Week 9, Things #20, #21, #22, and #23

I do like the "Introducing the Book" video, and I think that middle school students might think that it's funny. At a workshop recently I was introduced to the book trailers that publishers have put on Youtube, and our public librarian planned to use them to promote the summer reading program for teens. There is a wide variety available. In addition, I hope to incorporate book trailers into plans for a Library club next year. With a few Flip videos I think that the kids would have a lot of fun and might come up with some interesting projects. The next step will be to partner with a teacher to offer the book trailer as an alternative book report option. Here is a sample for The Hunger Games:


The variety of podcasts available is pretty incredible. Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me is one of my favorite radio shows, and I often miss it, so it will be good to have the RSS feed here. When we convert to Follett Destiny in the fall, I hope to have students create podcasts for book reviews and upload them to the library catalog. It might also be fun to have a weekly podcast on the library web page of "What's new in the library this week," or even a way to promote the monthly trivia contest. I will take a look at the podcast tutorial this summer.

LibriVox is a cool idea, but I didn't come up with any hits for the middle school level titles that I searched. Still, it may be worth a try to find materials for vision-impaired students.

I didn't expect to like ebooks much, as I had only tried those in plain text format. Several of those available in American Libraries used page turning, which I absolutely loved, especially for the illustrated children's books. The variety of texts available at worldbookfair.org is incredible, especially for $8.95 a year! I thought that the featured bird book was the ultimate ebook, until I looked at the British Library's online gallery. Every offering there leaves me speechless.

The web sites about Creative Commons and fair use were enlightening. The Stanford site provides one of the clearest definitions of copyright and fair use that I have ever seen. I did find a fair use of the CSLA Learning 2.0 site at Northwest Region OELMA members, but the planning and execution of the original site is so much more sophisticated that it makes it clear that "fair use" doesn't necessarily result in expansion or even replication.

Week 8, Things #18 and #19

Google Docs is the best. I had looked at it briefly at work about a month ago when I received a form email as a school library survey. I am amazed at the number and variety of templates. I think that the form in Google Docs would be great as a P.R. tool for the library. Kids love surveys. Including surveys about books on the library web page is a pretty obvious idea, but some of the other surveys included in the templates might be fun too, such as the "Random" survey. I think that short surveys of teacher and staff opinion could also be fun as well as useful.
I chose Google over Zoho because I think that's the tool most familiar to students and staff. Another way to collaborate with a lot of potential for student projects and even faculty committee work.

Whew! Library thing is overwhelming! Of the five books I added, the classics and best sellers had the most followers, of course, but one of my favorite books had just a couple hundred. I'd be most interested in reading comments on that novel. As far as using it in the school library, I think that new version of Follett--Destiny--has some of the same functionality. I may come back to Library Thing if Follett doesn't come through as I hope it does. The covers are a definite draw, and I am sure that we will have those in the fall.

Week 7, #16, #16A, and #17

I looked at a sample school wiki, a Grade 10 English class wiki, and the Book Lovers wiki from the Princeton Public Library. The most useful for my purposes was the last. This summer my school district is offering training in BlackBoard, so I am planning to use it for a Book Review club in the fall. I thought that the comment on the page that the library "upgraded the catalog to include reviews" instead of initiating another wiki for the next summer was telling as well: sometimes a one-stop experience for a patron is best. I'll look at incorporating student reviews, book trailers, etc. into the school library catalog when it goes online. The Top Ten lists are also a potentially good idea for middle school students.

I was really impressed with what's available on the wikis. I particularly liked the webquest for school library websites that Joyce Valenza has on her wiki. I think that the template is right on target, and there are lots of good sample sites to explore. It is so important to establish a good presence for your students through your website and to promote your library in that way, and I have been looking for good models. Lots and lots to think about--too much for just one week!
And the ideas for curriculum connections using wikis have lots of potential, too.

I had already edited the sandbox on the CA wiki site when I tried to register at the PA wiki and failed. Maybe it was a bad night for that page, so I'll try again later.

I was able to add to the PA wiki a few days later, so I posted on the page about wikis.

Week 6, Thing #13, 14 and 15

I'm pretty satisfied with pulling my favorite web sites from the drop down in the address bar, and even though I'm sure that del.ici.ous works well for some people, I found that it just clutters up my home page. It slows down the start up of iGoogle as well. I think there's a lot to be said for a clean interface; after all, that's been part of Google's appeal for going on nine years. I learned a lot from a professsor in library school about the reference interview: ideally, you ask questions that help the patron determine just what they need, and you help them find just that. You don't assume you know what they need, and you don't give them piles of material that overload them. It's way too easy to fall into internet overload.

I guess the same reasoning applies to how I feel about blogs and Technorati. I'm glad that they are there for the people who like them, but I'm not one of their fans. Celebrities come up near the top of the most popular searches--no surprise. The few posts that I read, even those that are library-related, did not have me wanting more. Many web 2.0 tools are wonderful, but the blogosphere makes me feel like I'm being swept over a Niagara Falls of words. It might be because the blog is often written so personally to such an anonymous audience that the effect is jarring. Too many assumptions on the part of the author.

Wendy Schultz has the best perspective on the "new" library that I have read so far. Too often the idea of the library as an important physical space is discounted or ignored in discussions about technology. She writes, "But Library 4.0 will add a new mode, knowledge spa: meditation, relaxation, immersion in a luxury of ideas and thought. " I think she's right, but I would argue that this isn't a new mode at all. That sort of atmosphere has always been the draw for libraries; it's what Barnes and Noble and Borders began to trade on; and it's what libraries had come full circle in trying to imitate. "You know, the library," as Schultz says. Yes, as the library has always been and should continue to be.

Week 5, Things #10 ,#11, and #12

Using Google Picasa to edit pictures and publish them in a blog is simpler than I thought it would be; so are the other image generator tools. These tools would be good to use for signage and other promotional materials. I'm still thinking about how to incorporate them into student projects so that students come up with a meaningful product.




So far I think that some of the comic strip generators lend themselves best to projects, such as an alternative book report or to incorporate into a book trailer.

For Thing #11, I added the del.ici.ous toolbar to Explorer and imported and tagged my bookmarks. So far I haven't shared any, but I suppose that high school students working on a group project might really benefit from this tool.

The del.ici.ous toolbar really slowed down the start up of my iGoogle page, so I ended up removing the program. For me, it would be really useful only for a collaborative project.

I had the opposite experience with Thing #12, Rollyo. I tried importing the sites that my 8th graders use to research Greek mythology, but Rollyo returns way too many hits for that age group to use effectively. I would predict that the students would gave trouble keeping their citations straight, too. Navigating one pre-selected site at a time, and citing it, works better, especially since the reading level of some of these sites is pretty high. I want to try using Rollyo for the sites I look at for free knitting patterns. I think it will work well for that.

Week 4, Things #8 and #9

I used Google Reader to add the RSS feeds. At first the bundles seemed like a good idea, but I soon decided that the numbers of new posts would be overwhelming. I decided that it was more realistic to remove the bundles and look for single feeds to add to my iGoogle page. I have added two from the Charlotte, NC library, one about Mysteries as well as one about YA General Fiction, and another from Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh that lists its weekly events. On the school library page, students could give their opinions about additions to the library collection by using the reviews from the Charlotte feed and could make suggestions for local events based on what they see that the Carnegie is offering.

Just remembered to try Thing #9 (after #11), so I searched for library blogs. I am trying to appreciate blogging, but so often, sorry to say, I come away from reading even library blogs with that too-much-information feeling. Maybe blogging is best when it is directed to a limited audience and is about a specific task or event. Too much free rein can be exhausting for a reader, and I include my own blog in these comments.

Week 3, Things #5, 6 and 7

My favorite tool in Flickr was the poster-maker at Big Huge Labs. I made one using a photo of my cat for the faux-movie Terrible Tabby. I think that students would really enjoy having the option of using Flickr for creating posters for books instead of writing the standard book report. Because I had already downloaded Picasa, I used it to add text to the above photo of Widener Library in Cambridge, MA and import it to this post.