Thing 23 - Reflection

Well, I am feeling very accomplished, and glad that I spent the time learning these "things"! I did go back and watch the video that we started with, and I have had my eyes opened to the whole idea of students feeling as though they need to "power down" to attend school. The idea that Web 2.0 takes us beyond simply being passive receivers of information is intriguing. We have moved from html, a non-user friendly code which was all about form, to XML, which is a user-friendly platform that is focused not on form but on content. I am also intrigued by the whole question "who will organize this information?", especially as I am a library media specialist. WE - US - I - YOU will organize it, manipulate it and use it, is the answer. I am interested in seeing where this new world will take us. Tagging, done by us and shared with others, is so different from the idea of cataloging as it is done by the authority of the Library of Congress.

I am excited about using what I have learned, but I am also reserving judgement on some of this, as I do not think there has been enough time for us to really see the educational results. I recently read a review of a book called "You are Not A Gadget" that sounded fascinating, and I have ordered it for the high school library. The review states: "Computer scientist and Internet guru Lanier's fascinating and provocative full-length exploration of the Internet's problems and potential is destined to become a must-read for both critics and advocates of online-based technology and culture. Lanier is best known for creating and pioneering the use of the revolutionary computer technology that he named virtual reality. Yet in his first book, Lanier takes a step back and critiques the current digital technology, more deeply exploring the ideas from his famous 2000 Wired magazine article, One-Half of a Manifesto, which argued against more wildly optimistic views of what computers and the Internet could accomplish. His main target here is Web 2.0, the current dominant digital design concept commonly referred to as open culture. Lanier forcefully argues that Web 2.0 sites such as Wikipedia undervalue humans in favor of anonymity and crowd identity. He brilliantly shows how large Web 2.0–based information aggregators such as Amazon.com—as well as proponents of free music file sharing—have created a hive mind mentality emphasizing quantity over quality. But he concludes with a passionate and hopeful argument for a new digital humanism in which radical technologies do not deny the specialness of personhood." -Publishers Weekly, January 2010.

Bottom line: we do need to explore and continue to use technology WHERE it makes sense, not just because it is there.

Thing 21 - Wikis

I have always been a bit confused about the difference between blogs and wikis- but I guess it is just that the wiki is more "group-owned" and the blog has generally one author who receives comments from others. I guess another way to describe a wiki is that is is like a google doc, except that it is a website instead of a document. Again, as with podcasts, I don't see myself searching out wikis, but it is useful to see what is out there and what potential there might be for my creating one on my own. I looked at the educational wiki search engine, and was disappointed to see that they were organized in alphabetical order by title (NOT useful!!!), although a keyword search could be used to narrow the search. In my exploring, I did see one obstacle that I first witnessed on the Arbor Heights elementary school site- when looking through discussion and history, it became very apparent that one guy is handling most of the work. It seems that in many cases, it may start out as a collaborative idea, but may end up being on the shoulders of one person. The wikihow site seemed silly to me- perhaps it was just the ones that I clicked on, like "how to get your boyfriend to read". I sometimes cannot get past my need for authority on the site: I keep thinking, "who wrote this?!" I did see a nice collaboratiove project on the comparison of the seasons of the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere with an American School and a New Zealand school: this, it would seem, is an ideal use of the wiki.

Thing 20 - Podcasts 2

I took a look at the Education Podcast Network, and clicked into Secondary school podcats. My complaint here is that the titles are not helpful, and they are not organized by subject, so I feel as though I am blindly clicking in (also, several were not available when clicked on). There were also only 20 listed under Secondary schools. I then tried Podcast Alley. I was pleased to see that it as possible, as you suggested, to browse by genre- however, under Government, for instance, it showed 18 podcasts, but once you entered the gov't section, there was actually only one. The fact that they are not specifically created for educational purposes, as you mentioned, creates another obstacle here. In thinking about podcasts, it seems to me that I might not be specifically searching for podcasts. The point is, if I come across them, for instance, within our subscription databases, I will not be intimidated. I used my itunes to subscribe to three NPR podcasts. I am getting on a plane to L.A. tomorrow and will listen to: NPR's Culturetopia, NPR's Books and NPR's StoryCorps! It was Easy Peasey, as they say..... I can also see the benefit in learning to create one, and will try to do so this year, using Audacity, to perhaps create a booktalk for an English class.

Thing 19 - Podcasts

Can I first of all say that I just LOVE the CommonCraft videos- they are so perfect in every way! Absolutely anyone can understand the Plain English videos. They should have them for everything.....I could not get the Great Educational Podcast videos to work, so I just went on to explore podcasts. (It is, as we speak 90+ degrees outside, and it is 4pm- I am tired and hot. Why am I telling you this? You'll see...) What a pleasure to choose an NPR podcast, and stretch out on the couch in the AC with my eyes closed! I listened to NPR's Culturetopia, http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=89697153 and loved it. I plan on subscribing to a few, and figuring out how to download them onto my Ipod, which I have so far used only for music. I also checked out the vocab minute from the Princeton Review: http://feeds.feedburner.com/princetonreview -that is DEFINITELY going on my library homepage! I also listened to booktalks for students at http://nancykeane.com/booktalks/podcast_list.htm What a great way to have students recommend books to each other- I am going to start podcasting with English classes this year! I then listened to an Internet Safety podcast http://www.internetsafetypodcast.com/ with the author of a book called Ethics in the Information Age. It was 40 mins. long, though, and I can't imagine teachers sitting that long without something to look at. (Teachers are the worst audiences, in my opinion!) This is another great Thing as far as I am concerned!

Thing 18 - Slideshare

I will definitely do some digging here and see what may be helpful to use with information literacy/research classes (boy, Shift Happens is OVERWHELMING!!!!). I did creat an account and plan to upload a powerpoint that I use with Public Speaking classes on how to be a good presenter. In the meantime, I will embed a popular slideshow with some incredible paper sculptures....perhaps this is what we will do with all of the paper that we no longer use since we collaborate online with Web 2.0 :)

Astonishing Paper Sculptures from Jeff Nishinaka

View more presentations from Nubia ..

Thing 17 - Productivity Tools

As I mentioned in another post, I use LibraryThing and love it. However, I have private settings. I think it would be more useful to make my tags and bookmarks public- perhaps I could link to them within my research pathfinders. I think I'm ready to take that next step.

As for trying new things, I signed up for Remember the Milk, which bills itself as a task organizer. I loved the title, to start with! I am feeling overwhelmed with getting one daughter off to college this weekend while we also pack for a trip to visit my other daughter in L.A.- I thought that two task lists would help me feel less overwhelmed- NOT TRUE! The site is not very user-friendly- you have to dig for a "how to", and the FAQ page went on forever- no thanks!

I then tried Trailfire, thinking that it would be useful for classes to create an annotated web trail. I just didn't find the site useful. It was not easy to search existing trails by subject area- they did have a tag cloud, but there were some really bizarre (as well as really obscure) tags. I did click into a few random ones, including a Webkins trail- there was nothing new or unusual, only 5 sites and one was Wikipedia. I can't see how I would send students here.

Maybe I'm just not having an open mind, but, with all the new tools I am learning, I don't see the need for looking for more- it's interesting to know so many are out there, but I feel as though my plate is full as it is. I am interested, though, to see several whiteboard presentation site links- I do not presently have a whiteboard in the library, but in the future would like to see that added- in that case, I will explore these. (Matt- it would be good to keep this blog up and running so that we can have access to these links down the line!) I also hope to utilize the calendar options in our district email this year- so the need for additional calendar productivity tools would not make sense. It makes better sense to utilize the ones that we have in place with district email.

Thing 16 - Google Docs

I have used google docs with our collaborative work on WITLS, so I have some practice with it. In order to practice, I uploaded a file with interview questions that I would share with a group of people on an interview committee, asking them to review the questions and add other pertinent questions. I can see this being a great help, and will definitely use it more now that I am comfortable with it. I created a spreadsheet of favorites, and shared it with my family members. Not sure who I'll hear back from- if they do not have a google account, can they access it and edit? If they are too busy to stop and create an account, they may not get right back to me. We'll see....
As for using this in school, it's a no-brainer for committee work. I also will try using the Windows 2007 feature this year with the Publishing software. The Journalism class uses Publisher to create their newsletters, and I need to get up to speed in order to help them.