23 Things, and then some

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Yay!! Twenty-three Xes all in a row!

I signed up for the course because I thought it would be cool, but I also thought I was kind of cheating since I have already learned and used a majority of the tools covered. Well, surprise, I learned even more, and am very enthusiastic about it all. The real challenge lies ahead, of course, in using the tools well and encouraging & teaching others to use them.

I’m already deep into PageFlakes. You can see the page I’ve made here — several “flakes” on the page pull in information from our official school site, which I’m really excited about. We have so much information scattered all over, so this PageFlake page is a way to present scattered information all in one “portal.” The next thing I’m going to do is put a lot of my pathfinders & style guides into a wiki (the school has a site called WikiPi that’s really taking off) and link to those from the PageFlake portal.

I’m so happy to have these tools. I’m setting the PageFlake page as the homepage for the browsers on the library workstations — I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, and when not, I can fix it. I’ve already taken some feedback from a student, which was really helpful. A possible next step is to create a page for the elementary library, which would highlight and link to elementary appropriate resources. Because they’ll be on the same account, both HS & Elem pages will display in tabs on the same web page. Our elementary library is moving buildings next year (boo hoo!) and having our Welcome pages linked in this way will help keep us connected.

I hope the folks taking the class next have as much fun. Bon voyage!

Now that I look at Ning and other “social networking” sites, I realize that I’ve been doing this for several years, in slightly different platforms. I belong to about a thousand Yahoo!Groups and actually manage one, have used Apple forums to troubleshoot my Mac, follow a debate forum for the team, used to belong to a scuba network, and “network” online in a lot of ways. The main difference I see right off is that what I’ve done doesn’t have a personal campsite — Personal Page — as part of the information exchange. For my purposes that’s ok — I prefer not to have my personal stuff on the web so much anyway.

So yes, social networking is very useful. Classroom 2.0 was interesting in a 2.0 way — lots of good information — but I didn’t see much specific to librarians/media specialists. A couple of discussion groups with practically no members, no library or media tags. I am not inspired to jump in.

I can see that this could be useful for groups of educators and/or students to communicate & share information and get to know one another. With all other other tools we’ve learned about this spring, though, there are lots of ways to do all these things. Maybe a network pulls several (but not all) different tools together under one virtual roof? YahooGroups do a lot of those things too (documents, messages, photos, databases, etc)

Again, it’s good to know about Ning, so if I ever have occasion to use it (debate team, maybe??) it’s in the toolbox. Right now, I don’t think of anything I want to do that this would help me accomplish.

Google Docs certainly has its uses. We just used it in a tech committee to collaboratively edit a ’scope and sequence’ list for the technology curriculum, and it worked really well. And, like del.icio.us bookmarks and other 2.0 tools, it’s nice to be able to access a document, a list or anything else you need, from anywhere, without being dependent on a particular machine or software or cookies.

Possible educational uses:

• a solution for students who have different computer operating systems at home, or different/older software (WordPerfect instead of MS Word, for instance)
• data entry for a group research project (for example, a class of students collecting water samples from area creeks and entering data in a single spreadsheet)
• evidence creation for 2-person debate teams

The WP mode seems to me very like a wiki, the difference being that the end publication of a Google WP doc would be to paper, while a wiki is published to the web. It’s good to know it’s there, but right now I’m not rushing to think up ways to use it. When a project comes along for which GoogleDocs would be useful, at least it’ll be in my 2.0 toolbox!

So this is another one of those tools that I heard about a while ago (I think I even read the Will Richardson blog post), but never thought I’d have any reason to give a hoot about. Darn it all, if I wasn’t wrong (Again. Sigh)

The portal idea is wonderful — I can completely see working up a PageFlake page to pull together lots of bits of information and information leads, and use it as the start page for all the library workstations. My initial go at it is here — I’m going to mess with it over the summer and see where I get. I’d like to customize the theme, maybe with a Paideia image and of course colors, and some things I’m not sure are going to work out (the Page2RSS feed for our school News and Events pages, for instance). Also, the things I want to include or link to have to be in good working order as well.

I haven’t found a way to create a Flake that accepts JavaScript, so the Recommended Websites flakes aren’t how I want them (had to work-around with RSS instead of a linkroll). Also, I wish the Flake titles could be customized (as in ‘made bigger so they’ll stand out more’) — the look of the iGoogle page is a bit cleaner to me — but the PageFlake ’sharing’ aspect is great. Nobody has to be logged into an account in order to use the page.

I have to announce that I’m also very proud of myself for the little “Catalog Quicksearch” widget/flake on the page. I snagged the code from our main catalog page and edited it into a little box. I’m hoping it can go on the library pages of the official school website soon.

I’ve had ScribeFire in my Firefox add-ons for while, but (embarrassed chuckle) couldn’t remember why I downloaded it in the first place. This weekend I looked up what it does, and yep, it’s pretty cool.

What ScribeFire does is split your Firefox window in two, with a blog editor in half and a web page in the other. You can write a blog entry (with links, formatting and all) and post to your blog without having to open a separate tab/window, and go back and forth between tabs while you write, copy links & embed code, etc. I did my entry for Thing 19 with ScribeFire, and I’m converted.

Nifty thing about this is that if you have more than one blog, you can set it up with login info for each one, and not have to be logged-in separately to each blog. Here’s more information in a Lifehacker review. If you already love Firefox, give add-ons a try. They are just so cool!

YouTube, oh boy. If ever anyone wanted 15 minutes of fame, this is it (although I think you’d have to have your fame in 2 installations of 10-minutes plus 5-minutes

I don’t use it a lot for school — interesting things come along and I watch and maybe forward them. Many of the videos I use (like the CommonCraft Show) are available in other places too. What I like most about YouTube is that it’s truly international, and is an awesome source for video clips (TV shows, movie trailers, music videos) from other countries (or from the US, for those poor children who don’t have cable TV at their house)

Here are some YouTube videos that relate to library stuff:

• One Minute Critic book reviews:
Dracula, Jasper Fforde and An Abundance of Katherines by John Greene
• Trailer for new Japanese anime series: Library Wars.
• Ninjas of Knowledge (video contest entry) No sensible shoes here!

How to:
do an ollie on a skateboard. My son won’t learn how to ride his board, but he sure does want to do all the tricks.

Things I just like:
• Cheburashka & Krokodil Gena, “Goluboi Vagon“: Soviet claymation
• Cheburasha & Krocodil Gena, “Birthday Song”
• Nu Pogodi, (ну погоди!),Episode 1: Soviet cartoon (Roadrunner-ish)

TeacherTube — promising but not quite satisfactory (for me, yet)

I do think that TeacherTube would be the best place to post student-created work (such as poetry readings, book trailers or reviews, short films, walking tours, how-tos) because of the focused educational community likely to view it.

• “Trailer” for life as we knew it (YA novel) – great idea, but the learning was in the making of this video, not in the watching of it.

• America Idle – the judges vote for the top Information Resources — Google, Uncle George and Librarian. Guess who wins!! I could definitely see incorporating a video like this in a presentation or lesson.

Posted by Dr. Loopy at TeacherTube.com.

Wow — this was a lot easier than recording and mixing in Garage Band! I didn’t even read the directions and had no trouble at all getting up and running. I’ve spent maybe 20 minutes on this thing. Phew!! Of course, as advertised, it’s a lot more spartan too. I really like the idea of being able to have ‘call-in’ podcasts — very cool.

Here’s the podcast I made sharing ideas for using podcasts in the library. If you have any more ideas or comments, I’m all ears!

I think podcasts are cool. I like to listen to them (when I get inspired or get around to it). Podcasts are fun to create. But I don’t have any regular subscriptions in my iTunes — so far I haven’t found any that I absolutely must listen to regularly.

One of the things about iTunes is that all those files get downloaded in order for you to hear them — that can take a LOT of drive space without you even thinking about it. I really like having podcast RSS feeds in my reader instead — for me it’s much easier to scroll past the latest offerings, listen to ones of interest in a pop-up Google player, and when I’m done, they’re gone. If I love it, I can download & save that single mp3 file. Since I don’t have an iPod (I have an iRiver instead), the docking & downloading ease with iTunes doesn’t apply.

I like to sample world music styles, so I enjoy The World’s Global Hit podcast (I listen while I’m scanning the other items in Google Reader), and sometimes I also listen to the GeoQuiz podcast. I’ve used iTunes to find personal interest podcasts (language lessons or lectures). Usually I only download specific podcast episodes of shows I either missed from broadcast radio, want to save, or have found out about from a blog or news article.

Last year I got excited about podcasting and tried to create a series of student-created book review podcasts, a la Nancy Keane’s Booktalks Quick and Simple. I only managed to recruit one student, who did a great job on two or three programs. His first one is here.

I’ve got a cadre of enthusiastic readers using the library, but they are either too shy or too busy to add one more thing to their days, and I didn’t think that students would get too excited about listening to me do them all. So that project is on the back shelf for now. I really like the idea though, and may try again sometime.

Ugh.    >:-(  This is my brain on crank-y. 

I know we are supposed to think about positive ways to use this tool, but I can’t.  My goals, like everybody else’s, are either really important and ought to be private, or inane, and ought to be private.  All are better tracked on a piece of paper, or a diary if you want to be formal about it.

This goes back to my original feelings about blogs-as-public-personal-diary*:

1. Why???
2. Why on earth would I care?

My cranky opinion and 98¢ will get you a dollar.  On to the next Things.

++++++++++

*  Oh yeah, the irony of my personal opinions being aired via this world-wide public blog hasn’t escaped me.  I have a black sense of humor.

Yeah, I’ve had a LibraryThing account for a while too.  I use it (in true-to-self fashion) as a tool for displaying/highlighting recommended books on a website somewhere else.  I’ve never explored the social web part, mostly because I have seven gazillion other ways of finding out about books.  “Books-a-plenty, books galore!” is my life.

I do like that Groups area, though.  That’s pretty neat, and I could see using and perhaps even participating in a group of interest.  Tags are handy, but they are also pretty scattershot; mine are mostly relevant to me, not necessarily to you.  The Groups have additional criteria, so the likelihood of finding relevant & quality books seems to be a lot higher — Asian Fiction & Non-Fiction in a group won’t include Japanese manga (probably) but tags Japan & fiction might.  The Read YA Books group discusses a different young adult title every month.  With a group of dedicated readers, a library could have reading discussions over the summer this way, or  students could track their summer reading — including the progress monitor is a cool visual.  A group of far-flung friends could share & discuss favorite books in a LibraryThing group.

Aside from the blog widget that I like so much, most of the uses I can envision right now for using LibraryThing in my work/life are pretty much re-inventing the wheel, and not very effectvely at that. I’ve heard of small libraries using LibraryThing to catalog their collections because they don’t have an automated system — awesome, but not useful for us.  A printed summer reading guide is a lot easier and more useful than inputting titles online.  And I don’t own enough books to care about cataloging them at home — I get all my reading from a library!!!