Friday, August 14, 2009

Step 23 -- Whoop! I'm done!

This was actually a very good thing to do. I just should have started working on it in June :-)

I think the neatest thing was LibraryThing. I would love to organize my home library although it would probably just be easier to make a spreadsheet with a list of all of my books. I liked all the groups and book reviews. I can see going back to this again.

Delicious seems like a great way to take my bookmarks from computer to computer. Sometimes I just can't remember where to find the site I want. I don't think I'd want to share though. I don't think most people would be interested in the sites I bookmark.

Facebook is interesting, although I'm not much of a poster. (I feel the same about Twitter.) I've connected with some family and friends, but there are things that they post that make me wonder why they would want to. Maybe I just don't understand. And I can't imagine my life being interesting enough to other people to Twitter the details of my day.

The BlogReader, RSS Feeds, Digg, LibraryWorm, Wikis, YouTube, and PodCasts could very easily be major time hogs. There's so much to look at. I had to stop following some blogs and twitterers because the quantity of information was overwhelming.

I'm just curious how much of these tools will be available at school. Thanks so much for putting this all together for us. I've learned a lot -- more than I thought I could.

Step 22 -- Almost Done :-)

Well, two of us are finished (I'm almost done), one has done some, and one has had way too busy of a summer. Of course, she's the one who could do all of this in her sleep. She tried to teach us some of these things at our "Tech Tuesday" meetings but we couldn't get to the websites two days in a row (internet filters...) and we were always being interrupted. But we're glad our library is used (because we like our jobs).

I would bet that a lot of our younger teachers know more about this than I will ever figure out. I wonder if it would be helpful to offer a mini-class once or twice a month to show them how to use some of these tools. It probably wouldn't have to be more than 15 minutes long to get them started and they could go off and play on their own. I know they could use classes on all the databases that are offered through the library and the Citation Machine and other programs they could help teach the kids.

Step 21 -- Podcasts

Podcasts are a big thing at our house. My husband creates one about every month for his company. He and his coworkers produce a funny and clever (usually) skit. They interview members of management, introduce new employees, pass along company information. It's been a good way for his company to communicate with its staff. Plus he downloads several political podcasts to his iPod to listen to on his way home from work, when he's relaxing, or whenever he has time. He was a bit upset when his company blocked several of the sites from which he gets his political entertainment.

The quality of the podcasts I listened to was quite good, although I am not a real audiophile. I'm not sure I would subscribe to any, but that's mostly because I get my information from books and the newspaper. I don't watch much tv or listen to the radio and podcasting is kind of like that. Although, the timeshifting would be useful (like recording a tv show to watch later).

This would be another great forum for student book talks and probably easier to do than videotape. Kids might listen to the book reviews by their peers. Or we could let people know about the news books we get in.

Step 20 -- YouTube

It would be possible to spend hours and hours on this site looking at everything. Personally I like the bari sax, soprano sax, banjo, accordion, clarinet arrangement of Flight of the Bumble Bee that my son played in several years ago :-)

The book cart drills looked like fun! Melissa has been recording student book talks and putting them on the library website. I think that putting the talks on YouTube would make sharing good books easier with students all over. It would make a fun book review site.

Step 19 -- Google Docs

I can see this being an useful way to collaborate on library documents -- easier than marking it up by hand and passing it along. Wonder if we can do this at school?

The document option is very much like Word, presentation like PowerPoint, and spreadsheet like Excel (without quite as many features). I'm probably still more likely to use the Microsoft products and email it along as an attachment.

The form option was interesting and not hard to set up. The way the results came back surprised me. For some reason I didn't expect the results to come back in a spreadsheet.

This is more useful than all of the social networking sites. Those are fun "time consumers" but this could easily be used for work.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Step 18 -- Wikis

Well, that was kind of fun. My friend, Florajean, will tell me I put too much information in it. Oh, well. It was frustrating when I put a page under the wrong page (all under mine heading) and couldn't move it to the right place (even though it looked as if that should be possible).

Part of my frustration with many of the 23 things is that my computer is old, slow, and short on RAM. I like to have lots of windows open so it's easy to find the various pages I want to look at all at the same time. I've crashed my internet connection several times and had to reboot. I think I get the kids' computer once they leave for school.

Step 17 -- LibWorm

Nothing came up when I entered Hebron High School but when I looked for "High School" I found many entries for Huntington (I think) High School. Their librarian posts a lot of information for their kids. They did some special events for the opening of the movie "Twilight" that promoted reading the series. That's a good use of Lib 2.0.

I liked that the site let me look at the list of categories and tags to make it easier to come up with ideas to look into further. And, if I was interested in specific topics, I could add that to my blog reader. But the amount of information could become overwhelming very quickly.

Step 16 -- LibraryThing

I think this is the coolest library 2.0 thing so far! It's a way to organize my home library collection (I'm always forgetting what I have) and a neat way to read book reviews by real people. Often I'm disappointed by professional critics' reviews of movies and books are the same. I can see working on this project when I'm through with the NT23.

Step 15 -- Digg

Digg was interesting. I signed up for it only because I wanted to "digg" an article and I couldn't unless I was a member. It actually a neat way to surf hot internet topics. And the social networking aspect of it is interesting -- to be able to see what my friends "digg." But, again, I don't spend that much time typically on my computer. I like newspapers and books :-)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Step 14 -- Delicious

It wasn't hard to set up the Delicious account (libaide73), although when I added it to my Explorer toolbar it made me close Explorer. I didn't appreciate that because I tend to have tons of windows open when I am working on my 23 things. It's much easier to have a lot of windows open than try to go back and forth between sites using back arrow.

I think it will be useful to find my favorite sites when I'm on my computer at work or when I'm borrowing my in-laws' computer when we're visiting.

I think this will be a site I look into more when life calms down. It's hard to get two kids ready to go off to college, get me ready to start school again, and get this done at the same time :-)

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Step 13 -- Tagging

We do use tagging in our library to help the students find information as not all useful topics (names, diseases, other subjects of interest) show up in the MARC records. It also helps us help the students. In that respect, it does belong in libraries. We're really just adding additional subject information.

Step 12 -- Twitter

I've set up my Twitter account -- http://twitter.com/libaide73. It was very easy to do -- maybe too easy. I'm following a few people, but this seems to be a time killer just like Facebook. I have to look around and see how everything works but I've got a lot to do before school starts :-)

I don't remember specifics of the last time I heard about Twitter. It shows up on TV, in the newspaper, on websites -- it IS all over!

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Step 11 -- IMing

I set up a Yahoo account. My user name is libaide73@yahoo.com. Now I need to find someone to talk to.

I haven't done most of the 23 things before. I'm glad I'm trying everything, but I'm not sure how useful it will be to me in real-life.

Step 10 -- Ning

Ning looks a lot like facebook to me. And after reading the article about Ning's management policies, I'm not sure why one would want to join it. The difference seems to be that facebook is for individuals and groups and Ning is just groups. I'm probably missing something...sometimes I'm high-tech challenged :-)

By the way, I've been accepted as a "friend" by several of my facebook requestees, but I'm still waiting to hear back from the groups I applied to.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Step 9 - More Facebook

Well, I have several requests out for "friends". I'm a "fan" of the university I went to (many years ago). And I've joined (or requested to join) my alumni group, my Aggie Mom group, and my neighborhood group. And I've made my two posts.

I guess I'll check tomorrow and see if any of my requests were accepted.

Looking through the lists of groups was very tedious. It was best to search on a couple of topics and select "all results" to get the groups instead of individuals.

I can see where this could be a very time-consuming activity :-)

Step 8 -- Facebook

It was very easy to set up a facebook page and stick in a picture. I'm glad we were warned not to use our email directory to troll for friends. I've thought about doing this for a long time. A lot of my friends and neighbors have been talking about it. It looks like a good way to share news and pictures with my family.

Step 7 -- RSS Feeds & Google Reader

It was very easy to add the RSS feeds to Google Reader. It should help me keep up-to-date with sites in which I am interested.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Step 6 -- Blog Reader

I like that the blogs I was already following showed up. I also like that once I've read a post it's marked as read -- just like email.

I know my husband has a blog -- I need to add his :-)

Step 5 -- Image Generator

I guess I've done this kind of stuff before, but in Microsoft Office applications for newletters or informational flyers. Again, I appreciate the opportunity to learn how to use the Web 2.0 tools, but it's not really me.

Step 4 -- Flickr Mashups

My name in pictures:






A captioned picture:


It's a pain to put a bunch of pictures in a blog. You can't move them around easily.

But the Flickr tools are fun to play with. But that seems like what this is for the most part. I don't know how much I'll really use this function.









Friday, July 17, 2009

Step 3 -- Flickr

I liked the picture found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/biggreymare/3194410402/. Especially since my son is Class of 2011... Now I need one that says Class of 2013! Now I suppose I should try to make my own Flickr account -- that will be step 3a.

Step 2 -- Lib 2.0

I can't believe that summer is half over and I haven't gotten any further on this.

Well, I just listened to and watched the Lib 2.0 entries. To me, Lib 2.0 seems like a research tool. I'm not sure that everyone needs to be able to 'twitter' or 'facebook'.

And, nothing can ever replace sitting with your kids/grandkids, holding a physical book, and reading to them. I like reading books and newspapers. I don't spend much time surfing the internet -- I guess I'm old-fashioned.

Monday, June 1, 2009

School's Almost Out!

Well, this is the first step to becoming "high tech" :-) I guess I'll be busy this summer.