In my dreams...

Eyeing the prizes

ELL in real life

In the past 24 hours (I worked late last night) I've...

• taught 3 students how to put their power point presentations, essays and science reports on their flash drives,
• taught 2 students how to save and then attach their work to a self-addressed email
• tutored all 5 in the beauty of Google docs.
• introduced my son to Pandora.com (he thought it was cool and promptly set up an account)
• turned same son onto a podcast of an NPR show that I knew he'd find interesting.
• shared a few hilarious Youtube links with my Dad (links courtesy of fellow bloggers)

and enjoyed doing all of it.

#23 (Ta DA!!!!)

In no particular order and without organization, here's the feedback.

• Great program. I learned a lot and I know I'm going to go back and revisit various Things to explore further.
• I truely appreciated the permission to play, along with the helpful nudges, hints, links and guidelines.
  
• I'm the kind of person who needs to process information for a longer period of time before responding. There were several Things that I would have liked to have had more time to explore and think about, especially when considering how the tool (for lack of a better word) might be used in a (or 'our') library setting.
• More time in general.
• Sometimes it was frustrating to work on this alone. Yes, we could (and sometimes did) bounce stuff off of colleagues. But I think this would be really fun if it was done in small groups, like 3 people. This presupposes that all 3 people want to be involved. In an ideal world, we'd be able to devote 2 hours (just throwing that out there) once a week to playing around. Maybe self pace it? On the other hand, there needs to be an end otherwise we would get totally distracted and not finish anything.
• While I'm not sure we'll be using everything we learned, I'm darned glad I know about it. (I listened to the debate last night, can you tell?).
• I'm really curious to see how (or if) some of these Things become more widely used. Twitter for example. I talked to lots of High School students, adults, kids, professionals and overall the response I got was 'Twitter???! You mean like birds?' So maybe this is a phenomenon that's localized to techno-geeks (my apologies to techno-geeks everywhere).
• On the other hand, we in libraries need to facilitate communication in all its forms. We need to support all these different forms of media and we have to continue exploring the new stuff, creating new ways to interact with our patrons.
  
• Regarding utilizing these tools here at EPL, absolutely, but how savy are our users. We have a digital divide. What is our role in closing it? Thinking of kids and apps like Googledocs. If kids don't have a computer at home, or access to the internet at home, do they at school? Do they have email addresses? at school? Access to computers whenever? Are teachers supporting, or even teaching digital fluency? We can certainly step into that role but it would be better if we were working with schools, teachers and media specialists.
• ...

My Media Mall

I've used this before and it's pretty intuitive to use. My only problem is the lack of titles, especially in the younger age range, which would be a real asset. There've been loads of times, especially during peak vacation times, when a downloadble book would have been perfect...but it doesn't exist, at least not in My Media Mall. Overall, I'm glad we have this and I hope it expands.

Finding podcasts

Podcastalley was a pain in the arse, with Podcast.com a close second. I prefer itunes - it's much easier to navigate, intuitive to use and MUCH easier to figure out how to listen to something before subscribing. I did find an interesting podcast called The Naked Scientist that I subscribed to. It's all about recent finds in the world of science. Did you know there's been a vaccination for MRSA developed? Or that bees can count? How cool is that? It would make a good companion to e review publication The Scout Report. There are a lot of ways we could use podcasts to extend our services, like many other libraries already are doing. Storytime anyone? I really like being able to listen to interviews, or whatever, on my own time. And it's amazing what's out there.

Later...OK, revisited the podcast thing and this time found some great book feeds that I subscribed to, including one out of Canada that is all children's book author interviews. Now the problem is only going to be how to keep up with it all!

Podcasts

Way cool.

More 2.0...Etsy (#18 & 19)

Enough about wikis, spreadsheets etc. I cut right to the fun stuff (for me) and explored Etsy. Etsy is "your place to buy and sell all things handmade". This site is well organized and has some funky ways to search - like by color, showcase, price range, in addition to a decent, linked category listing. There's a community section, a blog etc. There is a small fee for selling items through the site, and sellers need to set up an account, but all terms/conditions/requirements are clearly spelled out. Can we use this in the library? Probably not, unless we find inspiration for craft programs.

Google Docs

Thank you Marcia M for giving us a live and in-person demonstration of how useful this little app is. It's also easy peasy to use. (Thank you google) It's kind of mind-boggling to think of all the different ways to temporarily store, transfer, send and work on documents. As easy as attachments and email are now, they're almost last century, you know? With the number of students who use our computers and resources to write up assignments, this is an excellent way for them to 'take it with them' so to speak.

Later, on second thought....Yes, good way for students (or whoever) to work here, there or anywhere on a document but they have to have an email account to do so! While I don't know the statistics, I would hazard a guess that many of our students (grades 3-8 and possibly higher) who could really benefit from this do not have an email account, or may not have adequate access to computers to make use of one etc. I need to explore and think about this a bit further. Obviously we need to not only be aware of how the schools (middle and elementary) are set up for computer usage, but we also need to know what/how they are instructing their students.

After fiddling around with both Google and Zoho, I think I prefer Zoho. Although it's not as clean looking as google, it was a little more intuitive for me to use.

Wkis

These things are great. It was really interesting to see how they're being used in other libraries and I would love to set one (or two or three) here. What a great way to build programs, or reading lists, or how-to manuals.

I wonder if there is a sheep or yarn wiki out there? Mayben there's something devoted to bamboo?

The ELL wiki was fun...very easy to post to. I had no idea that Campagnola had an outdoor deck!