Last THING

I am done. I look back with satisfaction that I made the time (and it was many hours of it) to acquaint and reacquaint myself with some new technological tools. I have shared many with my families, friends, students, and coworkers. I hope to continue to use and experiment with many now and in the days ahead. I encourage CSLA to continue to help all of us in continuing professional development. I would be more than willing to offer up additional membership fees for this type of continuing education. Thank you CSLA and all those mentors out there suffering through another blog entry.

Thing 23: Copyright, Creative Commons

First off, I found the YouTube video “A Fair(y) Use Tale” EXTREMELY difficult to watch and make any sense of. I finally just listened but even that was frustrating. I think if I really wanted to appreciate it I would need a written transcript. The websites that I looked at for copyright were thorough and beyond me. I am pleased with creative commons and will make sure to pay attention to the symbol whenever I see it . Copyright has always been a problem for me and all I can promise is to try my best to be aware of possible infringements. Now I am on to the completing survey.

Thing 22: Audiobooks and Ebooks

Both of these resources have been available to us for many years now. I would like to have more access to downloadable audio books at the high schools but cannot afford the yearly subscription rates. I am constantly referring students to the public library. When looking at these audiobook sites on this tutorial, I thought I might have our parent volunteers ad links to our catalog records to book records that have free access audiobook urls. I think as long as I put it in the local notes field it should not provide to much controversy within our union catalog.

Thing 21: Podcasts

One of our seniors is doing an internship the radio program "Way With Words"
I have to admit to not owning an ipod, though it is on my wish list. So to overcome this terrible impediment I subscribe to a few podcasts just so I can keep in touch with my ipod toting friends. I listen when I am responding to emails. I know it is not ideal but there is only so much time in one's day. I always listen to the latest Way With Words, first and then move on to some of my less academic selections.

Thing 20: YouTube

I have been fortunate to have had access to YouTube for a few years. Mostly my students and children have shared their videos with me through YouTube. This year for Christmas my son gave me a Flip video camera so that I can create my own. I think I will start by loaning it to my library assistants to create videos on how to use the library and it resources.

I spend time browsing videos having to do with information literacy. Some of the best work I have found is being done by Cultural Anthropologists. One I particularly like was created by Professor Mike Wesch out of Kansas State University.
The Machine is Us/ing Us.

Thing 19: LibraryThing

I love LibraryThing. I get the best suggestions for books from my YA group on it. I am not quite sure how to use it in my library but I do occasionally show it to interested students. It is most useful for me in readers advisory work when I haven't got a clue what a student should read next. It had previously been not accessible (filtered out) from school but I wrote to our tech people and it appears as if it is now available to all. YEAH!

Thing 18: Productivity Tools

Zoho is a truly astounding tool. You can do so much with it. I have not explored everything but just being able to create and save a document in html or pdf format is great. I looked briefly at creator which allows you to collect data from your wiki or website and it looks like something even I could figure out. Now, I also want to look into Camtasia which looks like a great way of creating online tutorials. What a find. I wonder how they can do it all for free.

Thing 17: Sandbox

I enjoyed visiting the Sandbox and seeing all the great ideas. I think for myself, I will need to have some time for all this to percolate. I am not usually the best at coming up with new ideas but I usually have success in seeing a good idea and adapting it to fit my situation. I now am feeling overloaded by all the new tools.

Thing 16: Wikis

From what I can tell, wikis seem to have replaced what used to be called pathfinders. Many that I have looked at are not collaborative, which I think is one of the main reasons they were designed. I have used them when I need to quickly build a webpage and do not have access to the school software. I also use them with my library assistants in online exercises. I have been using pbwiki and am not happy with the space alloted to educators or with the means of allowing others access (by email invites, now). I looked briefly at wikispaces and could not see how it would be any different or better than pbwiki. Now after looking at your examples, I am going to explore using mediawiki and possibly wetpaint in the future. Are there any others out there that you would recommend?

Thing 15: Future of Libraries & Web 2.0

First, I do not consider my background or experience such that I can offer up the kinds of comments in any of the articles suggested in Thing 15. However, I do have my questions and concerns regarding the blogs, interviews and comments. Michael Stephens in his OCLC newsletter article states that "libraries of the guided by how users access, consume and create content". Libraries and librarians have always based their services on their end users. Now this "evidence and rationale.. is provided by people through its online communities" as stated by the wikipedia article on Library 2.0. The problems lie in "radical trust" or the willingness of our clientele towork with us in developing the libraries of the future. The student library users I interact with do not value the development of libraries. They want accurate succinct information quickly where and when they need it. We must reach out to our student clientele and as Rick Anderson states work to "eliminate the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need". That I see as our challenge and if we succeed we will survive in this constantly changing information age.

Thing 14: Technorati

Useful for popular culture blogs as well as looking up what might be considered "influential" blogs in certain areas. I noticed that some of the blogs I get on my bloglines do not come up on Technorati. I assume this is because they are not claimed? Tagging is important if you stand any hopes of relocating things that you have stashed away out there. It is nice to have the online thesaurus of our terms and I try to be consistent across technorati, de.lici.ous, and flickr. Is this just the librarian in me or does it really help access?

Thing 13: del.icio.us

This is another tool I began using many moons past but have not kept up with. I do have a login. I have uploaded my bookmarks. I find the clouding aspect of the bookmarks fun. I like that now it is integrated with Facebook. However, I just do not use it. I need it to be more in the forefront of my mind to put it to use and I just do not know how to keep it there. I can see it might be a great way for locating potentially valuable websites but there are many other great ways. So for me it is another social networking tool I know about but do not regularly use. What am I doing wrong?

Thing 12: Rollyo

I think this could be quite an impressive tool at the high school level. I can see using it to share multiple good websites for projects we currently make pathfinders or wikis for. It does not allow for website descriptions and it also has advertising interspersed throughout. We will need to educate students in how to view results as well as how to search it. I too will need to study up on the search techniques that work best with it. From the FAQ page I see it is primarily relevance ranked. But can I use truncation, phrase searching, + or -? These are all things I will play with a bit more later.

Thing 11: igoogle, wetpaint, and widgits

I have a gmail account so setting up a igoogle page was great. Now if I could just figure out how to incorporate my RSS feeds onto the page, I will be all set. But that is for another day.
Also, took a look at wikis. I currently use pbwiki but cannot afford the upgrade to allow more visuals. I took a look at wetpaint and liked the templates and setup but not the advertisement. I do not think it would work in an educational setting, some of the ads were a bit out there for a school wiki. Finally, I looked at widgits on Yourminis but could not figure out how to load them to my desktop. Maybe tomorrow.

Thing 10: Image Generators

This was super easy to do. ImageChef has many ways to be creative for those of us without a clue.

Thing 9: Public Blogrolls

I am sorry, but I can't figure out why I would want to share my blogroll with anyone else. I can understand maybe sharing a feed suggestion but putting the whole roll out there? My blog is like a window to my soul and I am not sure I want to allow everyone to access all of my blogroll. Should I set up separate bloglines for my library community, my donkey friends, my fellow beaders? Am I alone in wanting to keep certain compartments of my life outside the limits of my fellow bloggers?

Thing 8 : RSS Feed

I hate to confess that I have had a Bloglines account for over a year. I set it up to keep me up-to-date on all the latest library blogs and found I was overwhelmed with the information. I need to be able to keep up but at the same time not give up. I can tell by looking at other postings that this is a challenge for many of us. I guess I need to update my organization and time management skills. For that I found just the blog entry on Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk blog: http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/
atom.xml

I will continue to play with my bloglines account and perhaps now that I have it as a bookmarklet, find it more integrated in my day to day habits.

I am so surprised that people are actually reading this blog. I signed on to resume work on Library 2.0 and lo and behold there were actually comments on my blog. Thank you all for taking the time to provide feedback, especially in terms of the Horizon Report. I was asked to give the link for the report. Here is the Horizon's wiki where you can access the current as well as past reports: http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Main_Page/
I am glad to finally have some time to get back to exploring Library 2.0 and actually thinking about what I do and why. Most of my day to day school experiences are spent just pushing ahead with all the classes, reports and administration that a large school library requires. I so much enjoy this time with Library 2.0 and the opportunity to explore the new ideas and exchanges coming about thanks to Library 2.0. Thank you CSLA for the push.