Thing Fifteen: The New Library/Librarian

Well, I guess we can say the Web 2.0 is officially here and it has made it's way into the school and library, or it should have. As a school teacher I look at all of the things I do with my students online; class blog, Shelfari, Edmodo, my class website, and anything else that I can discover to make learning more fun.

When I reflect on what library 2.0 means to me I think of the students that I am serving, multi-taskers who spend more time online, with anti-social, social networking, than with print sources. Those student won't be satisfied with simply a library of print sources, they want to interact more with information, which is why it is important to be up-to-date on the latest web 2.0 tools and how they could be use to collaborate with the teachers in my school. It would look like using Shelfari to do reading logs and reading responses with the language arts teacher, teaching Edmodo to the teachers and then collaborating to teach it to the students so that paper is eliminated, trees are saved, and the students get what they want, more time learning online. It would be put technology out there for the students' easy use and being excited about showing them how to use it.

I can definitely see me talking technology instead of just book talks when classes come to the library, as well as reaching out to my teachers with ideas on collaboration that use web 2.0 tools.

That's all I can think of on this topic. I'm off to further investigate these 23 things!

Thing Fourteen: Technorati and Tags

Technorati; I just don't know what to say about it. I did not find it terribly user friendly; it took me a while to figure things out and get the RSS feed to work. For some reason the format the "Safari" gave was not compatible with the format the Technorati wanted. I finally just put in my URL for the RSS feed and they accepted that; I'm not sure how long it will take for them to actually claim my blog, but we will see. I did search, but nothing I found really jumped out at me as something I needed to follow. Am I old fashioned? I love technology, but the whole tags thing holds no interest for me. Perhaps I have a love of the hunt, finding what it is I am looking for on my own merit, rather than through tags. I have never revisited Delicious or Flickr, except for creative commons when I need a photo, and I'm not sure that I will really revisit Technorati either. The way I could see it working for a librarian is that it would allow you to claim your library blog, if you have one, as well as search other blogs for ideas from other librarians. It could give you ideas and information on collaboration and allow you to give and receive ideas and information with other librarians.

Okay, that's all I've got! I'm going to quickly move on to the next thing, and hope that it is more fun. I want to create things, not just search things.