Library 2010

Library 2010
Originally uploaded by readerreed

Home away from home--my elementary school library

Top 100 Picture Books Poll Results (#1-101)

Top 100 Picture Books Poll Results (#1-101): "

And now, in order and with linkety goodness intact, I bring to you the results of the Top 100 Picture Book Poll of 2009. Please note two chan...

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On Sara Scribner "Saving the Google Students"

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/21/opinion/la-oe-scribner21-2010mar21
The following is from the LA Times, March 21 by Sara Scribner

Opinion

March 21, 2010|By Sara Scribner

The current generation of kindergartners to 12th graders -- those born between 1991 and 2004 -- has no memory of a time before Google. But although these students are far more tech savvy than their parents and are perpetually connected to the Internet, they know a lot less than they think. And worse, they don't know what they don't know.

As a librarian in the Pasadena Unified School District, I teach students research skills. But I've just been pink-slipped, along with five other middle school and high school librarians, and only a parcel tax on the city's May ballot can save the district's libraries. Closing libraries is always a bad idea, but for the Google generation, it could be disastrous. In a time when information literacy is increasingly crucial to life and work, not teaching kids how to search for information is like sending them out into the world without knowing how to read. Instead of simply navigating books and the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature -- an annual index of magazine and newspaper articles used in the olden days -- today's students sift through an infinite number of options: books, Internet sources, academic databases. Much of the time they opt for Google, which is like beingtossed into the ocean without a paddle.

An info-literate student can find the right bit of information amid the sea of irrelevance and misinformation. But any college librarian will tell you that freshman research skills are absolutely abysmal. Before they graduate from high school, students need to be able to understand the phenomenal number of information options at their fingertips, learn how to work with non-Google-style search queries, avoid plagiarism and judge whether the facts before them were culled by an expert in the field or tossed off by a crackpot in the basement.

As even struggling school districts manage to place computers in classrooms, it's difficult to find a child without Internet access. But look closer at what happens when students undertake an academic task as simple as researching global warming -- tens of millions of hits on Google -- and it becomes clear that the so-called divide is not digital but informational. It's not about access; it's about agility.

Most children consider a computer search second nature, so trying to give them instruction or advice can be difficult. Recently, noticing that a sixth-grader didn't know how to search the school library catalog, I tried to show him the steps. "You don't need to tell me," he said, clearly insulted. "I know how to use a computer!"

The issues Ms. Scribner writes about are not rare. I have seen all of these information missteps happen and for children to be able to navigate through all of the good and bad, useful and non-useful, applicable and non-applicable sites, they need to learn some information navigating and evaluating tactics. It is worrisome that many young internet -users think they already are correctly and completely accessing answers to their queries and that the librarians who can teach them these steps are losing their jobs.

Information=Deformation

Method 12: Reflection and Evaluation

A Dozen Ways to Two-Step: Essential Web 2.0 Training for Texas Librarians has been a great way for me to get my feet wet with Web 2.0. I now feel more literate and able to answer questions that my patrons ask about these technologies. I am happy that I will be able to use what I have learned to make my library more efficient and up-to-date. Using RSS Feeds and reading other librians', futurissts, and technologists' blogs will keep me current. Using wikis will help in my collaboration efforts. Delicious will help me to organize the many wonderful sites I find and it will also help me find new sites--I will share with my teachers, students, and parents so learning will be more fun and relevant for my students. Computing in the cloud opens up a whole world of opportunity for me, personally and professionally and will impact my library in ways I have seen in this training program and in ways that I haven't even thought of yet. I would definitely take part in this program if it were offered again. It would be especially helpful to me if there was an extension of this program.

#11-The Wide World of Podcasting

I found a lot of podcasts that I did not find interesting before I found MuggleCast on PodcastAlley.com. This podcast is all about all things Harry Potter and created by guys who even play the movies in their bathrooms. I found factoids that would be of interest to my Harry Potter readers. One such item of interest is that Daniel Radcliffe's favorite movie is Half-Blood Prince because of his relationship with Sirius Black. I am sure that after looking around more and asking my friends and colleagues for recommendations, I will find more podcasts that interest me.
Podcasting will be possible with my students and I already have all the equipment I need to create them. I think, though, for podcasts to be enjoyed by my students, they would have to be vidcasts because many of the children are second-language learners and need the pictures for comprehension.

Method 10: This Wiki World

I enjoyed this method, especially browsing favorite blogs that were recommended on "Library Development A Dozen Ways to Two Step Favorites" wiki. I learned that wikis could be useful in my library, especially with collaboration efforts. I have been trying to collaborate and plan lesson/units with classroom teachers, but due to scheduling conflicts, I have only been able to plan with one teacher at a time. A wiki will be very helpful in collaboration. I plan to use a wiki to enhance collaboration efforts. I will be able to work with entire grade levels, asking the teachers to contribute to the wikis when their schedules permit.

#9 Chat and Instant Messaging

Option 1
I have been familiar with chat. I have chatted on Facebook and also with businesses such as printer supplier when I was choosing a printer for my library. I have also chatted with Norton 360 when my laptop was crashing. Chat is easy to use. I think chat and instant messaging could be very useful in a library. Real-time answers to questions and responses to thoughts could be very useful to patrons. I thought the best idea for school libraries would be Meebo widgets embedded on catalog searches. Meebo would be very helpful when catalog searches had no results.

#8 Social Networking

Social Networking has many possible implications for libraries-- and I have read the social networking sites of many libraries that are employing them for information, public service, and publicity purposes. Twitter has many possibilities for informing patrons about services and books that are relevant to current events. I think that Twitter Search can be very useful, because the library can "pop-in" and help when people are making queries or "tweets" about the library.
Privacy continues to be an issue with social networking sites. I already have a personal Facebook Page and when I get a professional social networking presence, I will keep it separate from my personal presence. Of course, some things/sites/thoughts will be posted on both personal and professional sites but many will be obviously either personal or professional.
It is very important for my students (and my children) to understand privacy issues and implications that are possible and probable with social networking sites. I will post and teach information and lessons about these sites in my library.

Method 7: Tagging, folksonomies & social bookmarking in Delicious

Delicious may help with collaboration between teachers at my elementary school. Our teacher portal has been getting crowded with links to many sites that I think will be valuable to our teachers and students. Tagging and social bookmarking, perhaps with tag clouds rolled on our website, should help alleviate the crowding on our website and help encourage our teachers to try new sites and a new way of collaborating. It will be easier for teachers to share sites they have found useful.

Of course, it will be great to have my favorite sites in the cloud, so I can access them everywhere.

I've created a Delicious account and am most excited about exploring the sharing aspect. I am thrilled to be able to follow the sites/tags that respected, tech-savvy librarians are employing, exploring, and finding useful.

Method 6 You too can YouTube

The Discovery Exercise in this method proved to be the biggest challenge yet of all the exercises. I enjoyed exploring YouTube and spent a few hours exploring the video sharing site. The difficulties for me began when I tried to embed a video into this blog. For some reason, everything would seem to be working but when the time came for me to not "close the window" until the sharing was completed, the waiting never ended. One time, I waited at least thirty minutes. However, when I used Slide Skins, I was able to easily add a YouTube video to the blog.

I chose the Library 2.0 Manifesto because it included beliefs that I want to remain foremost in my mind as I build my librarianship skills.

YouTube offers so many videos. Some of them are indeed, not fit for an elementary school setting but some of the videos would be very useful there. TeacherTube could be an answer to having access to only the useful videos, but many of the TeacherTube videos just do not hold the attention of elementary school students and the collection is not nearly as extensive. YouTube is blocked in the school district where I work and our students are missing out on learning opportunities because of that decision. I am hoping there is a way to allow access to YouTube in the school district, at least to teachers who could search, find, and project the videos most useful and appropriate to their lessons.

Librarian 2.0 Manifesto finally

Picasa

Picasa is a neat tool. It allows the user to edit photos right on the desktop. However, photographs seem to look a little better on Flickr. I am excited about having my student patrons use our Flip video camera to video community helpers and then share them with either Picasa or Flickr. I will probably try using both Picasa and Flickr, using the school technology, and stay with the one that is easiest.

Method 5-Online Photo Sharing

Personally, I love online photo-sharing. I live thousands of miles away from my new nieces and online photo-sharing helps me to keep up with their lives. The site they use for the babies is Shutterfly. Shutterfly has a level of security in which it does not allow pictures to be grabbed and placed on Facebook or Animoto. I enjoy looking at shared photos on Facebook and shared videos on Picasa. These photos can be grabbed and shared without the subject's knowing it, but members seem to be aware of this fact.
Professionally, I think there are lots of uses for online photo-sharing. I would love to use photographs of library events and activities to encourage more library use. I am concerned about sharing photos of children without parental permission. We have handles this posting issue with a few methods. For one of our guest reader days, we placed the children that did not have media release forms in one area of the library and were careful not to include them in photographs that we posted. We have also photographed events and used only the back of the children's heads. I would like to post past and present photographs of our school, neighborhood, and alumni.

Rainbow Books

Rainbow Books
Originally uploaded by bluemarla

reminds me of the time someone "helped" by shelving the books in our library by size order

Method 4 RSS feed

I have spent a few hours selecting feeds. I read through so many enlightening posts from so many feeds that I had trouble selecting only ten. I have a limited amount of time available for reading the feeds (until summer, when I will have more time available for "my choice" reading) so I limited my choices. I found the Google Reader featured bundles to be very helpful for finding interesting feeds. I selected the bundles, then deselected individual feeds within those bundles that I didn't want. I also selected librarian's blogs and hope to find some more librarian's blogs that will help me to improve my library. Links to some of the feeds I selected are:
http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/
http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
I chose these particular feeds because I want to keep abreast of libraran techniques and ideas and I want to keep up-to-date about the merits of available software.

Method 3-Computing in the Cloud

I am excited about cloud computing and cloud-based productivity tools. Cloud computing will save my library money, (for example, some computers could use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Word...)so I am sure that I need to learn to be more proficient with different apps. and tools. I need to use them with caution about privacy and backing-up data issues. I've been using Google docs. for a few years to post book reviews and read other's book reviews. It's a very helpful tool. I have posted nothing that I don't feel comfortable sharing, but I would be sure to back up anything I wouldn't want to risk losing. I will also need to keep in mind that Google is selling advertisements with their services.Privacy issues and backing up information in the cloud would be useful information I could share with library patrons.

Methods 1 and 2
Thoughts about Web 2.0 and the library
Libraries and bookstores have always been my "happy places." It is incredibly empowering to be able to find and evaluate the information and even more empowering to be able to collaborate and create sources of information. Today, libraries need to be constantly changing in order to meet the needs of its users. In order to remain relevant, libraries also need to keep up with technology and ideas. Libraries will involve collaboration and linking ideas and people.