Concluding Remarks

I'm done? Really? And I'm only a little bit late? Yippee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, though, I really appreciated this assignment--especially now that it's done. It forced me to learn things that I most likely never would have heard of without an assignment telling me to learn about it. Technorati? Rollyo? Who knew?! I am so glad that I finished the assignment and was able to add all of these tools to my toolbelt. I even had a lot of fun along the way! If I had to pick two things that I learned that I'm most grateful for learning about (and that I didn't know about before), they would be LibraryThing and Technorati...I think. (It's difficult to choose!)

If I had one thing I would change about the assignment, it would just be a berating get-your-attention yell to myself: DON'T PROCRASTINATE! You'll enjoy this so much more if you can take your time to learn these things. Oh, well. Maybe next time....or the next.... ;)

Wicked Wordle

Podcast Parties

The podcast that I listened to can be found at the following URL:

http://www.hopkintonschools.org/hhs/library/podcasts/Graveyard.mp3

It is kind of a book talk about Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, which in and of itself is great, but this podcast offers so much more! It is part of a series of podcasts a middle school/high school librarian puts out each year to inform her students about books they can vote for as favorites in their state of New Hampshire. What's really cool is that at the beginning of the podcast, the librarian explains the award the books she talks about are competing for, and it's an award that was actually started by students and public schools!

I really enjoyed this podcast for a few reasons. First of all, I think it makes things interesting. Some students could get bored by simply listening to someone talking without any visual stimulation, but this librarian makes it difficult to be bored! There are wonderful sound effects and music, and everyone who talks in the podcast has great animation. I also love the fact that this librarian uses podcasts to get as many people (especially students) in her community involved in the voting for the award as possible. I'll definitely have to check up on her future podcasts!

Admiration of an Author

Ever since I read Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak several years ago, I have been a huge fan of hers. I've now read three more of her books, and I admire her even more. Now that I've found this video--where I learned that she is also a big supporter of having qualified librarians in school libraries--I think I just might have an infatuation forming :) j/k

Learning with Laurie

Tweet Timelines

I must admit that for a very, very long time I was one of those people who thought that there was no point to Twitter. I wondered why anyone would care what anyone else was doing on a minute-by-minute basis, and I thought anyone who would Tweet had to be quite self-involved to think anyone else would care what they said.

Then a couple of weeks ago I got my first taste of how Twitter could be useful. When there was an earthquake down in Roosevelt, no one that I was with could seem to figure out exactly what happened. People had cell phones and laptops and were hurriedly typing away and googling "Utah earthquake," but no one found anything...until...my husband thought about checking Twitter, and voila! There was our answer. None of the media news outlets had a chance to post anything, but people living near Roosevelt broke the news of the earthquake to Utahns via Twitter.

I still think that some of the other technologies we've learned about could be put to better use in a library than Twitter could, but I'm sure there are some possible uses for it. I guess I'm still not sold on Twitter because I had to "google it" to get some Classroom Twitter ideas. There were actually quite a few good ones. I especially liked the following ideas: Tweet about a useful source that could help students on a project; provide daily tips like a word or a book of the day; link to a book trailer or a video book talk; schedule meetings with other teachers; etc. The list goes on, but I think that's quite a good start. Sorry for dissin' ya Twitter!

Really Simple Searching (RSS)

I have heard about RSS feeds for a really long time. My husband subscribed to My Yahoo about a month ago to keep track of his feeds, and for about a week all I heard about was how awesome it was! (Obviously not, it probably just seemed like it was all he talked about because my guilt was telling me I should already know about RSS Feeds thanks to Learning 2.0!!)

I didn't know beforehand that you could even sign up for feeds of topics, but what a neat concept! Now I have a feed that keeps me posted on news results for Utah teaching positions! I also have an RSS Feed for a comparison shopping website--hopefully that doesn't turn into a bad thing!

I am also planning on following librarian.net and "Awful Library Books." There were a couple of things that really impressed me with the first blog. First of all, it was obvious that its creator is passionate about sharing stories about successful library stories in these tough economic times when the positions are so often undervalued and axed. I really like "happy ending" stories, so I thought I'd appreciate this touch. The second thing that sold me on the blog was the fact that the author is writing a book that focuses on the digital divide--which is what I was worried about in just my last post! I hope to gain some insights into how we can solve the digital divide problem in society. As for "Awful Library Books," I couldn't resist looking at a blog with a name like that!! It will be an interesting (and, I suspect, often humorous) blog to follow.