Reflection

I have to say that this has been a good use of my time this summer. Web 2.0 is not the mystery to me that it was in the past. I wish every librarian in my district had participated. I like the idea of exploring these sites on my own rather than sitting in workshops. My favorite thing was Facebook since I had already discovered it. My least favorite thing was probably Library Worm. I enjoyed discovering Library Thing and Delicious and plan to keep using these. I set up two accounts for Delicious and hope to be able to share bookmarks with colleagues when school starts again. I wish Goodreads had been on here. I know teachers that are already using it successfully in their classrooms. I've already established an account there, it has book discussions, and a place to keep track of all the books you've read.

Thing 22

We were not required to do the 23 things. I felt like it was something I needed because I always feel like I'm a beat behind when it comes to technology. I know that there are a couple more librarians in my district who are doing it too. It would be great to adapt this for the other librarians in the district as well as for the teachers in my school. However, I don't feel comfortable enough to be the one to adapt it. I've learned a lot but I've struggled too. I just don't feel like I have a handle on all of it yet.

Podcasts

Being a very visual person, I'm not fond of audio books. I have to say I feel the same way about podcasts. I much prefer videos and don't know why people wouldn't prefer to see and hear information rather than just hearing it. I know that there are teachers at my school that use podcasts successfully so I can understand that there is a purpose for them. I can see using them for information or short booktalks, but my attention span can't deal with some of the longer podcasts I found. So I listened to the shorter ones. I had high hopes for the booktalks I found but frankly wasn't overwhelmed or tempted to go check the books out. The audio quality was good though. Even so, I can't imagine subscribing to any of the podcasts I listened to today.

You Tube

Thing 20 was a fun assignment. I love You Tube. I found a wide variety of library-related videos from book cart drills to book trailers to speed knitting in the library. I watched informative videos on Tex Share and the K-12 databases. One orientation video I saw seemed long in length but short on practical information. It was mainly 4 minutes of shots of the library with a brief history thrown in. I do think the orientation idea is a good one though if it includes basic procedures and rules for your library that your students will need to follow all year. I think my favorite videos are the book trailers and this is something I would might like to get the kids to do with me next year. Another fun thing my students would enjoy on You Tube are the author interviews. What a great way to put a voice and face to their favorite authors. I wish there were more.

Google Docs

I was not aware of this google feature. I successfully sent myself a link to a document. The laptop I use at home does not have Word on it so I love the idea that I can go to Google Docs and generate documents and store or share them there. This is a feature I will probably use in the future.

Wiki

I use Wikipedia all the time. I realize there is a lot of controversy about the accuracy of the information but I find it an extremely useful starting point for research and as a source for quick information. Before this exercise, however, I had never clicked on the discussion button before. Very interesting, I must say. Right now I am reading The Stolen One by Suzanne Crowley and as it has to do with Katherine Parr, her article is the one I looked up for this Thing. One of the interesting things I discovered when I clicked the discussion button was a heated controversy over the spelling of her name. Now, my question is can literally anybody edit and add to Wikipedia, even me?

I set up my wiki page with only a little trouble. I didn't realize the subpage needed to have a name unique from everybody else's. Once I went back and read the comments and discovered this crucial bit of information, I was able to create my 3 sub-pages of more than anyone really wants to know about me.

LIBWORM

I did not find much of value in this particular thing. There is way too much information on here and not enough that looks interesting to me. Also, some of it was out of date like the post about the Twilight movie coming out and this came up on the first page of results. When I clicked on Web 2.0 I got a lot of foreign language entries. Then there are the pages and pages of results. I just don't have time for this website. I thought some of the book reviews I found were interesting, but I can book reviews in many other places. I may try the Worm again some day if there is something specific that I am looking for. But just browsing, I wasn't impressed.

Library Thing

Now this is a site that I love. I've been playing on it for half the day now. This was probably the easiest site to join. Put in a username and password and you're in. I started out by adding books I own. This alone could become an obsession. Let's see how long it takes me to put all the books in my personal library into Library Thing. Then I joined a couple of groups and posted some comments. I love the idea of a group for book lovers. I want to put a plug in here for goodreads. I love this website and would encourage everybody to check it out. I have teacher friends who are using this site with their students. Anyway, it's two thumbs up for Library Thing. Again, I don't know how much time I'll have to devote to it though.

Can you Digg it?

I'm not sure I dig Digg. The first story I tried to view shut my computer down causing me to question the safety of Digg. I'm not one to give up that easy so I tried Digg again on my laptop the next day and was able to look at several stories. I will say that Digg is interesting but I don't really see it as something I will use all that often. I chose not to join Digg at this time but I could change my mind later so I can Digg things.

Thing 14 - Delicious

This website seems like a great idea. Finally, I can keep all my bookmarks on one site that I can access from any computer. Every year they come through and reimage all our computers and I have to save my bookmarks on a flash drive or lose them. Now I have a permanent place for them. I like the feature that allows you to choose which bookmarks you want to share and which you prefer to keep private. There are a lot of tag options and that may prove to be confusing down the road when I have more bookmarks saved on this site and the editing and organizing may be time consuming at first but this seems like a very useful site. I am wondering about a couple of things though. Will this website be blocked at school? I wouldn't see why it would be but so many things are. I guess I'll find out the next time I am at work. My next thought is whether people open more than one account, one for work and one for home. I have tons of favorites on my school computer that would be good to share with other librarians and teachers but I wouldn't necessarily want to share my personal bookmarks. So next time I am at school I am going to see about making another account and downloading the favorites that I have there so I can share. To see the bookmarks I imported and added go to http://delicious.com/sunshine1128

Tagging

Tagging sounds like assigning keywords to me, like an index. I like the idea of using real language instead of being confined by a list of subject headings although I can also see the other side of it when you don't have uniformity. I think there is a place for both in the library.

Twitter

Well, I have been wondering about Twitter for a while now and now I have my own account. I signed up to follow some celebrities and news shows, magazines and organizations. As for the last time I heard about Twitter, a commercial for wfaa just came on as I started this blog telling people to Twitter. When I finish this, I will probably go back on Twitter and start following them. I hear it all the time, at least once a day. I'm still not clear on all the ins and outs or what Twitter's relevancy in my life is going to be, but I have now taken that first step.

Thing 11

I already have an IM account through my yahoo email. However, I'm just not that into it. I do chat on Facebook and that's almost the same thing, right? I started to peruse the article on abbreviations and was overwhelmed. That list will be best used as a reference. I can't say for sure why I don't like IMing or texting. I know on Facebook, I like chatting with my oldest son, but with everybody else, I feel this awkward, when and how do I stop this conversation. I guess I just prefer email because I control the pace, it's not instantaneous.

Thing 10

I'm happy to be in the double digits! Thing 10 is ning. I watched the video and read the article about ning and don't think I will be joining this group. When I was putting in search terms, so many groups came up that I don't think I would have the patience to go through them all. I was also struck by how few members many of these groups had. I'm thinking what's the point. The article raises a lot of issues that would make one think twice about joining this site. I don't think this is the place for me.

More Facebook

I have already joined some groups and added pages to my profile on Facebook but I never really understood the difference between pages and groups until I read this article. This time I became a fan of That's What She Said, John Ritter, Cornelia Funke and Ray Davies. Then I joined the Texas Library Association Members, Fans of Fablehaven and Fans of Sporcle groups. I think the most surprising person I've connected with on Facebook was a neighbor I haven't seen in 45 years. Even though I was 8 when we moved and he is now in his seventies, I still have vivid memories of him. He was such a kind, sweet man and a good friend to my entire family. I'm enjoying catching up with him. When I first joined Facebook, I was fairly obsessed with finding people from my past and frankly, that obsession has not let up a lot. I am finding more and more classmates, relatives and ex-coworkers all the time. And they are also finding me. It's a delightful two-way street. I think my favorite thing is finding former students all grown up with families of their own. Wow, it is hard for me not to think of them as children or teens and there they are with their own children. My favorite story is here the couple that actually met and became friends at my middle school library sleepover, Teen Reading Camp. I did not realize that down the road they had started dating and gotten married until I became friends with both of them on Facebook and put it together. I look forward to all the new old friends I will make on Facebook in the future.

Thing 8 Facebook

I've been waiting for this thing because it's one I am already familiar with. People kept telling me that I needed a facebook account so I finally registered and have been facebooking for several months now and already have over 300 friends. I'm connecting and reconnecting with family members, old neighbors, old and new coworkers, people I went to high school with and former students who are now young adults. It seems like everyday someone new has popped up on Facebook. I read an article that baby boomers are ruining Facebook now for the millennials. Again, we boomers are being marginalized. Instead of looking at it as a great way to bridge the generation gap and bring people together, the reaction is "Horrors, there are older folk on Facebook now. It must be the beginning of the end." I sincerely hope instead of spelling doom for Facebook, it will only strengthen this social networking site. There are many other questions about Facebook for which I don't have answers. I've gotten a couple of weird messages trying to get me to click a link for a video that were not actual sent by the people who it says the messages came from so I'm assuming there is the potential for hackers and viruses that one must be vigilant about. I also worry every time I click apply so I can take a Facebook quiz. What am I actually agreeing to? The privacy issue is a thorny one but information is available about all of us for a fee to anyone who wants to know badly enough anyway. I've had my identity stolen before by someone in a different state who managed to get my social somehow so I'm not too worried about the benign information available on Facebook. All in all, I have to say that at this time I find Facebook to be an incredible opportunity to find lost connections.

Thing 7

Today I watched the video on RSS feeds. I had no idea RSS stood for really simple syndication. I went into google reader and added subscriptions for LISNews, Star Telegram and CNN. This is a really handy way to keep up with news feeds and blogs. I can also see spending hours adding to this site and reading it every day. I am going to have to work on time management when school starts up again.

Thing 6

Today I went into Google Reader and added several new feeds to follow. This is not something that I have done before and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with it to this point. It seems like I could spend a lot of time adding new blogs and reading them. I would need to spend a lot more time learning how to manage them and figure out all the features available on Google Reader.

Thing 5

Okay, here's my cat again. I have to admit this is fun. I was overwhelmed by how many sites there are. I spent a lot of time at the ALA Read generator. I wish I was creative enough to have done a cartoon on comic strip generator. My computer wouldn't let me do wordle without a fight and I'm not enough of a techie to figure out what to do. Image Chef was fun and easy but I couldn't embed my image from the site like I wanted to. I'm intrigued by Word Sift but I'm not sure I've figured out its practical applications yet. All in all, I enjoyed this activity.

Thing 4

These sites are pretty cool. I could spend hours on them. My captioner post is pretty simple but it's a first effort. Big Huge Labs has so much to offer that it's overwhelming. I decided to stick to warholizer and mosaic maker. It took me a long time to get my mosaic made because I couldn't get it to work by uploading from my computer. I had to upload photos to flickr and make it from there. Again with the cats.

Flckr

Apparently, I already have an account with some interesting cartoons and such. I suspect my children did this. Check out my cat:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/19344315@N07/3723594017/

Flickr is cool! I found everything from pictures of libraries to pictures of flowers here. I can see how it could be used in libraries to publicize events or maybe give patrons a tour of the library. I worry about the privacy implications for a school library though. I doubt if we could post pictures of students on Flickr. However, we could certainly post pictures of displays or use Flickr to give a virtual tour. I would have to learn more about how to set up collections on Flickr. I would like to be able to use pictures on Flickr for my animoto book talks but I think I would probably have to contact each photographer which would be cumbersome. I have a colleague who prefers Picasa which I haven't used but will probably check out when school starts again.

Thing 2

Well, I have to say I'm finding all tis a little confusing. Is there a Web 2.0 for Dummies out there I can read or am I making this all harder than it really is? I guess I am a little chagrined by the statement about baby boomers being a dwindling patron group. Yeah, we're all headed for retirement or death anyway, so why bother, right? I don't like living my entire life up to this point as a member of the largest demographic group in the U. S. to now being irrelevant. But that's really beside the point. Even though I'm apparently a fossil now, I still want to try to keep up with what's going on in the library world. Not counting the teachers I work with, my patrons ARE made up of millenials or whatever group 10 - 12-year-olds are and I do want the library to be relevant to them. I really want to be able to blog about books with them and start a virtual book club with them. I'm just not sure what kind of restrictions the district has set up for blogging and if those will be easing soon. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to blog but as a school librarian, I guess I take the concept of summer break seriously.

Book Talk

Well, this is my very first blog so I'm not at all sure what I'm doing. I really hope I can use this spot to talk about books I am reading or have read. I think that would be sweet. Hello to all the other 23 Things participants. I hope to learn a lot.