Am I a Techy Now?

Nope...not yet. But I am A LOT closer. This has been a great crash course on many different ideas, technologies, software, programs, media, etc that are available to individuals and can be specifically used for educational purposes. It was fast and furious but effective as an introduction. Now the responsibility falls on me to expound on the groundwork created while doing the Learning 2.0 assignments. I especially enjoyed learning more about social bookmarking, Skype, image generators, Google docs, and tag clouds. They were areas I either knew little about, learned the most, or can see an immediate use in my library. So maybe my next blog should be called "Confessions of a Librarian Who is Still Learning" because that is exactly what I plan to do!!!

Google Docs - TOTALLY AMAZING!

I love Google docs. I've been using the cloud for awhile for shared documents but I have never used the "form" option and it was SO MUCH FUN (and very useful...of course:). I was curious how you could receive results from the survey and BAM, a spreadsheet is made for you in correlation with the survey. How cool is that?!? I just checked, and to date, I only have a few responders but the concept is so mind blowing that I could sing...lalala!!!! Use it! Love it! And Use it AGAIN!

Fun Survey

Word Clouds are beautiful!

Word (Tag) clouds are so much fun! I love them. They are easy, quick, but impressive looking. The students think they are great and you can use them for anything and everything: advertising a genre, book characters, theme, mission statement, report information, etc. The most common site used to create tag clouds is Wordle, but I like Tagxedo better so I posted an example I did on the latter using the same topic as my embedded video: Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

Pod casting?

So what is pod casting? It is basically a DVR for your favorite radio (audio) programs. You can pick and choose what you want to listen to, save on it on your device, and listen when ever you want. I found a great podcast called "Book talks Quick and Simple". A middle school librarian, Nancy Keane, produces book talks and you can subscribe to hear her every week. The podcast I listened to is based on the book "Chicken Chicken Duck" by Nadia Krilanovich. It was cute and to the point. I could get hooked to a simple method like this to get information on new books that come out or any topic that interests me.

Just as a side note, I am addicted to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me pod casts from NPR and listen to their Saturday broadcast, through out the week. There are so many resources and options when it comes to multimedia.

YouTube Book Trailers - Cinder

I chose to post a book trailer about the YA novel Cinder by Marissa Meyer because I see that being a great use of YouTube in a library website/blog/or wiki. This is a quick and exciting way to interest students about books that are coming out. Also, this book trailer was professionally done, but many are done by average readers, including students. They then can be posted and viewed by their peers. I think that is pretty fantastic and I can see other students getting excited about not only seeing what others think but creating their own book trailers.

Why Tweet?

So, if you haven't guessed from my previous posts, I'm not a huge fan of social media. It can be a little too time consuming and wasteful in my opinion, so I just avoid it altogether. But in a school library (or certain settings) I can see the value. Especially if you are dealing with high school students who LIVE for social media. This is a great way to connect with them on a level they are familiar with and gives you great repertoire for being "with it". I could see sending tweets as reminders for various events or just little blurbs about new books or such, being a very effective way to reach out to the students.

Google Reader Fan!

I have played around a little with Google Reader but found myself being sucked into a time consuming past time with so many family members and friends blogging, so I dropped it all together. But now that I am trying it again in a professional sense, I can see what a great tool it is so as to be informed of new ideas, books, trends, technology, etc... that are critical to the job of a librarian.

The two blogs I added to my reader are Kiss the Book and Free Technology for Teachers. We all now know about Cindy Mitchell and her blog with book reviews, but I wanted to add it after going to UELMA and participating in her class. It was great and I can see it being a wonderful aid to librarians who are trying to decide on book purchases. We can't possibly read every book so this is a great detailed look at many many YA and MG books. The Free Technology blog caught my eye because we are always looking for new and innovative ways to present ideas to our students. On the first page, the author introduces a way to take an interior tour of the White House using Google maps! How cool is that?!? So I am looking forward to keeping up with these blogs and many more.

School Library 2.0

In an article found in the School Library Journal by Christopher Harris titled School Library 2.0 the author talks about the need to be innovative and lead the way in a school when it comes to harnessing and using technology so that the Library continues to be a center of learning despite inevitable changes in the way education is done.

I very much enjoyed the ideas he presented about how librarians are incorporating blogs, social media, book talks, and book sharing into their libraries. I especially liked his comment that libraries need to put stickers on everything saying "Library Powered" to mimic Intel's sticker "Intel Inside" so that everyone would think about how essential a library is to the learning process.

Some of the ideas seem more appropriate for high school and middle school libraries so a little less applicable to me and my school but still, some great things to think about and I agree that we have to be be flexible and knowledgeable about the techno trends or we will be left behind, which is a disservice to our students who need to be educated about the digital world. Although I can't see applying all the examples at my school I could see introducing and helping upper elementary students create book trailers, pod casts, and online book reviews to be a lot of fun! And I have a feeling that anything that involves a computer and creativity will be a hit!!!

Trying out Technorati

This is a blogging world. Only a few short years ago, Blogs were a newly emerging form of self publication. Now they are everywhere. Anyone who has an opinion, a passion or merely a desire to share, can create a blog and be connected to millions of people. So how do we keep track of these hundreds of thousands of blogs and find those that are the most reliable and interesting to us? Technorati is one way to do so!

I found Technorati a great site to look up blogs by post topics, blog title, and category. I am a cupcake lover! So the first think I looked up was....cupcakes! When I did a search by post title, I found some great recipes for Boston Cream Cupcakes (which look sinful:) and Nutella Cupcakes (YUM!) both at The Kitchn (yes that is spelled correctly) -which happens to be a highly rated blog site when you look in the "blog directory" under 'living' and then 'food'.

When I put "cupcakes" into the search under blog titles, I got totally different results such as Cupcakes Take the Cake and Baking Bites. I was less impressed with these results because these blogs have more commentary and fewer recipes. So I found what I really wanted by doing a post search. That might not always be the case but for this example, that is what I found.

I also found it interesting that the most well represented categories were in the areas of books, small business, food, home, art, family, and info tech. I will definitely be looking at the book blogs, food blogs, home blogs and family blogs so I seem to fit well into popular mainstream blogging:).

Lets Diigo!

I saw the term "social bookmarking" and dreaded what was to come, but despite my reservations, Diigo turned out to be a very effective and almost fun:) way to bookmark digital information. I don't have multiple devices so the option of sharing between computers, ipad and phones was not what enticed me. It was the organization, detailed bookmarking, snapshots, highlighting, and (my favorite) sticky notes that hooked me. I spent several hours looking and playing around. It actually took me a few minutes to figure out where my notes had gone after typing them in (look for tack in upper left hand corner:).

I also looked at some the popular book marks to see if there was any interesting topics that had similar tags to what I had been adding. They were great and easy to find. My only complaint is that the comments were mostly garbage, advertising for other sites and putting links to lead people away. So I was not impressed but that is a reflection of the users and not the program (which is awesome!).

What I envision using Diigo for is mostly for organizing myself. Since I'm new to the profession and to education in general, this is great way to keep track of the wonderful information that is out there to help and inspire educators (new and old). It also allows me to connect with others looking for similar ideas and content so I can find what I'm looking for that much sooner.

Do I see myself using it in my library or on my wiki? Not yet but maybe someday as I understand the program better and see a clear use for it in our school library. But until then, I will continue to take advantage of the benefits of organizing a disorganized person...me!

Image Generator UPDATE!

Well, my last picture was pathetic so I did so more tinkering and found out why! I used too small of a picture. So here is my new image and it is MUCH better. If I had only read the information better, I would have learned what the recommended image size was, so let that be a lesson to read all of the instructions before jumping into something new.:) Just FYI, the site I used before has changed its name to www.typoeffects.com.

My Library - Order Rules!

So, do you want to keep track of your books? Get tips from others about books you might like based on your current collection? Have fun building a virtual library while connecting with other book lovers? Then Library Thing is YOUR thing!

I've heard of Good Reads but this is my first introduction to Library Thing. I'm excited to organized and keep tabs of my book collection this way and I can see how useful it would be (and addicting:). I started putting in book titles and couldn't stop. But that's great and speaks to the ease of using this program and easily finding books that you own by doing a quick search.

I can see this being a useful tool for school librarians so that they can encourage their students to read and share the books they enjoy in this way. It could also be a way to promote books by showing students what is in your personal library.

So do you want to see what books I liked so much I bought? Take a peek to the right and check out some of my favorites!

Image Generators

I had fun messing around with some image generators (websites/programs that you can take a picture or text and make something unique). I found one at www.black-text.com . You download a picture and put in a text (I wrote "Come to the Library") and it will convert the picture into words. Mine is not as dynamic as the examples given on the main page of the website and I tried several different pictures, but maybe their is a trick that I haven't figured out. Oh well, here is my image. See if you can guess what the picture is.



Congrats! You got it right if you thought it was a stack of books!

Skypin' up a Storm

So what is up with Skype? Everyone talks about it, everyone is using it, is it really that cool? Yes! It is!!!

I just barely got my own Skype name and am trying it out for the first time on a personal level, but I have seen it in use several times in a school setting and the possibilities are endless. My school Skyped with Tom Angleburger, author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda and Darth Paper Strikes Back. It was directed to the middle school kids and they LOVED talking to him. They brought their lunch into the library and the librarians had everything set up to Skype and do other activities along the theme of his books. It was fun, informative, entertaining and the best part....FREE! Gotta love Skype.

We are setting up a future author visit through Skype with Michael Buckley, author of The Sisters Grimm series and the kids are very excited.

Beyond author visits (as if you need more incentive) I can see other opportunities in a library to utilize Skype. One such would be interviews with professionals or other classrooms. Lets say we are doing a report about Russia, why not Skype with someone who is there and can tell us more than any book or article can portray. What a memorable thing for students and teachers. I can't imagine very many other activities to be more powerful than to talk with someone who knows first person about the subject at hand.

The "why" of Wiki's

So I'm learning about Wiki's and its quite interesting. I can see the use and application of a wiki but it was initially hard to get into the spirit of what place a wiki had in general education. Can a wiki really help educators and specifically librarians? Then I saw some of the nominated wikis for "best in education" such as The Daring Librarian and Resources for History Teachers and I started to see some of the amazing things a collaboration of students, teachers, professors and other interested parties could create. I was impressed.

The problem is, I'm not entirely sold. I think wikis look very erratic, unprofessional and disorganized but that is coming from a layman's perspective. We are, however, a very visual society and make judgement calls on websites all the time and probably within 10 seconds of landing on the page. So if a site does not impress me instantly, I rarely stay to sift through and find the "diamonds" that lie in wait. So maybe that is what my goal will be in creating my own wiki (which is, by the way, http://truetothebook.wikispaces.com/) to put together the most aesthetically pleasing, functional, intuitive, information packed wiki possible. Good luck to me!

New York City

I love the NYC public library. It is breathtaking, historic, tranquil (after having been on the streets of New York:) and it is one of my favorite places.

7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners

According to Lori Reed of PLCMC there are 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learning. I have always loved the phrase "lifelong learning" because it sums up our very existence as human beings. What sets us apart is the ability to continually gain knowledge and then use it regardless of age, situation, or any other supposed hindrances. Life is ALL about learning and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can have some fun. The saying goes, "The more I learn, the less I know" and I think its true because as I grow and gain knowledge, the more I realize how much there is still to learn. So the habits go as follows:

1- Begin with the end in mind.
I think I do this fairly well because without a goal in mind, I would find learning more challenging because there would be no direction. I pick up my violin to learn a new piece because I have the goal to play at an event but overall, I know that my end goal is to practice so I can become more proficient. I take classes so I can be qualified to work at I job I will love such as in a school library, and along the road, I can learn as much as I can to better prepare myself.

2- Accept responsibility for your own learning
I absolutely agree with this. Too often people have complained to me about age or money or time being a hurdle that keeps them from learning. Anyone can learn and the opportunities are endless, even when we think there are none. There is never an excuse for letting life or our learning experience become stagnant. All one has to do is open a book, go to a city council meeting, hike on a nature trail, turn on the Internet, etc and we will find more knowledge than we can possible intake in a lifetime.

3- View problems as challenges
I flunk at this one. If I come to a problem, I usually mope a bit (depending on how big the problem is) and wonder "why me", compare myself to others and think that I have terrible luck or just get plain frustrated. I eventually get to the point that I can look on these "challenges" in a more positive light, but that is definitely not my first reaction.

4- Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
I feel I have confidence in myself as a learner because I figure can eventually (given enough time:) figure anything out, but like most people, when you initially dive into subject matter you know little about (such as the theories and methods of teaching) it is hard to stay on top of the discussion when you are lost in the jargon.

5- Create your own learning toolbox
This is something I need to work on, and maybe we all do. It is a never ending task to gain and hone the skills/tools that will help us learn better. But maybe the point is to simply realize we need a "toolbox" to effectively learn and we can keep adding to and taking away as we progress on our journey to knowledge.

6- Use technology to your advantage
I am still a novice in many ways to all things technological. I am more comfortable that my grandmother (not saying much:) but I feel a little behind the times. I don't have a camera on my laptop, I don't use a smart phone... I just barely added texting to my cell phone package, I casually use and check my email rather than get constant updates, and I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account (gasp!) but I can see how learning and understanding about these things can better me as a person even if I choose not to participate in them fully.

7- Teach/Mentor others
This is a great one and I hope we all do this. Its so great to share what we have learned even if it is calling up and friend and telling them about a great recipe you found or getting others excited about a book you read by writing a review. These are all great ways to teach and share with others. What good is the knowledge we gain and cherish if we don't share it with others?

7 1/2- Play!
ESSENTIAL! Knowledge and learning is fun! Enjoy it. Learning doesn't have to be scary or intimidating. We do it everyday whether we know it or not, so my not make a conscious choice to do it well and have a great time along the way?!?