Learning

All the lessons have been completed and now I must tell what I have learned. There was a lot to learn and one thing I learned is that there is a lot to learn--nothing is static, things on the internet are always changing and it will take time to learn. I think one thing I learned is that I must take a few minutes each day to investigate things on the internet. It is much like taking time to smell the flower, by taking a walk each day, stopping at the store to talk to people, pausing to look at the sky, slowing down and observing. It seems people use the internet to speed up their lives and for that it is convenient but to appreciate it fully takes time. I think it could become addictive, information overload, isolating from the world, but for every good thing there are bad things that go with it.
Overall it will take discipline, discipline to log on and learn something, investigate something each day and also discipline to not spend too much time looking at a screen and spend time looking at the world around me.

WIKI

I logged on to the South Dakota Library challenge today to see if I was behind. I haven't looked at it for awhile--busy time of the year. I was pleased to find out I wasn't too far behind. I looked at the lesson about Wikis and went to a few of the sites. I am familiar with Wikis but never really knew how they worked. I know from experience that the Wiki the students use at school, the encyclopedia, is often full of partial or misinformation, however it is a good place to start. After I read up on Wkis I realized why the site the students use is full of partial and misinformation. It is user driven. So, that is the advantage and also the disadvantage of Wikis. On the American Library Assoication web-site there is a Wiki for the upcoming Mid-Winter Conference in Denver. I will be attending that so I was interested to see what was on there. Now I understand why some of the areas in the schedule are filled in and others are not. The advantage of using Wikis for this type of information is that it can be changed quickly and easily, added to by people responsible for the event and easily accessed.
I saw on one web-site a Wiki that had been vandalized--the disadvantage. I guess people had changed information or added information inappropriate to the site. Even though this is a disadvantage there are ways to insure this does not happen--securing the site with registration is one way.
All in all Wikis are fun, useful tools to share information quickly and easily.

Widget

In taking this Library challenge and doing the activities, I have found so many things on the internet, some I knew were there just haven't used them and others I had no idea what they were. I recently discovered "widgets" which are fun and interesting tools. I use one on my computer at home for the Coke Rewards. It is on the desktop, so when I want to add a code it is there without logging onto internet then the website. I thought I would try this one from Schoastic to see what it would do. Here goes:

MySpace/ Facebook/Social Networking

I have had a MySpace profile set up for several years and and account on Facebook for about a year. I am more familiar with MySpace and use it more often as I write blogs on there and read others blogs, keep up with friends and have added several new authors on my friends list. I haven't uses Facebook much but do keep up with friends there too usually with just one or two line comments. My children say they like Facebook better.
I have seen how these social networking sites are very beneficial but like anything else can be abused, with cyber bullying, fake profiles etc. However, on the positive side it is a great way to network. Think about the recent election. Each candidate had a MySpace profile. Information about the candidate was on their profile and it could be accessed by millions of people as they stayed in touch with family and friends. New authors can find people on MySpace who might be interested in their books, librarians or teachers. It is like going to a giant party to make contacts and shaking a few hands, passing out business cards, and getting acquainted.
There is a wide range of use for these social networking sites. In fact a person could get tangled up in them and spend hours. It just depends on how social you are.

Google DOCs

Google Docs can be very valuable. I have had frustrating experiences with trying to figure out how to save a document in one place and download it somewhere else. Without a flash drive a document can be writeen and saved in Google and accessed from any computer any where. This is particularly helpful in our school setting. We have students who will type a document at home on a Word version newer than the school version, save it to a flash drive only to discover it will not open on the school computer. Imagine the frustration! I have typed something at school and want to edit at home and usually I will e-mail the document to myself. This is what students do sometimes but, since they are not supposed to access e-mail at school this presents a dilema for them. First they have to get permission to access e-mail then copy and paste document, etc. I am glad that this lesson was next on the list, because I learned a lot from this.
Just this week we found a lost kitty. I had a picture on my computer of the cat but no printer. My husbands computer had a printer but no picture, so instead of using e-mail, I typed the lost poster in Google, inserting the picture, and then accessed it on my husband's computer to print. It worked like a charm. The kitty is still with us, I think we will adopt him since no one claimed him.

Video

Videos--How can they be used.? I experienced that just a few weeks ago in observing a class. The teacher used You Tube to play clips from Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream" speech as a prompt for a writing assignment.
I sent this YouTube video about homelessness in our city to several teachers who are responsible for our annual food drive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNwyk_bVlsg

What a great tool to use for clips of shows, news, speeches, etc.
I realize this tool can be used in a derogatory way and because of this YouTube is blocked from some places but for us it works well.

I will have to think how to use this tool in the library.

Podcasts

http://www.mediafly.com/Podcasts/Feeds/NPR_Hourly_News_Summary

Podcasts have already become part of our family at home and I could see a real benefit of them in helping patrons at a library. I work at a school, and the use of media devices by students is discouraged during the school day. However, links, web-sites etc could be used in reports, to enhance presentations both by teachers and students. I spend time researching and give infomation to the teachers about new books and media so, I could also find podcasts to support curriculum such as presidential speeches, news reports, culture, etc. I could see a benefit using podcasts this way.

Lesson 4 was all about Flickr. I had no idea there were so many things out there to do. It is no wonder these time saving devices take up so much of our time! I think it won't be long before people are taking vacations and just exploring the virtual world.
As I looked at some of the things that could be done I saw so much potential for use in a library. How fun to make READ posters, or motivational posters using your own images. How fun to make trading cards of your friends, sharing photos much like we used to do in grade school on picture day, cutting out our small pictures and giving them to friends with a message on the back. Do you have anyone famous in your drawer of pictures?
After viewing a lot of those things I am exhausted and so will quit for now. Suffice it to say, there is a lot that can be used in the library when it comes to Flicker apps!

I have been playing with Flickr the last few days trying to figure it all out. It seems to be fairly easy to work with IF you know what you are doing. I have not learned all about it yet so am having a bit of frustration trying to get pictures from one place to another. It is not too complicated though once you learn where everything is. We used to take pictures with a camera, take the film out, take the film to the store for developing and in a few days pick them up. After that they either ended up in a drawer, a box or if I was motivated in a photo album. This is much the same only with digital images. Pictures are taken, downloaded to a computer and Flickr acts kind of like the drawer or the box. When you want to share the picture you can pull it out and put in on a blog or some other site for sharing.
I chose this picture of my kitty Salem to share in this blog. I had a bag sitting by the door with my book in it to take back to school the next day and he crawled in. I couldn't resist taking his picutre with the Breaking Dawn book. This is a very popular series at our school now and so I downloaded the picture to my e-mail and accessed it at school so I could use it to make book marks and a poster that said "Curl up with a good book". It was fun and the students loved it.

Pictures, blogs, Flickr account have so much potential for use and it is fun, but, alas, it takes time!

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

The new assignment is to think about these things as you blog:
What do you like about RSS and newsreaders? This is very convenient, just log on to one place and there is a list of news or blogs that have changed. I like this because sometimes I forget to check certain places or I can't think of the name of something I was following and this way it is always there.
How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your library or personal life? I can see that this would be quite beneficial with reading groups, to keep up with who is reading what, libraries can share information quickly and easily and patrons can know quickly what is new.
How can librarians or library support staff use RSS or take advantage of this new technology? i think I answered this question in the previous one!
Which tool for finding feeds was easiest to use? The easiest tool was the one on the tool bar that let me know that the site I was on was RSS
What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds? Some sites had an area which indicated RSS or share feature.
Find any great sources we should all add to our feed reader? I am still learning so could not answer this yet.

Create a Blog

How easy was that! I began using computers way back when everything was text, and all the commands had to be written out to draw a box, add a picture (usually just a series of symbols in a design), delete and add, copy and paste. DOS commands were all we used. Fortunately for the school where I am, I was familiar with the DOS commands because our library program from the 80's is a DOS program, so no problem for me. I just had to brush up on the commands a bit.

Anyway, with just a few clicks here and there, voila, an online diary of sorts. I can see using this in a variety of ways:
staying in touch with fellow librarians
recommending books to patrons
using a network of blogs for book discussions
book reviews
learning about new technologies

So many things to discover in the cyber world. I have only begun!

Lifelong Learner

This is a test post for the Challenge. Although I have been blogging for a few years now on MySpace, I have never set up an account anywhere else, so this is new. I enjoyed the lesson on being a Lifelong Learner. The easiest thing for me is to accept responsibility for my own learning. I read and study things that are interesting and in so doing I am learning about a lot of different things, one thing leads to another. The hardest thing is to actually set a goal. I do things, learn things but without direction, so often times I am all over the map, with pieces of stuff everywhere. This is a good exercise to stay focused