Thing #23: Summarize Your Thoughts About This Program

This has been an awesome experience for me. Thank you, Spring Branch, for providing this training and especially for opening it up to those of us who are not part of your district. Please don't take down your blog... ever! I plan to come back to it over and over again.

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
I especially liked the image generators, and being able to create all that by embedding a code instead of writing it! Blogging has become very exciting for me, both professionally and personally. And, I go back to my Thing #21 a lot just to play my videocast. Every time, I ask myself, "Did I really do that?"

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I am happy to say that for these 23 Things, I have conquered my hardest habit of lifelong learning by successfully viewing my problems as challenges. For the most part, I have worked through any problems I had without giving up, knowing that I would learn the process better by figuring it out for myself. This has given me more confidence in my technology skills and my ability to learn new things. I definitely want to come back and revisit some of the "things", both as a review and to continue what I started here.

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
My biggest surprise is that I am no longer afraid to try some of these Web 2.0 tools. I've seen how others are using them and want to be a part of that excitement. And I've also seen lots of different library blogs... some that are filled with comments from students and others, and some that have had very little response. But the blogger keeps on blogging anyway, and that has inspired me to keep at it, even if at first I don't have a lot of feedback.

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I have no complaints at all. You gave us just enough information to complete each task, but not so much that we weren't challenged. And I love the self-paced format.

5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
Absolutely, without a doubt.

6. How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities?
This was the best learning experience I've had since library school!

7. Now go and comment on some of the other Players' blogs?
I've commented some as we went along, but I have a goal to go back and read parts of all the Players' blogs. Every time I read one I get a new, fresh idea.

Back to Thing #12

I've waited until the end of this journey to finish my post for Thing #12 because I wanted to explore more blogs not associated with our Library2Play group before commenting. Now I will share a couple that have been meaningful to me.

The first is Turning Pages, created by the media specialist at Cisco High School. This blog has inspired me because Cisco is a small, rural school district just like mine and in the same area of the state, and I like what she has done. It would make sense for me to use this blog as a model for one I might create for my high school. Even though I do not know the creator of this blog, it's very possible that we might meet sometime at a workshop being held at our service center. By reading and looking around on her blog, I have become convinced that I need to do something similar. I can see its usefulness for her school community.

The second blog I will comment on is Kathy Schrock's Kaffeklatsch. Most people involved in education are probably familiar with Kathy's name. She is a well-known expert in the fields of education and technology (and others, I'm sure). Her blog caught my attention first because of its name, but primarily because of Kathy's reputation as a source for all things related to these fields. Her blog is one way for me to keep up with technology in schools.

Thing #22: Nings

I've been somewhat confused about the difference between blogs, wikis, and nings, so I Googled the terms and found lots of discussion on the topic. The most humorous explanation I found was by John Maklary here: Blogs - one voice at head of table. Wikis - equal voices around the table. Ning - big honkin' party. He continues, So in ning, bounce/brainstorm ideas. Back & forth discussion. Actionable ideas/consensus get formed and articulated on wikis.

I think a blog would be my choice for keeping the school community apprised of what is happening in the library... what classes are doing research, promotions, book fairs, digital book reviews... just a general update to give the library a larger presence among teachers and students. But a ning would be useful for students, teachers, parents, or administrators to get involved in whatever way they wish, maybe by starting discussions, recommending good books, sharing ideas for improvement, suggesting programs, and then elaborating on those suggestions with examples, commentary, podcasts, or a number of other digital devices available in Web 2.0 format.

I explored and joined Texas School Librarians Ning. Could this possibly replace our TLC librarians' listserv?

Thing #21: Podcasts and Videocasts

I'm glad the creators of "23 Things" gave us lots of guidelines for creating and posting our videocast. Although I never dreamed I would be creating these, it really wasn't all that hard with the step-by-step instructions. Our own Techbrarian conducted a workshop in the early part of summer on Photostory. Fortunately I attended and became somewhat familiar with the program then. It is so easy to use and seems like a simpler version of PowerPoint.

I greatly admire all the librarians out there who are creating digital book reviews and trailers with this technology. I am a fairly slow reader and tend to get sidetracked with other things, so I would need to collaborate with other teachers and/or staff at my school who read a lot, or share responsibilities with my high school book club, in order to create and maintain a book blog. I think the kids will love using Photostory and Audacity for all sorts of assignments. And after this practice, I believe I will be able to help them with their projects.

My videocast was made from family pictures of my great nieces and used by permission from their mother. The music is from Photostory.

Thing #20: YouTube, TeacherTube and Zamzar

Thing #20 has opened a whole new realm of possibilities for me. I'm not sure why I have not used YouTube or TeacherTube. Maybe because YouTube is blocked at school, or maybe I just didn't realize the potential those two sites have. Again, I spent way too much time just looking around and watching "just one more video." My learning curve has dramatically increased this summer with this "thing" and all the others up to this point. The wide variety of movies available on these sites makes their potential for usefulness huge. I found something on every subject I searched. No teacher can use the excuse that they can't find anything relevant to their subject here. These online video sites compare favorably with Discovery Education and other subscription databases for streaming video.

Obvious ways that teachers will find these sites useful are as teaching tools, for reviews, for emphasizing parts of a lesson, for reteaching, as a quick focus on particular areas of study, and more. Students might use them also to review, or to embed into presentations for assignments.

One of the videos I chose to embed into this post is from TeacherTube, and focuses on the themes in To Kill a Mockingbird:



I also decided to include a video I found on YouTube called The Librarian Song. It is just for fun and has no relevance to education, other than for motivation or inspiration:



BTW, I had a little trouble embedding these into my blog post, so I went to TeacherTube for a tutorial on embedding videos into Blogger!

Thing #19: Web 2.0 Awards List

It was really hard to stop once I got started with this list. Like the saying goes, "So many books (Web 2.0 tools), so little time". I started with YourMinis, which is a source for widgets for blogs, websites, etc. There I found this internet radio and put it in my blog. We have a new AV system in the high school library where I work and I'm anxious to try some background music to see how it affects the students' behavior. (The radio was too big to fit as a gadget, so I had to put it in this message... haven't figured out how to resize yet.)

Next I looked at Netvibes, where you can create your own personalized startpage. It is a free web service that brings together everything that matters to you — blogs, news, weather, videos, photos, social networks, email and much more — and they are all automatically updated every time you visit your page. As I've mentioned several times before in this blog, I'm always looking for ways to help our UIL students learn the massive amounts of information they are required to know. By setting up a personalized startpage using Netvibes and various news sources, I can create one place for them to go for the most up-to-date current events information.

I also looked at Mango Languages, which is a subscription tool for learning conversational skills in foreign languages, and Picnik, another photo editing website. I'm not sure yet what the differences are between Picnik, Flickr, Picasa, and other photo editing tools, but I especially liked the special effects and fonts available in Picnik. It provides lots of possibilities for enhancing presentations created by students and teachers.

Thing #18: Online Productivity Tools

Either of these tools (OpenOffice.org or Google Docs), if they work like they claim to, will be useful for our students who want to do work at home or at school. Many times a student comes in the library with a document he has saved on a flash drive at home and wants to open it on our library computers. Even though the student usually thinks he has used the same software we have, most of the time it is different or at least a different version that our computers may not read. Needless to say, the student is quite upset when he realizes he is not going to be able to access his work (usually we can work around this problem in some other way, but by using either Google Docs or OpenOffice, we should be able to greatly reduce the number of times this happens). These tools give us another way to work with students and provide opportunities for them (and us!) to become more Web 2.0 savvy. And of course the best part of all... they are FREE! For severely underfunded schools, this could be a huge advantage.

I really had not explored Google Docs enough to know what all was there. Besides the documents, presentations and spreadsheets, I'm impressed with the hundreds of templates that are available. I will definitely be using the flash cards, as well as the gas mileage chart when we go on vacation.

Thing #17: Rollyo

At first I thought Rollyo would be the perfect tool for our UIL current events team. However, after exploring it a little further, I decided its best use would be for classes coming to the library for research. Rollyo might be a way of encouraging reluctant teachers to let their students use the internet. And for those UIL students, feeds would probably be the best way to keep them current on what is happening in the news every day. For now I am posting my current events Rollyo as a gadget.

Thing #16: Wikis

I am thinking of several different ways to use a wiki in my library. Even though I tried it before with my book club, I was not diligent in getting the kids to use it. Once I show them all the possibilities... reviews, comments, lists of titles, ratings, opinions, anything they want to say about books, etc., I think they will jump on board and be eager to participate. And then as a UIL sponsor, I'm always looking for new ideas to get the kids to learn the material. They could post study tips or trading cards they have made from Big Huge Labs. What a great way to learn about authors and their works!

One of the most useful wikis on the list for me will be Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. This is a wonderful source for all things library related. Our district has a subscription to Atomic Learning, so I signed on and watched 5 or 6 tutorials about setting up a wiki. I am so anxious to use this tool. Thanks, SBISD, for all your hard work to create such a useful summer workshop and for allowing all the rest of us to benefit from it!

Thing #15: Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the Future of Libraries

These articles contain a lot of thoughtful, well planned information. I have mixed feelings about some of the Library 2.0 ideas. In reference to the series of articles from OCLC, for me they are both exciting and frightening. I agree that we must embrace Web 2.0 tools (Michael Stephens). The ideas expressed by Dr. Wendy Schultz are still "way out there" to me, but maybe when Web 3.0 and 4.0 become a reality, I will be able to understand them more easily.

However, there are a couple of things that concern me. Most of us work in real world libraries where we see patrons (students, in my case) who do not care about contributing or participating in their own education. To them, having access to many of these Web 2.0 tools would only mean chatting with their friends to plan their Saturday night activities or cheating on an assignment. I do not see these students as being an asset to a "user adds value" concept or the idea of "collective intelligence" (Chip Nilges). How do you embrace the good and resist the bad (in schools, especially)? I realize many of you have worked through these issues and I would be interested in hearing your solutions to these types of problems.

Regarding my above comments, I agree with Techbrarian Talk when she says: "We are letting young people drive how we approach teaching & learning and I'm not sure they are experienced enough to know what is best. So....I think we should adapt these new technologies as they are proven to really be teaching something worth learning. There is still a need to study the past and learn from past mistakes. There is a need for old-fashioned values and stability. Somehow, we've got to update and upgrade without crashing the existing system." Well said, Techbrarian.

All that being said, I am not opposed to Web 2.0 and I know it is something we must learn and use in order to keep our libraries viable in the technoworld we live in. I think we must proceed with caution, considering these concerns and others, and try to find a level where we can provide the necessary services without letting obstacles like those mentioned above get in the way.

BTW, I really liked John J. Riemer's ideas in his article, "To Better Bibliographic Services" especially as they apply to relevancy rankings and streamlining metadata creation.

I know this is way too long. Is there any type of blog etiquette that tells how long a blog post should be?

Thing #14: Technorati and How Tags Work

After exploring this Thing and the last one, I've come to realize just how important and beneficial tagging can be. But it's fascinating that the same principle works in different ways; that is, in Delicious the users tag the content, helping them save and categorize sites they want to remember . However, in Technorati, that function belongs to the publishers or creators of their own blogs to help them get their message out to a larger number of people. So I guess a person would choose one or the other of these (Delicious or Technorati) depending on their needs and perspective. Both could be useful for research. In my school situation, we would probably use Delicious more so that the students could recall the sites they had found previously and might want to use again.

When I searched the blogosphere for posts, I got 121 results with the term "School Library Learning 2.0". Changing to search for blogs, there were 21 results, and by limiting the results to tags only, I ended up with 28 (most of which were from our Library2Play blog).

Thing #13: Tagging and Discover Delicious

I am definitely on information overload status now. So much to see and do with these social bookmarking sites! I already had an account on Delicious, set up primarily to archive my bookmarks and make them available from school or home. I also didn't want to lose them in case of a computer crash. I had no idea about all the other capabilities of this tool. I like the tagging feature because often a website needs to be bookmarked in two or more folders, creating a lot of duplication. With tags, it is saved once but recalled with any of its assigned tags. In looking around in some of these sites, I discovered how easy it is to find other information on a topic of interest to me. I also like the capability in Furl (or Diigo now, as it appears to be called) of adding highlights or sticky notes for later reference. Maybe that is possible in Delicious too but I haven't found it yet.

As for school use, I would be interested to know how others use these tools. I can see their benefits as far as research is concerned, but many of these types of sites are filtered in our districts and students are not allowed access (I don't know about these particular sites because I have not yet tried them at school). Also, our teachers usually require students to use subscription databases rather than (or sometimes in addition to) internet for their research.

Thing #12: Creating Community Through Commenting

These readings brought up ideas about blogging that I had never thought about. I especially appreciate Vicki A Davis' comments on her Cool Cat Teacher blog about newbies. Being one myself, it is sometimes hard for me to believe that I might actually have something to say that could be useful to others. She makes the statement, "If the 'experts that be' listen to newbies they can learn valuable information that will help answer the questions of beginners." I tend to be a lurker rather than a contributor most times, so Vicki's blog has inspired me to speak up more often.

Although there are lots of discussions on the subject of commenting, I particularly like what Meredith Farkas says: "Lots of people hold on tightly to what they know and don’t give it out unless someone’s paying. I believe strongly that my willingness to share has been a driving force in my professional success." To me that statement sums up what blogging is all about. It's nice to be able to share ideas freely.

I have posted comments on five Library2Play blogs that captured my interest for one reason or another: Book Diva (love her background), Ginny's Blog, Techbrarian Talk, Farmgirl Librarian, and Library Larks. Some of these are in my school district, one is in my part of the state, and a couple just caught my eye because of the blog name and content.

Thing #11: LibraryThing

I'm glad this was part of our 23 Things. I've been meaning to explore the site for awhile but just as with a lot of other stuff, it got pushed aside until I had more time. I try to be organized (even though I'm not always successful!), and this is a good way to keep up with my own personal collection of books. I have more than this, but for now I'll stop with these 23 titles.The group called Read YA Lit would be a perfect one for me to join. It would provide another tool for keeping up with YA literature, but mostly, my high school book club could follow this month-by-month discussion of titles as one of their activities.

Thing #10, part 3

Sorry to keep talking so much about image generators, but I've had a lot of fun with this and want to see my pictures on the blog. This one was created with the jigsaw puzzle tool in Dumpr. The photo was taken at a youth camp in South Texas. Beautiful place.

Thing # 10, part 2

ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

This fun tool let's you combine text, symbols and photos. It took me a long time to figure out how to get it to show up on my blog (cutting and pasting the HTML code did not work). But finally I saw the button that said Quick Post, and Blogger was one of the choices. It was easy after that.

After looking at all the image creators in this Thing, I would have a hard time choosing a favorite. I like them all, and there are many ways they could be used in my library. As a UIL Literary Criticism sponsor, I am looking forward to creating motivators for my students. This would also be a great way to promote books and reading, or to set up screen savers to attract attention to the library.

We have a teacher at my school who is crazy about happy faces. I can't even imagine what all she could do with Happy Face Generator! Kay, are you listening?

Thing #10: Online Image Generator

Although I'm not finished with this Thing yet, I wanted to go ahead and post my first image made from Comic Strip Generator. This tool was easy to use and quite fun. My biggest problem with any of the things is that I want to see and try all they have to offer. I can spend hours on one thing. I must learn how to be more productive with my time.

Thing #9: Useful Library-Related Blogs and News Feeds

Of all the search tools explored in this exercise, I liked Google Blog Search and Blogline's Search Tool for their ease of use. But Technorati was probably my favorite, because of its Blog Directory and Top 100 Blogs. There you can see links of blogs by subject and by popularity. The most unusual blog I found was on Technorati's Top 100, and it was called "Post Secret." It is described as "an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard." It is very unique and worth taking a look.

Syndic8.com was my least favorite search tool. It seemed too busy and remote for my taste. I didn't find much there that I was interested in. For now I will stick with a few library blogs I already knew about.

Our district also subscribes to Atomic Learning, so I will be reviewing this subject throughout the summer using their tutorials.

Thing #8: RSS Feeds and Readers

I've used RSS a little but not enough to know much about it. For this Thing I subscribed to 5 library related blogs... two from our Library2Play group, two from well-known Texas librarians who create a lot of book trailers for YA, and Kathy Schrock's Kaffeklatsch. Then, since my interests include a little play from time to time, I had to include one for my machine embroidery hobby.

What I like most about RSS and readers is the basic idea. You don't have to go to each blog to see new posts. They are all in one place in the reader. And then, you don't have to read through all the posts to see what's new. Very helpful idea.

I will use this at school for following new YA books and promoting them with our students. It will also be a great way to keep up with some of the more innovative things the experts have to say about Web 2.0. Teachers and administrators can use RSS in the same way by choosing their own area of interest, locating relevant blogs, and subscribing. Easy!

Thing #7 - Cool Google Tools

For this exercise I have created 3 alerts... one to follow my favorite hometown athlete, one for my hobby and one to gather more information about an educational topic that is relevant to my situation at the present time. My district is looking at providing a laptop for each student in the near future, and we will need lots of input on how other districts who are doing this manage their one-to-one initiative. I have limited the athletic alert to news only, but set the other two to comprehensive so that I will receive as much information as possible on those subjects.

The other Google tool I am exploring extensively is Picasa web albums. I am really excited about this one for personal use, as well as for certain assignments at school. As students are required to create more presentations and digital assignments, Picasa will be useful for locating, arranging and storing their pictures.

In the fall, I am looking forward to introducing our high school students to Google Docs and Google Scholar when they are writing research papers.

Thing # 6: Mashups and 3rd Party Sites

A person could literally spend hours, days, weeks exploring all the neat toys and tools others have created using mashups. I can imagine using Movie Poster with the theater arts classes when they create their own movies. A poster could be displayed around the school to advertise their presentations. Or, at the first of the school year, students could use Map Maker to report on their summer vacations. The possibilities are endless and exciting!

I created a trading card for this "thing" using Flickr Toys and Big Huge Labs.

Thing #5 - Flickr

What a great way of sharing photos! I especially like being able to use Flickr's Creative Commons to know exactly what permissions are given for their use. I will be adding Flickr to my school web page and teaching the students how to use it.

I chose a picture of an altered book from "T" altered art at http://www.flickr.com/photos/teresa-stanton/550133479/ for this post because I am fascinated by the combinations of art and books. One of my favorite presentations at TLA this year was on altered books. Two Art 3 students in my school have loaned their altered books projects to the library for a year or two. I will be displaying them in the fall. This would be a great project for my book club.

Thing #3 - Blogging and Avatars

I have to admit I was clueless about Avatars. The instructions on the Library2Play blog were great. I had read some posts from bloggers who said they had trouble getting theirs to show up, so I was dreading the export. I had a lot of fun creating myself and surprisingly, my Avatar appeared on my blog the very first time I tried! I'm only on Thing 3 but I've already learned so much. Can't wait to see what's next!

Thing #2 - Lifelong Learning

It took me awhile to get past the cookies issues and get this blog up and running, but now that I've done it, I'm excited to get started. Maybe that was my first challenge (notice I didn't say problem) as explained in #3 of the 7-1/2 habits of lifelong learners. The guidelines are simple and practical. The easiest of those for me is probably #1 - determining my goals. I have lots of them, especially regarding technology. The hardest? Viewing my problems as challenges instead of problems. I become frustrated easily and tend to give up and ask for help instead of trying to figure it out myself. Technology is changing and expanding so fast it's hard to keep up. Hopefully after these 23 Things I will feel much more confident.