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 . . .

Presidential Elections

10 Top Web Sites on Presidential Elections

Cable News Network Election Center 2008

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/

“Road to the White House”, blogs “from the Left” and “from the Right”; follow the primaries, the caucuses, the money, the delegates and more. Cable News Network Politics at

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/ features polls, top 10 stories daily, blogs, and Road to the White House tracker of delegates – scroll down the entire page to see all of the features.

 

FindLaw Legal News and Commentary

http://news.findlaw.com/

Scroll down the page for links to the latest legal rulings and news categorized by Supreme Court, Politics, Civil Rights, and more.

 

Public Broadcasting System News & Views

http://www.pbs.org/news/

Link to Politics and Government, top news stories, recent political speeches and more. Keep an eye on this site – typically they will put up an entire election web site once the primaries are over.

 

National Archives and Records Administration

www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/

This Web site is maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration. It offers extensive information about the Electoral College, its constitutional mandate, and presidential elections in the United States, including a new link to Election 2008.

 

American National Election Studies

http://www.electionstudies.org/

Sponsored by the University of Michigan, this site features data about voting, public opinion, and political participation for educational institutions.

 

America Votes: Presidential Campaign Memorabilia from DukeUniversity

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/americavotes/

Search by candidate and election for memorabilia from DukeUniversity’s Special Collections Library, including letters, campaign flyers and buttons, and more. Great source for primary documents.

 

Presidential Museums

http://www.presidentialmuseums.com/

Portal to web sites of Presidential museums, brief biographies of Presidents, and even presidential pets, organized chronologically by eras. Easier reading level.

 

Federal Election Commission

http://www.fec.gov/

Campaign finance laws and information for Presidential, House, and Senate elections.

 

Presidential Libraries

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/liblinks.html

Part of the official White House web site, this has links to each of the Presidential libraries administered by the National Archives Records and Administration. See also links on the left side of the page for quick facts about Presidents and First Ladies – choose short facts, official portraits, or full biographies.

 

Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/index.html

A wealth of information on presidents, elections, and specific presidents in the American Memory collection and other special exhibits. A great resource for teachers is Elections: the

American Way

, online at http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/election/home.html, with quality resources linked to primary source documents from the American Memory Project.

postscript to post

I have not been successfully able to hyperlink in the past two posts, not sure why. Will try to figure that out so there aren't those annoying URLS cluttering up the posts.

Week 7, Thing #17 Playing in the "sandbox"

Hey, that's my idea, #13, under Image Generators, in the sandbox! A few detours along the way -- hit edit before hitting the link, then had to log out and hit the link first, THEN hit edit. Oops - almost typed in the wrong place, beginning of the page instead of at the end. I think the best way for me to start using wikis, as suggested by blogger Laura Cohn (see my last entry, Thing #16), is with other teachers at my school in committee groups, etc., before trying it with students. One very practical reason for this is that we'll have to convince our IMS people this is a safe technology that won't violate AUPs on campus, so getting the bugs out with adult users only at first is a good first step. I took the PB Wiki tour, read the suggested articles and looked at the comparison charts of wiki-hosts, and still have lots of questions. Next step: fill out yet another "request to unblock" form -- so far all requests have been denied, but I'm optimistic that talking face to face will fix that.

Week 7, Thing #16

I took an online "tour" of wikis at educational institutions. There are some interesting and innovative uses of Wikis in educational institutions. The well known language institute at Penn State, CALPER (http://calper.la.psu.edu/technology.php), Center for Advanced Language Proficiency, Education, and Research, features blogs, wikis, and chat rooms on its Computer Mediated Activity Library online. Students can learn about these innovative technologies, or simply use the technologies to enhance their language development. Working papers posted online by Steven L. Thorne, Rebecca W. Black and J. Scott Payne describe the use of wikis and blogs in foreign language instruction. I found wikis at public schools, private schools, universities, and of course wiki software is a part of Blackboard, a popular forum for offering online courses. On Tufts University’s AT web page (http://uit.tufts.edu/at/?pid=24), there are links to a digital library, blogs, podcasts, online forums, and wikis, where students can post ideas and research for others to comment upon. Bryn Mawr uses wikis in its writing courses, where students post rough drafts for comments. The University of Minnesota has taken an interesting approach to web 2.0 with its UThink page, with over 6,000 blogs and 89,000 entries, lists of recent entries, and, if you scroll down the page, “suggested reading” links of local and national newspapers, radio stations, and some of the more well known blogs. The blog page is supported by a “technical wiki,” where people can suggest ways to better tweak the blog page. This seems more like the “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality than an innovative use of technology, but, hey, there are 89,000 entries to choose from, so start blogging and give your good suggestions via the wiki! Librarian Laura Cohn is just signing off this month on her Library 2.0 wiki (http://liblogs.albany.edu/library20/). She’s retiring from Albany, and her blog posts will stay up for a year, well worth reading. Laura Cohn sees wikis as a way of preserving the “collective intelligence” of a “cultural institution,” such as a library, by allowing patrons to improve web pages, add suggested bibliographic links and build subject lists, give tips to newcomers on navigating the facility, and collaborate on research and projects. The wikis she recommends following online are The Unofficial EZProxy Support Wiki http://www2.potsdam.edu/ezproxy/wiki/index.php/Main_Page which offers free and useful software code, and Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki (mentioned earlier in this course, online at http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Main_Page). Her last few postings talk about the balance between control and collaboration, with the “fading out of the webmaster, and the focusing in on the group.” Her very practical suggestion is for librarians to practice this kind of collaboration by creating wikis for their librarian committees and groups.

Week 6, Thing #15 Three great articles on 2.0

Comments on #1: Michael Stephens “Into a new world of librarianship.” We have heard the mantra of “user-centered” many times, but Michael Stephens says it well and creates from it a paradigm for evaluating new technology: “Does it put users together with the information and experience they seek?”
Comments on #2: Rick Anderson “Away from the Iceberg.” Love the picture with the oars (tag this one “metaphor” also!) Great insights on the way people are accessing information and the urgent need for libraries to change along with the times or risk becoming totally obsolete. I don’t think print collections will become obsolete, but I do agree the library has to extend beyond the facility and things can’t be so hard to find (oops, I mean “access”) that it requires special training to use a library. Hmm . . what does that mean for my freshman library orientation?
Comments on #3: Dr. Wendy Schulz, “To a temporary place in time . . . on the way to the library experience of the future.” Freudian slip – I first typed this title omitting the word “experience,” which would change the subtitle to “on the way to the library of the future” (thinking of it as a facility) rather than the “library experience of the future” (thinking of it as a total experience). Libraries as “mind gyms?” “idea labs?” “art salons?” a “knowledge spa?” Wow! Sign me up, and bring along the million dollar budget to make that happen. This gives me a great business idea – the private library, with monthly fees and “trainer/librarians” to guide the patrons in their pursuit of knowledge and aesthetics. Let’s write a business plan and make this happen! Libraries run by the government have been under funded, with underpaid professionals, and obsolete collections. Private enterprise libraries run by trained librarians in the era of the knowledge economy? That totally makes sense.

Week 6, Thing #14 TAGGING

Hmm, we just had a staff meeting agenda about TAGGING in the restrooms, aka GRAFFITI; interesting that same terminology is used to identify blogs. I was working with students today on SIRS, and noticed that one of their new Leading Issues topics, Election 2008, had a little box to the side with some TAGS floating about in no particular order. When I create a "pathway" handout on library resources for a research project, I always include "keywords for searching," but perhaps I should start calling them keywords/TAGS, and typing them helter-skelter about the page in different fonts rather than in a neat alphabetical list. Students need my list because they have all kinds of ways of thinking about what they are trying to find in the library which the library catalog doesn't understand - my list is a sort of glossary, turning their need for a "job," for example, into "vocational guidance." Here's what I notice about TAGS on Technorati, Flickr, and Del.icio.ous -- nouns, verbs, adverbs, place, names, slang ("Rant" seems to be a popular tag) -- anything goes. It's a kind of keyword free for all, but it seems to work! As a linguist, I know that language and language forms are created by people and constantly evolving, not dictated by a grammar book. This "blogosphere" provides a fascinating look at a new type of language form in the process, the TAG. I notice that the larger sites now have directories, putting blogs into categories, and many use visual icons to represent various types of blogs. I truly think the blogosphere needs some virtual librarians on board so that they don't have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak (note to self: add a metaphor tag to this blog!)

Week 6, Thing #13 Democracy on the web?

Intrigued by the article on Del.icio.ous about Wikipedia, Digg, and democracy (or the lack thereof)on the web. Apparently there is more control than first meets the eye, or the mouse, on many of these interactive web 2.0 sites, with a few controlling the content of what looks like a large collaborative effort. I had a similar experience last week when I attempted to get a link from the Learning 2.0 course unblocked at my school. A large iPrism message popped up, followed by a link to an official looking pdf file, which I downloaded, filled in (pencil on paper), and was ready to put into a school envelope to send to the address indicated (Information Management Office at the District) when our tech guy walked by. He noticed the form, asked me what I needed, opened his cellphone and dialed one guy at the District office, gave him the URL, and voila! Link now links. I realized that this entire machination leads to one person, a person I know personally, and from now on I will just pick up the phone and call him. The problem is that he is not an educator, he is a "tech guy", and his reasons for blocking things come from a link of web types ("gaming" was the category that got me in trouble in this instance) and a list of forbidden words and terms which he refuses to publish since they are "forbidden." The literary me is reminded, of course, of the Wizard of Oz, the little man behind the large machine. And with all of its collective power, it is a reminder that web 2.0 is after all connecting people. The power of social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.ous is the power to connect people to information, which is what librarians are all about. Very practically, I could use it on my library web page to create bookmarked links for specific assignments. And it is nice to see that web 2.0 librarians are already actively sharing resources this way, commenting on each other's information and ideas, and collaborating to find new ways to help their patrons.

Rollyo

Select...writing for childrenTop NewsReferenceTech NewsBooks+AuthorsRecipesSearch The Web

Week 5, Thing #12 Rollyo

Rollyo allowed me to collect my favorite sites for writing for children and teens in one spot and make them searchable. By sharing my Rollyo list, others can edit and suggest additional sites.

Week 5, Thing #11 Web 2.0 awards

I found my house's current value on Zillows (down 14% in the last 30 days, no surprise), checked out the social networking sites on Ning (yes, there are librarian groups there!), watched Google's video extolling the virtues of Google Docs, and surveyed the many free widgets from Your Minis
Peer Trainer wants to help me lose weight, and 43 Things wants me to list my life's goals and chart my progress. I notice that all of these sites are very easy to use, simple design, and, being web 2.0, all about collaboration. I did not understand the web design sites, but I do get that people are working together on projects on those sites and sharing information for free. It is very intriguing to see this shift from independent competition to widescale collaboration, and I wonder how long it will be before our political institutions catch up. Serendipity again. Technology and Learning just featured Web 2.0 tools in the February 08 issue, with an emphasis on engaging students through social networking. Check out this issue for links to schools which are using Web 2.0 sites such as Flickr, blogs, wikis, Skype, and Twitter to extend the classroom into cyberspace. Twitter is like sending mini-postcards throughout the day to your online "family" or "group", like, "Hey, I just got off the plane!" or "Found a great pair of shoes." Web 2.0 is all about Connection and Collaboration.

Thing 10 postscript

Postscript to my foray into the land of image generators. It's much easier if you create a folder for images (I cleverly labeled mine "images") to save the files; that way, you can edit them later, decide where to post them, etc. You can see from my cartoon strip that somehow not all of the dialogue made it into the final image. Very fun possibilities here for my library web page!

Week 5, Thing #10 Image Generators

Week 4, #9 Blog feeds

Technorati, Topix, Feedster, GoogleBlogsearch, and Syndic8 all search for blogs using "tags" (what we librarians used to call keywords). A useful link was the School Library blogs , which searches specifically for library blogs. My favorites were Gargoyles loose in the library and Wanderings. Gargoyles has a lot of great pictures and I enjoy seeing what other librarian's days are like. Wanderings is content-rich, with archives of past blogs with clear informative titles. Now that I am aware of and looking for the RSS feed icon, I see that many online newspapers do offer RSS feed subscriptions, and I am astonished at the breadth of information available free. At Topix, I can subscribe to stories about my home town, and in one day found articles and information about an incident last weekend from several different newspapers and syndicated sources that did not appear in our local papers. I doubt I'll ever be asked to be on a jury again.

Week 4, Thing #8 RSS Feeds & Google Reader

My nifty igoogle page in place, with Google Reader embedded in it and RSS feeds from several education, library, political and technology sites in place, the news now comes to me voluminously Another site I need to explore more is Feedster.com, another "aggregator" site. And a "widget" or was it a "gadget" allowed me to share some interesting content on my blog by embedding a link from my Google Reader page to my blog. Wow! I now have a "web presence," and even read an article about "webetiquette" and how to be a "good date" online by using proper language, responding promptly to comments on my blog (I admit I didn't know I could or should, but now that I know I certainly will). Why not encourage students to have their own igoogle page? They could use the calendar to organize their assignments, the Google Reader for research (have an aggregator find articles on their topic for them), and begin collaborating via blogs and wikis. Okay, I admit, I am finally "getting it." Thank you, 2.0 team, for pointing the way!

Dad at his computer

Week 3, Thing 7 : Technology Learning Styles

My 83 year old father has been a guest in my home while he recovers from surgery, and we set up his computer downstairs for him. He spends time every day checking email, then working on learning his new 2007 Microsoft Office Suite programs. We are having fun comparing notes on my learning curve with School Library Learning 2.0, and find the process is similar: get the facts, give it a try, figure out what mistakes were made, and try again. His learning style is a little different than mine, in that he prefers to spend quite a bit of time getting the facts (watching a tutorial, for example) before experimenting. Monday I held a workshop for one of the departments at school showing them some specific features of our research databases they could use with their Special Education students. Some of the obstacles to their learning were very simple -- how to find the library web page, how to use the "tabs" feature in windows to go back and forth between applications, or how to back up a URL. Some preferred to tackle one task at a time and others liked to dabble a bit in all of the options I had demonstrated, confident they could refine their skills later. This afternoon I helped a student in the library who did not have the confidence to type in a password unless I was standing right there next to her! I could adapt the format of this online course of "23 Things" to help new students and new teachers at our school learn about and practice using some of the technology available to them. That would allow some to spend the time they need to "get the facts," others to jump in and learn by doing, and anyone to practice and get feedback online. The Technology Committee would have to help with the feedback, of course, but it's certainly "doable."