I'm still here!

Well, I have jumped in with both feet this time... I have adapted the 23 Things tutorial for my school staff. There were a number of links that were no longer valid, and some of the tools are not really relevant to what our school does, so I changed it up a bit. So far, one teacher has signed on...I am hoping for a few more.

I also decided to export the blog to share with my fellow teacher librarians at their schools. With a minimum amount of time they should be able to be up and running with their school sites as well.

Afterward

Well, it has been almost a year since I completed the 2.0 tutorial, and I am happy to say I implemented some of what I learned. I used LibraryThing to post books new to the library, and I managed to keep it up-to-date! I developed a blog for the library using edublogs. (I was much more comfortable with blogger, but my district blocked the site.) I faithfully use my RSS reader to follow all the blogs that are important to me.

This coming school year I am planning to work with the kids to podcast book reviews, and I still need a way to organize my time to have an opportunity to post blog entries more often. I am also setting a goal to use VoiceThread somehow.

I am still so glad that I participated in this tutorial...it has made a difference in both my working and my personal life!

Withdrawal

Gosh...I am going through withdrawal with this blog. For weeks I had a purpose and I had a great deal of collegial feedback. It was great. I am using the things I learned to create a school site blog, which is also good, but which serves a different purpose for now. This blog has been a completely peer-related exercise which I had the time for during the summer, but probably won't as much during the school year. I have added a number of our blogs to my Google reader, and it is fun keeping up. I look forward to meeting many of you in person at CSLA in November. Cheers to a good beginning!!

Edublog vs. Blogger

After completing the 23 things using blogger, I find I am very comfortable with it. I like the versatility and ease of adding widgets, etc. The problem with blogger in a middle school setting, however, is the accessibility of the "next blog". So, I think I am going to set up my school blog on edublogs. I have just started experimenting with it, so I am sure I will become very comfortable with it at some point. There are so many presentations to choose from!

Week 9, Thing #23

I completed my survey, and am now thinking about what an incredible learning experience this has been. Many thanks to the 2.0 team for putting this together for us. I would do it again in a heartbeat!

There were so many discoveries that I made that I will be using this next year that I don't think I have one favorite. I would have to say the most useful to me was setting up my RSS feed. I have been able to follow fellow bloggers and other sites so efficiently. Others that I really enjoyed, and plan to use next year are LibraryThing, Flickr, PBWiki, and podcasting...not to mention blogging!

One of the aspects of this program that was most satisfying for me was the collegiality I experienced from other CSLA bloggers. I was always amazed when someone would comment on a post.....people really were reading my blog (and I was reading theirs). I think that is what really made it authentic for me. I hope that when the school year starts for us, many of us will continue to blog. I know I have several CSLA people on my RSS list. This just seems like such a great way to build and maintain our community.

I think the format of this program was great. I liked that it was a little structured, but there were places where we could go off track and serendipitously discover on our own. I would definitely sign up for another discovery program like this again. Summer was the best time to do this, because we weren't distracted by all the things that happen in our working lives. I know I probably spent way too much time at this, but I loved it! I will probably go through withdrawal now. The biggest challenge for me now is to figure out how to bring some of the teachers at my site along. If our tutorial stays online, I can refer them to the sections that they would find most useful, and guide them along.

Hmm...one word or sentence? This was a great learning experience.....in my sweats, with my cup of Peet's and my colleagues online every day. It was inspiring!

Week 9, Thing #22

While learning about access to e-books and audiobooks I was amazed to see the variety of places to find them. I guess that is why Google is trying to do its best to "digitize" the world. It sure would be easier to go to one place to find out what's out there. The biggest difference that I see in many cases is that Google's books actually look like pages from the books, whereas many of these other e-books seem to be glorified pdf's.

On my train trip across the United States this summer I met a gentleman who was using an e-book reader very adeptly. He told me that he likes it better than lugging around big hard cover books. He is able to change the font and contrast to give him a reading experience that was better than "screen" reading. I don't know...it still didn't feel the same.

Librivox looks like a very promising site for audio books. Of course, it does depend on the quality of the reader as well. Another site I have used through our public library in Contra Costa County is Califa . It is a collection of both audio and e-books for libraries. I am sure many public libraries are probably already part of this consortium.

This whole area seems to be in its infancy, and it will be interesting to see how it develops with regard to school libraries.

Week 9, Thing #21

And I thought there were lots of videos on YouTube! Podcasts are equally ubiquitous! I looked at a couple of podcast directories, but found myself most comfortable with i-tunes. I found a great podcast site called Just One More Book that was pretty cute, and I subscribed to the podcasts at Redwood Middle School in Napa (because I work with middle schoolers).

And....just because I like to make things harder for myself, I created a little podcast of my own! It was a bit challenging, because after I recorded it I had to find a site to host it. I wanted to add a little mp3 player icon to my blog here, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. Needless to say, I have never done anything like this before. Anyway, I do have a link to it, so if you want to listen just click on my podcast. It is only about one minute long. Much to learn here!