Week 9, Thing 23 Reflections on the Journey

Real learning should change the learner, not just fill their head with content or teach new skills, and Learning 2.0 has changed me in some unexpected ways. I am now critically aware of the need to structure the library experience of my students and faculty to their needs as "users," which means that if it takes too much "training" for them to be able to acquire the information and experiences they are seeking in my library, I'm doing something wrong (see comments on article by Michael Stevens in previous post)! Consequently, I met with the head of the English department and we are revamping the way we do freshman library orientation. I met with my IMS guy, and we are revamping my library web page (once fiber optics is up and running, supposedly in April). I am going to actively participate in the freshman academy at my school so that I can be a part of creating a learning experience for the students that isn't the "same old, same old" in a block schedule. My main goal is to use technology to create active learning, collaboration, and engaged readers in my library and beyond in my school. Can you tell that I LOVED Learning 2.0?! Thank you, 2.0 team! I hope to be able to thank you in person at CSLA in the Fall. P.S. -- A quick apology to the readers who kept up with me for inundating you at the end -- my online exploration and learning were ahead of my blog postings, and when I realized that I was going to have to finish by April 1st, I had to catch up on the postings. ANSWERS to the 6 questions, in reverse order:
#6 - My learning experience in one sentence: The format of this online learning experience allowed me to explore web 2.0 applications at my own pace and on my own time, integrating them into my life and my library as I learned.
#5 -Would I choose to participate again? Yes, definitely - bring it on!
#4 - How could the format or concept be improved? My only suggestion would be to make the Weekly Tips portion interactive by posting it on a Wiki where others could quickly post answers to questions (technological difficulties) which sometimes slowed me down, especially when working from home.
#3 - Unexpected outcomes from this program - a shift in my perception of my role as a librarian from "user friendly" to "user centered", and new confidence in myself as a "techy" person
#2 - How this program has affected my life long learning goals - I now have at least a beginning familiarity with a whole online world of knowledge, reflection, commentary and interaction which will allow me to take charge of my own learning experience and collaborate with others as I grow.
#1 - My favorite exercises or discoveries on this learning journey - it was very fun and confidence building to acquire the skills to use these web 2.0 applications on my own and see that I could make them work, so I did enjoy the practical "how to" exercises where I actually created something (my blog, my igoogle page w/ reader, a flickr account, a zoho account, my rollyo search bar, etc.). But I also very much appreciated the inclusion of thoughtful reflection and commentary on these applications, reading online articles, journals, and blogs about them. That balance made this a very worthwhile journey for me.

Week 9, Thing 22:Audio books and e-books

Many of the sites for downloading free books seem to be using the same sources: 1) so called public domain books whose copyrights have expired (the “classics,”), 2) online computer and technical information, and 3) books being created online specifically for an internet audience, many of them collaboratively. Now audio versions of public domain books are being pod cast on Librivox, many of them originally published by the Gutenberg project. What a great collaborative project! This has immediate applications for my own school's special ed and EL populations. Audible, Audiobooks and Itunes seem to be the biggest sources for commercial audio books, and many people just download right to an MP3 player. Barnes and Noble has gotten into the audio book business, and Recorded Books (one of the biggest sources for libraries) will now “rent” as well as sell. Right now in my own library, 100+ titles from Recorded books go out regularly, so I know the “market” is there. I have not had the online space to offer e-books from my own library, but that may be changing. The disadvantage is that, like a regular book book, only one user at a time can “check out” an e-book. The biggest controversy in e-books and online audio books, of course, is copyright vs. “the right to know/read/hear.” Google has run into a lot of controversy with its plan to begin scanning and sharing whole university libraries, but it makes sense to me, especially when one or two libraries hold a few rare volumes. The most blatant case of scholarly stinginess in the last fifty years was the small group of scholars who held the Dead Sea Scrolls hostage, not sharing their work for almost forty years, until a graduate student obtained photographs and a journal published them, forcing the controlling group to open up access to the documents. As a beginning freelance writer, however, I clearly see the other side of the story – the importance of protecting and being paid for your work. We have indeed entered a brave new world! Of all of the online e-book and audio book providers, I liked NetLibrary the best, probably because it is connected to a trusted library group, OCLC, and that is the service I will use when bandwidth permits in my own library. Hmm, I'll have to rethink that "no ipods" in the library rule, won't I?

Week 9, Thing #21, Podcasts

Finding and listening to interesting pod casts is easy; most of them have RSS feeds so you can subscribe to them and have the information come to you on your iGoogle page or blog. I toured Yahoo, Odeo, PodcastNet, and PodNova. On the EdTech site I found a beginner’s lesson in Morse Code and a great educational pod cast site, www.edtech101.com, where I listened to a pod cast on scanning. They recommended a web site, www.photorepairshop.com, which has a “scanning calculator” to calculate the proper resolution to scan any particular file so that you don’t overload your Smart Board, for example, with an image that is too dense. But publishing your own pod cast takes a few more steps. I added the edtech101 pod cast to my iGoogle home page, which I will be able to access from school (until IMS catches onto this possibility). I also read the entire How to Pod cast tutorial pod cast tutorial – this requires a pretty sophisticated set-up. You must have a web domain, a web host (to store your audio files, which will take a lot of bandwidth), a blog where your listeners can contact you, make comments, read your notes on your episodes, view photos, etc., and RSS feed. The tutorial recommended not using a blog site, since the URL will be hard to remember, but apparently Blogger and Libsyn will allow people to register a web site for about $10 a year. A web host with good technical support is a must, and you need at least one gigabyte of storage, and at least 24GB of transfer bandwidth a month to get started with an audience of about 300 people. The tutorial recommended using Feedburner as the web host, Blogger as the blog site to accompany the pod cast, and OurMedia to store the broadcasts. For the “hobbyist” pod caster, the tutorial recommends Lybsyn. For the serious pod caster, the tutorial recommends Wordpress for the blog service and RSS Feed and Powweb or Globat for web storage. As far as pod casts go, for now I will definitely be a consumer, not a producer, of pod casts, but there are some great sources out there for educators, and again, people collaborating to share knowledge and ideas.

Week 9, Thing #20 YouTube

Here's a fun library video I found called Why We Love the Library, apparently made by some students for a contest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQMtp_yr-J4
It's about four and a half minutes, "stars" two students, with background music and short video interviews ("the library has lots of books"), no props needed except the actual books and computers in the library and the building itself. Very reminiscent of what our high school video crew produces every day for their TV announcements, which has morphed into a kind of daily talent/commentary/can you out do this? show which now gobbles up more than fifteen periods of class time (but I dare the teachers to turn it off -- the kids love it!)Now, the amazing connection - my new library TA is in the video class, and one of his assignments for me now is to produce some cool videos for our library. The first one he did demonstrated some do's and don'ts of caring for your textbooks (DON'T use your textbook as a hat in the rain but DO wrap it in a grocery bag). If we're smart about this we can build up a "library" of videos to show on the announcements and also perhaps link to our library web page on all kinds of topics.

A few books to peruse from my Library Thing

Week 8, Thing #19 Library Thing

Lovely new tool, and why am I the last person to hear about it? Library Thing offers easy to personalize tools, connectivity to others, a chance to dialogue online about books. I've seen the Library Thing links on library web sites, but didn't know how they did it (handy "widget," of course!) This would allow me to highlight new books in my library with one easy link, find ideas for my own reading, and, someday (the same day all of my photos are neatly organized in beautiful scrapbooks), someday catalog all of my own library books at home, even the ones overflowing into the garage and stacked next to my bed. We can all dream! I'm going to try using the "widget" to post a few books from my library.

Week 8, Thing #18

Way back in Week One we were advised to create a toolkit,and now I see the wisdom of this but of advice! I now have more passwords than a CIA operative has passports, for the many different applications I am trying. The easiest method for me has been to bookmark the web sites in folders on my home computer (too many of them are blocked at work), and email myself passwords and keep those in a folder in my home email. I also printed out lots of "how to" info and the passwords and keep those in a manila folder on my desk. Anyhow, on to online word processing and spreadsheet applications! Very nice, organized list posted on the 2.0 blog, and that was an easy way to explore. Our LMT group in our District is currently working on a Selection policy and we have been emailing long documents back and forth, so my first project will be to post our rough draft on Zoho so we can all collaborate online and have a pretty good idea of where we are going with it once we actually meet in three weeks. Lots of great ideas from other libraries, including links to resources. I am going to try to post my latest "Top 10" web sites I do for students and staff, using my new Zoho account. Stay tuned . . .