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.