We were asked to search the term "school library" in YouTube. Did our teacher know that Gale had been doing a contest called "I Love my Library" so there was an abundance of Library love vids on YouTube? Perhaps so. Still, after watching several (more than I'd like to admit to, and many that made me cringe,) I DID find this one, called Thank You Note from Green Gables Elementary School, which made me smile.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Tech transformations
Everytime I check Twitter, there's a new article for me to read. Everytime I read that article, it leads me to another article, and so on and so on. Suddenly, I've spent hours surfing through articles on the librarians at ALA or reviews from the NYT or links to ways to make an avatar on Yahoo!, and then I find the world of podcasts that needs to be explored, like Grammar Girl, and their corresponding websites. I also found a podcast from ProQuest explaining how to access newspapers from home via the internet. How can I create those mini-videos to embed on our website? Those types of tutorials could be sweet.
Then I find new blogs from AASL to read where, instead of talking about ALA, they are talking about NECC, and some comments bring up ideas that don't seem revolutionary to me, though the blogs approach them as such. It makes me realize that as behind in the times as I am in terms of certain technologies, I am not completely ignorant. I've kept my ears and eyes open to learning where people are going with computers, and certain softwares.
As my del.icio.us page attests to, I've found a way to personally use that site for a year now. Though I still struggle with how to integrate some of those/these technologies into the classroom. In listening to the Grammar Girl podcast I think, the English department could really benefit from these, and I wonder what other podcasts I could introduce to the faculty, how they could livestream them so it doesn't take server space, and if there's room on the school server to create podcasts of our own.
Later, I was watching my favorite video blog (vlog) of John Green (author of Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines)and his brother Hank Green called Brotherhood 2.0 and what is Hank doing but reading. The next day, John's talking about ALA. But back to Hank, in his vlog he's reading The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, and he questions the acceptability of adults reading young adult books. What follows in the comments is lots of cheering for YA novels as well as thick discussion of the upcoming movie for The Golden Compass. Being the surfer I've been all day, I head to the website, and try to create my own daemon. Here's what they gave me, a jackel:
I've tried to embed the image from the site, and hope it works. I figure that is a test in and of itself. I can't see the image when I use Firefox, but can when I use Safari, so please let me know what happens when you read this post.
Seems a little mean to me (the choice of jackel), and apparently it can be changed but...I know this site is created to promote the movie, but there are other books like Lemony Snicket which certainly take advantage of the world wide interweb to help promote their books. How well to libraries and librarians pay attention to this? It seems we should.
Maybe, after all this searching, my real question becomes: what's the priority? Where do libraries and librarians enter the tech world and how much is truly necessary to stay current and provide the best services to users? How do we become efficient surfers so that students can learn from us, how to move through the interweb with limited distraction. Maybe distraction is fine (it is, really), but all the surving and exploring and discovery takes time. What is the minimum a library needs to know in order to serve the most people?
Then I find new blogs from AASL to read where, instead of talking about ALA, they are talking about NECC, and some comments bring up ideas that don't seem revolutionary to me, though the blogs approach them as such. It makes me realize that as behind in the times as I am in terms of certain technologies, I am not completely ignorant. I've kept my ears and eyes open to learning where people are going with computers, and certain softwares.
As my del.icio.us page attests to, I've found a way to personally use that site for a year now. Though I still struggle with how to integrate some of those/these technologies into the classroom. In listening to the Grammar Girl podcast I think, the English department could really benefit from these, and I wonder what other podcasts I could introduce to the faculty, how they could livestream them so it doesn't take server space, and if there's room on the school server to create podcasts of our own.
Later, I was watching my favorite video blog (vlog) of John Green (author of Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines)and his brother Hank Green called Brotherhood 2.0 and what is Hank doing but reading. The next day, John's talking about ALA. But back to Hank, in his vlog he's reading The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, and he questions the acceptability of adults reading young adult books. What follows in the comments is lots of cheering for YA novels as well as thick discussion of the upcoming movie for The Golden Compass. Being the surfer I've been all day, I head to the website, and try to create my own daemon. Here's what they gave me, a jackel:
I've tried to embed the image from the site, and hope it works. I figure that is a test in and of itself. I can't see the image when I use Firefox, but can when I use Safari, so please let me know what happens when you read this post.
Seems a little mean to me (the choice of jackel), and apparently it can be changed but...I know this site is created to promote the movie, but there are other books like Lemony Snicket which certainly take advantage of the world wide interweb to help promote their books. How well to libraries and librarians pay attention to this? It seems we should.
Maybe, after all this searching, my real question becomes: what's the priority? Where do libraries and librarians enter the tech world and how much is truly necessary to stay current and provide the best services to users? How do we become efficient surfers so that students can learn from us, how to move through the interweb with limited distraction. Maybe distraction is fine (it is, really), but all the surving and exploring and discovery takes time. What is the minimum a library needs to know in order to serve the most people?
Monday, June 25, 2007
A few ways technology followed me to NJ
Took the bus to NJ for some graduation festivities This means that for days I was away from my computer. Still, I found myself talking about technology, libraries, and schools while I was traveling. I even observed some various things. Here are a few:
1. On the bus, I sat next to a college student from Brazil who uses Skype to talk to his family back home. He and I also talked a bit about the difference between libraries in Brazil and those at his college campus. We also talked about Wikipedia, which he found to be a great resource when it came to looking for information about musicians and other cultural things. He seemed to like the way Wikipedia allows a person to maneuver around an entry to find other related information. In this way connections are made that many of the best "scholars" in a field seem ignorant of.
In addition, I asked him if he went to the Library at his college. The word on the street is that students don't go to the library much anymore. And he said "No." But when I asked if he used Databases he livened up saying "I use Jstor for everything!" Jstor is only available by subscription, so the library must get this database to assist their students. In other words, in today's world, I find it believable that students would never enter the library space during their academic career (still a bit sad, but believable), what I don't find believable is that library resources go unused by an academic community. Several schools have IM accounts to provide assistance to those at home. Others make sure that their database access applies outside the library walls. Those who use these services are still using the library. Aren't they?
2. Before I even read the student tech.encyclopedia entry on Facebook, I watched my recently H.S. graduated cousin rapidly log in to her Facebook account, simultaneously chat with like three people and then run out of the room again. She (or her twin sister, I really am not sure which) did this on various occasions during my time there. I can't think of a time I heard them on the phone, but they certainly were checking their profiles, their friends' profiles and making plans via the vast world of the interweb.
Then when I got home last night there was a Law & Order about a girls "B-friends" page where she complained about her mother and essentially put a hit request into virtual cyberspace. It made me wonder how much my own cousins say and expose of themselves on Facebook. It also reminded me of the culture of "dangerous internet" the media and adults seem to push. In some ways, a person's cyberlife seems to be a dirty little secret.
This morning, I read an old NYT article about Webkinz and Club Penguin. Seems the social networking is going further down the ladder and now there are sites to get 8 & 9 year olds in on the act. At my favorite toy store in NJ, there was a big sign in the window announcing, "WE HAVE WEBKINZ." I thought it was like the beanie baby craze. I didn't realize the stuffed toys give a person access to an online character. That's right, the toy has a special code which can be used to access an online avatar for more interaction with your toy. Somehow, this reminds me of Gremlins.
3. On the train in to NYC, my recently H.S. graduated cousin helped me program my phone to use T9 texting so that I could write messages more quickly. This was interesting in part because recently, the YALSA blog had an article explaining that young people prefer not to use T9, as they already know what letters are on which keys and how many strokes it would take to write their message.
Of course, my cousin is just one person, but she seemed a bit fan of the T9. And with its help her fingers flew across her phone, sending out notes at lightening speed. I've now added the T9 to my messaging, and must admit that I'm not so sure I like it. In some ways it's faster, but alternate or unusual spellings really slow the whole thing down. In addition, I have to keep figuring out how to change "On" to "No" or "them" to "then," etc.
4. I think my mother may be a YouTube addict. This isn't really true, but whenever she hears of something funny on there, she then wants everyone to see it. Granted she finds great things, but she did run into an interesting dilemma last February when she showed my niece a Panda Sneeze video that she found great. Later, when my niece wanted to find the video herself, she ended up alone on YouTube. My niece is in elementary school, and while YouTube would have some content appropriate for her age, it also would not. While my mother's intent was honest and good, it made my sister-in-law nervous. Is the computer the new babysitter?
Of course, YouTube is rife with candidate videos, and this is one reason it hasn't been blocks at the HS I work at. This doesn't stop media personalities from commenting on these videos. At dinner one night news correspondants were busy talking about the YouTube videos of Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton. At the same time NBC plans to create videos to help students with AP exams. The article on this was linked in Twitter, and I had to go back pretty far to find it again. Anyway, read more about NBC's plan here.
5.My grandfather's house has no internet access, no cable, and only one working TV. It was nice to be there. He missed all the graduation festivities for health reasons, and it was nice to pull out my digital camera to show him pictures of the event. With the help of a magnifying feature, I was even able to show some details I hadn't even realized I captured. He got to witness some of the events, and I was really glad I could share those pics with him. I placed a few of the pics on my Flickr page, but the majority will go into a Snapfish album, because I've found that Flickr is for socializing for me...Snapfish is for sharing pics that people will want to print. At least that's how I use those two programs. There are so many programs, it seems necessary to me to determine each one's personal usefulness or else, why use it at all?
I suppose there were more simple technologies I encountered this weekend as well, but these are just a few thoughts on the matter. Time to go out in to the real world...
1. On the bus, I sat next to a college student from Brazil who uses Skype to talk to his family back home. He and I also talked a bit about the difference between libraries in Brazil and those at his college campus. We also talked about Wikipedia, which he found to be a great resource when it came to looking for information about musicians and other cultural things. He seemed to like the way Wikipedia allows a person to maneuver around an entry to find other related information. In this way connections are made that many of the best "scholars" in a field seem ignorant of.
In addition, I asked him if he went to the Library at his college. The word on the street is that students don't go to the library much anymore. And he said "No." But when I asked if he used Databases he livened up saying "I use Jstor for everything!" Jstor is only available by subscription, so the library must get this database to assist their students. In other words, in today's world, I find it believable that students would never enter the library space during their academic career (still a bit sad, but believable), what I don't find believable is that library resources go unused by an academic community. Several schools have IM accounts to provide assistance to those at home. Others make sure that their database access applies outside the library walls. Those who use these services are still using the library. Aren't they?
2. Before I even read the student tech.encyclopedia entry on Facebook, I watched my recently H.S. graduated cousin rapidly log in to her Facebook account, simultaneously chat with like three people and then run out of the room again. She (or her twin sister, I really am not sure which) did this on various occasions during my time there. I can't think of a time I heard them on the phone, but they certainly were checking their profiles, their friends' profiles and making plans via the vast world of the interweb.
Then when I got home last night there was a Law & Order about a girls "B-friends" page where she complained about her mother and essentially put a hit request into virtual cyberspace. It made me wonder how much my own cousins say and expose of themselves on Facebook. It also reminded me of the culture of "dangerous internet" the media and adults seem to push. In some ways, a person's cyberlife seems to be a dirty little secret.
This morning, I read an old NYT article about Webkinz and Club Penguin. Seems the social networking is going further down the ladder and now there are sites to get 8 & 9 year olds in on the act. At my favorite toy store in NJ, there was a big sign in the window announcing, "WE HAVE WEBKINZ." I thought it was like the beanie baby craze. I didn't realize the stuffed toys give a person access to an online character. That's right, the toy has a special code which can be used to access an online avatar for more interaction with your toy. Somehow, this reminds me of Gremlins.
3. On the train in to NYC, my recently H.S. graduated cousin helped me program my phone to use T9 texting so that I could write messages more quickly. This was interesting in part because recently, the YALSA blog had an article explaining that young people prefer not to use T9, as they already know what letters are on which keys and how many strokes it would take to write their message.
Of course, my cousin is just one person, but she seemed a bit fan of the T9. And with its help her fingers flew across her phone, sending out notes at lightening speed. I've now added the T9 to my messaging, and must admit that I'm not so sure I like it. In some ways it's faster, but alternate or unusual spellings really slow the whole thing down. In addition, I have to keep figuring out how to change "On" to "No" or "them" to "then," etc.
4. I think my mother may be a YouTube addict. This isn't really true, but whenever she hears of something funny on there, she then wants everyone to see it. Granted she finds great things, but she did run into an interesting dilemma last February when she showed my niece a Panda Sneeze video that she found great. Later, when my niece wanted to find the video herself, she ended up alone on YouTube. My niece is in elementary school, and while YouTube would have some content appropriate for her age, it also would not. While my mother's intent was honest and good, it made my sister-in-law nervous. Is the computer the new babysitter?
Of course, YouTube is rife with candidate videos, and this is one reason it hasn't been blocks at the HS I work at. This doesn't stop media personalities from commenting on these videos. At dinner one night news correspondants were busy talking about the YouTube videos of Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton. At the same time NBC plans to create videos to help students with AP exams. The article on this was linked in Twitter, and I had to go back pretty far to find it again. Anyway, read more about NBC's plan here.
5.My grandfather's house has no internet access, no cable, and only one working TV. It was nice to be there. He missed all the graduation festivities for health reasons, and it was nice to pull out my digital camera to show him pictures of the event. With the help of a magnifying feature, I was even able to show some details I hadn't even realized I captured. He got to witness some of the events, and I was really glad I could share those pics with him. I placed a few of the pics on my Flickr page, but the majority will go into a Snapfish album, because I've found that Flickr is for socializing for me...Snapfish is for sharing pics that people will want to print. At least that's how I use those two programs. There are so many programs, it seems necessary to me to determine each one's personal usefulness or else, why use it at all?
I suppose there were more simple technologies I encountered this weekend as well, but these are just a few thoughts on the matter. Time to go out in to the real world...
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
good old fashioned fun
Today is my first official day of Summer Vacation! Whee!!!
Of course, I have this class and then some and about a million other things to do, including trying to get to NJ before 6:30 tomorrow night, but all will be well, all will be well and all matter of thing will be well.
While I was waiting for a Skype call last night my roommate and I played Risk. This is one of my favorite board games of all time, and I did a terrific job of stomping on his ass. It was fun!
Image from Flickr
Of course, with this tech class on the brain, I wondered about how games like Risk and Clue and such fit into a classroom or the library classroom. In my library this year I had Clue and Parchesi though no one actually played it. I know that a lot of Public Libraries have had gaming events with Playstations and the like and I wonder about how those old fashioned games fared or fare in the library realm. Where do education and entertainment meet?
But me, I'm off to conquer the world one more time. Now that my roommate knows a little more about the game I suppose I should be a little bit worried, but I'm not. I'll take Australia, and then THE WORLD! (insert evil laugh here)
Of course, I have this class and then some and about a million other things to do, including trying to get to NJ before 6:30 tomorrow night, but all will be well, all will be well and all matter of thing will be well.
While I was waiting for a Skype call last night my roommate and I played Risk. This is one of my favorite board games of all time, and I did a terrific job of stomping on his ass. It was fun!
Image from Flickr
Of course, with this tech class on the brain, I wondered about how games like Risk and Clue and such fit into a classroom or the library classroom. In my library this year I had Clue and Parchesi though no one actually played it. I know that a lot of Public Libraries have had gaming events with Playstations and the like and I wonder about how those old fashioned games fared or fare in the library realm. Where do education and entertainment meet?
But me, I'm off to conquer the world one more time. Now that my roommate knows a little more about the game I suppose I should be a little bit worried, but I'm not. I'll take Australia, and then THE WORLD! (insert evil laugh here)
Sunday, June 17, 2007
the better mousetrap?
I am only slightly proficient in several technologies. Apparently I've gone for breadth, and it makes me wonder if depth within technology is really possible. Learning one system well only leads to the end of that system. At the school I work at they went from web pages to moodle, and next year they are introducing edline. What does one do? I find all this very confusing. Also, it's hard to keep up. This is a very steep learning curve. I still can't manage to watch videos on my Firefox browser, and I wonder if that is due to security restrictions made long long ago to avoid pop-ups. True, I don't get pop-ups, but I can't watch videos either.
Friday, the Urban Dictionary word of the day was "digital immigrant." I would argue, based on the definition, that I am not one of these, but maybe I am. I know YouTube. I just don't really have much time to view items on it. (Plus the aforementioned browser issue). The site also makes me nervous as it is a breeding ground for copyright infringement, even by those with the best of intentions. Just check out the "March of the Librarians" or the montages made by Hank and John Green for Brotherhood2.0.
I admit it. I find the world of technology overwhelming. Just when I get used to one element, another tech-door opens. Now I have a new phone that can work as an mp3 player, when all I want is a phone phone since my whole choice of purchase was to replace a phone that was giving me bad reception to the max. Half my calls weren't going through. I have my ipod video for songs and movies. And soon, there will be the iphone. It sure is pretty, but...Does one really need a phone to play music? Of course, the ringtones on this phone are horrible and it makes me wonder if the mp3 option would improve that. All the photos on my old phone did not transfer over with my old phone numbers. Gone is the picture of my grandfather in a pilgrim hat. Nevermind the half-life of these toys, what is the life life? If they can transfer numbers, why not pictures too? Still for all the overlap, I can't help still wanting one of those swank PDAs so I could update my calendar with the swish of a stylus. This tech-desire frightens me.
Maybe the term for me is ludite-in-training. Of course, I'd be lost without my phone, my Mac, my digicam, my regular unlined moleskin...
Friday, the Urban Dictionary word of the day was "digital immigrant." I would argue, based on the definition, that I am not one of these, but maybe I am. I know YouTube. I just don't really have much time to view items on it. (Plus the aforementioned browser issue). The site also makes me nervous as it is a breeding ground for copyright infringement, even by those with the best of intentions. Just check out the "March of the Librarians" or the montages made by Hank and John Green for Brotherhood2.0.
I admit it. I find the world of technology overwhelming. Just when I get used to one element, another tech-door opens. Now I have a new phone that can work as an mp3 player, when all I want is a phone phone since my whole choice of purchase was to replace a phone that was giving me bad reception to the max. Half my calls weren't going through. I have my ipod video for songs and movies. And soon, there will be the iphone. It sure is pretty, but...Does one really need a phone to play music? Of course, the ringtones on this phone are horrible and it makes me wonder if the mp3 option would improve that. All the photos on my old phone did not transfer over with my old phone numbers. Gone is the picture of my grandfather in a pilgrim hat. Nevermind the half-life of these toys, what is the life life? If they can transfer numbers, why not pictures too? Still for all the overlap, I can't help still wanting one of those swank PDAs so I could update my calendar with the swish of a stylus. This tech-desire frightens me.
Maybe the term for me is ludite-in-training. Of course, I'd be lost without my phone, my Mac, my digicam, my regular unlined moleskin...
Thursday, June 14, 2007
the joy of passwords
Blogger is now linked in with gmail. Apparently, this is old news, but as I am revisiting the blog world, this is new to me. In the meantime, I have managed to forget my username and password for Blogger. Is it my gmail address and password? Is it an email address at all? What password did I use? Unlike some, I have a few, but cant always keep it straight which is which. Then I think I figure it all out and for a while I get to change my password but find NO blogs in my dashboard so I have to try to resolve that. 20 hours later (or what seems like that) I figure it all out and finally get back in.
Around the same time Google Reader, my RSS reader, went all wonky and suddenly Google Reader only showed ONE feed, after I'd just added 5 to the 7 I already had. Another frustrating moment with my technology. Oh 2.0, why do you hurt me so.
There was an interesting article I found on a blog about adults using myspace, and at one point I would have been able to link to it, but I realize that is what began the debacle.
On a positive note, I found a site called GoodReads where one can leave book reviews and add their friends to their network so you can see what your friends and family are reading as well. The only drawback? There's a writing element where people can add their own original writing. This could be considered a good thing, but I'm leary of open authorship like that.
Around the same time Google Reader, my RSS reader, went all wonky and suddenly Google Reader only showed ONE feed, after I'd just added 5 to the 7 I already had. Another frustrating moment with my technology. Oh 2.0, why do you hurt me so.
There was an interesting article I found on a blog about adults using myspace, and at one point I would have been able to link to it, but I realize that is what began the debacle.
On a positive note, I found a site called GoodReads where one can leave book reviews and add their friends to their network so you can see what your friends and family are reading as well. The only drawback? There's a writing element where people can add their own original writing. This could be considered a good thing, but I'm leary of open authorship like that.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Begin again
So begins my new blog for my course in using technology in the Library Classroom. This is my 3rd or 4th blog...but I never manage to get them very far off that ground. I was going to use one I created for book reviews, but it seemed almost wrong to return to that blog and do something else with it.
This is fine though, I'll give it another try. With less than a week left of the school I work at, this could prove a pleasant distraction during the summer. Of course, all my tech problems usually happen during the school year, what will it be like without all that? I'm not sure.
I spent a good amount to this afternoon trying to figure out Twitter, GoogleTalk, and finding feeds for Google Reader. In the end, I created a gmail account (yes, I am one of the few who didn't have one yet), and feel like I'll have to start the process all over again. Once I get my Skype account running though, I should be able to turn in the assignment all this is for on the course Wiki. Fun stuff.
This is fine though, I'll give it another try. With less than a week left of the school I work at, this could prove a pleasant distraction during the summer. Of course, all my tech problems usually happen during the school year, what will it be like without all that? I'm not sure.
I spent a good amount to this afternoon trying to figure out Twitter, GoogleTalk, and finding feeds for Google Reader. In the end, I created a gmail account (yes, I am one of the few who didn't have one yet), and feel like I'll have to start the process all over again. Once I get my Skype account running though, I should be able to turn in the assignment all this is for on the course Wiki. Fun stuff.
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