Method 12

Wow, my colleagues and I did it! We are not the most tech-savvy trio and this course definitely stretched us and our tech support crew who had to unblock quite a few sites so that we could even start the methods and blog about them. I have to admit, though, it was fun walking around school talking about "starting my blog."

I enjoyed learning about cloud computing and Delicious the most. I have started using tagging, and it's helping me get better organized. Cloud computing just seems like it's here to stay, and if I ever become a more mobile computer user I will need to know how it works.

I hope other courses will be offered in this format. It was very convenient for the librarians in our district to get together during scheduled inservice days and work together--and the content actually related to us. Sadly, that doesn't always happen with district-wide training.

Thank you Naomi for providing this learning opportunity for us!

Method 11

As avid NPR listeners both my husband and I enjoy the freedom of listening to shows when it's convenient for us, so I was familiar with that aspect of podcasting.

I didn't realize that all it took to create your own podcasts was a microphone, internet service and a computer. Our elementary campus has kicked around the idea of creating a daily news broadcast, and book talks written and performed by our students in podcast format would work perfectly in that venue.

I listened to a Librarian Live podcast which had great information, and the site is well organized. (Imagine that, organized librarians!) I also listened to some of Nancy Keene's book talks.

Method 10

When I started this method the only Wiki I was really familiar with was Wikipedia which I don't advocate using for "serious" research. So I was pleasantly surprised to learn all the other applications for which wikis are used.

I really liked the video example of starting a wiki to plan for the camping trip. This summer my family is going on our first cousin vacation, and so far the planning--via email--has not been very efficient. A wiki would organize the process so much better.

I can also see using a wiki to plan collaboratively with a grade level. Now I usually deal with the team leader, but there are always decisions we must make as a group and sometimes that process takes much too long while we wait for everyone to respond either by email or verbally.

Method 9

As a busy person--and who isn't these days?--I love text messaging and telephone answering machines. You can leave your message and get on with your day. But there's always that possibility that the recipient either won't get the message or won't get it in a timely fashion.

Enter IM and chat. (Something I actually have experience with, and this is only, what, Method 9?) If the person you need to contact is online and available you've got basically a captive audience and are pretty much guaranteed an instant response. That's my kind of communication.

As for library use; our district email system is very reliable, and I try to check it a handful of times during the school day. So I can't see the teachers wanting to learn a new technology when what we have serves our purpose well.

Method 8

This was a frustrating method for me because any site with either the words "facebook" or "my space" is blocked by out district, so I wasn't even able to read the articles about using these sites. So basically, none of these options are available to the librarians in our district. The end.

I was able to read the articles about using Twitter, and as an advertising media I think it could be very useful for libraries with patrons who are old enough to carry cell phones. Short and sweet is always good in my book both as a writer and a reader.

Method 7

As an untidy bookmarker who can't ever seem to find the website I used last week, I love the idea of annotating websites with tags. I also like the idea of using the "collective wisdom"--a great TLC listserv term--of other librarians with more experience to help direct my web searches.

As for library patron use of this type of organizational tool, I don't think it would be appropriate for my elementary kids, but with lots of encourgement I might be able to get my teachers to try it.

Method 6

I looked at the videos on TeacherTube. The one I chose is a cute lesson on taking care of library books at home, which is a skill that is always a challenge to teach without preaching.

The potential problem I may have with using this video with my classes is the advertisement before the video. It's for General Hospital, and boy is it lurid! (I don't remember story lines with graphic serial killer blood-splattering when I used to watch in high school.) The advertising before the videos along with the extensive adverising on the web page are not user-friendly.

I would be very leery about using videos from this site on a library page where I wasn't monitoring the advertising tied to each video.

Method 5

I enjoyed digging around in Flickr, but I had trouble downloading a photo into my blog. I finally just used a sample photo from this computer--not the one I have my school files stored on with a few actual photos of my library--to complete the assignment.

I can understand how a large public libary would use a site like Flickr to advertise or promote their programs, but I really don't think anyone would be interested in browsing pictures of my little elementary school projects unless they had a child directly involved.

We can use pictures of kids labeled with their first name and last initial in our local newspaper and district newsletter, so for my situation that is a much better use of my resourses.

But still, I could wasted a lot of time looking at other people's art...

Method 4

I chose the following three Google Reader subscriptions:

Library Story Time http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http%3A%2F%2Flibrarystorytime.wordpress.com%2Ffeed%2F

I'm always looking for fun ideas to use with my PreK and K students.

Quotes of the Day
http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.quotationspage.com%2Fdata%2Fqotd.rss

It's amazing how often you can insert a quote into a conversation and sound REALLY well-read.

Unshelved
http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unshelved.com%2Frss.aspx

Just the funniest library comic ever, and a happy way to start a work day.

Method 3

OK, I had no idea that I'm a cloud computer user. I religiously back up all my documents on a flashdrive--lesson learned the hard way--so if you had asked me where my "stuff" is I would pull the flash drive out of my purse and show you. I never really thought about all my other information that is stored elsewhere like at Amazon and Google.

I don't think I'll ever really move to using 100% cloud-based computing simply because personally I don't use a lot of the applications mentioned in the articles, but that doesn't mean that my teenagers won't want to be able to walk into our high school or public libray and use cloud-based computing there. I just hope someone grounded in reality like Jenny Levine will be there to mentor them.

Methods 1 and 2

It's pretty exciting that I'm able to even access this website. Our district blocks all "weblogs" along with just about anything that might be considered offensive to the residents of our small town. The other 2 librarians in the district and I had to have our tech guy unblock blogger.com so we could even begin this inservice. I guess we'll have our work cut out for us if we want to educate our students about and promote the web tools that are available to us.

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