Week 9: Thing #23

As I review my blog posts of the last nine weeks, I feel a tremendous sense of personal accomplishment and deep gratitude to those who have made this tutorial possible -- Helen Blowers and the California School Library Association for creating the program, my own Massachusetts School Library Association leadership team for discovering this tutorial and partnering with CSLA so that I could take part, to Kathy Dubrovshy, who shepherded our Massachusetts group despite her many other responsibilities, and Beth Donahue, my cheerleader for the tutorial (Even though I did not call on you, just knowing you were there and available made such a difference!). What a journey!

The words I would use to describe the Library 2.0 journey are engaging and empowering. It was fun and quite a challenge.

My favorite part of the tutorial experience was the balance between learning the new Web 2.0 applications and reading/viewing the blog posts, essays, and videos of such people as Michael Stevens, Chris Harris, Joyce Valenza, and Michael Wesch. Their brilliant, clear ideas about the web, teaching and learning, libraries, and communicating inspire me.

I feel more confident about using Web 2.0 tools. I also feel a greater sense of urgency to keep up on new 2.0 developments and to share my knowledge with school colleagues and students.

In the face of many new web tools and so much new web jargon and web content in the form or blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc., I sometimes feel overwhelmed and retreat to the sidelines. This tutorial has enabled me to feel as though I have “caught the wave,” at least for a little while. That feeling is a great motivator for me to continue learning.

The unexpected “take away” from this program is a great sense of pride that a school library organization developed this remarkable, user-friendly tutorial. A school administrator I shared my blog and the program with have been surprised, I think, to know that school librarians are at the forefront in teaching themselves and others about the new Web and it’s powerful potential for teaching and learning. I think: Why not school librarians? and Who better?

I would definitely love to participate if another discovery program is offered.

This online tutorial, as it is now, is nearly perfect. There are a few dead links that CSLA might fix or find substitutes for, but otherwise, I cannot think of any changes I would make.

Week 9: Thing #22: eBooks, audio books

When I first visited the World eBook Fair site, I saw that there was a handful of free books available, but that a subscription fee was required to join the site and gain access to the entire catalog of digitized books.

I decided instead to make a contribution to Project Gutenberg and see what I could find for free. I should have understood that the books on Project Gutenberg would be those where there is no existing copyright, i.e. older books. In fact, this seems to be true. Among those authors with works on Project Gutenberg are the following: James Russell Lowell, Amy Lowell, John Locke, the Roman historian Livy, and Jack London. The following children's authors were not available at Project Gutenberg: Natalie Babbitt, Kathleen Krull, Lois Lowry, or Shel Silverstein.

I downloaded a version of Jack London's Call of the Wild from a mirror site as a compressed file. The book opened as a txt file. Although I accessed the full text of the book, the appearance of the text was dated looking, reminding me of early Internet files before graphics. I don't think Project Gutenberg is going to replace the regular text versions of books any time soon, but it is a great, convenient research tool.

I tried to download an audio book, The Kabul Beauty School, from my regional library system. I was able to access a brief two-minute introductory reading of the book, a beautiful reading. To get the entire book, I needed to download the Overdrive Media Console, which I did, and also upgrade Windows Media Player, which I could not do on account of security on the school laptop I was using. Also, I could not discover whether and where the file was locate on my laptop. So with the equipment I currently have and the security restrictions on some of it, the use of audio books and e-books would not be that easy. I am sure that if I had more time, and if I got some technical help, I would be able to get the file I downloaded.

Week 9: Thing #21 Podcasts

I just downloaded the Story Corps podcast to my Bloglines list and am delighted to notice that my Blogroll automatically updates itself!

I am thrilled to have this particular feed as I enjoy listening to Story Corps segments on NPR. After looking at a number of the podcast directories and not finding anything that I really wanted to have automatically downloaded to my computer, I recalled that WBUR (Boston University radio) offers podcasts. I made several attempts at subscribing from that site and finally went directly to the Story Corps website where I was able to add the feed without difficulty.

I do not have an mp3 player and so have not tried transferring and editing podcast files.

I located and read several beginning tutorials on podcasts. I need to read further and look for examples of how schools have used them, including how and where podcast links are placed on the school website.

Week 9: Thing #20 YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM Information R/evolution

Kansas State University assistant professor, Michael Wesch, has created several thought-provoking videos about Web 2.0. These videos are available on YouTube. Several of his titles are the The Machine is Us/ing Us, linked from Library 2.0 website, The Information R/evolution, and A Vision of Students Today.

I found Wesch’s video presentations powerful and love the availability that YouTube provides.

Using the image of a restless cursor on a digital page throughout much of The Machine is Us/ing Us, Wesch asserts that the Web 2.0 revolution challenges us to rethink everything, including copyright, identity, authorship, privacy, commerce, love, family, and even ourselves.

In another video called Information R/evolution Wesch, who teaches Digital Ethnography, claims that the Web 2.0 revolution has changed the rules of order, of how we think about and organize information. Wesch refers to David Weinberger’s book, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Chapter 1 is available on Weinberger’s blog), to illustrate the inefficiencies of ordering things in the physical realm and the tremendous flexibility and accessibility of “third order organization,” the use of tags in the digital realm.

In Information R/evolution Wesch also refers to Clay Shirky’s fascinating online essay, Ontology is Overrrated: Categories, Links, and Tags on Shirky's Writings about the Internet site. Here again Wesch, via Shirky, asserts that the alternate organization system – tags and the aggregating of tags – does a better job of allowing users to create value from one another than previous, hierarchical structures such as search directories permit. It’s a powerful message whose truth is demonstrated by the explosion of the Web as a means of communicating through 2.0 applications such as YouTube, blogs, and Flickr.

I loved being able to see these brilliant videos on YouTube and then follow up the references that interested me.

These videos have been used effectively in various ways in my school as professional development resources.

Week 8: Thing #19 Library Thing

Adding books to Library Thing as I read them will be a great way to remember titles I want to recommend to students at my school.

Library Thing is pretty interesting. It's fairly easy to add books. I did find that, for those titles which contain common words, it's better to look up the exact ISBN on Amazon rather than doing a title search, which can yield far too many results to look through. For example, when I wanted to find the book, Millions by Frank Cottrell, and entered that title by name, I got 1700 hits, including books that had the word millions anywhere within the title.

A feature that seems very good is the Local feature. I discovered some great events at public libraries near Boston, not exactly local for me, living near Worcester, but possible.

I finally added the Library Thing widget to this blog page. It's a neat idea, especially for a school library web page, to have a widget that has a selection of books that are actually in one's own collection in Library Thing.

Week 8: Thing #18 Zoho Writer...a second try

A Look at Zoho Writer

I'm logged in on a Dell laptop now, and using Internet Explorer. There's whole range of "very friendly" tools available in Zoho Writer, including various symbols used in webpage generators. Zoho Writer may be an easier way for me to create/modify pages for the Ednets server that my district uses for web hosting, easier than remembering to open each page, originally created in MSWord, as a web document.

The comments tool is neat! A great way to give editorial ¶ comments.

But I am having some difficulty inserting an image. I tried several times to browse for an image saved on my desktop before realizing that while I am using Zoho Writer, I'm out on the web. I'll see if I can find a web-based image that's o.k. for me to link to.

Still couldn't insert a picture. I am sure I'll be able to discover how to do this in Zoho Forums. I added a tag, though, a handy feature if one has many documents, covering a range of topics.

Will see if I can post this document to my blog.

Technorati Tags Writer,Zoho

Week 8: Thing #18 Zoho Writer

Lots of helpful information on the Zoho FAQ page. I am not sure that Zoho Writer will work well on my Mac, running Firefox 1.0.6. Firefox requirement for Zoho is 2.0+. But I'll only know if I try it.

The tags feature is here in Zoho Writer, too. I selected the word "Zoho" and pressed the "tag" button. Nothing appeared to happen, but perhaps it did.

Not sure exactly how to save this brief Zoho document. I can't see how to EXPORT it to my desktop for saving. There is no EXPORT tab. I'll have to try this on a pc.
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