Week 7, Thing 17

Today I added a post to the Region One Sandbox and explored California 2.0 Curriculum Connections. Something I have enjoyed in this tutorial is the Wiki experience. Students can participate in the creation and content of a Wiki and teachers can turn Wiki's into group projects over class novels or short story reading. I especially like the interactive nature of this new technolgoy.

Week 7, Thing 16

I explored the library success wiki, the book lovers' wiki, and the sample literary circle wiki. I was especially impressed with the literary wiki because students have the opportunity to hone their technology skills as well as respond in writing about a book they they read in class. I can definitely see the value of this in the public school, where a teacher can grade students according to their understanding of the plot, theme, character, setting, mood, etc., all of which are popular TAKS objectives. A wiki is student centered and interactive.

I can also see from the library success wiki that "vandalism" can occur if someone chooses to provide incorrect information in a wiki. This brings up the question of the the reliability of some wikis, such as Wikipedia. But hopefully internal security measures can be implemented in a school setting to ensure authentic authorship of a wiki post.

Week 6, Thing 15

I read Michael Stephens’ Into a new world of librarianship and the Wikipedia article Library 2.0 about the next generation of librarians and the services they offer patrons. We are quickly approaching the “brave new world” of future libraries: user-friendly, patron-centered, collaborative, interactive facilities that go beyond the four walls of the traditional library: it reaches into cyberspace and the needs of the community. The 21st century learning resource center is not only technologically based, but now patrons help decide the needs and expenditures of their library. What a utopian ideal! Wherever he is, I’m sure Aldous Huxley is smiling.

School libraries, unfortunately, will take longer than public libraries to embrace this notion of a modern, interactive library because of curriculum and funding constraints.

Week 6, Thing 14

I did not like using Technorati. The keyword search, the blog search, and the tags all brought me back to the same page with "Who's Writing About Freepath" as the starting point. And when I clicked on a link within the Library 2.0 parameters, I found the information wasn't particularly useful. I don't see myself using this tool or teaching my staff to use it. Delicious, FD Toys, and Rollyo were far more useful.

Week 6, Thing 13

I created an delicious account at http://delicious.com/jan519 . At first, I didn't see the point in looking at other people's bookmarks, and it almost felt as though I was peering into other people's private internet searches. Then I realized how useful those bookmarks can be if I were doing serious research on an obscure topic. What other people find on the same topic can be extremely helpful in my own research. Now I'm hooked on this social networking tool! I typed castles in Ireland in the search box and found a huge number of sites that can accommodate my curiosity or increase my knowledge on the subject. I hope that this is a website that is not blocked in our district so that I can introduce delicious to our faculty.

Week 5, Thing 12

I created my own Rollyo search site at http://www.rollyo.com/search.html?prevsid=452109&q=library&sid=452109. I included topics of interest to me, especially book lists of popular, up-to-date teen reads. I can access this site easily when I'm about to begin ordering books for the library in September. Furthermore, I can share the site with my vendors in order to acquire the book collection I want for the library.

This tool is useful not only to librarians, but to the teaching faculty as well.

Week 5, Thing 11

I was really intrigued with the Ning network. So much so, in fact, that I created my own link: http://tigerbookclub.ning.com/ in which I set up a method for students to participate in a book talk about popular middle school novels. I made it private in order to comply with district online safety standards and I plan to create the invite list once I collaborate with the campus reading teachers in late August. Ning is a wonderful tool for teachers.

I also visited the Web 2.o Awards website where I explored http://www.biblio.com/ which provides a method of ordering rare and out-of-print books. I found this site particularly useful because there are so many hard-to-find books that I want.