Thing 20: YouTube

On YouTube, often enormous amounts of time to load clips. Ugh. No patience. So I headed over to Yahoo Videos and Teacher Tube and checked out a few things.

Back on YouTube, I found a piece that had circulated my way a bit ago, and may have come your way, too. Very funny. Mom Song to the William Tell Overture. I think humor is a very key draw of YouTube, which can work for learning. Not this piece, of course, but humor about your topic can make a memorable lesson.

On a serious note, I would like to use YouTube in my library for computer training, like the Creative Commons pieces. Very instructive. I would not produce something original--I don't have the resources. Besides, there is plenty of excellent content in that realm.

Thing 21: Podcasts

Could not access any podcasts on Podcast.net. Success on PodcastAlley. Too much commercial presence on both sites. I liked being able to listen to the podcast and work on another site at the same time, because I'm not patient enough to just listen. Explored Podcast Alley's genres. Went to the genre, Education and from there to History Clip of the Week. Those had images in addition, but they were shorties (less than 60 seconds), and at the end I get a message, "visit our sponsors." No thanks. Also in Education was Mugglecast, but it was too much drivel (of the sort found on talk radio) to keep me engaged. I love Harry Potter, but tend not to like all the hype. This stuff was from March 2007, when there was LOTS of buildup to #7.

Because I am a Mac user, I checked out iTunes podcasts, which I had never explored--have only done music library to play my own(ed) audio CDs. iTunes podcast had some great content, such as the TED talks (Technology, Entertainment, Design)--recorded lectures, containing video and audio, of major thinkers of our time. Unfortunately, the only podcasts in iTunes with RSS feeds are only a handful of Microsoft tech updates--not a good fit for me.

I finally went to Yahoo podcast and searched for book reviews. Nancy Perl, of NPR fame, came up. Yay! She is funny and a good reviewer--and has read voraciously--so I subscribed to her podcast on Bloglines. Her commentary is definitely a great addition to my library web page!

Thing 19 revisited: LibraryThing and Groups.

Feed. In doing a search for this book (by M.T. Anderson, and another favorite of mine), I visited Groups, and recognized the names of some of the groups that had come up in my search for ratings/ravings or a discussion about Once and Future King.

Groups look pretty cool. Some folks are members of MANY groups. There are interesting stats on the Groups page: Standing groups, Groups with most members, Most active Talk, Most read groups, to name a few. You start to see names of participants repeatedly, as they exchange ideas on different books. These are all little communities. I would say that Groups is the very essence of LibraryThing and the social networking concept.

Thing 19: LibraryThing

Link to my library in LibraryThing. I actually set up an account in LibraryThing 'round about Thing 5, since I'd heard about it from the MSLA listserv, and was having trouble finding a catalogue record for a particular item in my school library. When I set it up, I even added the LT widget to my blog. Kinda fun.

I searched LibraryThing Talk for discussions about my favorite book, Once and Future King (I lie; one of my faves--who can possibly limit oneself to ONE favorite book??). It was interesting to see how the results of my search (ie., people's responses) actually were linked to the topic in which they'd originally appeared, so you can get a feel for how your book "plays" in a variety of contexts (eg., some of the topics were: What are you reading now?; a particular book group's discussion; 888 [books] for 2008, etc.). In my search results, I liked how search terms (the title) were bolded, except and came up a LOT, and wasn't necessarily a hit. Most interesting comment was about how the theme of the Arthurian legend is that things always get worse; we go from light (things are ok) to dark (bad kharma of seeds sown earlier; can't outrun fate). That's exactly why the story is so tragic and T.H.White's retelling so powerful.

Thing 18: Online word processing. Zoho Writer.

Very cool. I got into Zoho at school, creating an account and poking around a bit, per the assignment; created 2 documents and saw where they were saved in Zoho Writer. My second creation was a note and a link (to SLL2.0 #18!) so I could pick up the assignment from there when I got home. I didn't even have to email it to myself! Of course using Delicious would have been another way to go (bookmarking the site), or just typing in the url or googling it at home, but the point was to utilize this web-based word-processing app. so this was my little test. And the test worked! There was my note with the link when I got into my account. But alas, it was at the top of the intro page that tells you about some of the features of Zoho Writer, just where I'd created it, since I could not find where to create a new doc (a la Word), but I was being invited to edit the Zoho page (the edit button above the page), so I took it.

Thing 17: Wiki Sandbox

Here's my post to the Calcurriculum sandbox (note that it is the MSLA sandbox page). I was very surprised that mine was only the second entry on that page. Where have others put their sandbox "doodles?" Probably on the Sandbox page. I found the page, Water Cooler, helpful. I also noticed what many folks don't seem to have--that there are many different pages in the Calcurriculum wiki, all alphabetically listed if you link via the box at the bottom of every screen, Wiki Information. Some of the pages have participants' names--those are the pages they made and then could not find; note all the postings to that effect.

Anyway, how I plan to use Wikis was discussed in my last post. I found wikis to be one of the best apps so far in SLL 2.0 and also, the discovery of Calcurriculum is invaluable. It has been bookmarked!

Thing 16: Wikis

My first direct experience with a wiki was a few months ago when member Laura D'Elia of the Elementary Independent School Library Association started one for the group and trained us all at our winter meeting. There's been no collaboration from me, however. And not from too many others beyond the first 2 weeks! Pathetic! In honor of SLL 2.0, I got on and did my first posting.

I found the articles that you provided very informative, once again. They helped me round out my knowledge of wikis. Now I feel ready to do a wiki with kids. I love wikis! They are the epitome of social networking because of their collaborative nature.

What I'd like to do with wikis in my library:

• A joint project where all kids are contributing
• In-class worksheets that I post and they work on from their laptops. I like the kids sharing answers, so I usually have them do it as a class anyway.
  
• Book reviews, linked from the library's web pages.
  
• A chatroom for students. Even a chatroom where their participation was required as part of my class.
• Processing and cataloging policies.
  

Thing 15: Perspectives on Library 2.0

Reading the articles from OCLC's newsletter and the Wikipedia article and its sources gave me a new appreciation of the Web 2.0 trend in libraries. In fact, together, they gave me a sense of the future for libraries; it looks quite different from the current, "typical" library. Fundamental concepts of the 2.0 thing: beta is forever; take the library to the user and, in fact, involve the user in development. A perfect example of this is tags. I have been very enthusiastic about the democratic process of tagging. John Riemer has some great ideas about libraries sharing catalogue records without redundancy, using the web as the model. My favorite: "Through RSS feeds, libraries can package and push their content to users’ preferred working places." I could actually do that for my teachers, as I add stuff to the collection! Wendy Schulz, a futurist, has a great perspective, seeing libraries evolve from archives to communities to virtual reality idea labs.

What does all this mean for me? for school libraries? I still have kids asking me what a web research project has to do with "Library." And I still have the problem of saying, "No, we don't have that title" when a teen asks for the latest pulp teen fiction (one of Tom Storey's "icebergs:" purchasing a title 'just in case' the right user comes along--chances are slim that s/he will). Should I be pointing her to the computer and offering an online version?

Thing 14: Technorati

A search of the phrase, SCHOOL LIBRARY LEARNING 2.0, in 3 different indexes in Technorati--Blog Directory, Tags and Blog Posts--results in the following:

In the Blog Directory, I get 1578 results. This is because it matches the words separately, in any order, not as a single phrase. This is untrue of the search in Tags and Blog Posts, which do search as a single phrase. In Tags I got 12 results and in Blog Posts I got 35 results. There were overlaps; I saw the same blogs--at the top--in the results of all 3 searches. I note, too, that Top 100 Blogs are rated two ways: by number of fans a site has and by authority. Aah haa.

What do I think of tags? They are marvelous. I like the fact that anyone can tag in all of these apps. I am always asking kids to define keyword and subject organization of libraries (the ol' Dewey concept). "What is it about?" Tagging is a variation on that theme--something people get intuitively. And kids will continue throughout their lives to use this concept. On the flip side, it's lowest common denominator at work. What are the most popular tags? Yesterday, a Saturday afternoon, it was "news." This morning (after the big evening out) it is "viagra," followed by "inflammatory arthritis." "News" is now in third place. Aah haa.

Thing 13, continued. More on Del.icio.us.

I can use del.icio.us to track developments in the field of reading/language learning disabilities in neurological research, an area that faculty are involved in as teachers of dyslexic kids and as teachers of teachers . And it is definitely useful for accessing bookmarks at home AND at school, where I work on different computers. You have provided some great sites to check out, many of which I have added to my Bloglines via the RSS feed each site has.

A good example of how libraries use del.icio.us is Menasha Library. Why? Because they have tons of bundles, not just tags. Contrast their site with Thomas Ford, where they have not bundled up their tags, so you are looking at an alpha list of unrelated topics under a single bundle called--surprise--Tags. Done well, it is a great resource for your users. Like a good garden, web page or blog, del.icio.us needs lots of care and tending. Sadly, as a solo librarian, I would have trouble doing just that.

Thing 13, complete with bad luck: del.icio.us

Of course, I had to create an account on del.icio.us to bookmark this really good article, This is How we Lost to the White Man, in the May 08 issue (online, of course) of The Atlantic, a rag I've always respected. But I digresss. I was burning to post it for everyone to read and comment on-- get a discussion going about it; my first post on del.icio.us! So I attempt to set up an account. I try 3 times, then another 2 times, and it keeps bumping me. I get messages like, not enough letters, someone has that name (I seriously doubt it) too old (the scrambled letters that you type in at the end when you set up a login), must combine numbers and letters (got that message, I think, for both user name AND password), user name and password are too similar. OMG. I finally get it: I've got some browser bug. I am on a Mac after all, and some apps just can't cope, altho as a longtime Mac/Safari user, I've encountered relatively little of this, until SLL2.0, that is. Maybe using Safari was at the root of my problems at the beginning of the course, when I could not get Google to recognize my login data for Blogger, and I went thru endless loops of getting/setting new passwords only to be locked out, with the message, password does not match. So, given the history, yeah, I'll make Firefox my browser, and, how cool is this? I will import my Safari bookmarks into del.icio.us! Therein lies the tale, and the miseries.

Thing 12: Rollyo

Hmm...Rollyo didn't work quite as I expected. I understood it to be like a set of bookmarks to my favorite search engines. But trad search engines like YahooKids or Ask.com, both of which I like to point kids to, aren't allowed on my search roll, Hammy. OK. I must think of it as a customized search engine of blogs and news sites or other commercial sites, to name a few; just no search engines.
I would like to use it as a tool for those hard-to-find titles. In fact, I saw many such search rolls.

Thing 11, continued: Ning

I can't remove Ads box in customizing my Ning page. I am not happy about that. I would really like to use it for book discussions with the kids, and would prefer less "noise" that advertising-free allows. Stay tuned for development of the Ning space; it leaves much to be desired in its current state (ie., no content!).

Thing 11: Award-winning Apps.

Looking around the list of 2007 winners, I was astounded by the quality and ingenuity of the sites. I chose LibraryThing because I'd read on the MSLA listserv that it is a great cataloguing tool. I was hooked by the brusque tone of the LT home page in which, after describing the merits of LT and how it works, it concludes, "If the buzz page doesn't convince you, you cannot be convinced. Go away." I suspect that is the voice of founder and director Tim Spalding, a fellow Massachusettser. The buzz page is unbelievably voluminous and enthusiastic. As a thing "of the people," its connections (the social networking piece), the collective wisdom (eg., people taking the time to identify duplicate works and authors, or contribute photos), the dynamic nature of a thing evolving, is a tribute to humanity and the hard work of the LT folks. Why keep library cataloguing in the hands of librarians? For an example of this, see the thread on adding books. The idea discussed is the integrity of records when you have the same book with many records (some good, some b0tched) and how to control for them. It's an example of a user's idea being explored by other users who contribute refinements to the solution. It's not clear that LT has or will adopt the improvements, but they are clearly aware that duplicate records is a problem. 

Thing 10: Image Generators

I made this banner at Image Chef. I found Image Chef to be the easiest to navigate of the image-generating sites.

Flickr Toys: Saw in Flickr assignment. Made a trading card of my favorite librarian.

Generator Blog: Generates you-name-it: jokes, headlines, posters, band names, jacket messages, boat names, place names (eg, English hamlets), Bob Dylan messages--funny, but a waste of time.

Comic Strip Generator: Junkie, a waste of time. A chat room is below image/sign info--it's most of the screen. I could make church signs (is there a big market for this??). This is one of many web rings (a community of web sites; sounds criminal) -- a web ring of image/sign generators.

So I feel like I've been to the carnival, going to all these sites. Glad to be back.

Thing 9. More on RSS.

I did a lot of looking around at RSS without much to show for it. I checked out Google Reader but chose Bloglines to set up an account in. I found Bloglines's search tool the easiest to use in finding feeds. Examples: I put in the search term, "interest rates" and chose a feed from among many (NYT Interest Rates), then did another search, "School Library Journal" and got SLJ Breaking News. Easy! I have added both to my feeds on Bloglines for my real-life needs as I mentioned in my last post. 

I looked at most on the list of recommended links on the assignment page. Comments on a few: I found BlogPulse a waste of time. Why? When I put in "School Library Learning 2.0" as my search term, I got recent stuff on religion in Sci Fi (by a fundamentalist blogger named Jeff the Baptist, from Delaware). Earlier stuff on the thread was more on-topic, but my time just isn't worth this! I did the same search ("School Library Learning 2.0") in Google Reader and had fun reading hits. I felt much more linked to the bloggers. I found Syndic8 wild and woolly. Mustn't forget Suprglu. Really fun. Librarians you'd actually want to hang with outside of work.

Thing 8: RSS

RSS = Really simple, stupid. Just kidding. April Fool's!

Once I learned about RSS and how it works, I started to realize that RSS is all around and I have never known how it works or taken advantage of it. An example is my homepage on my browser, Yahoo, which features the headlines from several major newspapers that I selected eons ago when I set up the page. In fact, it can be seen among these feed icons (a little eye candy to entice the reader).

When I realized that RSS allows one to get the headlines without the irksome "noise" of advertising that I see on my homepage, I was overjoyed. I find the visual interruption, the distraction of ads really derails my reading and ability to focus on important information. This is a concern at my school, which is for kids grades 1-8 with language learning challenges, and dyslexia in particular. Working with kids who have special learning needs has made me much more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of my own learning abilities.

My responses to some prompts (in bold) from the assignment page:

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school life? Book review blogs would inform my collection purchases in a new way. SLJ would be a good one--they must use RSS (I've probably seen it advertised in SLJ print version). I found 3 blogs that I added to my feeds: Librarians' Internet Index, Library Web Chic, and The Shifted Librarian, 2 of which were on Bloglines's Top 1000 list. Way to go librarians!

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your personal life?

Maybe I could keep an eye on interest rates so we time the application just right for a loan that we want to take out to do a major home renovation.

How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology? Definitely keeping up with tech developments for libraries and have an impact on the profession.

If you are still reading this, I just found the comment (for the third time, as I've gone over and over the assignment, making sure I've done everything) at the bottom of the assignment page: "Why have a public account? To share blog rolls with others, of course. That's how we keep track of School Library Learning 2.0 participants." And for the third time I've said, "Wow. That's how they read our stuff. Very cool." So thank you for pointing it out and modeling the technology--another great app for RSS!