Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Week 10 , Reviewing

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Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Week 9, Thing 23

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
I really like the del.icio.us bookmarking program. I had too many bookmarks and had trouble getting them organized. Now I can find the ones I really want and use the most.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
It is alway fun to learn new things but the technology is changing so fast it is hard to keep up. This program provided a framework and path to follow to find some important things that can be applied immediately in the library.

Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I will definitely be showing students the Zoho writer. Just getting email approved has been difficult so this will be a practical solution that teachers should appreciate.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
It was encouraging to get comments. I liked the program as it was.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
Yes, because their are constantly new things to learn.

How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote CSLA learning activities?
This experience was challenging, organized, and fun!

Week 9, Things 21-22

I have listened to several of the educational broadcasts from infopeople and other sources. I have added audio books to the library in the last two years but they do not seem to be especially popular with my students.
My son has downloaded several books and likes to listen to them while he is gaming. The Gutenburg Project is a marvelous undertaking and I have had a link to it on my website for several years.

Week 9, Thing 20

YouTube is marvelous. One of my students did a video of our library last year and posted it on YouTube. I incorporated "Library Blonde" in my orientation for freshmen this year. The only problem with the site is that it takes up so much bandwidth that the technology department had said we must limit student use of it. Makes sense but what a shame!

Week 8, Thing 19

I created an account and think this would be an easy way to list new additions to the library as part of the book corner section of my school web page. It has been hard in the past to keep up with new books. I have tried to get students to do book reviews and have quite a few from last year but this seems like an easy approach that might get more participation.

Week 8, Thing 18

Zoho writer seems like a great application for students who are using their email right now and having documents transferred to school to work on them. Just today we had a student who wanted to transfer an assignment from her laptop and print it on our printer. If she had written the work in this program it would have been very easy. As it was, we eventually used a flash drive to download her work from her laptop, then upload it to our computer, and finally print it out. It would have been much easier with Zoho writer.

Week 7, Thing 17

My school uses a program called Moodle that is essentially a wiki. Teachers post information from the days' class, list homework, and have students leave comments in regard to the lesson. The science department has been very proactive in promoting the technology but all departments make some use of it. It is a private wiki with passwords that prevent others from viewing it. I have mentioned to a few English department teachers that some schools are encouraging comments from students studying the same books in different schools to set up a joint wiki that we may look into in the future. Doug Achterman's session on wikis at the CSLA conference had some ideas of how to use it in the library.

Week 6, Things 13-15

Reading about Library 2.0 on Wikipedia emphasizes how challenging it is to keep up with constantly changing technology. The aspect that struck me very strongly was that beta is forever.

I have really enjoyed del.icio.us bookmarking, especially the feature of grouping recently visited websites so it is easy to navigate among them. Discussing Internet innovations with teachers and students reveal that few of them know about more than social networking.

In the future if libraries are able to incorporate this aspect into the informational services there should be a very viable place for the library.

Week 5, Thing 11

Today I tried out Library Thing and catalogued a few books. It was fun to read other peoples reactions to some of my favorite books. It also would be a good way to remember the latest books I have read for book talks.