The List

Here's my "Top Ten Things Every Teacher Should Know About Technology List" from the beginning of the semester...I looked carefully at the list and thought about each one. After careful consideration I concluded that I wouldn't change anything on it except for number 10 - I'd suggest that librarians can help with website evaluation because it's one of the things we're trained in in this program. I have the same attitude and approach toward technology in education that I did at the beginning of the semester, and that's what my list focuses on, mainly. What's changed for me is my level of experience with that technology - I've done so much more work with the most current applications now! I am so glad to have had that experience - it truly reinforces numbers 3 and 4, in particular. Librarians are well trained in this stuff and are a valuable asset to the learning process. I didn't know any of this when I was a classroom teacher up until two years ago - I wish I had (and that my school didn't have to cut all of the librarian positions!).

Number 1 has absolutely been enforced - even technology applications that had previously intimidated me (and I like working with technology) are typically pretty easy if you read the sites' intro and help pages. The creators want you to use their sites, so users really just have to do some reading (or even just watch tutorial videos) before they dive in.

Regardless of everything I've learned, I still truly believe in number 9 - technology can only enhance our teaching and learning; though it can help it along significantly, it cannot replace other aspects of instruction instruction. But thanks to everything I've learned this semester, I'm excited to use technology to help enhance my students' learning.

Ten Things Every Teacher Should Know About Technology

1. Like many things in life, technology can be really easy to use once you know how to use it.
2. You don’t have to figure out how to use it on your own; there are books, manuals, and online tutorials
3. Ask a librarian for help –we love this stuff!
4. Beyond teaching you how to use technology, we are skilled in integrating these tools into the curriculum. Let us help with the technology part of lessons/units.
5. Students use technology constantly – regardless of your views on technology in education, it is a great way to connect with what they understand, enjoy, and how they communicate.
6. Learn from your students – they are particularly knowledgeable in social networking applications, for example. Think of ways to incorporate these intelligently into your classroom.
7. Just because students like using certain technologies doesn’t mean they know how to use everything that’s technological, so don’t be intimidated. Many students cannot use a SMART board, navigate the library’s card catalog, or find high-quality research on the internet, for example. You know more than they do in many technology situations (or can quickly become more knowledgeable than them).
8. Don’t ever rely solely on technology for any given lesson – the one day you need it will be the one day the Internet will be down at your school! Always have something non-technology based to use in a lesson.
9. Technology can help enhance learning. It does NOT necessarily replace other elements of instruction.
10. Carefully preview all websites and applications you’ll use with your students (this includes becoming familiar with privacy settings on applications like wikis and blogs). Come to the librarian with any website concerns or if you'd like to explore them together -we're trained in website evaluation and know just what to look for. Websites whose names sound innocent can sometimes be inappropriate for students.

I like Destiny

The OPAC, that is!

Silly librarian humor aside, I do like the Destiny with "Titlepeek" OPAC from Follett, and after speaking to the lead librarian  in my school district my initial impressions of this system have been verified. The librarian I interviewed works in one of the town's elementary schools and I work in the high school, though the elementary school I worked in last year (in a different school district) actually switched to Destiny mid-year, so I've been able to observe and use it in several different settings and situations. My current school district switched to Destiny at the beginning of the previous school year. I've always been pretty satisfied with it - it has loads of interesting features, though we don't utilize many of them for various reasons. But that could be a whole other blog post.

I was surprised at how we came to purchase and implement Destiny. The LMS I interviewed reported that the schools had previously used Athena but when Follett purchased it they stopped upgrading it, so it wasn't keeping pace with other available programs. Fewer tech support personnel were available for help, so it becamse necessary to make the upgrade. It seemed in some ways that unfortunately the district had little choice about upgrading to a more expensive system.

However, the librarian is very enthusiastic about Destiny and seems glad to have made the change. She appreciates the fact that it's web-based and can therefore be accessed from any computer, has helpful visual icons for younger patrons, and that Follet's "Titlewave" makes cataloging very easy. She likes the social networking-like "Destiny Quest" feature (which is a web-based application where students can connect through their "bookshelves," send messages, update their statuses, etc.), though at the high school where students are likely the only students in the district who are old enough to use this feature, they don't. The librarians at the high school have not yet promoted it because they are concerned about monitoring the messaging and other social features on the program -and students and teachers currently use Edmodo for similar puproses anyway. In theory though Destiny Quest is a fun and exciting way to get students involved in the library and the library staff would like to find a way to implement it (interestingly, they couldn't find a way to use Destiny Quest in my previous school district either).

One part of the process of choosing the OPAC that I hadn't been aware of was the fact that the lead librarian and the library staff posted to LISTSERVS to get feedback from LMSs in different school districts and then narrowed their search down to 4 OPACs. They then got vendor demonstrations and concluded that Destiny was the best choice for them, based on criteria like price, ease of use, and web-based access. I like knowing the most important criteria and how to prioritize it, as this will help me in the future, should I ever need to switch OPACs in my school - and it will also help me with ideas about what to emphasize in my proposal letter assignment this week.

Thank You, Catalog It

Because after reading 90 pages of this very dense and helpful book, I finally realized that I was confusing "cataloging" with "physical processing." I understand now!

I find that if I can translate tricky concepts into my own sentences then I do understand them. So here goes:

• I'm glad I now know my way around MARC records, what the numbers and symbols mean, and how and when to modify them, including subject headings. I can modify them even though they'll likely come completed bythe publisher.
• Modifications like these can help my users access materials more easily. More subjects - including topics I know are in the curriculum - help them find what they seek more efficiently.
• Dewey Decimal numbers CAN be changed...now I know why I've seen different organization and classification at every school library I've been in!
• Bar codes and call numbers (which include the Dewey Decimal number, which may be decided upon by how and where the LMS wants to classify the book) are LOCAL PHYSICAL PROCESSING, not cataloging. This is what I have more experience with in school libraries.

If anyone reading this sees any errors, let me know. Please do.

On to the next 80 pages of CI!!

Annotated Bibliography

This power point presentation I'm creating this week would be aimed at fifth grade students coming into the LMC for their fixed weekly or biweekly library time. I’ve worked in elementary, middle, and high schools, and I think around fifth grade is an ideal time to start exploring Internet safety with students in greater depth. Around that age level they can start to be given a tiny bit more freedom in their Internet useage at school, so it's very important that they are aware of safety issues before we have them online in this way. The PPT could be created jointly with any technology specialist that may work in the system. It’s an introduction to Internet safety; the goal is to teach young students about smart and positive habits to use when online.

I’ve decided to not delve too deeply into any one topic – this can come in later presentations, classes, and grade levels. I still want students to have a good set of pratical ideas, tips, and guidelines on Internet safety after viewing and discussing the presentation. A lot of the resources on cyberbullying that I encountered just seemed a bit too intense and mature for fifth graders, so I do touch upon cyberbullying so that students are aware of it - but in this imagined elementary/middle school the cyberbullying discussions would take place in sixth grade and beyond, where it is likely to become a bigger issue. The goal of this presentation is to introduce Internet safety ideas in an easily understandable and approachable way so that kids feel comfortable and knowledgeable, not overwhelmed. The games and videos will likely be used in the PPT presentation, while the articles and websites may be referenced, quoted in slides, and/or given to parents for future reference.

1. http://www.fbi.gov/fun-games/kids/kids-safety - This is a very brief, succinct set of basic tips or guidelines for kids to follow when they go online. It’s easy to understand and remember, and a good inspiration for my points on the PPT.
2. http://kidshealth.org/kid/watch/house/internet_safety.html?tracking=K_RelatedArticle – The points in this article are similar to the FBI’s site, but a little more in-depth. The writing level is still accessible for fifth graders. It’s nice to have both simpler and more advanced options for students to look at. I also really like how the articles on this site have the “listen” button option for students who need help reading them.
3. http://kidshealth.org/kid/watch/house/online_id.html?tracking=K_RelatedArticle – This article is also from kidshealth.org and focuses more specifically on online identities and how to stay safe. It mentions social networking sites and cyberbullying, so I might pick and choose what to use in order to tailor the information to my presentation; it also has a nice set of safety rules to follow at the end. Both this and the previous article in this site link to additional, similar topics.
4. http://www.netsmartzkids.org/indexFL.htm - This whole site is full of resources for kids, parents, and educators. There is a fun “games” section on this site that might be useful in the PPR, as well as a “resources” area for more teaching/presentation ideas.
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opDkzuLHMs8&feature=related – Cute, quick video that kids will find funny and will enjoy. They can even say the words out loud along with the characters, because the characters don’t speak out loud (students are certain to notice this!).
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVOqeqP4DLA&feature=related – Cute and gentle, but this topic needs to approached with caution in kids who are quite young and perhaps haven’t been exposed to cyberbullying yet. It is good to broach the topic during an introductory discussion on Internet safety with young kids. I’ll probably focus more on safe searching, protecting identity, etc.
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KecjG6HnNc&feature=related – Again, this video is cute and easy to understand. Because there are no words, the video is a great jumping-off point for discussion and exploration. For example, we could discuss: why does SSK look dazed? What does this have to do with surfing the Internet?
8. http://www.att.com/Common/images/safety/game.html - Fun game that’s appropriate for this age level. This can be introduced and demonstrated as a class, then at the end of the presentation students can pair off and play the game through in order to reinforce the concepts they’ve learned in the presentation. The 10-second loop of repeating musical notes is incredibly, incredibly irritating – it might help to turn the sound off!

My Experiences with PD...

...have been, as I noted in this week's discussion, less than ideal. I don't mean to sound negative, but I remember what it was like to be a busy, swamped classroom teacher who was at times less than enthusiastic to spend five hours learning about differentiated instruction...again. What I always really wanted (and was grateful for when my colleagues and I got) was time to do really focused work on my classroom needs, curriculum, even planning what would be best for our school community. Along with my colleagues I simply didn't want to sit and hear lectures about the latest educational theory, again.

For this week's assignment I chose a target audience of administrators, who can often be quite enthusiastic about implementing technology in schools.  I wanted to teach them about practical, readily applicable tools they could use right away. I thought it would be an interesting exercise for me to really deeply, fully explain Web 2.0 tools (making the assumption that my PD "students" were relatively new to them). I aimed to make an online mini-course that would take about 8 hours to go through. I chose an online course because these are online tools, so I figured people would learn best by doing. Besides, it's easy to get overwhelmed in a one-day course and forget all the stuff you're told, so I thought it would be nice for people to take their time and work in a self-directed way.

It was all going fine until I realized I had done no more than introduce blogs, and I was already five pages in! There are just so many details that need to be explained in order for "newbies" to really be comfortable. I realized that to do an overview of online communication tools (blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, photos, screencasts, podcasts, social bookmarking, and so on) would be an enormous undertaking - it'd essentially be the Module 2 of the course I'm taking right now, and probably far more in-depth than the assignment calls for.

It just kept getting bigger and bigger, so I've narrowed it down to blogs. They're a great starting point, they encourage communication and collaboration, and are even simpler than wikis. Once people have mastered a blog and feeling confident in their online application skills, I think they're much more likely to branch out into wikis and other tools. So the mini-course has morphed into being just about blogs (and Twitter as a sort of mini-blog). It's still lengthy - but I think the explanations and examples would be worth it for the participants.

Here's the opening blog post I wrote that I'd have them they'd read (blog name is LBS 850PD), and later in the course they'd add to it in addition to starting their own blogs.

All Sorts of Stuff

I like e-readers, from what I've seen. With my limited exposure to the outside world at this point (email me for more on that), I'm not able to go out and fiddle around with one. But I have seen several of my colleagues and friends using them. I like the Nook because it's like a little computer and has great graphics. But people tell me the non-glare/eye comfort feature of the Kindle is really helpful if you use it a lot. I'd like to get one at some point, and if I travelled a lot for my job I would have already gotten one. I think they'll become incorporated in more schools but I don't think they'll take over the majority of school libraries, like Cushing Academy. It's possible that this technology will be replaced by something new in the years to come, or it's possible that this is the future - I have no way of knowing now. I do know that while getting rid of books opens up the library to other educational uses, these e-readers are currently quite expensive and few schools could afford to do what Cushing did. I also know that books are not just containers of information; they are also physical artficacts, and are valuable in many ways as such. I'd welcome a mix of e-readers and books, but I hope that actual books are always at least a part of my librarian experiences.

By the way, I know no students who use these. I don't actually know many students who like to read! I'm sure there are students who have them, but I just don't know of any yet.

On to my top five tools. Not quite sure what is meant by this - top five in terms of potential? For personal use? In a classroom? In a library? I like different ones in different situations. Here's my best shot:

1. wiki (I typically use PBWorks)- I like this tool because it has so many uses, both professionally and personally. It's easy to use, collaborative, has great privacy settings for kids, and it's easy to tell who's done what (in terms of accountability in school assignments).
2. blog (I typically use blogger) - I was an English teacher for many years, so I really, really think students should be writing all the time. Just because we tweet and text doesn't mean we are not responsible for teaching our kids to be writers, and to organize their thoughts into lengthier pieces of writing. Writing is a part of nearly every job, to some extent, so I love a tool that has them writing but really feels appealingly like it's theirs. They can modify and personalize it, collaborate with others, share, comment, etc. - and has great safety features. Perfect.
3. Jing - I just love these screencasts. I think they're an enormously helpful tool in both teaching and professional development. They make it possible for students to re-visit parts of your lesson...and if that's available, they are likely to learn the concepts more solidly. I like that they can be personalized with your voice, too.
4. YouTube - or other online videos. I'm a visual learner, so I always welcome a visual aid to my learning. I think a lot of people are like that, too. Videos are a great way to introduce or reinforce concepts in a lesson -they are real-life examples of what students are learning about. This both engages them and reinforces what we teach. There is loads of great content on YouTube in addition to some junk that must be waded through.
5. Delicious/social bookmarking - though this wouldn't necessarily be used for a classroom, I think it's invaluable as an educator, or grad student, or any person who looks around the Internet a lot. Which is most people. Having the sites I need all in one place has saved me many times, especially in this grad program where I need to revisit certain concepts frequently. I like that I can look through other people's sites using the tags too. I think we put sites like Good Reads in the same category - I just love that because it helps me remember what I read, and I get to see what others recommend. And I get to see everything lined up so tidily and neatly - which is heaven to my compulsive organizing tendencies!

Social Networking and Education

The other element we looked at this week is social networking. I'm actually kind of a newcomer to these sites - I only joined Facebook last summer. And I have to admit that I'm one of those people who joined Facebook to keep current with other people, not to communicate anything about myself. One of my sisters-in law lives in Chicago with our nephew and is an avid FB user, so I like to follow her and see the latest nephew photos. Actually, it seems like one of the best ways to see others' photos nowadays is through Facebook, which I enjoy - but  I wonder if people actually print and frame pictures anymore.

I don't even post my own photos, and I've always used the (valid) excuse that I'm in public education and don't want my personal information readily available. But I also think it's my personality - I don't love sharing my stuff with the world, though I do think that it's important to participate in these sites to keep current. I do think that regardless of my personal relationship with social networking, it's vital that school librarians are aware of and even involved in the technology. This type of interaction seems to be the trend of the future - fast, public, and broad-reaching communcation that is definitely not limited by the boundaries of a classroom.

That being said, I have a tough time figuring out how  to safely and effectively use FB in education. I could see setting up a page for a classroom - but why bother? It's just as easy to make a secure website, blog, or wiki. I know that kids love FB and it would definitely be easy to get their attention on the site, but why not expect them to visit another site? It's not that much to ask, and I tend to agree with one of the posters on our discussion board this week: why should we not expect more out of our students than Facbook? Why not challenge them to visit another site that we could easily set up to have social/collaborative aspects but still be entirely safe?

Could I Become Addicted to Online Gaming?

Yes.

Have or will I?

No. I'd never tried online gaming before this week. But it's only because I get literally insane when I get too deeply into a game. I've learned over the years that I cannot handle any except the most casual gaming experiences and so have to carefully monitor my game useage. Kirby's Epic Yarn? I got it as a Christmas gift this year and love it because it's 1. easy  (aimed at 7 year-olds, I believe) and 2. very contained - there aren't a lot of choices. I lost the months of January and February to Harvest Moon last year -another game essentially aimed at children, so I knew I had to be cautious when exploring World of Warcraft and other online gaming experiences this week.

Luckily, I was able to talk to my friend's husband, who is a former W.O.W. player. He explained the concept to me, the storyline, and the characters...and then told me how completely addicted to it he had become a few years back. He tried to play less or not on certain days, but quickly realized he had to stop altogether. I understand why kids enjoy these and similar games, and I don't see an educational use for them. They can be fun in moderation and I'm glad I know about them as a librarian, but I'd rather focus my educational efforts on other online applications. Perhaps there could be an online gaming club afterschool to discuss strategy or gameplay- it'd be a way to connect with kids but still leaves the more valuable learning experiences (in my opinion, anyway) to the school day.

I found Second Life to have perhaps more educational possibilities, but it's still an environment that's enormous, potentially unsafe, and hard to monitor/control with students. I saw some great SL libraries that librarians had set up that are really fun ways to access online books and resources, and a way to chat with others who are interested in libraries. I would have enjoyed interacting with other librarian avatars but couldn't find any during my visits (or couldn't figure out how to find them). I'm sure that SL gets easier and more manageable with even more use. But I wouldn't want students chatting with random avatars on the site or visiting innapropriate or completely non-educational areas. So while there are possibilites (virutal field trips and assignments, virtual cross-curricular community planning, etc.) it would take a lot of time, energy, and planning to keep it safe, educational, and easy to access.

Now I Direct my Frustration Towards Online Mulitmedia

After searching around extensively this week and browsing through Schrock's podcast lists, I'm still having trouble finding really good quality online multimedia that I'd be happy to use in a classroom or for professional development.  I found a lot of videos that were entertaining or cute, but less that I found to be really educational and informative.

I settled on the topic of psychology because my obstetrican happened to mention that she saw some great videos of infant wellness tests on YouTube (yes, YouTube even has that). The further I explored that topic I realized that there are some excellent videos showing examples of developmental psychology theory in action as well as famous psych experiments. I think they'd be a great way to bring these concepts to life for students in a high school psych class - especially since psychology is all about the human experience.

I am having a tough time finding good podcasts about this topic. Most of them are lectures that college psych professors have posted online for their students, ostensibly to help them study or review, or "pop psychology" podcasts that are more like audio self-help books. The college lectures seem high-quality and nicely challenging for a high school pysch class, but likely nothing that their own teacher couldn't tell them. Perhaps they could be used as supplements to lessons or part of homework assignments - or perhaps I'm looking for too many bells and whistles.

Uploading multimedia content

It's acutally far less robotic than my title makes it sound. This is from our final pre-pregnancy fun vacation to Disney World last year, linked from my new Vimeo account: http://www.vimeo.com/user6191062/videos. Email me for the password!

Vimeo was pretty easy to use. It's hard to tell at this point in the semsester what is easy and what is difficult, because I've been to so many sites and used so many programs and been through so many tutorials and "abouts" that the process is starting to feel pretty standardized to me, regardless of the different types of applications.  It seems to me that the vast majority of these sites are not hard to use if you just read their instructions. I must remember not to say that, especially in a snooty tone, when trying to help teachers or students at work. Or at least say it in a really nice, helpful, non-judgemental, and approachable way. I want people to feel comfortable coming to me for help! But I think it's true -with a little patience and willingness to really go through the site, they're usually pretty accessible.

I chose Vimeo because it seems to be a little more serious than You Tube. Maybe serious isn't the right word - perhaps I mean that it's more careful than You Tube. Vimeo has clear parameters -nothing commercial, nothing adult, privacy and licensing options - that I didn't find as much of on You Tube. For this assignment I appreciated that because I posted a video that shows my husband and me on a roller coaster in Disney World and I don't want it readily available to the public on You Tube. If it were something less personal I would absolutely use You Tube - and have in the past for my teaching job.

Online Apps for Education?

I was very exicted to try out some new applications this week and looked forward to delving into those that I'm already familiar with. I had mixed results (typical for me!). I really liked some and thought that others would have to be really, really stretched in order to use them in a classroom setting. I could think of uses for all of these sites - just not necessarily with students or in a school.

First, the ones I think would be good to use with students: a range of visual projects, documentations, and exploration can be done on Flickr. I like its privacy settings as well.  There's a lot of fun, playful stuff a class can do on Dumpr and Voki (and I can think of a lot of academic applications for Voki as well). All of these seem fairly easy to use - I've documented my Flickr issues extensively - though Flickr is defintely the one I've looked at the most extensively.

I like Google Docs and Zoho as well, but I'm not sure why a person would use one over the other. They seem quite similar. If I already have a lot of google applications set up (like this blog, email, etc) it makes sense to stick with Google Docs.

I had trouble thinking of educational uses for StumbleUpon, Zamzar, and Doodle. I could see using Zamzar and Doodle in other professional or personal endeavors (converting files, scheduling meetings), but I'm not really sure how an average student would use these. In my assignment I discussed how Doodle could be used to communicate with parents and Zamzar could be used by students doing highly technological things (like producing segments for the school's TV news show). StumbleUpon seems kind of fun for personal use, but in addition to having RSS feeds and teaching students sharp website evaluation skills, this site just seems like it would be overwhelming for students, and might make their research harder rather than easier. Rollyo seems like it would be more helpful in research purposes.

I'm looking forward to hearing classmates' suggestions about how to use these applications. Perhaps I'm not thinking creatively enough. No matter what, I'm glad I've been exposed to all of them and look forward to using some in the LMC I work in.

P1010013

P1010013
Originally uploaded by LBS850ERG

Another example from my Flickr stream!

This was the view from our balcony in the first place we stayed on our honeymoon.

P1010060

P1010060
Originally uploaded by LBS850ERG

Thanks, Barb!!

Is this how it's done?

Just the link? Shouldn't the photos show up here?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59446774@N05/

These are a few pictures from our honeymoon a while back. For the first few days, we stayed at this unbelievable spa resort ("Alm") in Austria.

I am mad at Flickr...

First of all, the former English teacher in me is wondering why the "e" is missing in "Flickr." Is that necessary?

Then the frustrated grad student in me is ready to throw her laptop across the room after spending an hour attempting to link my Flickr account to this blog. I thought it would be nice to have my pictures show up here, and a good tool to know. Though it is fairly easy to upload photos on to Flickr (though honestly, not as quick or intuitive as other programs I've used in this class, like this blog or Twitter), I have found their Help section to be buried - they direct you to their Help forum first, which is just others' questions.

I guess it would be okay to just have the Flickr account for photos and just drop the blog issue, but I am trying to master these programs in order to use them in my professional and personal lives...so I am frustrated that I'm having this much trouble. Flickr's "test blog" worked and showed up here (I deleted it); why can't I get my own pictures here? I don't want just a link - or is a link all you can get for your own pictures? Can you only blog other people's photos, and if so, why? Is it because this is a Google application and Flickr seems to be connected to Yahoo (thouugh I signed in through my Google account)??

Hopefully my next post will be more positive and full of blogging/picture sharing success...

RSS Feeds

Setting up the RSS feed was really easy: I used Google Reader and followed the very intuitive layout: I clicked "Add a subscription," typed the addresses in, and I was all set. Again, I love how it's cleanly my infomration is organized; I won't have to remember whether or not I visited a site I like on any given day because they're all in one place for me to peruse. I like that I can add notes and share items with others - especially the library sites I'm following, which my classmates or colleagues might like to see. I can also envision how a teacher might share certain entries with her class, or students might also share with the class.

Currently, I am following several of the School Library Journal's blogs, including Adult Books for Teens (not "adult" adult, but rather books written for grownups that teens would like), one about the Internet, and one on great new books for students. I am also following boston.com's news feed, which is tough to keep up with, boston.com's food section, and a blog that I absolutely love called Food Network Humor (http://www.foodnetworkhumor.com/). I'm allowed to have a little fluff!

I can see how, like Twitter, RSS feeds can keep professionals up to date on the latest their colleagues are writing about. I particularly enjoy seeing the School Library Journal feed - especially the entries about technology and new books. As I mentioned in the Discussion board, I am not sure how practical or useful these feeds are in terms of direct student interaction; in other words, I am not sure about productive, intelligent ways to use RSS feeds in student research projects, unless their research has to do with blogging or other forms of social media. As I also mentioned, I would show students how to set these up for their personal use, like keeping track of the latest sports or celebrity blogs, or whatever they enjoy.

Finally, my husband brought up a good point when I attempted to put my new RSS feed knowledge to use and set one up for the 15 or so sites he likes to read on a daily basis: he enjoys the routine of going through his sites and reading the articles. He likes the visual set-up of each site, and the act of going through them. When he saw my RSS feed he felt like it would take away some of the relaxation he feels from this browsing routine, with everything in one place and looking fairly similar. I wonder if other people feel that way too - I can see his point. So I guess they're perhaps most helpful for people who need and want to look at large amount of materials on a daily basis to stay updated, and perhaps not the average reader who likes browsing around a bit for fun.

I'm still glad I know how to set one up now...though I don't know how much I'll use it. Between reading tweets from colleagues in the field, using delicious to remember any sites I may forget, and looking at the blogs I like, I guess I don't feel overwhelmed by manually going through sites as opposed to looking at the latest feed on the reader. That could easily change though as demands on my personal and professional time increase, however.

Good Reads

On to Good Reads...the link to my account is on the previous post.

I looked around Shelfari and Library Thing, and both looked excellent;  I like Good Reads in particular though because it's not connected to a store (like Amazon with Shelfari); and though the cataloging feature in Library Thing is excellent, I don't feel I need it for my current job, I don't think the students would use this feature (see my explanation of Destiny and Destiny Quest in the next paragraph), and I don't want to have to pay a fee if I add more than 200 books.

I have had a Good Reads account set up for many years but I have actually never used it to post books I've read. I use it to look at what other people have read and their book opinions, because I love good book recommendations. For this week we were required to enter at least five books, and that was my plan out the outset. But...once I started adding books I had a hard time stopping! First of all, though slow, the site is very easy to use. You simply press the button that describes what you'd like to do: enter a book, rate a book, leave a comment, organize your shelves, etc. Secondly, for a visual, organized person like me, seeing the list with the accompanying book cover icons is enormously satisfying; it's like I get to tidily revisit all the things I've read recently. I can absolutely see why a librarian would want to use this in connection with her library/collection. At our school however we use the Destiny catalog,which has the Destiny Quest feature - which functions very similarly to Good Reads, and has the safety advantage of only being accessible to members of our school community. Users can "shelve" the books they've read, categorize, and rate them, and send each other messages. Since we're already paying for Destiny this is a useful social networking feature to get students exciting about reading. Good Reads connects users to other readers anywhere, not just in a school, which is particularly helpful when trying to connect with colleagues and get feedback about prospective books for the collection.

Next, the tool that perplexed me the most this week: RSS feeds.

Online Organizational Tools

Being an overly organized person, I was very much looking forward to this week's Explorations. Even more ways to organize myself, my work, my studies! I am a particular fan of a couple of the sites we were to look at: delicious (http://www.delicious.com/mrschase23) and Good Reads (http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/433145?shelf=read). I have used each of them to varying degrees.

I actively use delicious, as I find it both useful and convenient. I mostly use this account to bookmark sites for graduate school because I set up a different, joint account for the librarians I work with. When I'm gathering sites for a teacher's latest project in the LMC it's great to be able to use delicious to save and easily share them with my colleagues.  During this program, delicious has been enormously helpful in terms of remembering the sites that I use not only for coursework, but in particular those that I plan to use (or currently do use) at my job. There are so many sites out there - some good, some bad - that having a spot to keep it all in, regardless of which computer I'm using, has been a huge help.

Just an aside - my page is called "Mrs. Chase" because that would be my name if I hadn't kept my maiden name. Apparently I was in a traditional sort of mood the day I created the account. That brings me to my next point: there are a few non-grad school sites saved there, all of which are sites I saved when searching for my husband's Christmas gifts, including a subscription to the English World Soccer magazine. The subscription site is harder to find than you'd think! I attempted to lock the two or three non-library related sites, just to help out any fellow librarians who search through and are not interested in European sports magazines...

Before I accidentally delete this I'm going to start a new post about Good Reads and RSS feeds.

This time it was not my fault...

I just went back into my previous post about my wiki to add some of my musings on how my wiki would work collaboratively when...blogger crashed. I lost all of the work I had added. I see that it saves itself automatically, but where are the "drafts" it gives the time for? Where do they go and why can I not figure this out? I frantically searched around for the draft that had to have contained my newest work, but all I could find was my original post. The site then proceeded to crash and reload itself (and erase any new work I added) every time I hit the "enter" key.
I'm going to frantically add this before the site crashes again...I chose to do a wiki with a student page and educator page (though both groups of participants can go to all pages) because I have been thrilled about the small but committed group of students I've met in the high school I started working at this year who are avid readers. The only other age group I've worked with who've had this much (and even more) enthusiasm for reading are the second and third graders who can't wait to get into the library for more books. The library staff run a once-monthly book club in school for the kids, but I think they'd love a wiki because they like talking about books, and they like communicating online. Some teachers show up at our book club and I know more would like to come but can't because of their schedules, so the wiki is a way for teachers to talk about books with each other and even the kids. Personally, I love getting book recommendations from others and I am always excited to try something I've never heard of, so even though an online book group may not be the most original idea, it is one that I feel sure that students and staff in my school would enjoy participating in.
Best book a student has recommended to me lately? The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart ( http://www.amazon.com/Disreputable-History-Frankie-Landau-Banks/dp/0786838191/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296585475&sr=1-1). What a protagonist!

Why a Peanut Butter Sandwich?

I've decided to use PBWorks to set up my wiki; I have used it before for courses in this program, and I've found it easy to navigate as a user.  I read in a couple of this week's articles that the "pb" stands for peanut butter, as in, "This site is as easy to use as making a peanut butter sandwich." Interesting choice. I do think PBWorks is pretty easy and intuitive to use, but I do find as both a user of wikis and now a creator of a wiki that this site can get bug-gy. In other words, sometimes it crashes while I'm trying to save (this must be a common problem because there's a link that keeps showing up that asks me to click on it if the page crashes while saving!). It's inconvenient, but easy enough to learn how to deal with. Just reload the page or click on the link to get to a saved version - easier to regain your work on PBWorks than on blogger, ahem. Also, I have found some delays or problems when editing: when I try to copy and paste from Word, my content often gets re-formatted and it is very hard to figure out how to format the work in a more attractive way. Sometimes when I try to change font sizes or styles it either refuses to make the change or the change kicks in about two lines later.
Aside from these minor glitches though I find it easy to add new pages, add links, and beginning a page is quite easy. I also like how they sent a welcome email to me that offered a free live webinar tutorial each month, and also not-live help sections that are always available. I like what I can get for free, and how, when I went to set up an educational page, the site offered me a bunch of template pages that I might need as a teacher (like Assignments, Syllabus, etc), that had pre-made charts and bulleted lists. This would be incredibly helpful if I were really setting up an educator page (especially since I've found formatting things like making charts to be occasionally tricky on this site), but I decided to do student and educator book club pages instead. In order to cut down on confusion for potential users I was easily able to delete the unnecessary pages from my navigation sidebar.
My overall impression is that PBWorks is easy enough for an educator to set up - it did take me a while to set up my pages (even though they may look simple!!), though from what I saw of Wikispaces I think it would take a while to set up a wiki on any host site. I definitely think students would find this easy and enjoyable to use - through links and the sidebar I was able to make everything neatly organized and accessible.