K12 Learning 2.0

Just like when I viewed Library Thing I couldn’t help but be irritated by the seeming lack of organization to the site. Once I started acclimating to the site it became more tolerable. After checking out the groups tab I found three that I felt would be of interest to me: Librarians, Books That Matter, and A Crazy Place Called Middle School.

Librarians seemed to be predominately made up of librarians that are eager to use web2.0 technologies but don’t have much practical experience doing so. Maybe they should take this course. I know one of the most valuable pieces of this course for me has been answering the question, “How can you apply this to your own professional or personal learning?”

Books that Matter had a bunch of book recommendations for teachers to improve their teaching. For some reason I thought this site would be about books that changed peoples’ lives after reading them. Nothing that spectacular, but still a good resource to keep in mind.

A Crazy Place Called Middle School had lots of posts by teachers looking for other teachers to do collaborative units with.  I think this has great potential especially with my school being an international school. I plan to mention this to the middle school English teachers and see if they might be interested.

In surfing around I also found a forum called, “Textual Harassment – Where would you draw the line?” Alan, one of my coaches for this class and the instructional technologist at my school, was recently approached by the middle school counselor who wanted to know if he would like to set the agenda for Making Good Decisions Week. He and I and the upper school librarian were brainstorming today for ideas. We came up with plans for 6th and 8th grades but were drawing blanks on what to cover with 7th grade. After looking at this forum, I think we could use textual harassment as a good starting point. The number of students with cell phones seems to jump substantially from 6th grade to 7th grade. This would be a good time to talk about starting good habits while texting. I don’t think I would have come up with this without having seen the idea on the Educational Ning network. Hopefully, I’ll have the more inspirations like this in the future when perusing the site.

The jury is still out as far as what I think of Pageflakes. My initial reaction was that most of the pages I’ve seen seem like information overload; there is just so much to look at on one page! Yet, at the same time, it’s sort of like getting comfy on the couch with a good book, the phone, the remote, a hot drink, and a blanket; you’ve got any and everything you might possibly need in one place without having to get up again (or in this case load another page). What’s so nice is how easy it is to add, change, and delete flakes. I think I just need more time to really get the feel for it. I envision loading it down with flakes at the beginning, and then reevaluating each flake as time goes by to see how much I use each. If only rearranging furniture was this easy!

One idea I have for my Pageflake page (Is it just me, or does that sound redundant?) is to use it to encourage reading. I could showcase new books as they arrive, have students do podcast reviews, show pictures of the covers, and  show pictures of students reading the books and giving a rating.  One concern, though, is that my school has recently spent a good deal of time and money to develop a school portal with a certain “look”. I’m not sure how well it would go over if I wanted to have a pageflake page off of the school site.

We’ve been using Google docs at my school for a few years now. A couple of years ago the two other librarians that I work with and myself used it to develop a synopsis of what we wanted to say at a presentation we were going to give. Google docs was very useful for this; we were able to each add our parts and critique each others sections when we had the time. We didn’t have to find a time when we could all meet together. We are currently using the same method for updating our library handbook with our library policies and procedures. Again, we are all able to work on this when ever we have a chance, and we don’t have to find the time for a group meeting. I wish I had realized last year that I could have uploaded a spreadsheet to Google docs as well. We began a middle school reading program, and I was the keeper of the students’ progress. I had teachers asking me for the latest updates all the time. I could have just loaded the spreadsheet that I used to keep track of the progress and given the teachers access to it. It is a very useful tool, and I know I’ll be finding many uses for it in the future.

From checking out my Google Reader  I came across an interesting blog post entitled, 10 questions about books, libraries, librarians, and schools. Question #6 states, “Our information landscape is more complex than ever before. We still need people who know how to effectively navigate these intricate electronic environments and who can teach others to do so. But does that mean we still need ‘librarians’ who work in ‘libraries?’  Or will their jobs morph into something else?”

I can’t help but think back to the railroad barons of the early 20th century. They essentially controlled the movement of people and goods in this country. These railroad barons saw themselves as being in the railroad business instead of as being in the transportation business. What’s the difference? If they had done the latter, they would have made sure that airports were built near their railroad lines. They would have gone into the airline industry and made sure the two connected to one another seamlessly.

The point I’m trying to make is that librarians need to be able to understand that their roles are in the process of undergoing a seismic shift just like the railroad barons faced, and we need to have a mindset that will allow us to embrace this change.  Librarians by nature want to help people, so I’m optimistic that librarians will see a need and fill it. How exactly their role will be defined is anybody’s guess.

I’ve been working with seventh graders on plagiarism in the past month, so I used the tag “plagiarism” to see what I could find on YouTube. I found several videos, though I’ve only looked at a handful. The ones I viewed didn’t really grab me, and I don’t think the students would get much out of them either. One of these was called  Info Literacy 11. Plagiarism & Citation Styles. It features the library director of a community college and is one in a series of online tutorials. Unfortunately today’s students are so used to being entertained that simply watching a man sitting in a chair talking about plagiarism is akin to watching paint dry in their eyes. I’m willing to keep an open mind, though, and in the future I’ll pop over to YouTube and TeacherTube when I’m on the hunt for something specific to give it another try.

Wow! I never knew making a podcast could be so easy. Recording and converting the file to MP3 format was a piece of cake. The only difficulty I had was uploading the MP3 file to GCast. It evidently did load correctly the first time I tried, but it gave me a message saying something about a “boo-boo”. (Their words, not mine.) I assumed that meant it hadn’t worked, so I did it again. It was only when I scrolled to the bottom did I see that I had uploaded it twice. (Sorry about that, Shelley!)

Anyway, I toyed with the idea of having students do book talks as podcasts because I’ve seen statistics that say that students will try a book based on a recommendation from a peer around 75% of the time, around 45% of the time from an English teacher, and only around 35% of the time from a librarian. As a librarian I naturally find that disheartening. However, if I could get students to create book talk podcasts for other students to listen to, maybe I could take advantage of that 75% statistic to spread the word about interesting books. The next step would be to find a way to make the podcasts easily accessible. Ideally I could create links to the podcasts in our library catalog; I’m not sure that is possible, though. Maybe Moodle? Any suggestions would be appreciated!

I checked the links to Learn Out Loud and NPR Podcast Directory. In the former I subscribed to a podcast called Just Vocabulary. I was in a meeting this morning with the English teachers at my school and they were discussing ways to improve their students’ vocabulary. Since students love to use technology this might be an option for some. It gives a word (in this case ‘imperious’) and then uses it in a sentence. It then repeats the word, uses it in another sentence, repeats the word, and then gives the definition. What I didn’t like about it was the commercial that ran at the beginning.

There certainly seems to be a podcast for just about anything. I’m not sure I would know how to find a podcast on a specific topic, though. Podcasting is like many things I’ve learned about from taking this class; the more time I put into exploring and playing around, the more I learn.

I’ve got to admit, as a librarian I was prepared to fall in love with a site called Library Thing. Alas, I really think a better name for it would be Bookstore Thing. I think this site has more in common with a bookstore than with a library. When I tried to find information about the book Impossible I got back 1,089 hits – in no particular order! It was only when I typed in “Impossible Werlin” that it took me straight to the book I was looking for. (If I hadn’t known the author I would still be scrolling through the list.) I found the same thing with discussion groups; no particular order was identifiable. Give me alphabetical order any day over this mess!  Okay, I will admit to liking the function called LibraryThing Recommendations. I could see myself referring students to this feature when they ask me for a book like such and such. I’ll continue to play around with the site, and if anybody has stumbled upon a really neat feature please let me know. I realize there is a lot to this site, and I know I’ve only scratched the surface on investigating it.

I’ve used a similar site called ikeepbookmarks.com before. With ikeepbookmarks, however, you keep your links in folders and subfolders. I think the tagging method of Delicious should make it easier to find a link,especially if it hasn’t been used in awhile. (My delicious links, by the way, can be found here.) The tagging method is very interesting to me. As a librarian I am used to using the Sears List of Subject Headings. This is like a librarian’s bible; essentially it is a list of tags that librarians have agreed upon to help patrons find what they are looking for in the collection. It is republished every few years and lists all the “official” headings librarians should use. Tagging is putting this power in the hands of the users. (This is just another way that the Internet seems to be eliminating the middleman. People can download music directly now – no need to buy CDs. They can find houses without using a real estate agent. I wonder how far this trend will go? Will we recognize when it has gone too far?) I think teaching students to create tags would be very beneficial. Once they understand the thought process that goes into creating tags, they would most likely have a better grasp of how to search with them.