Google Docs

Our school has been using Google Docs for about a year. It has many advantages, one of them being that it's free, for our District. Our team has the tech teacher on it, and he has been teaching us how to use the calendar, email, and documents. When our team meets, we use a form he created in Google Docs so that, no matter where we meet, we have a form available in every room in the school. Then we take turns taking notes so that we become more familiar with it. We also have a place that houses our team notes and we don't need to have the notes emailed or have a hard paper copy, especially if we are all at the meeting. He usually sends the notes, or a notice that our team notes are available on Google Docs, which also saves the Principal time if he doesn't want to read the notes. I feel that the word processing is pretty easy and doesn't need to be more sophisticated, as it might have to be if you were writing something like a resume using Microsoft Word.
We are also using parts of the program to prepare grades and to prepare a document from a grade-level team before it goes to the parents. Internal public library work could use the program, also, to save time. Members of a committee, library directors, or trustees could create a document together that could be checked by all first, and then go out to the public. Plus, preparing newsletters would be much quicker, making all involved feel they were part of the creative process.

Adding to a wiki -still lesson 9

I was able to add to the "favorite restaurants" page of the vermonts23things@hotmail.com! It took me awhile to figure out how to add to the blog, though. It's supposed to be easy to do but couldn't find how to add the link without going back a page to see the directions for adding. The directions mentioned putting the label URL in the correct place.
I can see that adding to wikis can be lots of fun. How to use in school? It would be a different way to build an all-class project on a topic, such as elephants. Each student could add a link with information about elephants, as well as add more info. Wikis are great!

Lesson 9 - Wikis

This, for me, was one of the most interesting lessons. I had used wikipedia but hadn't seen any of the other sites. For new librarians, the website that taught about librarianship was simple to use. I looked at an article about weeding, which is very challenging to someone new in the profession. I agreed with most of what they said, since I do thoroughly weed my elementary school library all the time. I liked what they said about taking a shelf a week to work on.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get into the website on library instruction, which I would have looked at for suggestions on teaching different skills. When you can't get on a site, you don't know if it's your computer, or the fault of the site.
The Bull Run Library site was terrific, much more updated than our public library site, including a video on RSS that I watched for an earlier lesson.
I used the Wiktionary to look up a word from the book I am currently reading, The Great Wide Sea. It was easy to use. When I saw that there was a Wikipedia article, I went to it to see a picture of a bimini. We used to have one on our boat, only I didn't know that is what it's called! I looked up dinghy (which I know) just to see what it would say, and it, again, referred me to Wikipedia. This makes me think that I should just go to that site first, and skip the Wiktionary, unless it's a foreign word or something very unusual and hard to find.
Wikihow could definitely become addictive, because I love to see how people do arts & crafts projects. But there are not enough "how to's" on that site yet to really be helpful. I did look at the article on walking meditation, since I learned how to do that in Thailand at a Buddhist monastery. The article was pretty simplistic and the video was banal. There was a basic explanation, but even I could describe the many steps that we learned in more detail.
I do feel that, for the most part, wikis can be used in public libraries and school libraries, as long as people understand that they are not always reliable or even factual.

Library 2.0 and Twitter - Lesson 8

Wow! Reading articles about the future of libraries is pretty scary. How are librarians going to keep up? I guess because I'm "older" than the young people who have totally grown up on computers, it comes more naturally to them than to me.
I do see the need for libraries to keep up or they will die like the dinosaurs. When I read that Rick Anderson's college library has had a 55% drop in circulation from 12 years ago, it is obvious that the library needs to function as an assistant to web users, not just book depositories. But, as he said, there are few librarians for the number of patrons, so librarians are needed to be contacted in other ways, other than face-to-face. When people have a question today, they want the answer NOW. And, if they can access the web on a phone, they won't think to ask a librarian for help, or even to look in a book, unless they can email or talk to a librarian over the internet.
I'm lucky that I work at a school library, where children are still taking out books like crazy. I still have lots of contact with children and books, and a good tech lab nearby.
Twitter is easier to do than I thought. I became a fan of Barack Obama! I knew Dr. Phil was on Twitter, so I went to see his posts. I will see if any of my relatives are on Twitter. It would be fun to Twitter with my granddaughter when she gets a little older. And my cell phone is so old, I can't text with it. To me, that would be the most fun. Next time I take a trip, I will Twitter with my daughter also. As far as using them in libraries, I can't really see using it at this time.

del.icio.us Lesson 8

I love the idea of being able to access your bookmarks from any computer! I will use this site, also, to pursue a few hobbies.
I would love to show this to teachers at school. The video on delicious showed that you could network with others at work, but I have no idea how they did it. There must me some way to set up a group, but I'll have to try it later. I really want to get through the 23 things, since I'm getting closer to the end. How would I use it in my library? I would love to tag sites for teachers, instead of sending an email.
Could our Vermont Educational Media Association set up a group?

Library Thing

Part of Vermont's 23 Things is to look at Library Thing, a site for you to enter the books that you read, review them, and read what others have written. Amazing source of reviews for books lovers! It's free and easy to set up. I wonder if kids could do this during the school year? The site is http://www.librarything.com/home/TravelingChris if you want to see what I'm recommending. Book lovers, this is the site for you!

It seems that once I have posted a blog entry, I don't know how to edit it, so I will put, in this post, the website if you want to create your own word image : http://www.imagechef.com/ic/word_mosaic/. I certainly had fun looking at some of the websites and created my own avatar. However, I didn't see anything on yahoo's avatar to save it before I lost it! I don't spend a lot of time browsing these kinds of sites and had no idea there were so many! I would love to buy a Christmas ornament that I saw you could make out of groups of your photos. Maybe when I retire I will have the time for it.

I am learning how to use generators and created this image. I am a big supporter of the Central Vermont Humane Society, which has a great need for people to adopt animals and to temporarily house them to get them ready for adoption. I had a great cat that came from the shelter. Hope you can visit your local shelter!

Social Networks

I am not able to get on the social networks at my job, but I may try at home. With so many millions on these sites, I would like to find a group that is interested in traveling or quilting, for ex. Perhaps when my granddaughter gets older, I can join her social network!
I have watched so much on Dr. Phil & Oprah about the evils of what kids are doing, but I understand the attraction for the younger generation. It seems that young people who want to feel popular can, if they can be part of one of the most popular MySpace kids in school. And it may empower people to be more outgoing in the safety of their home, in front of the computer. How much time they spend on these things, I can only imagine. Between that and texting, I don't know how they get anything accomplished, like studying.
But I'm glad they have these sites because it opens their world. Since the young today are being raised on this, it's no different than how we met with friends for hours on the phone. I still prefer to talk with someone personally. I'm a product of my generation, too.

Technology - I'm still learning

I've had some success lately and a failure, which makes it difficult to wile away hours on something and not have it work.
I was successful in putting a project together, with pictures and text, and copying it to a CD. I had to do this for UVM because I had to finish my graduate course. That seems pretty simple, but I tried three kinds of discs before one of them worked. I knew it wasn't the size of the project, only 4 pictures and 5 written pages of text, but getting the computer to transfer the work to a disc. My tech teacher told me to save the stuff in a folder, and that eventually worked.
My unsuccessful venture was today, actually. I had created, on a MAC in my library, a Keynote presentation that I made from photos and video I had taken of robins that had built a nest below my deck. The photos and videos took 2 weeks to gather as the birds matured and I was quite proud of how much you could see as mom and dad robin fed the babies. I wanted to be able to transfer the completed work to a CD so that I could show it anywhere. On the MAC, the movie was only 2" high and wouldn't work at all on my PC. I know that the easiest way is to have the original program on a laptop and run it from there, but I don't have a laptop or a MAC. When I leave this school, I really wanted to take it with me. I'll try again.

flickr image

I was successful somewhat in taking this off of Flickr. It came in vertically instead of horizontally. All I did was copy the letters and paste it here. Using the "Add Image" choice from my blog did not do it. At least I got this far!

Flickr mashups

This week's Vermont's 23 Things wants us to look at some mashups available from Flickr. I was certainly amazed at what one can make! I liked the "Catchy Colors Colr Pickr" site. I'm sure one could waste a lot of time playing with it. I tried uploading a photo but had no luck. I tried using a picture that was not copyrighted, but it wouldn't work. I'll try something else.