Monday, January 26, 2009

Thing #23

I've really enjoyed Web 2.0 and 23 Things. It has been to our benefit and the benefit of our students to be able to connect with them at their level in technology. We, as librarians, need to speak their language and bring them into their library via the digital technology and everything that surrounds the internet. I have been so engrossed in this coursework, that each time I accommplished "a thing", I couldn't stop and leave it at that. I found my self motivated to continue until the very end.

Thing #22 EBooks

It is music to my ears to find that there are over 1.5 million ebooks that can be downloaded. If you become a member you may download as many as you wish for a small fee of $8.95 per year. I find that Ebooks and/or audio books are very helpful for our ELL students who are learning the English language and for our Special Education Population who are trying to achieve a higher Lexile Reading Level. This is a user friendly source for any librarian or teacher to use.

Thing #21

I was really fascinated with podcast.com since this resource allowed you to select from various topics. I navigated through the topic on "books" and found book reviews, episodes, playlists, book podcasts, newest podcast episodes, browsing through book podcasts selection, and the list goes on and on. I did create an account with podcast.com and selected to have emails sent to me on the latest book podcasts. This is an excellent tool to use for selection of books for librarians within any school district.

http://podcast.com

Thing #20 You Tube

You Tube is a tool that I have used from home several times. I usually have used this source when following the political campaign of Obama vs. McCain. In addition, I have used You tube when viewing movie trailers. For instance, I have You Tubed the "Twilight Movie" to see what the buzz was all about. After viewing the movie trailer on You Tube, I was intrigued by the scenes, the rating, the number of viewers who watched that particular trailer, that it prompted me to see the movie as soon as it premiered. The only thing that I don't like is that at times, the quality of video may be somewhat poor since amateurs are recording some of the videos.

Thing #19 Check Out Library Thing

Library Thing is one of my favorite learning conquests of the Web 2.0. I was getting carried away by the simplest manner of adding books to "my library." I did find that one of the books I added was ranked number "9" as a popular title for this month. As I went on to navigate through this fantastic resource, I was able to see the ratings for each book I selected. I will continue to use "Library Thing" and continue to tweek and adjust my homepage.

My direct link is: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/griseldag

Thing #18 Online Productivity Tools

After creating my account through Zoho, I found that Zoho Writer is indeed a fascinating tool to navigate from any computer, and incorporate into any type of document/software. In addition, Zoho Writer has many helpful features such as: adding pictures, tables, spell check, and exporting your document to your blog post or to your email account. No more worrying about converting your files from html to pdf and so on.

Thing #17 "Sandbox" Wikis

I really enjoyed posting a comments on the Wiki which reflected on our thoughts on pure play and practice. As I ventured onto The School Library Learning 2.0 and I realized how beneficial it would be to use wikis within our library. I could see how the librarian can post a topic especially after a training that we provide where teachers can post their comments. We are required to provide 7 schoolwide trainings and many questions/comments are posed after the training. I could definately benefit from wikis where our faculty can post their comments. In addition, our students can post their comments after their orientation here at the library