Tuesday, July 22, 2008
My New Blog
Well the summer is over half over I have not gotten around to working on this project any more. I have, however, started a new blog on Edublog in the last few days. School Library Journal is sponsoring a similar on-line workshop on Web 2.0 and wanted us to use Wordpress or Edublogs. I was also curious about the possible uses of Edublogs with kid so I am checking it out. You can find my new blog at http://bookbabe.edublogs.org/
Friday, May 30, 2008
SLL 2.0, Starting again, Summer 2008,
Summer has finally arrived. I thought it never would. School has not allowed me time to work on this tutorial/blog but I hope to get back into it this summer. I wanted to post something as I was afraid that Blogger might terminate my account. I am not sure how they deal with inactive accounts but they must clean things up every once in a while. I see that the banner I made for my blog using Blog Banner Generator has disappeared. Not sure what that is about. It has been a long time since this blog was active. Something somewhere must have expired.
One of my concerns with Web 2.0 applications is that one looses control over their content. It ends up saved on someone else's server and is at the mercy of the software developer or the company that supports the application. If the company goes belly up, is bought by another company that decides to sell access, etc. all your work can disappear.
We have been exploring new OPAC software for our library. Many of the companies that are wanting our business are offering web based software. I find the idea disturbing. If we don't/can't pay a yearly fee we loose our OPAC. Some companies are hosting our MARC records too. It makes us too dependent on them. We have no control over costs or our data base. I don't think that I am ready to hand that over to any company no mater how good they are reputed to be.
One of my concerns with Web 2.0 applications is that one looses control over their content. It ends up saved on someone else's server and is at the mercy of the software developer or the company that supports the application. If the company goes belly up, is bought by another company that decides to sell access, etc. all your work can disappear.
We have been exploring new OPAC software for our library. Many of the companies that are wanting our business are offering web based software. I find the idea disturbing. If we don't/can't pay a yearly fee we loose our OPAC. Some companies are hosting our MARC records too. It makes us too dependent on them. We have no control over costs or our data base. I don't think that I am ready to hand that over to any company no mater how good they are reputed to be.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
SLL 2.0, Week 5, Thing 12
Rollyo is officially cool in my books! This site would allow you to create a search engine for students that would search only those web sites that you wanted them to be on, This would be great for Web Quest pages. I am thinking of a Web Quest on States for my 5th graders. They could use a special search engine to find the info for their assignment. That way they wouldn't be floundering around on the world wide web without a clue. They can really get lost and waste a huge amount of time without guided searches of some kind.
I added a search box to this page for searching for data on different plants. It searches several online plant data bases. Now I can search them all at once instead of going to a half dozen different sites.
I added a search box to this page for searching for data on different plants. It searches several online plant data bases. Now I can search them all at once instead of going to a half dozen different sites.
VERY COOL!!
SLL 2.0, Week 5, Thing 11
It has been a while since I have posted. I have had more important things going on. The last book of the Harry Potter series arrived so I needed to get it read.
I looked at the Award sites. There are some really interesting sites but they look like real time eaters. Still if you needed an application they would certainly be useful. I am going to put a link here to explore them more later. One that I looked at was the Google documents. I can see it being useful to send documents to an from work and home etc. I will give it a try the next time I have a need to send a document.
I joined the ALA NING site. It is nice but like a lot of social networking I don't see myself using it too much. Keeping up and posting is just another thing to take up my time. Still it is interesting. High school students might like to interact with one another and share books on a library related NING site. May be it might be a way to revive the library club next year.
Can you tell that I am beginning to feel stressed about school getting started and finding time to get everything done? Hummm... "Time waits for no" librarian.
I looked at the Award sites. There are some really interesting sites but they look like real time eaters. Still if you needed an application they would certainly be useful. I am going to put a link here to explore them more later. One that I looked at was the Google documents. I can see it being useful to send documents to an from work and home etc. I will give it a try the next time I have a need to send a document.
I joined the ALA NING site. It is nice but like a lot of social networking I don't see myself using it too much. Keeping up and posting is just another thing to take up my time. Still it is interesting. High school students might like to interact with one another and share books on a library related NING site. May be it might be a way to revive the library club next year.
Can you tell that I am beginning to feel stressed about school getting started and finding time to get everything done? Hummm... "Time waits for no" librarian.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
SLL 2.0, Week 5, Thing 10
Well I am back. It has been a while since I have posted. I haven't been asleep. I have been spending lots of time playing with RSS feeds. After being so excited about them I was not too impressed with online image generators. There were some that were kind of interesting but they were not very useful. They were fun to play with but I didn't find much that I will use in the classroom. I added the image to my blog banner using a generator called Blog Banner Generator.
http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr/blogheader.php#
It is designed for Wordpress blogs but I was able to up lode a picture to the generator, save the generated pic to my computer and then attach it to my banner on the "customize" link. It looks ok. I will look around for some more but I am not terribly excited about what I have found so far.
http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr/blogheader.php#
It is designed for Wordpress blogs but I was able to up lode a picture to the generator, save the generated pic to my computer and then attach it to my banner on the "customize" link. It looks ok. I will look around for some more but I am not terribly excited about what I have found so far.
Friday, July 6, 2007
SLL 2.0, Week 4, Things 8 & 9
RSS feeds are Amazing! I had no idea that they existed. (I have been living in a cave.) I have seen the little orange icons on lots of sites but didn't have a clue how cool they were. I have set up a Google Reader and added about a dozen different feeds. I am sure that I will get rid of some of them once I find out about them. I always wished there was some way to check news stories without going to sites all over the internet. I would like to use video and audio feeds too but my G3 is a bit slow to make them usable. I subscribed to several feeds from the ALA site. It was amazingly easy to add them. There must be a catch. It is to good to be true. I am in love with RSS.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
SLL 2.0, Week 3, Thing 7
More Time Please.
Technology is an amazing thing. When I first went to work as a media specialist over 30 years ago almost nothing being used today existed. One of the coolest pieces of technology that my school had was an ancient cabinet about 5 foot tall filled with stereoscopic viewers and hundreds of cards with geography pictures from all over the world dating back to the 1920's. The kids loved it.
Over the years we have added more and more diverse technology. Teachers in my small rural district have the usual overhead projectors, cassette and CD players, VCRs, DVD players, DVD recorders, and TVs. They also have access to PDAs, digital cameras, digital movie cameras, LCD projectors, and laptop and desktop computers. Nothing too avant-garde but every one of these items requires a level of tech expertise. In addition every vcr, every projector, and every computer works a little differently. Just because you can run one LCD projector doesn't mean that you can run another. Every piece of equipment is different.
That is just the equipment. Then there is the software. Every computer program has a learning curve and is changed (updated) every few months. When teachers come back to school this year they will have to re-learn how to use most of the software and some of the equipment that they used last year since it will be updated or replaced over the summer.
Then there is the Internet. Every site works differently. Every site requires the user to sign up, register, provide user names, passwords, etc. In taking this course I have had to register at three different sites. They require the latest plug ins and browsers, all of which must be downloaded. As a media specialist nearly every company that I purchase from has a website and requires me to log in to use it. Remembering all of the logins is a full time job. All of these things work differently depending on what OS you are using, the type of computer that you use, and the network setup, firewall, virus protector, and spam blockers that are present.
Teachers can be forgiven if they are developing a fear of technology. They can spend endless hours learning how to do something, getting it set up, and teaching their students to use it, only to have everything undone when the tech person changes a setting on the firewall. Even kids are becoming technophobic. I have been working on this tutorial for School Library Learning 2.0 for several days now and have spent hours and hours figuring out how this all works. Who knows if I will be able to remember how to do everything I have learned. I would never have time to do this during the school year. A check of the blogs on the SLL 2.0 site shows that many of them have not been updated for weeks. I am sure that time is the limiter.
The biggest technology challenge for teachers and the media specialists that serve them is going to be finding time to weed through which technologies are the most important, finding time to set them up, learn to use them, and then actually implement them.
Time may be THE most important technology requirement.
Technology is an amazing thing. When I first went to work as a media specialist over 30 years ago almost nothing being used today existed. One of the coolest pieces of technology that my school had was an ancient cabinet about 5 foot tall filled with stereoscopic viewers and hundreds of cards with geography pictures from all over the world dating back to the 1920's. The kids loved it.
Over the years we have added more and more diverse technology. Teachers in my small rural district have the usual overhead projectors, cassette and CD players, VCRs, DVD players, DVD recorders, and TVs. They also have access to PDAs, digital cameras, digital movie cameras, LCD projectors, and laptop and desktop computers. Nothing too avant-garde but every one of these items requires a level of tech expertise. In addition every vcr, every projector, and every computer works a little differently. Just because you can run one LCD projector doesn't mean that you can run another. Every piece of equipment is different.
That is just the equipment. Then there is the software. Every computer program has a learning curve and is changed (updated) every few months. When teachers come back to school this year they will have to re-learn how to use most of the software and some of the equipment that they used last year since it will be updated or replaced over the summer.
Then there is the Internet. Every site works differently. Every site requires the user to sign up, register, provide user names, passwords, etc. In taking this course I have had to register at three different sites. They require the latest plug ins and browsers, all of which must be downloaded. As a media specialist nearly every company that I purchase from has a website and requires me to log in to use it. Remembering all of the logins is a full time job. All of these things work differently depending on what OS you are using, the type of computer that you use, and the network setup, firewall, virus protector, and spam blockers that are present.
Teachers can be forgiven if they are developing a fear of technology. They can spend endless hours learning how to do something, getting it set up, and teaching their students to use it, only to have everything undone when the tech person changes a setting on the firewall. Even kids are becoming technophobic. I have been working on this tutorial for School Library Learning 2.0 for several days now and have spent hours and hours figuring out how this all works. Who knows if I will be able to remember how to do everything I have learned. I would never have time to do this during the school year. A check of the blogs on the SLL 2.0 site shows that many of them have not been updated for weeks. I am sure that time is the limiter.
The biggest technology challenge for teachers and the media specialists that serve them is going to be finding time to weed through which technologies are the most important, finding time to set them up, learn to use them, and then actually implement them.
Time may be THE most important technology requirement.
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