Thing 22 and 23 - This is the end...

...my only friend, THE END!

I am really glad I tried this endeavor (and even gladder that I made it to the finish line). I think that this was an outstanding program and really worth the time. So, now what?

The fact is - of the 20-some things we looked at - some I really liked, some seemed okay, and a few did not seem worth the time or effort. I truly believe this idea of prioritizing is important. There is no way I could keep up with and utilize EVERYTHING that is out there. However, I do think that if I can narrow my focus down to the handful of things that I like and use - that will still make me rather progressive in my profession. I am surprised to say that Bloglines has probably proven itself to be the most useful of all the tools to me personally. It has really cut down on my "surfing" time not checking sites that haven't been updated since the last time I visited them. I also see myself using things like Flickr, LibraryThing, Shelfari, del.icio.us, a great deal in the future.

Does that mean that I will close my eyes to the other (and future) Web 2.o tools out there? I certainly hope not. I do resolve that I will do my best to keep as current/informed as I possibly can to this ever-changing technology. I can't promise that this blog will stay alive - I currently have three blogs going (one for a grad class, one for my library and this one) - not bad for a kid who had never blogged until 4 months ago!

Once again, kudos to those who worked so hard to put this program together - it really was a worthwhile endeavor.

Thing 21 - Other Social Networks

I know I gave the impression that I wasn't too fired up about social networking a couple of posts ago. However, the social networks discussed in this "Thing" are ones I could see myself spending a bit more time with.

Obviously, the professional networking aspect to sites like these is fairly appealing. The ability to "hook up" with like-minded people or other librarians could be very beneficial. I stopped into the 23 Things Ning (say that three times fast) and got a chance to "see" some of the people going through this program. Beyond that, Shelfari is one that caught my eye. Much like LibraryThing, I like how it connects people through books - and the widgets look pretty cool on a blog.

When I find the time, I am going to try and look into some other social networks that may pay dividends at work - too fried to try it right now.

Thing 13 - Online Productivity

Is that an oxymoron? I think sometimes that the time I can spend online "working" actually makes me less productive than I could be.

Anyways, I do have some experience with some of these tools. I have start pages through both MyYahoo and MyMSN. The Yahoo one came about through Fantasy Football. While I do not use it for my personal homepage - I do like the way that it allows you to predetermine what headlines and information you see up front. The MSN page is the homepage for my desktop computer at home. Again, it shows local news and weather reports which is nice.

One thing I was interested in was the online calendar sites. Scrybe was not accepting new registrations so I went to 30 Boxes. The site is okay - although I did run into some annoying snags. I did put a widget from my calendar on this blog. I also tried to place it on my library homepage through edublogs.org, but it did not work out (probably more of an issue with my host site).

Overall, I think this stuff is okay - but there is nothing wrong with using a trusty pen and day planner.

Thing 20 - MySpace/Facebook

As I thought about libraries incorporating social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook, I couldn't help but think of the old adage "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." There is no doubt that a library MySpace page might seem cool to some kids, but the fact is, they would still have to be interested enough in the library itself in order to even visit the page. The fact is, kids/people participate in these networks in order to communicate with friends. Even if the school I worked for allowed me to set up a MySpace page and allowed students to visit it, I am not sure it would be worth the risk of time that would be wasted on "other" endeavors.

That is not to say that there are NO positives in libraries using such technologies. In browsing through some of the library-based sites I found on Myspace, probably one of the coolest things I saw was how many authors have their own MySpace pages and link up and interact on some of the library sites. This is a cool connectivity aspect that would be great for a library and its patrons. MySpace obviously also would allow for simple and up-to-the-minute announcements and such - but those things can be just as easily accomplished on other tools such as blogs and wikis.

In the end, social networking sites such as these carry a lot of baggage with them and until those issues are safely addressed (if that is possible), I don't see them playing a huge role in public schools. But, hey, I never thought this Internet thing would catch on either! :)

Thing 19 - Podcasts

As a talk-radio junkie, I hear the word podcast hundreds of times a day (every show I listen to offers its program in podcast form). However, I do not own an iPod so I have never really looked into podcasting. I see the point - it is kind of like a walkman for those of us who prefer the spoken word to music. Aside from radio programming, I also know that audio books and the like are also being made available for an mp3 player. If you own the necessary equipment - great. I listened to a brief interview from the latest MEMO conference and can see the benefits of this tool in that one can keep up with things and hear about events/conferences/etc. strait from the horses mouth.

As far as incorporating this into my library - I again have to go back to the administrative restrictions excuse. iPods and such are not allowed in the school I work in, so I doubt I will spend too much time worrying about providing podcasts for my student patrons. I will not rule them out completely - it may be something fun down the road that I might have some students work on, but for right now I will probably just stick to finding some that I can use for professional development purposes.

Thing 18 - YouTube

I am very familiar with YouTube and have been for quite a while. There is no doubt you can find just about anything under the sun at this site. My one complaint is what I would call "reckless tagging" of many videos. For whatever reason, it seems that one can search for something and will be directed to things that actually have nothing to do with what they were looking for. This can be very dangerous, especially when you consider how it could be young people who are searching and a seemingly innocent search term can dig some some "dangerous" things. This is probably the main reason why many schools do block YouTube. It would be nice if they could "monitor" tagging a little better. I know there are other video sites out there, including one called TeacherTube which is appropriate for the classroom.

The above video is a clip from the movie adaptation of my favorite book, The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo.

Thing 16 - Project Calculators

I have come across similar tools from my days teaching in an English classroom. I think they are fine, it's just that what they do (give a timeline/plan for completing an assignment) is basically what the teacher does in teaching the assignment. College professors do not spend a lot of their time "walking" students through projects - but such practice is very common in the high school classroom. Because of this, I never saw the NEED for these tools for high school kids.
But the more I think about it, the more I see the potential benefit of such tools . Thinking back to my own experience teaching the research process, no matter how detailed a timeline you give a student, no matter how many "step-by-step" deadlines you have - some kids just aren't going to pay attention to them and will still cram it all in at the last minute. Maybe, if kids get a chance to feel like they (with the help of their computer) are setting their own deadlines, they might be more involved in the process. I also see A LOT of value for teachers themselves. I looked through RPC handouts section and found many interesting/useful materials.
In the end - I will definitely make my staff members aware of these sites and their supplementary materials and will probably make the RPC site available from my library homepage.

Thing 15 - Gaming

All right, back on the soapbox!

As far as gaming in the library goes - as a former classroom teacher, I definitely know (and used) the hook that gaming can have in the education process. "Educational" games are a great way to "trick" a kid into learning (I even have a five-year-old daughter at home who has been learning to read, do math, etc. through online games), and probably have other benefits that I am not even aware of. I have NO problem with the idea of kids playing some games during the school day. However, as a school librarian, my biggest concern is the type of atmosphere I want my library to have. Overall, I want the library to be thought of as a work/learning environment. Now, I know I just said that gaming can have some educational benefits, but the problem is in where the line between learning and other gaming endeavors lies. While I may sound a bit too "old school" for a program such as this, the rational side of me understands that sometimes it is just easier to say no game-playing in my library in order to avoid the inevitable arguments about which games are educational and which are not.
I did go into "Puzzle Pirates" for a bit (albeit a very short bit). I don't know - I guess I am just not a true "gamer" - it really didn't strike my fancy. I did not set up an account with SecondLife, but I did watch the video and read some of the articles. Again, not MY thing, but I guess it looks like there are those out there who are making this virtual world very realistic and the fact that there are libraries, classrooms, etc. do lend some credence to their existance.
In the end, I will probably stick with the "No Game-playing In the Library" policy that my school has been operating under unless I come across something that I just can't pass up. We will see.

Thing 14 - Library Thing

I have seen this "Thing" on so many other people's blogs that I was really excited to get in and explore the site for myself. In the end, I am pretty impressed and really want to be able to use it in my own library. I don't really need (nor would I want) it for cataloging, but what I like is that it a) looks kinda cool on your blog and b) it gives patrons book reviews from people other than....me. Right now I am just going to start with the books out of my library that I have read, but as we get into the school year I am hoping maybe to get some student helper staff or anyone to help me get as many books as I can in. The next step for me is to immerse myself into the site a bit more and try to figure out how to best utilize it for my student patrons.

I will be back with thing 13 later (or maybe I won't because I am a tad superstitious!)

Thing 12 - Can you Digg it?

Kid Swallowed By Mud Puddle - Watch more free videos

I hate to sound negative - but here is another media I would file under "I'm not seeing the need." To back up my point - above you can view what was the second most "important" thing on DIGG the day I looked at it.

As a SCHOOL librarian (I only emphasize that because I know it is probably quite different than public librarian) I don't think my patrons need much help figuring out what is most popular at any given time. Now, as a librarian, if someone comes out with a similar site geared specifically to 14-19 year olds, I would maybe check it out just to see what kids are actually interested in (as scary as that can be sometimes.) As for these sites - I don't have a lot of interest.

In the end, this "Thing" did give me the opportunity to figure out how to put a video on my blog - Hooray for me!!!!

Thing 11 - Ummmm, that's Del.icio.us

I first became familiar with tagging through my graduate coursework this past semester. While I have not developed my del.icio.us account (I have linked it on the left side of the page)as much as I could/would like, I definitely see a lot of benefits to such a tool. From personal experience I can say that one of my biggest technological pet peeves is having two or more computers at work (in different rooms no less) and having some bookmarks on one machine and others on the other. Del.icio.us is a great way to have all my bookmarks in one place and gives you the ability to access them from any machine (with internet access) at any time.

From a professional standpoint, I think this tool could be quite useful for research purposes. I envision asking the faculty for some of their "favorite" websites and compiling all of them on a library del.icio.us account. The work up front might be a bit daunting, but once it is up and running, I bet it could be quite a convenient way to help the research process for students.

Thing 10 - Wiki-wiki-WHEEE!

Well, Wikis were not something completely foreign to me (I have been coming around to their use as a research tool slowly but surely), but up until now I had never "participated" in one. Logging into the 23 Things Wiki showed me just how easy it is to edit a page. This ease of access is still probably the one thing that concerns me about wikis. I am all for collaboration, but I must admit that I am concerned about the consequences of publishing "anonymouusly." Particularly in a school setting, I do have some reservations about opening up a webpage to let anyone say just about anything they want (it is MY rear end that is on the line, professionally).

In looking at the library-based Wikis offered, I guess I was most intrigued by the Princeton Library Wiki. If I were to use one in my job - this would probably be the one most like the one I would offer. I have always thought about having student-written book reviews on my library website but have always had trouble with the logistics of such a venture. Maybe a wiki is the way to go. I still have some concerns about security - but maybe I just have to trust a bit more. A lot of this will have to come down to my school's internet/computer usage policies, so I will have to wait until the fall to find out how feasible it is.

As for the great "Wikipedia as a research tool debate," I have to admit that I am coming around on this one. I admit, when I was teaching high school English, I cringed at the thought of my students automatically turning to Wikipedia as their main (if not only) source of information. After taking a class on research this past semester, I began to see that Wikipedia is not the haphazard free-for-all I thought it was. Now that I have had a bit more experience with it, I have come to find that Wikipedia can be a great starting point for research. The key here being that the student still has to go a bit deeper to find all the information he/she needs (as well as to verify what he/she found). In the end, I think Wikipedia is a very valuable tool (when used properly) and that wikis themselves may be something that I incorporate into my own job when I find the proper place for it.

Thing 9 - GoogleDocs and Zoho

Basically - I didn't see a whole lot of difference between these two programs. Both seemed to work very similarly to any basic word processing program. The Google document (as evident by the much greater number of alterations)was much easier to access with Zoho requiring an invitation via email. While this was slightly inconvenient for the purpose of what we are doing, it does seem to be a nice security feature if you want to protect your work.

As far as a school library goes - I really don't see much of a connection. However, if I were still in the classroom, I would LOVE a tool like this. I think it would be a great way for kids to work on a group project together.

Thing 8 - Sharing is "FUN"damental

(Sorry - couldn't resist on the title)

This "thing" reminds me a lot of things #4-6 and my experience was much the same: there are COUNTLESS programs out there that can do just about anything you want and it is good to get familiar with a fraction of them. For this thing I decided to try and start something that will be pertinent to my job (which I haven't even officially started yet) and created a mosiac on BigHugeLabs featuring a few books that I know will be new to my library in the fall. Again, this kind of stuff is VERY easy to use and great for promotional type things such as this.

Now I have a question - the few things I have "created" through this series have consisted of images I have taken off of the net (like the book covers you see here). Am I going to get tazered by the copyright police? Seriously - is this a bad thing to do?

Thing 7 - Communication Tools

There is no doubt that communication in this day and age is changing drastically - and it is definitely good to see libraries changing with it. We would be doing a huge diservice to our patrons if we did not try and find the most popular/convenient ways to communicate with them.

School librarians, however, are limited by the rules and policies of the district they work for. Usually, the use of email, text messaging, etc. is prohibited during the school day - so putting a lot of focus on such technologies would not make much sense. Besides that, the need for such communication isn't quite as important in a school library since the students are there pretty much every day (as opposed to having to travel to the public library). Despite this, I do feel it is important to give students at least an opportunity to have some contact outside the norm. I have included my email address on library webpages I have managed and encouraged students to contact me with questions, comments, suggestions, etc.

Web 2.0 does offer a lot of communication tools which are beneficial to the professional. Obviously email is unavoidable in this day and age and I have already taken advantage of things like mailing lists and listservs. These have been great ways to find ideas and information pertinent to my job. I can see myself delving a bit farther into this sort of thing and joining up with some library personnel web communities.

Thing 6: Image Generating

Undoubtedly the possibilities for these sorts of tools is endless and they really help the artistically challenged (like myself). I think the promotional possibilities are obvious (trading cards, posters, logos, etc.) but I also think that tools such as this woudl be appealing to students to use for special projects, etc. I know going back to my elementary days - this would have been fun to try with the students and I think they would have eaten it up.

To wrap up things 4-6: There is a TON of cool stuff out there and at least now having a passing acquaintance with them is very beneficial. I don't know if I can handle too many more accounts/passwords, however!

Thing 5 - More "fun" with Flickr

Wow!. Just when I thought I couldn't feel any more technologically inadequate - I find this stuff. In all honesty, these things that people are coming up with are pretty cool and could maybe be neat to try out every once in awhile, but I am not sure how much I would really worry about these things. Obviously copying over the above picture was not too difficult - so I could see myself spicing up a blog every now and again.

Thing 4: Flickr

All right, I admit it, I took the easy route with thing 4. I decided to look for a photo rather than start my own account. (thanks, tahdaev for the above pic of Iowa wrestling coach Tom Brands) After reading up on Flickr, however, I definitely plan on opening an account and using it for professional purposes (I am not a big personal photo guy). Some big advantages I see to this format is that anyone can view them from anywhere and it definitely saves your computer/network in terms of memory space. I think this could be great for library promotion and whatnot, and that is how I plan on using it (after I start my new job in the fall).

Thing 3 - RSS

In general, I don't know if I am that fired up about this RSS thing. I mean, I can see how some people who might peruse A LOT of different websites on a daily basis may find convenience in limiting their bookmark cruising to just updates - but, for myself, I really do not see it as being that big of a deal.

What really confuses me is why news/sports sites would use this at all. The basic premise of going to sites like CNN.com, ESPN.com, etc. is to get the LATEST in news. These sites must be updating practically every second - why would you need to see updates? On the other hand - less current sites (like blogs) do have definite uses with this program.

Using the site seems pretty simple - I did not encounter any problems. I stuck the basic cut and paste method for adding subscriptions. I added a few "23" blogs to my list so that I dont have to go back and check them every day.

Would I use it? Personally, I do not see a HUGE need for it. I could see myself subscribing to some professional sites/blogs that I can use to cut back on aimless surfing. Right now I don't know how/why I would use it with students and what they do. If you have any suggestions - please feel to drop me a comment.

Thing2 - Perspectives

This question of where we are at/what Library 2.0 means to the current library structure has been a very important (and beneficial) one to me in the past couple of weeks. I have been interviewing for new jobs and I believe my participation in this program and thinking/learning about Library 2.0 played a big part in my receiving those offers.

The job that I ended up taking has the added benefit of being a school which will be building a brand new facility within the next three years. Hence, the new librarian (me) will have the opportunity to help design the new media center. Because of this, many of the interviewing questions revolved around the concept of "the library of the future" and what it might look like. Now, I admitted up front that if I knew EXACTLY what the library of the future (LOF) would look like - I would be a genius (or at least an oracle), however, I did talk about how the LOF would be a source of information which could not/should not be limited to within four walls. Rather, it would be a physical holding of printed resources along with an electronic/web-based network which would allow patrons to access things from wherever they are.

You always hear people say that libraries will soon be obsolete, that the WWW is all we as a society need for information - that is ridiculous. The fact that the web is home to much more information than a traditional library could ever hope to house makes the need for organizing and helping patrons find their way through all of it even more important. Just because it is possible for a student to find just about anything they may want or need on the web, that doesn't mean that they will be able to do so. In my opinion, the need for a knowledgable/helpful librarian is even MORE important now than ever.

I will admit, I am looking at this from a school librarians point of view - but I think the basic idea applies to public libraries as well. The web is definitely becoming more and more user friendly, but there still needs to be some sort of organizational setup to help novice users find what it is they are looking for - that setup will come from the library.

This is a very exciting time for libraries, and I am very excited to be a part of it. I see this "23 Things" program as being a huge benefit to me as I learn how to use/incorporate blogs, wikis, etc. in my own job as a high school librarian. I know that it will make my three summer break months a bit busier than they have been in the past and that my golf game may suffer (if that is even possible the way I play), but I really think that what I am embarking on here is extremely important and could prove to be very fun as well.

We have liftoff!

Hello all - and welcome to my blog. This is my first attempt at something like this. I wanted to do the 23 Things the first time around but with adjusting to a new job and graduate school it just wasn't in the cards. I was very happy to see them offer a round two and I hope the impending summer isn't too big of a distraction.
Anyways - setting up my first blog. I guess it went okay - my biggest challenge was trying to add the Avatar. I had one already created from a fantasy football league I did in the fall, but figuring out how to add it to my blog took some time. I guess the biggest lesson I learned is to read all of the instructions on the 23 Things blog before I try to muddle my way through a step. Once I found the specific directions to adding the avatar - it was easy.
So, where will this blog go? Honestly, I have no idea. For right now, I don't see it as being anything more than reflections on this overall process (the fact that I will be doing it mostly while school is out of session pretty much leaves me little choice). However, the more used to the process I get, the more I will try and incorporate it into my school's library.