Monday, April 7, 2008

Tribute to Library Learning 2.0 Media Clerks

Posted by MyraG at 10:23 PM 7 comments

You Did It! Congratulations!

We made it! We have explored, created, and learned about ways to use new technologies to learn, teach, research, communicate, entertain, and socialize. We have come full circle to our original goals for organizing the PST. Our original definition of Web 2.0, the Read/Write web, was:

  • Creativity – using free tools of the Internet to design and create Web content.
  • Connected – constantly connected to your PLN, your family, your friends, your employer, your future employer, your students, your peers, professionals in your field, and the world.
  • Collaboration – Social networking and Web 2.0 are all about strengthening relationships; working in designing, creating, and sharing the learnings from conversations and learning projects.
  • Conversations – about anything that interests you…from crafts, to education, to libraries, to the most current scientific research available. Conversations with your PLN – as small or as large as you want to make it.
  • Content -- user-generated content. We all have the ability to join the conversation and add to the content of the web, instead of just consume data. We have the ability to add, mash up, share, and use the collective intelligence of the Internet -- and the World. That's exciting!

We have only scratched the surface of the tools, conversations, and creativity that is now possible -- not only for our own productivity and learning, but what we can share with others. Your permanent assignment is to share what you have learned -- with a student, a teacher, your administration, your children, your friends.

Discovery Exercises:

  • Review the "Things" you have learned and note what you have accomplished in this class.
  • Read your own blog and see how far you have come!
  • Your final assignment is to write your reflection on this class as your final blog post (use your new tools!). Please be thorough, contemplative, and honest -- this will serve as your course reflection to receive credit. Make it as long as you need to fully reflect your experience and learning.
  • Keep commenting on the blogs of your classmates and continue to add to our Media Clerks Wiki. This document will continue to serve us as a great reference tool.

To help get ideas flowing for your final blog post, here's some things to think about:

  • Did the class meet your expectations?
  • What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
  • How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
  • Were there any unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
  • What could be done differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
  • Did the instructor cover the content adequately?
  • Would you do it again? ...or, better yet, would you do this class without the credit?
  • What suggestions do you have to improve on the content/delivery of the materials?
  • How will you apply what you learned? ...personally? ...in the library? ...with students?
  • How has this new information added to your job skills, and capabilities, as a media clerk?
  • How do you feel about blogging? ...will you continue to blog after this class is finished?
  • What is the most important thing you learned about yourself, technology, or working with your Personal Learning Network?
  • What would you suggest for another topic or area of study for our next Professional Study Team project?
  • What ideas do you have to add/develop programs to enhance our professional development experience and opportunities?

Thanks to all of you for your humor, patience, diligence, determination, creativity, contributions, and for being such great inspiration. This learning experience was so rich...because of all of you. I look forward to our next learning journey together.

Posted by MyraG at 8:30 PM 0 comments Labels: ,

Thing #23 -- Expand Your Mind

Where will your learning journey take you now? We have learned so much, yet there is so much "out there" for us to explore and add to our expanding repertoire of Read/Write web tools. Here's some great places to continue your learning in our own back yard! The professional development opportunities to learn about the Read/Write Web and Online Learning Tools continue to grow in our district -- try out a few!

Discovery Resources:

Atomic Learning -- Learn more about:

St. Vrain Virtual Campus

Office of Professional Development

Discovery Exercise:

  • Blog (your Thing #23 post) about some of the things you discovered in this exercise. What did you find that will be useful in your learning journey?
  • Where will you go from here?

If you want more:

Continue your journey! Here's some great places to explore more available for you to learn, create, share, and use. Happy learning!

Posted by MyraG at 8:29 PM 0 comments Labels: ,

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Thing #22 -- Your Cellphone as a Tool

No longer is your cell phone just a device for making a phone call. The capabilities and features of new cell phones now rival your home computer offering texting, photos, videos, blogging, social-networking, personal productivity, mobile office, online connectivity, ...the uses are endless. Our students are tapping into the communication, texting, and and social networking features; but, what about educational applications? Explore some of these sites offering ideas, applications, and ways of integrating this "life" technology into the classroom:


Discovery Exercises:

  • Explore some of the cellphone tools sites and educational technology sites. Do you think that cellphone technology can be used in the classroom?

  • What are some problems and issues you foresee in using cellphones in the classroom? (kids access -- cost, have vs have-nots, methods for including kids w/o phones or services).

  • What is one way you could use your cellphone as a tool for your own personal productivity?
  • How could they be used in the library? ...in the classroom?
  • Write about your thoughts, on your blog, on using cell phones in the classroom and for your own personal productivity.

If you want more:

The power of the web is coming to your cell phone. Learn more about how to take advantage with these tools:
  • Mobile Web - Directory & Search Sites
  • DialDirections - free directions to an address, business, or event, sent as a text message directly to your cell phone.
  • Fring - free calls over your cell phone (requires download, and either 3G or WiFi connection for phone).
  • JahJah - free local VoIP calls, long distance at local rates.
  • Jott - your voice translated into email and text messages.
  • Phonevite - voice messages sent automatically to multiple numbers.
  • TalkShoe - record phone or VoIP calls, publish as podcasts.
  • Talkster - free, ad-supported long distance calling.
  • ToneMine - mix and download free ringtones.

Posted by MyraG at 4:00 PM 1 comments Labels: ,

Thing #21 Copyright and Freedom of Information

Social networks allow us to create and freely exchange information. But with the free exchange of information comes the responsibility of how we use and share it, and how we give credit to the author of that information. Check out this video, “A Fair(y) Use Tale” and learn some history of copyright.

In the library and classroom, we are often faced with copyright challenges of when it is acceptable to copy something and how much of an item (Fair Use) we can copy. Our students, as part of the always plugged-in culture, "cut and paste" information for posters, projects, presentations, as well as research projects. How do we teach them the ethical use of information. How do we define the ethical use of information in this easily accessible and constantly changing information-rich landscape?

In the networked world of file sharing, downloading, and RSS, we must acknowledge and teach the ethics of information gathering and sharing. Creative Commons is a copyright license that allows us to choose to share our intellectual property. This course is designed under a Creative Commons license and is an example of how one can take a piece of information or a product and re-work it to make it fit your needs. By acknowledging the original authors, they have given permission for us to share.

We covered Open Source software and the implications of availability and free use. But there is more to consider in the realm of software authorship, ownership, and use. We are addressing the free exchange of information, software source code, and collaboration in software development.

Discovery Resources:

There are several discovery resources addressing copyright issues, the freedom of information, and freedom to create, use, mash up, and build upon the work of others. This is rather a broad category, but one of high significance as we look at the Read/Write web, creating and collaboration of content, and the use of freely available softwar applications. You may want to expand your reading on these areas of information creation and use by starting with some of these resources.

Discover Exercise:

  • Write your blog reflection on copyright issues and how we can teach this foundation of Information Literacy.
  • What are ways we can teach the ethical use of information to our students?

Posted by MyraG at 3:55 PM 0 comments Labels: ,

Thing #20 Social Networking

Any article or conversation about Web 2.0, the Read/Write web, will focus on the 'experience' of the Web for the user. The platform that moves the user from passive information (as in what might be called Web 1.0) to one of rich, dynamic content and broad, interactive participation is social networking.

Web 2.0 has extended this concept to include user-generated content -- users create their own social networks, sharing experiences and events, communication, news, photographs, music, video, and other content with not only their real-world family and friends but also the virtual world of ‘friends’ on-line with whom they share interests.

As with a lot of 2.0 tools, pinning down a definition of a “social network” is difficult. Here are a few characteristics of social networks: profile pages: when you sign up for an account on a social networking site, your “profile page” becomes your home base. Most social networks allow you to add as much or as little information about yourself as you’d like. Common fields include your name, contact information, interests, and a photograph of yourself. Some social networks allow you to customize your profile page by changing the design, color, or look of the page.

MySpace and Facebook, for example, are two of the most popular social networks. "Friending" is probably the most important characteristic of a social network because finding friends (existing or new) on a social networking site is pretty much the point of being there in the first place! So, most social networks allow you to add another person/profile as a “friend” or a “contact” and your collection of friends becomes your own personal social network (not dissimilar to the way social networks form offline).

The “friending” aspect of an online social network often accounts for why some social networking sites are popular with specific groups. For example, Facebook began as a social network for college and university students; it has since opened up to allow anyone to join the network, but it still remains most popular with students. Why? Because people go where their friends are and where people share common interests.

With real life social networks, groups tend to form around common interests, therefore most online social networks allow users to start a group or join a group based on their interests or common goals. Depending on the social networking site, you will probably find a group that represents your interests, regardless of what that interest might be! While many 2.0 tools use some of these elements (e.g. “contacts” on Flickr, “friends” on Digg, profile pages on YouTube), most sites that are considered to be online “social networks” have all these elements in common.

Another way of looking at it then is that “social networks” exist primarily to help people keep in touch personally or professionally. These sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, and Ning, provide users the freedom to add pictures, slideshows, audio and video excerpts, and even custom designs. The other sites concentrate on users’ specific common interests such as video (YouTube), photography (Flickr), music (last.fm), or books (Library Thing).

Because Myspace is popular among teenagers and young adults, some libraries have used Myspace to connect with their younger patrons. Read through the Discovery Resources links below to get an idea of what different libraries are doing in Myspace and what librarians are saying about it.

Unlike the other major social networking services, Ning distinguishes itself by focusing on the creation of groups and offering the user a fully customizable space to ‘create your own social network for anything.’ Using tags to describe these networks, users find groups with which they have common interests, with less emphasis than the other sites on finding individual friends.

A number of libraries, public and school, have started to explore the potential of online social networks to reach their users. Here are a few examples:

Explore a couple of Ning groups, such as:

Discovery Resources

Discovery Exercises:

  • After reading through some of the resources above, what do you think about libraries using social networking sites?
  • Are you a member of any social-networking sites?
  • Post, on your blog, your reflection on social-networking sites and add any other thoughts you might have about social networking in general.

Posted by MyraG at 3:50 PM 0 comments Labels:

Thing #19 -- Microblogging with Twitter

Acording to Wikipedia, "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook". Twitter can serve as a learning network, a collaboration tool, a social network, a news source, a marketing tool, or a way to network with others on specific topics. You can set up a powerful personal learning network -- sharing website links, blog posts announcements, and notices of events and conferences. If you'd like to find out more about Twitter, try these discovery resources:

Discovery Activities:

  • Reflection blog post -- write about your thoughts on Twitter.
  • What is one way this could be used in the library? (or new ways, if your library is already using Twitter).How could this type of service be of value to you? How could this type of service be used in your own professional learning?

If you want more:

  1. Set up your Twitter account
  2. Find others with your interests
  3. Twitter for a week
  4. Write a second reflection on your use of Twitter.

Posted by MyraG at 3:45 PM 0 comments Labels: ,

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Thing #18 -- YouTube, TeacherTube, and User-Generated Video

Within the past few years, online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily upload and share videos on the web. Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently top dog serving up over 1 million video views a day and allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also embed clips into their own sites easily. Do some searching around YouTube yourself and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from 1970s TV commercials and 60s and 70s music videos (hey...here's the REAL music) to library dominoes and a video made by library school students for National Library Week. There's also the cult classic Conan the Librarian. See also:

Of course, like any free site you’ll also find a lot stuff not worth watching, too. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore and see for yourself what the site has to offer.

Discovery Resources:

Discovery Exercise:

Explore YouTube or TeacherTube and find a video worth adding as an entry in your blog.

  • Create a blog post about your experience. What did you like or dislike about the site and why did you choose the video that you did? Can you see any features or components of the site that might be interesting if they were applied to library websites?
If you want more (optional):

Try placing the video inside your blog using the copy and paste code for the for "Embeddable Player.” Note: you'll need to use Blogger's Edit HTML tab when pasting this code.


NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, are bandwidth hogs. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light Internet usage times. Also, don't forget that YouTube videos are blocked -- you may want to concentrate your video exploration to TeacherTube.

Posted by MyraG at 2:38 PM 0 comments Labels: ,

Thing #17 Explore Web 2.0 Award-Winning Apps

Throughout the course of this Learning 2.0 program we’ve explored just a small sampling of these new Internet technologies and websites that are empowering users with the ability to create and share content. But, given time, there are so many more we could explore. There are hundreds of web 2.0 tools with only a handfuls emerging as dominators in the market. And although time will only tell which of these new collaborative, social networking and information tools will remain on top, one thing is for sure, they're not going to go away (at least anytime soon).

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to select any site from this list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees and explore it. With so many to choose from, it might be handy to first select a category that interests you (like Books or Personal Organization) and then simply select a tool/site to explore. Be careful to select a tool that is Free and that doesn't require a plug-in or download. The majority of these are free, so this shouldn't be a problem.

Discovery Exercise:

  • Select any site/tool from the list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees. (If you prefer to select from just the winners, here’s a link to the short list.)
  • Explore the site you selected.
  • Create a post about your discovery. Be sure to include the link so all in the class can explore your choice. Do you have a project that you created with the tool?
  • What did you like or dislike about the tool? What were the site’s useful features? Could you see any applications for its use in a library setting?
  • Be prepared to share your find, in a 5 minute presentation, with the class next week.

Posted by MyraG at 12:46 PM 0 comments Labels:

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Thing # 16 Learning a Language

As an adult learner, learning a new language has been a challenge: money and time for classes, software, books, and instructors. Although there are several online tutorials and practice sites, the element that has been missing is the social networking aspect. To learn a language, you need to not only learn about it, but hear it, read it, speak it, and practice. Short of a trip abroad for total immersion, LiveMocha offers a 21st Century learning approach to learning a new language -- a "web-based language learning solution integrating online instructional content with a global community of language learners". All you need is an Internet connection. According to the LiveMocha site:

"Lesson plans include over 160 hours of beginner and intermediate level content teaching everyday conversational language along with a full range of practical reading, listening, writing and speaking exercises. LiveMocha also leverages the native language expertise of its members by allowing them to enhance the content with grammar tips, alternative phrases and colloquialisms".

In true social networking format (leveraging the collective information and intelligence on the Internet), you can learn, listen, communicate, and interact with other learners, native speakers, and tutors from around the world. Chat with others, integrating writing, listening, and speaking skills and tap the expertise of native speakers. LiveMocha brings several skill levels together as you learn at your own pace, whenever you wish, for as long as you wish.

Currently, on the LEARN section of the site, you can enroll in one of four levels of online instruction offered in the world's six most popular languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Hindi, and Mandarin Chinese. Instruction in other languages will be added in the future, but with the PRACTICE and SHARE sections of LiveMocha, you can communicate in any language with anyone in the world!

Discovery Resources:

Discovery Exercises:

  • Log on to LiveMocha and click Get Started or Register to set up your account. You will need to activate your account through your email address.
  • Blog about your thoughts on this type of e-learning experience and what you learned in exploring this site.
  • What other language learning sites have you found?

Posted by MyraG at 6:00 AM 0 comments Labels: ,

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