Blogging again

I'm getting started again because I am going to cheer on some of the new participants in Winter SLL2.0. I needed to get reacquainted with the whole blogging thing. I also wanted to save the Information Revolution video. I think I might use it with my Cuesta students in my online class if I can figure out how to post it to Blackboard. It's kind of wierd to be writing blog posts when no one will be reading them. It's more like a journal to myself. But it is a good place to store the Youtube video until I figure out how to use it.

Information R/evolution

Week 9 Activity 23 Boo Hoo

I am not ready for this to be over! My one word that best describes this learning experience is...

transformational.

I am a life-long learner and SLL2.0 has been a motivational guide this summer. My favorite discoveries are using avatars and graphic captioners because they are fun and my students will love them. The most difficult tool for me to grasp was tagging using del.icio.us and now I can't imagine how I functioned without it.

I am anxious to get back to school to see how much access our district allows to blogs and wikkis. If we are able to use them with students, I will have lots of suggestions for how they can improve the research projects my collaborators traditionally do each year. And I have tagged some excellent podcasts and videos that will demonstrate to teachers the power of these tools.

I am sorry to have reached the end of this course, but of course, it is just the beginning of my new journey into the world of Web 2.0.Thank you, thank you, thank you to the creators and faciliators of the course. And another thank you to fellow participants who have made comments and suggestions to me and whose clever, creative blogs gave me ideas for my own.

Week 9 Activity 22 eBooks & Audio eBooks

I tagged all three sites explored in the exercise. While I would not enjoy reading a book on my computer, students may think it is just great. And I would not want them to print a free eBook using my library printer, they may not mind doing that from home. I can see great advantages to having these titles freely available to anyone who wants them.

I especially enjoyed the audio eBooks. I listened to parts of Walking by Henry David Thoreau and parts of "Jude" from the Bible.

Finally, the free books site is an excellent resource. I will explore this further with the language arts department in my school. We are always looking for ways to get more books into the hands of the students.

Week 9 Activity 21 Podcasts

Podcasts were my least favorite of the online tools I have learned this summer. I see many uses for the video podcasts used at tutorials, but I did not find any of those in the directories I explored.

I chose to search travel podcasts and was disappointed to only listen to information about places I might want to visit. The Yahoo directory did not offer travel as a category. Perhaps they agree with me that if you want to explore places, you might do better with a video.

I do see educational uses for podcasts and there are a few student podcast projects going on in my school. I hope to learn to create podcasts like those presented in Library 2.0 where there is a PowerPoint presentation, narrated, and posted online for others to view.

Bypass School, College, Myspace Censors Filters Firewall

Week 9 Activity 20 YouTube Experience

I learned that there was a video contest regarding school libraries and many of the videos posted were clever advertisements. I also found a very funny video advertising a Library Workout that made me laugh out loud.

But I selected a video teaching viewers how to bypass school, college and business filters because I learned more from it than from any of the advertisements. This video by Jimmy.com has been viewed more than 28,000 times! There were several videos of this sort to choose from. The one I selected to post wasn't particularly entertaining, but very informative, offering several options for people wanting to view MySpace from a school computer, rather than just one. It was clearly narrated, while others just showed the screens and typing, but no narration. As educators, we have a lot to learn from YouTube.


I was actually a little disappointed in the quality of videos I found on TeacherTube. Most of the library videos were made by someone whose sense of humor just did not appeal to me. And their videos buffer, causing a little viewer frustration. I wonder if the buffering would show up if the video was posted to a blog?

Week 8 Activity 19 LibraryThing

I toured this site again and registered. I entered the books my book club has selected to read this year and found that most were quite popular with other members. However, one book, The Enigma Woman, is owned by only three other members. I was surprised I would actually see who those three members are and could have left a comment for them had I chosen.

I was gratified to see that my favorite YA book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, is wildly popular and considered a classic.

Week 8 Activity 18 Online Applications

I typed this entry in Zoho Writer. It looks very similar to Word. I can see some excellent advantages of students using an online word processor because so often they come to school with an assignment saved to a flash drive or a disc, but cannot open it because the Word converter does not recognize the software they used to create their document. I imagine there are a lot more advantages to such online tools, such as collaboration and being able to find your work from various locations.

My concern for using this at school is that our AUP forbids students from opening accounts, even free ones, because they are not allowed to give any personal information online. All of the accounts I have opened during this summer course have required me to give my email address. Perhaps it would be okay to open the account from home and then log into it from school. I will check into this. I wonder if my district is a lot stricter than others?

Week 7Activity 17 Learning 2.0 Sndbox

I enjoyed reading the curriculum ideas participants suggested for the various tools we have been learning. My suggestion is #33 under Wikis.

I also need to thank Cardinal Reader for sharing with me how to change my Avatar one more time. :)

Week 7 Activity 16 Wikis

I've been waiting all summer to learn about wikis, and it wasn't in vain. I think the use of wikis could dramatically change class research projects. I tagged the site Controversial Issues Wiki because the 7th grade GATE teacher does a six month project on social issues and this would be an excellent addition to how we teach the students to find and record their information.

I also tagged Wiki: A Beginner's Guide as a way to teach interested teachers how wikis work.

The only disappointment in this week's lesson is that I haven't found where to start my own wiki and what is entailed. I expect to learn that before the end of this course.

Week 6 Activity 15

According to Wikipedia, "Proponents of this concept expect that ultimately the Library 2.0 model for service will replace traditional, one-directional service offerings that have characterized libraries for centuries."

Rick Anderson from University of Nevada outlines three library practices we will have to examine and change for the next generation of librarianship. I agree with his assessment in regard to collection of print sources, if he is referring strictly to nonfiction and reference. However, in school libraries I do not see the reading of fiction decreasing at all. And ebooks have not been wildly successful, at least not yet. I would love to decrease my nonfiction collection and have more shelf space for fiction.

His second suggestion is that we cannot rely on librarians to train individual users, but rather libraries need to provide the easiest to use and most reliable sources for their users. He cites his ratio of one librarian per 680 users. That actually sounds good to many school librarians! And we are teachers, so I believe our emphasis on teaching large groups, small groups and individuals to find the most reliable information and employ the web2.0 tools to use that information creatively will continue. We will most likely be teaching the teachers along with the students.

He then proposes that libraries need to change the "come to us" model of the past. And this is largely true for all types of libraries as we advocate availability of resources 24/7.

Michael Stephen, presumably a public librarian, takes the last concept to heart when he reports that he meets his clients online to build new services. But he cautions against purchasing new technology for technology's sake. It must further the mission of the institution.

The Wikipedia article on Li bray2.0 concludes with, "The concept of radical trust appears to be at the heart of much of the issue. While librarians are learning about Web 2.0 tools to facilitate discussion so that their internal business can evolve to enterprise 2.0, involving external users appears to be (sic) face some opposition." This statement calls to mind the opposition we Library Media Teachers often face from our technology departments who control what the students can and cannot access on the Internet.

This is a GREAT learning community!

Thank you! I have spent two days viewing the fabulous blogs being created by the participants in this class. I have learned a lot from you while I waited for the del.icio.us tutorial to work again. Someone very kindly emailed me the tutorial and I still didn't quite understand. Today, I found the link was working again and watched it a second time. It took previewing the SJLibrary2.0 delicious page and reading the ALA article on tagging to understand the powerful tool this is. I immediately registered for a delicious account and tagged the sites I have been bookmarking during this summer course.

Week 6 Activity 14

I looked at Technorati and searched for “School Library Learning 2.0.” I found 1688 hits in Blog posts, but then went back and put quotation marks around the words and that narrowed it down to 165 hits. When I search tags, I found three. I did not find the Blog Directory.


Exploring the popular blogs, searches and tags was not surprising to me. I was disappointed to see Harry Potter listed under Paris Hilton, however.


It is a surprise to me how much time people must spend blogging, talking with people they do not know, about what interests them. I am still not sure about tagging because I haven't been able to see the del.icio.us video. I will come back to it when the video is emailed to me or the site repaired.

Week 6 Activity 13

I could not get the video, so had trouble seeing how del.icio.us works. I looked for someone ahead of me in the course and commented on her blog and asked about the video. Fortunately, she saved it to her computer and offered to email it to me. I am waiting for it, but will continue to explore this week's other sites. This networking is very helpful!

Meanwhile I took the LibraryThing tour, but did not join. I do not have time to catalog my own books. I looked at Middlesex, the novel I am currently and saw what tags members had given it. I'm still not sure I understand the purpose of tagging. I need to see that video. :)

I get it!!! I registered for a del.icio.us account and tagged the sites I have been bookmarking throughout this course. Now I can also find them at school when I hopefully will want to share what I learned with some colleagues! When I find something at home that I want to use at school, I will not have to jot it down or email it to myself, instead I will tag it and open my delicious account ant there it will be!

Questions and Crutches

I created a new Avatar to practice what I learned. The new background symbolizes the two learning curves I am experiencing. Recent foot surgery has me struggling to maneuver on crutches and so many new technology tools has my mind swimming with ideas and questions. I decided the Avatar was the most fun activity to date so I went back to it and created a new me! I like it. Do you?

Week 5 Activity 12

I created a searchroll for my first research project of the school year. Traditionally the seventh grade health teacher has her students choose their own topic for an extensive research project. We guide them to reliable sources and teach them to evaluate other information the find on the World Wide Web after they have explored the sites we suggest.

Here is the link to my Middle School Health searchroll.

http://rollyo.com/srowland/middle_school_health/

I expect to use this to be extremely useful and time saving for the students, teacher and me, if I can actually use it. Our county filters all blogs, forums, emails, etc. from students and teachers. I teach a course at the community college and cannot even access the discussion board from my desk computer at school.

Week 5 Activity 11

I joined the Teacher Librarian Ning. I had never heard of Ning before. I liked the middle school librarian group and think I will go there often. I actually haven't finished my profile yet or posted the blog, but I will. I think it might turn out to be one of the most useful tools I have discovered in this course.

The other tool I enjoyed was called Eventful. It posts all sorts of events at any location you type in. I wish I could search by county rather than city, as I live in a small town and our whole county is made of up rather small towns, so when I'm looking for a play or festival, I might have to search quite a few places. The local newspaper usually is sufficient for me, but I will see if this tool proves useful.

Week 5 Activity 10

After exploring some generators, I decided I might use the Captioner and be able to teach middle school students to use it. It was one of the few sites I found where I could use photos stored on my computer. Most want a URL and although, I have begun to use Picassa, I did not see how to easily get those images into the generators.

How could anyone help but love such an adorable puppy!

I found Captioner at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/captioner.php

Week 4 Activity 9

Imagine my surprise when I typed in School Library Leaning 2.0 in Google's blog search and the first hit was my last post! I wish it had been more profound!

For activity #9 I found some school library blogs to add to my RSS. The interesting thing is that Hey Jude from Australia looks identical to the School Library Blogs on SuprGlu. I think I will use these two more than any of the other sites I subscribed to.

The most interesting thing I read on the school library blogs was that there is new legislation at the federal level for school library funding. Currently, our libraries get all the Title V money that comes to our district. It isn't much, but at least we are not sharing it with other places it could legally be spent. I was happy to see that there might be new money coming our way.

Week 4 Activity 8

I created a Google Reader account and subscribed to three book review sites, two educational technology sites, and the cartoon site that was listed in the School Library Learning 2.0 course. I actually discovered that by being a Google Subscriber already, they had preselected some news sites for me. I went into managing accounts and removed the ones I did not want to read and kept the Google News site. I am not sure yet how much I will use RSS.

Week 3 Activity 6

There are some very creative things people are doing with photos using the Mashups and 3rd Party Sites. The trading cards and magazine covers are excellent ideas that could be used in learning activities for students, if the sites were accessible to our students. I might be able to direct students to them, so they could use them at home for projects, but our county blocks these sites from school use throughout the entire county.

I am currently at a middle school, but plan to move to the high school soon, when the librarian there retires. I imagine high school "techy" students probably already know these sites and will be sure to ask to see some of their projects.

This week's work with photos has inspired me to discuss the whole WEB2 class with our computer lab teacher. She loves art and does some very creative things with her middle school students. I wonder how much she knows about Flickr, Picassa, etc.

Two years ago at CSLA I learned about Shutterfly and have created a few albums there. I do not like having my photos in two different websites, though, and might try to gather what is on Shutterfly and put them all in Picassa. Do I need to store them on my hard drive as well? Will I someday lose all my photos?

Week 3 Activity 5

I enjoyed exploring Flickr. I loved the images of Stonehenge in particular. There is one photo with a swirly sky above and another where someone must have superimposed two statues in front of Stonehenge.

I am not especially into photography, though, and would not want to post my own pictures for everyone to view. I am surprised to see so many family and vacation photos displayed for the world to see.

Week 3 Activity 7

This is a photo I had already saved in Picassa. I learned about Picassa when I was taking an ELD/SDAIE class last spring and had to draw map of my library. Rather than draw, I took several digital photos and learned to use Picassa to organize and publish from my camera. I liked the site and haven't used it since, so I was happy to learn it has a button that sends the image directly to my blog. Since both are Google products, Picassa knew exactly where to find my blog. It was quite easy.

I selected this photo from all the library pictures I have stored because the student is not facing the camera and cannot be identified. It is not the best picture of my entire library, but it serves this purpose well.

Week 2 Activity 3 (b) Avatar

As you can see, I have created an avatar. I am relaxing in my robe and slippers because it is summer, but my mind is still on my library. I am drinking a cup of tea as part of my relaxation therapy. My purple hat signifies my tendency to impulsively get up and go somewhere when inspired by my husband, my sons or a phone call from a friend, or my adorable, fun-loving granddaughter. "Girls just want to have fun" is my summer motto.

Week 1 Activity 2

I am definitely a lifelong learner. The fact that I became a library media teacher after twenty five years in the classroom is evidence that I do not shy away from hard work or new learning. I had never even searched the Internet or sent or received an email when I began the Masters program at San Jose State in 1998. Now I am able to create web pages. And this summer I am learning the Web2 skills that CSLA so generously made available online.

I enjoyed the PowerPoint presentation 7 1/2 Habits of Life Long Learning. Numbers 2 & 6 are my strengths. I am fond of learning and a self-starter. I had to go online to learn how to enable the cookie functionality on my browser in order to get my blog going, and after may tries in the Internet options under the tools tab, I finally googled "cookie functionality" and found simple directions.

My weakness is number 7. I am afraid of coming across as a "know it all" or of upstaging other teachers, so I do not teach others or mentor them as much as I could. My most successful times of helping teachers in my school are when they watch me show a student or a class how to do something on the Internet or with Microsoft Word. Quite often a teacher will come back after school or email me and thank me.

On the other hand, I love sharing what I learn with students. They often know more than me, and I also love learning from them. When I teach a student how to do something, for instance submitting work to an online folder, I will ask that student to help the next student who is ready, and so on. I know the value of teaching others so that your own learning becomes solidified.

Week 1 Activity 1

I was excited about the program when I first read about it on Calib listserv. I wonder where the term Web2 came from and saw it referred to somewhere in my reading. But I am wondering if this term was coined by librarians or will others recognize the term? It seems to me it refers to the second use of the Internet, which is a forum for posting personal responses and ideas, rather than merely a place to find information.

I began before the school year ended, but did not have much time to devote to it. So today, I reread the first three steps and have begun doing them. I love this kind of self-paced learning.

Week 2 Activity 4

I actually registered two blogs... one with wordpress and the other with blogger. It took me quite a while to figure out how to post a second message. It turned out on Blogger, I was not logging in properly in order to get to the dashboard which allows me to make a new post. My perseverance paid off. I also had to google directions to enable cookie functionality, which reminded me that I neglected to mention the resources available to me online to learn just about anything I need to learn about technology.

Week 2 Activity #3

My Contract

My goal is to complete the Web2 course before I go back to work August 15th.

The obstacles I face are pacing myself, finding help when I need it, and fitting this in with the other responsibilities I have this summer.

The tools that will help me complete this work are my desktop computer and my laptop. I might even buy that printer server I have been wanting ever since I got the laptop! My persistence and patience will serve me well with this project.

The resources that will be most helpful are the people on Calib and the Web2 team. I might even be able to call on the tech team for our school district if I need personal telephone guidance through some of the activities.

The path I intend to follow is to work at two or three weeks per week so I can finish by August 15th.

I will check-in at least twice a week in order to complete the activities.

Official signature... Sandra L. Rowland