Week 9 - Thing 21

After looking at all of the podcast directories and fumbling around trying to navigate to the podcasts of interest, I realize how far I have come and how far I have to go. I did find some podcasts of interest particularly those that have news content and the book reviews, which I found particularly entertaining.

I tried all of the directories mentioned and felt that itunes was the most comprehensive. The others seemed to provide a more limited list.

Podcasts are excellent vehicles for engaging children in learning and for disseminating information. In the past one of my colleagues had students write poetry and create a podcast for other 3rd grade classes in the district that were linked with illustrations created by a buddy class from across town. The artists listened to the poems and then each child chose one to illustrate. She also had fourth graders create travelogues of the United States which they were able to share with friends and family, near and far, via their podcasts. I have created a podcast about the evaluation of web resources that can be accessed from our library's home page that, hopefully, will benefit our students and faculty.

http://www.shrewsbury-ma.gov/schools/SHS/MediaCenter/shsmain.htm

Week 9 -Thing 20

It was interesting to experience a bit of what YouTube has to offer. I hear the kids at school talking about YouTube so it was great having the opportunity to play with it a bit. It obviously offers a great variety of videos, some of which would be very valuable to teachers trying to describe a particular historical event or have them listen to an interview. I did some searches on historical topics that I know our students study to see what would be available to show as clips during a class to illustrate a particular issue or time period. By providing students with the opportunity to see and hear the actual events and people related to a particular incident, we are able to make history more relevant to our students. I do see problems with sites like YouTube where students can be exposed to some unsavory materials. There are issues of privacy as well that present some real concerns.

Unfortunately, the opportunity to use YouTube at our school to show educational videos is not available. Our filter prevents us from accessing YouTube from any of our computers. It would be possible, I'm sure, if we had a particularly relevant clip, to have the filter disabled on one computer for a limited time. This does provide some access but does cut down on the ability to be spontaneous, i.e. to access a video on the spur of the moment as the need arises.

The clip that I'm highlighting is an interview with one of the leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This clip would be an excellent way to open a discussion with students on the topic of Civil Rights in the 1960s.



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I'm having problems viewing my video on my MAC at school. It comes through on my PC at home. I don't know whether this is a problem with the MAC or whether, since YouTube is blocked at school, the video doesn't appear. I guess it points up the possibility of problems with incompatibility between platforms and the restrictions created by filters and firewalls.

Week 8 - Thing 19

I just finished entering my first eight books into Librarything and I love it! What an easy way to provide access to my family's book collection and at the same time connect with other bibliophiles who enjoy the same type of literature. By sharing with others who have the same book tastes, I will never run out of good reading materials in my subjects of choice. What makes this site even more enticing is the ability to communicate with other readers, have a book discussion or exchange ideas about our mutual favorites. I'm looking forward to entering more of my book collection and getting my husband to participate as well. It will even encourage me to evaluate my books and decide what I want to keep and what needs to be discarded. This is a site that I will share with others and will use on a regular basis.

If you want to check out my book collection check out:


www.librarything.com/catalog/cdonovan

Week 8 - Thing 18

Zoho has the potential to solve a number of problems in our media center. Lately, we have been having a number of issues with students who e-mail documents from home to the media center. When they attempt to print them, they find that because their computers have a newer operating system then the ones here, printing is impossible. We do explain that they can "save down" but that doesn't help when they need their essay for class immediately. Zoho would solve this problem. Zoho writer, Google Docs and the other productivity tools will make collaborating and communicating increasingly simple. Now, my only problem is getting the time to demonstrate the use of these tools to our staff and student body, not always easy in this time of standards based instruction!

Week 7 - Thing 16

I must admit that I approached wikis with some preconceived notions. I have never been a big proponent of the Wikipedia and, in fact, tend to steer my students aways from that source. I was impressed, however, with many of the Wikis that I looked at. The subject guides on the St. Joseph County Library System were great and very user friendly. Equally useful was the Library Sources website, which I saved as a favorite. I must admit, though, that I was most impressed by the teacher created Wikis that are being used to disseminate class information and to encourage collaboration among students. In fact, I e-mailed the English 10 Wiki to a couple of our English teachers and sent the APWH Wiki to our Social Studies director as an example of what we could do here for some of our classes. I have looked into establishing a Wiki and using it either with a subject teacher for one of our co-teaching experiences or as a portal into our media center. Each "thing" leaves me with so much to think about that it is hard to absorb it all!

Week 6 - Thing 15

I have read with interest four of the articles posted on-line for this exercise. I really enjoyed reading "Away from the ícebergs'". It made me rethink my collection development goals. In this time of decreased budgets and students who believe that everything they need to do research can be found on the web, the time has come to rethink what we do and how we meet the needs of our patrons. After having experienced a bit of what Web 2.0 has to offer, I have become increasingly aware that I need to spend more time developing my skills in the use of this amazing collection of connections. I need to find ways to make my students aware of how best to utilize the sheer volume of information that is available digitally. We may assume that students are "web savvy" but do they really know how to use the breadth and depth of the web to obtain the information they require from authoritative, reliable sources?
I also enjoyed reading "Into a new world of librarianship". The 5 descriptiors of the "Librarian 2.0" gave me pause and made me take a better look at myself as librarian. Am I equipped to be or to become a Librarian 2.0? By acknowledging the need to update my thinking and to become a proactive Web 2.0 user, I will become better at my profession and increase my ability to offer the best to the students and faculty that I serve. These articles gave me much food for thought!

Week 6 - Thing 14

I'm just now getting around to playing with tags and looking at Technorati. I can certainly see why you would need a search engine specifically designed to access the millions of blogs out there. I do have some reservations about tagging. Potentially, you could create millions of tags and in some cases defeat the purpose by not being able to find what you need since you never hit upon the right tag or you could tag each entry with innumerable tags just to make your blog entries accessible. I imagine that as we construct our tags and use those of others that match the contents of each post that a lexicon will naturally develop so that we will build from one another and a certain amount of standarization will result. I can see both the beauty and the difficulty in deviating from the standard "subheading" based system.
I did find that I was able to access more blogs by going to the posts than by searching by the tag. Most helpful was going "search.technorati.com"