Onboard 2.0

I was reluctant to venture into this course because I wasn’t sure I had the time to devote to it. But the lessons were well balanced, and since I was able to set my own pace, I never felt pressured. I liked not having someone looking over my shoulder because I’m a little slow taking in technical details and I get frustrated when someone hurries me. I had a vague idea about some of the tools, but hadn’t had the time to investigate them. Having the course direct me made it much easier for me to get a handle on things, and I think the course did a great job of exposing me to a variety of different tools. Years ago I took an introductory course in HTML and that was probably a huge mistake because it was so complicated that I shied away from what I thought were really technical things. But after experiencing the fun of creating a Wiki and realizing just how easy it was, I’m ready to go! I liked Flickr and will introduce it to my students while explaining the whole “Creative Commons” thing…so much better than the Google Image searches. Delicious is just that! And the LibraryThing was right up my alley. Classroom 2.0 is one of the best professional tools out there. I’m still not fond of the Google Reader but I’m not giving up…I just haven’t found ones that really resonate with me.

I spent quite a bit of time reading the other participants’ blogs, and I found them very interesting. I realized that I was taking the course with a lot of dedicated educators and I was glad to be a part of it.

The most important thing I learned was that, given enough time, I can figure things out. I made it through the tasks without too many glitches, and now I’m ready and willing to try more new “Thingies.”

I’m grateful to my coach for inspiring me to take this course and I will now become a cheerleader for others who may be considering jumping into world of two point oh.

Simply stated Classroom 2.0 is the Facebook for educators! It was quite an exploration and I’m feeling webbed out! There was so much information, but again, I had to dig deep and wide to find forums about libraries, and specifically, school libraries. “Media Centers” and “Libraries” were not terms listed by Subject or by Area in Classroom 2.0. I think we’re missing an opportunity here and need to make this happen. I did fine a Librarians Group, which led me to the meat and potatoes of discussions about libraries and Web 2.0. I plan on joining the Librarians group because I found their discussions most relevant for me. Click here to link to the search results for a “Library” group.

What I found of value: I was able to listen to an MP3 recording of a live webinar led by Steve Hargadon on the subject of the “Future of Librarians.” Generally the librarians were discussing ways to use Web 2.0 tools within their libraries. Most of the librarians in the discussion felt that their training had not prepared them for what they are seeing today and they felt strongly that librarians need to retool. Starting with books, which is the traditional approach, librarians are using voice and video booktalks. Librarians have to be in the mix of everything to be able to show students that they can talk about books through social networking sites. By modeling this behavior, librarians can relate better to their students. Librarians feel a responsibility to teach about Creative Commons, and Bibliography generators. Wikis seem to be the most popular way for librarians to make library resources available to their students and faculty and to get valuable feedback. Everyone agreed that it was an exciting time to be a librarian and the new 2.0 toolbox is a powerful thing.

From the discussions I was led to many valuable resource links, which I couldn’t bookmark fast enough, despite my prowess with Delicious.

I really want to set up a library Wiki in the hopes that my students will get excited about books and research and start talking about their reading. And professionally, I feel I have a far better method of finding other librarians like myself who want to explore and compare ideas in a supportive environment. After all, if they’re Web 2.0ing, they’ve already jumped into the new toolbox.
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One of the items that caught my attention and started my creative juices running was “Why I Read” from Successful Teaching by loonyhiker. Following the links I happily read how one woman became a reader (she can identify the exact moment!). Returning to the idea of “why I read,” I used the Googledocs Presentation tool to start a slide show listing the reasons to read, accompanied by a photo fron Flickr. I think that is will be fun for my students to add to the presentation, illustrating why they like to read. A great idea from a quick parusal of my reader.

This was fun. My coach showed me how to create an iGoogle homepage a few months ago, so this was similar to that, although it is better. The best use for this tool for me would be to set up a homepage for my library. I looked at lots of examples from different libraries and they all seem to contain everything a student or teacher could ask for. Not only could you include the basics like the card catalog, new books, subscription services, popular sites, and blogs about books, but linking students to specific research resources with pathfinders would be great. With a little help from my tech department, I think this will work great.

In addition, if I take the time to add all my RSS feeds, emails, bookmarks, and everything else I need every day, it will be a great one-stop-shopping site for me!

I had a brief introduction to Googledocs at my school during a one day workshop in June, so this wasn’t exactly new. As a librarian, I don’t have so many opportunities to have students do collaborative work, but I imagine that when an opportunity presents itself during the school year, (and I don’t know what that opportunity may be) I will be able to adapt what I’ve learned here. I would have liked more creative “stuff” in the googledocs presentation tool. The slides I made seem repetitive in design because there were limited creative tools for things like changing the background, fonts, and other pizazz.

Idea #1: I was pleased with the presentation I created, which I called “Why I Read.” I just started to list my reasons and used Flickr to illustrated the reasons. I think my students would have a field day with this, especially if I told them they couldn’t use any of the previously listed reasons. That would get the creative juices flowing! Idea #2: We are building a new school and in the meantime everyone is spread out in modular buildiings and it is difficult to communicate. The collaborative features of Googledocs would make if easy for the faculty to talk to each other and plan events. Idea #3: My student could use the spreadsheet application to keep track of the books and number of pages they read for their independent reading class.

I had an awful lot of trouble with this one. I couldn’t get Vocaroo to work. I kept getting an error message saying it could not connect to my server. And then it would connect briefly, and then shut off again. I finally used my own sound recorder, but it took some tweaking to get good sound quality. Then I had to go back and try to recall how to embed it into my wiki sandbox, because THAT skill was weeks ago and I only had a vague recollection of how to do it I’m honestly not sure how I might use podcasting in my library. I may have the students podcast some book reviews, but I’ll have to wait to see if they’d be interesting in hearing each others reviews.

I decided to podcast a book recommendation for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, which I loved. See what you think.
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My K-12 school has a “One School, One Book” program and this year’s book is a memoir called A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. I finished the book and had a lot of questions I wanted to ask the author. I found numerous videos on YouTube of Ishmael talking about his book and his life and he answered many questions that were similar to mine. It was like having him in my own living room. This is a great way to connect students with authors. I know that I’ll suggest that my students use YouTube to find a video and make a connection with the author of a book they’ve read. It would be a very simple and straightforward search for them.

I was less successful when I searched YouTube for a video that would support the “importance” of “reading.” I found a few videos but they were pretty poor quality. I searched TeacherTube, using the same keywords, and I did find one video produced by elementary students on a Dr. Seuss theme called “Reading, Reading, Everywhere” which was kind of cute and could be done very quickly.

When I searched YouTube using the term “Libraries” I found a very funny video of Mr. Bean.  He has a disasterous expeience in an archival library.  Very funny and fun for a librarian.

I think I’ll just limit my commentary to the podcasts I found and liked.  I loved the Art History Podcast which includes image links to the masterpieces that are being described in great detail. I added it to my Google Reader and I’ve been enjoying it. I was an art history major in school and it takes me back to those days in the darkened room where we looked at slides (yes, from a slide projector) while the professor told the story of the painting.

I also like Learn Out Loud’s “Booktalks Quick and Simple Podcast” by Nancy Keane. I’m always looking for good booktalks either as a way of previewing a book for purchase or as a way to present it on fly.  I added it to my Google Reader too.

I searched the iTunes store for audio podcasts using the keywords “books” and found 36 podcasts under the title Book Lovers.  From there I selected Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and subscribed to that, which I’ll listen to on my iPod. I subscribed to iTunes a few years ago, but haven’t ventured too far into the podcast area. I think I’ll enjoy the podcasts on my iTunes the most since I can listen to them while I do other things.  Aren’t we all great multi-taskers these days?

Finally–Something that was a “piece of cake!”  Need I mention that I’m a librarian and I’ve been cataloging books since the Beatles’ first hit?  Anyway, it was fun to see other readers’ libraries…and I’m not feeling at all inferior to someone named “angelrose” has a library of 30,641 books.  Geez!

I was thinking how neat it would be for students to keep a record of all the books they’ve ever read.  Can you imagine a student printing their list and attaching it to their college entrance application.  Who wouldn’t be impressed?  I think I’m going to have some of my avid independent readers use LibraryThing to keep track of the books they’ve read and require them to take some brief notes on their books.  I think the young bibliophiles will love it!

I’d explored Delicious when I “attended” the 21st Century Conference in Thing 13.  However, now that I’ve really delved into the site, I can see that it is a great way to organize your bookmarks, and as a librarian, I’m all for organizing and cataloging everything. (Just check out my closet) The idea of sharing bookmarks with co-workers is a great way for teachers in the same discipline to collaborate. There are three libraries on our campus and it would be great if the three librarians shared some of their Delicious bookmarks with each other, since we seldom can meet and talk with each other–we’re too busy.  I especially liked searching on tags as another alternative to the ubiquitous Google.  See my Delicious.

Last weekend I was on vacation and tried to use my personal laptop at a local college library.  Since I wasn’t a student, I could use their computers, but not my own—so I couldn’t access any of my bookmarks!  NOW I CAN!!! I took a few minutes to import my existing ones.

I have a question, though.  What if you use two different computers and have two difference sets of bookmarks (work & home).  How to you import both?