Thing Seventeen: Roll ups are good!

Hello fellow bloggers!

I have no experienced Rollyo and found that it could be useful as a librarian. You could create a Searchroll for the sites you most frequent and be able to easily search those sites on a daily basis without having to go to each site. I believe if I am comparingi Rollyo to Delicious, I prefer a Searchrolls to tags. I created a Books, Books, Books, search roll that allows you to simply search booklists and other review sites for books you might be interested in finding out more about before you read it, or put it in your library. Let me know what you thought about Rollyo.

Thing Sixteen: Wiki, wiki, what?!?

Hello fellow bloggers!

Here I am on Thing #16; how did I make it so far...it almost didn't hurt at all. While I love learning, sometimes it stretches you into places that are a little uncomfortable, but you make it through and come out on the other side more knowledge! I think that is where I am with tags and RSS feeds, I think. Ha! Well, wikis I can definitely handle, while I am a person who likes the bling, and wikis don't really allow for that, I can see how this would be beneficial in the world of a librarian. I can see into my future where I use wikis to collaborate with teachers from departments, for example, the sixth grade social studies team comes to me and wants to do research on Africa, that's what they were just doing, and so I create a social studies wiki where they can post the information they have and what they need from me. We can plan the entire lesson via and wiki with minimal time meeting after school. As is often the case, an entire grade-level department does not always have the same planning period, and the wiki will allow everyone to stay up-to-date regardless of ability to meet all together! How cool is that?!?! I must say that I like the notion of the "Sandbox portion" idea of designating places to play. The two wikis that were most interesting to me were the "Teacher Librarian Wiki" and the "Book Lovers Wiki" because those are two things that I have a passion for. I hope you had as much fun as I did checking out the wikis, and let me know if you start using them in your own classroom. I'm going to have to figure out how to fit this in before the end of the year. Singing off, FarmerDaughter!

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.

Thing Thirteen: Is it really delicious?

Hello readers! Well, I have finally investigated Delicious. It took me a while to warm up to the site; i feel that it is the same as searching on lycos, bing, or google. The only difference is you have to save and name everything instead of just adding it to your bookmarks for further use. So, once again I get to log into yet another website to access information. I think that is the one thing I am finding daunting about this process, the amount of user names and passwords I have accrued. I'm sure that some of these sights will never be visited again by me, while others will be frequently used, I'm not sure which category Delicious falls into. Okay, stepping off my soapbox...looking at this as a potential research assistant I can see that it might be useful if you are simply working from the internet, but does it work if I am working within a database? As a graduate student that is primarily where I am going to find my research, in databases of professional journals, etc. I can see that it would be available to you anywhere for use and tagging as long as you had an internet connection, but I do have to wonder what happens if all your research is there and your internet goes down; you need to definitely back that information up somewhere else as well, I would think. As a librarian I could see me using this application as a way to accumulate information for the different core areas and to tag them accordingly. I looked for ya fiction tags and found some good sites on reading advisory. I will continue to play with it and see where I ultimately land. For now I will be Switzerland...neutral. I looked at Digg as well, and that site really seemed like a cross between an RRS feed and facebook, you know, the Live News Feed part of facebook. I don't think I will be revisiting that site, but I can see how it would be appealing to those who like to keep up with news, etc.. online. Thanks for reading, I would love to hear your comments regarding these two sites. Heading out for another adventure...signing off.

Thing Twelve: To Comment or Not to Comment...that is the question!

Hello fellow LIbrary2Play-ers, and others who might be reading this blog. Today we are inspecting the ideas of commenting on other's blogs, and what to do with your comments section. After reading the many articles on correct blog commenting techniques, two drew my attention specifically. The first, how hard is it to leave a comment? I would agree with Darren Rowse on his tenth tip, Make is Easy to Comment. I know that I often don't leave a comment if it is too difficult to get that comment up on the blog. I prefer the ones that use other sites log in information, or OpenID, over having to create a profile in order to comment. I use a blog through SBISD that allows anyone to comment by typing in the name they want to appear as and their email address. I specifically chose to go with the one through the school district because it was so easy for all of my students to comment. The second thing I found important was the discussion of keeping up with your comments section. I agree with this; do I think it is feasible to comment back to every single person, no, not always, but I do think you should pick and choose good comments and return a comment to keep the discussion going. If readers feel that you never look at their comments, then why would they continue commenting, they might even stop reading your blog all-together. Okay, I'm off to find something meaningful to say to five other Library2Play bloggers and two others that I find out on the world wide web. I'll be back to let you know what I find. Signing off....

Thing Eleven: Shelfari vs. LibraryThing...the showdown

It is funny that this "thing" happened to fall at this time because I just recently had a conversation with another teacher who uses Shelfari with her students. I have recently opened up a blog discussion with my students regarding their thoughts on taking our current reading log and moving it online. My thought is that it would create more discussion amongst all of my classes, and allow for a more authentic audience. Currently I am the only person, besides the student, that reads their reading responses. With this new format it would allow for everyone to read their writing as well as comment to each other. My students seem really excited about the idea, as am I! So, it couldn't have come at a better time that I was introduced to LibraryThing as one of my 23 things. After perusing the site, checking out all of the resources, and setting up an account, I must say that I, unfortunately, find Shelfari to be more user friendly, and visually appealing. I think it is easier to search Shelfari vs. LibraryThing. In LIbraryThing once I added a book I had to search again to get the next book in the series. That became frustrating. Overall either of these two sites would work for creating an authentic, online community where your students could discuss books together. Let me know your thoughts on the matter, do you use Shelfari, if yes, how do these two sites compare to you?