Week 9:20 TeacherTube

The YouTube link for "Jack O'Connell Goes Back to School" is incorrect--it currently links to a 35 second clip of two students playing Tin Whistles. The real clip has some great school success tips at the end and is worth seeing.

Students are so visual, original or YouTubed videos would be a nice addition to a library blog or wiki site. The only caveat is to have the clips be short.

I loved "The Librarian Song" and so here it is:

Books are love!

Books are love!
Originally uploaded by janetmck

I am trying to get my Week 3:5 Flickr photo assignment to post. Let's see what happens.... I had originally entitled the photo, "Is this a way to make reading sexy?"

The only way I could redo my original posting was to create a new post, copy it then open the old post and paste the new HTML text (then delete the 2nd version leaving the 1st one).

Week 8:19.1 Digital Pipeline

The tutorials were great: short and sweet. In addition to collaborating with the English Dept. to have students view them, I will make sure they are a part of the library curriculum for my library aides. The "Narrowing Your Search" tutorial on using the "limiters" was very useful and students will like the Citation Format options since the English Dept. uses the MLA format.

In advanced search, I had always used "Alaska" as a subject search term and was interested to see the tutorial used it as a geographic search term. So I did some searches to see if it made a difference. It did but not to the degree that it made a big difference.

I created an Ebsco Account for my library topic searches and set up a RSS feed for alerts on wikis. One of the articles I saved was on using wikis to replace textbooks. I found this interesting as both parents and students complain about those "30 lb bookbags" that students have to lug home.

I watched the Flash Movie and on my computer there was no sound. Is this right? Lack of sound made the movie endless and boring. It took me a while to find out that when I was clicking on the next arrow, it was advancing to the next topic rather than just to the next screen. Oops. The changes look wonderful but I won't be using the Flash Movie as a tutorial with students unless there is sound.

Week 8:19 LibraryThing

What a great way to develop an online library catalog.  This would be great for those very rural libraries in the state.  It would also be wonderful for a book club to use.  

I discovered that you don't have to eliminate "The" in the title before search and that you can use partial titles.  However, when I searched "Angels & Demons" by Dan Brown, I ended up with not only that title but hundreds of titles that somehow related to the subject of angels and/or demons.

My personal book catalog is as follows: 

Week 8:18 Online Applications

I created my Zoho Writer account and, oddly enough, my standard and alternate user names were taken.  Another user name/password to keep track of..I need to open a spreadsheet document and start keeping a list.

I began creating  a FAQ document for my future school library wiki page.    Unfortunately, it saved as an untitled document first and I tried saving it multiple times as "FAQ" without success.  Then I tried deleting the untitled document so I could rewrite and save it as a named document but it wouldn't delete.   Once I fix this, I'll post it to my blog so that others can add questions that would address student needs.  At 57 and as a life-long library user, it is hard to think how a newbie school library user (and a teenager) would think.

I also signed up for a "30 boxes" calendar account but my email confirmation hasn't arrived...and it has been over an hour so I fear something is amiss there.  {{{sigh}}}  I would like to create an online calendar for the library in terms of classes booked and in terms of perhaps mini- after school demonstrations of some of the web 2.0 tools.

Week 7:17 Learning 2.0 SandBox

I had joined "wikispaces" months ago with the idea of creating a library wiki.  However, at that time the tutorials on the site were so vague that when I ran into problems, I had no recourse (I followed the FAQ answer to my problem but it didn't fix it).  I hope that I will now be able to be successful.  Having said that, the "Wikispaces TeacherTube Tutorial" was terrible.  The voice was way too soft and monotone and I only watched half of it.  The PB tutorials were great and I wonder how many in our district use that instead of wikispaces.

I added to the Learning 2.0 SandBox under "Blogging & Avatars," "Photos & Images," and "Wikis"

6:16 Wikis

Having struggled with HMTL and web page design, the easiness of wikis is a huge selling point.  I also like the dynamic feel of wikis.  Although there is naturally a concern over wikis being corrupted by poor or biased entries, the idea of using the power of a collective intelligence is appealing.  While it may be hard to give up control, in this day and age why try to "do it all by yourself?"

One of my favorite school wikis that I discovered last year is from East Anchorage High School and is located at:  http://easthighlibrary.wikispaces.com.  I like the box of alphabetical subject web links and have, on paper, designed my future school library wiki based on this one.

The "Sample Literary Circle Wiki" is a great example of a classroom wiki.  I hope that more teachers will come to use wikis.