Thing 23: Reflection

My favorite thing was Image Generators especialy Big Huge Labs.
My least favorite thing was Digg. I didn't like Digg for professional purposes because there is too much information that comes up that would be inappropriate for my students to see.
The most challenging thing for me was LibraryThing. I had a hard time using this at first and seeing the value in it. Thanks to other people's comments and reading other blogs I see what a valuable tool this can be.
I finally truly understand web 2.0 to the point that I can explain it and find tools that fit it.
This year I hope to use Image Generators, Library Thing, podcasts, wikis, and Flickr. i would also like to create a library introduction video using youtube.

I have enjoyed working through 23 things. Thank you so much for organizing this for us! It was a great experience!!!

Thing 22: My own 23 things

I loved doing the 23 things. I have learned so much. I work at an elementary library and so I don't have a staff. I would love to see our librarians throughout our district do a 23 things or our teachers at my school. I have learned so much that I would love to share as well as things that other librarians have shown me but I haven't gotten to teach my teachers.

I want to teach them what is web 2.0, Flickr, Flickr mashups, Image Generators, Delicious, Blogs, wikis, google docs, poll everywhere (www.polleverywhere.com), blabberize (http://blabberize.com), wordle, discovery educator network (DEN) and comic strip generator (I think this would be good for teaching vocabulary). I can't wait to develop my own 23 things and be able to teach my colleagues the great tools that are out there for them to use.

Thing 21: Podcasts

I have always used audacity. I had no idea there were so many programs for recording podcasts. I wish there was some sort of library list of podcasts for books. We create them but it would be so nice to have one central place to put them so that anyone could use them and we could use theirs. I found that the sites that were listed on our 23 things site were even difficult to navigate and find what I was looking for.
Our middle school librarians in our district have made their own lone star reading list and they create a podcast for each book on that list to try to get students to read them. I think they have done a fabulous job so I just wanted to share their work!

Texas Star Booktalks

Thing 20: You Tube

I am familiar with youtube and use it often along with tangle and teachertube. When I was in college we had to do a library lesson and post it to youtube.

I began looking at Texas libraries and saw book cart drills which was fun but I wouldn't use it...
Then I looked at elementary libraries and saw some tours. But one video caught my attention becuase it was a scene from a author visit at a school. So this gave me the idea to look for videos I could use for authors. My first grade teachers at school do a great job with author studies so I found some videos for them....
Todd Parr

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Eric Carle Interview

Robert Munsch Interview

Thing 19: Google Docs

My only experience with google docs was when one of our librarians took the time to put all of our collaboration files on there. She spent a lot of time doing it and then was told we were going to be moving to blackboard. The problem was that google docs wouldn't upload publisher files. I think that's interesting since it is one of the office programs. This is a very nice way to allow people to access information. I like that you can allow people to view only or view and edit files.

This would be a good way for our prinicpals to post information and have teachers access it and add information. In the library the only real reason I see so far to use it would be to collaborate with others.

Thing 18: Wiki's

I have worked in wikis without knowing what they were. I like that anyone can add to these if they are set up correctly. I think this would be an interesting way to have students write poetry, creative writing, even book reviews for a classroom teacher to grade. It would be nice to be able to log in from anywhere and grade them. I need practice in setting up a wiki so I could do it myself or help a teacher do it.
I know we can use wetpaint are there other sites that are even easier to use for creating wikis?

Thing 17 LibWorm

This is also a new tool for me. There were some links that were no longer working. In fact the first three I chose were that way...but then it got better. I had a hard time locating what I was looking for. I am not sure how to narrow down my search enough using LibWorm. I had a hard time locating useful information about the topics I searched for.

Thing 16 LibraryThing

LibraryThing has some neat discussions going on. Other than that I didn't see a whole lot that I would want to use. I do like that I can put inmy location and see upcoming events. That might be beneficial too....time will tell....
Did someone else find some part of this really useful for them? Please share, I feel like I must have missed something!

Thing 15 Digg

I have never heard of Digg before so this was a NEW experience!

An interesting new title I read..."Women spend nearly one year deciding what to wear"
Yes ladies, that's right.... according to a UK newspaper the average woman spends approximately 287 days choosing clothes during the course of their life time....

Another neat title: "The 10 coolest Things We Saw at the MythBusters Studio"
http://www.maclife.com/article/feature/10_coolest_things_we_saw_mythbusters_studio_0?page=0%2C0

The only problem with this site is that it is really easy to find content that is not appropriate for younger eyes. I work in an elementary school and I would have to mark the links I wanted and not use the actual digg site to show information becuase it seems like on every page there is an inappropriate link or inappropriate picture.

Thing 14 Delicious

I had seen delicious before but I had never created an account because I always saved library links at work and personal links at home. With so many of these new tools we have learned with the 23 things I have several tools I want to be able to use anytime. Now I can see how delicious will help me....and it will save me the frustration of not having the work link at home and the home link at work....

Here is my delicious page:
http://delicious.com/greenstephanie80

Thing 13 - Tagging

I love tagging items so the can be found easily. I do this all the time in my online catalog. I create lists of books that I know I am going to have to pull again for a teacher/ grade level/ or project. I would love to be able to "tag" a book with a teacher's name/ lesson idea, etc for others to see and to be able to easily pull it up. Our librarians could really network indistrict if we could tag a book with a grade level and teaching concept. It would make lesson planning SO easy!

Thing 12 - Twitter

I have not mastered Twitter yet. I do have an account but I enjoy following people mor ethan I do posting. My favorite person to follow so far is kirk franklin. I love his posts! He keeps me on my toes!
I still don't completely understand hastags. I have a friend who uses them all the time but I don't understand how to follow the hashtag... Does anyone know how???
I update my twitter from my cell phone and I am trying to link that to my facebook but I keep getting an error when loading the application. I am going to keep trying and maybe soon everything will be linked!

Thing 11 - IM

I have been instant messaging for a long time. I use my yahoo email account and instant message from there. I also use the instant message feature or chat feature on Facebook. I like that instead of waiting for an email to come thorough or a post I can have a conversation as if I was on the phone. Text messaging can even be a little difficult because you are always waiting to open the next text and it is hard to go back and look at what is said. I like that with a chat you can constantly have conversation and have a record of everything that was said on your part and theirs. This is a great tool for our libraries because it allows us to communicate with our patrons and we could even send the info to website people for new information for a FAQ's page. If someone needed to know the answer chance are that others so too! I have used a chat feature with the North Richland Hills Public Library when I was in library school. I actually conducted an interview that way! It was really neat to have everything I needed right in the chat window.... I love that they have a "live chat with a librarian" on their webpage. It makes their services so easy to access.

thing 10-Ning

I had heard about Ning but had never been there before. This is a neat space that allows networking with a group more conducive then Facebook does. My husband is a youth pastor and trying to help them network on Facebook has been difficult....Ning would allow this to happen a little better. My only reservation is getting them to all switch over. They have other networks on Facebook and I don't know if they would switch over to Ning or check Ning if they still have most of their contacts on Facebook.
I do think this could be a good way for our district librarians to network together better. I like that you can easily post videos in your network and have a "catalog" of videos to choose from that everyone can easily look through.

Thing 9 More Facebook

Groups: So far I joined groups that people invited me to. It was interesting to be able to look through and pick my own. I joined a few groups: Stimulate the economy-Forgive Student Loans, We will NOT pay to use Facebook, and 100,000,000 Christians Worship God!

Facebook is such a neat networking tool.
I must say though that my sister in law was very upset when they opened Facebook to everyone and not just college students. She is constantly commenting that there are all of the "old people" on there now... She makes me laugh!

Thing 8 Facebook

I love Facebook. I am addicted and can spend far too much time there before I even realize it!!! I have to be careful. I love that I can get lots of information about my friends in one stop. The weakness of Facebook for me is that I don't contact my friends near as much becuase I am able to see how they are doing by checking their Facebook.... probably not a good thing for a friend to do!
My husband is a youth pastor and I love that we can post things for all of our teens to see in one place and we can check on them easily as well!

Thing 7 RSS Feeds

I am not sure why this is distinguished from thing 6 except that now I know what an RSS feed. Most of the links were blogs like we did in thing 6. I did like being able to put star telegram headlines since I am a news junkie. These past two "things" have made me look at websites for ways to subscribe.

Thing 6 Blog Readers

I created my blog reader using google reader. I like that I can see more than just that the person has updated it. My blog lets me know there has been an update on blogs I followed but doesn't let me do the wuick look at all of them. I wish there was a way (maybe there is and I haven't found it yet!) to set it so that it shows me when people make comments. I have a couple of blgos that I like to see the comments for as well as the posts when they come in.

Thing 3-Flickr

There are so many ways now to share images with friends and family. teh days of trying to email them or send them a disk are over! Thank goodness! Flickr is a tool that allows you to create albums and upload pictures to share. You can shoose to make them private or public which I really like. I can also choose if I want to let friends and family see them which I also like.
Here is my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/greenstephanie80/?saved=1
This is really easy to use and even has a place at the bottom where you can edit pictures. All pictures can be tagged and descriptions can be written.

Thing 5: Image Generators

This was created using Big Huge Labs Warholizer. It was fun to play with and is a neat tool to change up pictures and would be fun for a digital scrapbooker! Big Huge Labs has so many neat toys!!! I spent a lot of time trying out each one. I am a scrapbooker so I had fun with tools that worked with pictures I already have! The comic strips you can create here were fun too but I am just not creative enough for them!!! I am working on it though. I think they would be fun to display for book recommendations.

Thing 4: More flickr

I created this using spell with Flickr. It is fun to change the letters. (Which can easily be done by clicking on each letter when you are creating it.)
I looked at colr pickr but I am not sure what I would use that for. I hope that some of my other techie friends will have some suggestions for this!
Retrievr was also really cool. I know my husband would enjoy using this tool to find pictures for backgrounds in our worship services. So many times you need a picture that is a specific color and this tool allow you to do that!
I need to spend more time with these tools and brainstorm some more ways I can use these them!

Thing 2: Library 2.0

I am in my second year as a school librarian. I finished my master's degree last year while working for the first time in my library. it wasn't unitl recently that I even felt like I had time to begin the process of understanding web 2.0.... I know, I am a librarian and should be on the leading edge! But unitl this year I was so unfamiliar that I was sinking. Now I am at least begininning to tread water!
Library 2.0, to me, is becoming relevant to our patrons. We live in a technology driven society and unless libraries keep up the fear that libraries may be replaced may come true. However, I feel if we can make technology work for us there is job security and a place for the fabulous resources that we have to offer. I love that I can easily collaborate with the librarians in my school district, state, and country through blogs, google documents, blackboard, etc. Not only can I help my patrons more I can help myself and save so much time!!!
Thank you to all of my fabulous library friends that I know personally and those that I "blog-stalk" who put their ingenious ideas on their blogs for us all to see!

Taking the Challenge: Thing 1

I am signing up for North Texas 23 things..... I can't wait to get started. Over the summer we will be working on 23 technologies that every librarian (or educator) should know!
Stay tuned....there will be more to come!