YouTube before however; and am surprised at how it seems that just recently people have started to praise the educational aspects of the site. I think it is a great tool to utilize in the classroom because kids easily identify with it. I did learn how to embed video, which is very exciting and incredibly easy! This is my little cousin Cassie's YouTube music video that she created to Katy Perry's Hot N Cold. It has had 29,458 views. She is 16 years old and created the whole video in one lazy afternoon (including editing, costume changes, and lip-sync sychronization). It certainly proves the technology that high school students are not only capable of, but able to utilize easily just for fun.
Web Awards-SpanishPod
Google Docs and Zoho
Zoho
Zoho Writer is awesome. This is a great idea and certainly could be the death of Microsoft Office, just like Skype could be the death of land phone lines (or apps like them in the future)! All of this new technology that we are learning about is so amazing but it's kind of scary that everything is starting to be web-based. This may be a stupid question but is the web truly infinite?
For instance, I love the Document History feature that lets you track every change made to the document. Sometimes that is really helpful and I'm surprised Microsoft Word doesn't have it, but does that mean all of these pre-versions of documents are being saved by millions of people on-line?
Regardless, this is way cool. I love that you can pull up the documents from any PC and also that others can share and edit. laTeX Equation Editor would have been great to have had in Algebra! It was just 3 years ago, I remember thinking that I wish there was a software program that had all of the symbol and function keys so my work could look more professional and look, here it is! I find that revelation happens alot with 2.0.
Google Docs
Are you kidding me? Is there no end to what Google can do? I really would like to attend a workshop/class on just Google alone. I love this week's 2.0. I can't believe we can do all of these apps online. I seriously was going to buy a new laptop because I couldn't access my documents that I create at home elsewhere but who knew, I can! My question is ..can I save the documents I create at Google Docs to my home computer or are they saved at Google only? I tried but it didn't give me the option. I did see that you could download but I don't know how safe that is, being that I just downloaded a virus last week that took out my firewall. Now I'm weary to even be online. But holy cow, totally impressed with all of these new findings.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
RSS-feeds at bloglines
This week's RSS assignment is pretty cool. It's basically an email account of current newsfeeds. It works like this. After registering for an account at www.bloglines.com, you subscribe to several feeds from different websites and each time they have a new post, it will appear in your blog lines account. I learned from MTV news that Chris Brown and Rhianna are back together, even after a supposed physical altercation. At iTunes Top 25 songs found out the song Alone- by Heart is on their top 25 list although it's been around for 25 years. Could that be because a contestant sang it on Idol last week? Teens have no idea these days where the good music comes from.
I think Bloglines could be useful if I can figure out how to get the feeds that I want- I tried to subscribe to the Salt Lake Tribune (which is the one I most wanted to have a feed to) but couldn't figure out how. Also, I thought it would be interesting to subscribe to George Norry- Coast to coast (which is a radio cast about paranormal things) but couldn't figure that out either. I haven't subscribed to a library feed because then it would feel more like a chore and responsibility to check it than fun. I really don't need any more whispering responsibilities in my head. Having to check my email is enough. But I'm sure that as soon as it pertains to my job, it will be very useful. I wish we could have bloglines at my work now, just to peruse through when we are not on a call. I could be up on all the important news that way.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Skype
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Flicker
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Man...what a good book. I hope when I die, it's going to be like waking up as a vampire! If you've read the book, you know what I mean:)