About Library Learning 2.0 for Media Clerks

Welcome to the Library Learning 2.0 program for Media Clerks of the SVVSD! For this class, there are 23 Things for you to learn and do. Each "Thing" will show you one more web tool. There are many 'cool tools' for you to explore, experiment with, and think about creative ways to use in your library with students and staff.

The purpose of this site to is serve as a road map for your personal journey exploring the new tools of Web 2.0. Library Learning 2.0 for Media Clerks is also a team discovery and an opportunity to develop a strong personal learning community. By building our PLC, we will have an instant resource for questions & answers, ideas, and support.

Each week begins with a brief explanation of two new Web 2.0 'tools', followed by hands-on discovery time. This will allow you valuable practice time and give you a chance to ask questions. For your homework, you will be given an activity to complete using the new tools. The theme of this PST is learning, but the vehicle is play. Play with the new tools and find out great new ways to use them in the library and for your own personal productivity. After you explore each new Thing, write an entry in your blog to serve as your class participation and reflection log. This will be your tool to communicate your feelings, new found skills, ideas, questions, and favorite new tools.

Whenever you have questions, remember that you have a 13-member Personal Learning Community. You can pose questions in your blog or ask them on another participant's blog. By sharing our questions, answers, and discoveries, our learning journey will be more meaningful for all. Take the time to read other participants blog posts and leave comments. We can answer each other's questions, give each other tips, and generally cheer each other along.

There are four requirements for successful completion of this course:

1. Attendance for all classes, to be held at Skyline High School Library on Wednesdays from 4:00-5:30 p.m., is expected. Additional time, off-contract and out-of-class, needs to be spent on your homework activities.
2. Completion of all 23 "Things".
3. Track your learning, discoveries, and reflections on your blog. You will learn how to set up a blog in week one. The blog will serve as your documentation of class learning and participation.
4. The class will culminate in a collaboratively created Wiki to serve as a summary of the class content and blueprint for ways we can use these new tools in the Library Learning environment. It will be available for class members to contribute, edit, and use long after the class is completed.

Personal tools you may want to bring (not required, but you may want to learn new applications):

• Your cell phone (camera phone, texting and/or video capabilities)
• a digital camera or some of your favorite photos on a flashdrive or CD (in *.jpg format) for editing, mashing, and sharing
• a flashdrive is HIGHLY recommended
• a personal set of headphones

For you "motivated learners": the post with the new "Things" for the Wednesday class will be posted on Mondays. There will always be a new video, article, and suggested reading to give you a head start and background information on what we will be covering in the Wednesday class. And, there will always be additional articles, links, and tools for you to explore.

Here's some great resources for you to warm up for the first class:

• Seven and 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners
• Set up a Google account. You may have already done this if you read the Media Clerks Forum Blog.

We will have a great time exploring tools of Web 2.0. Get ready for the ride!

Coming Soon!

The Library Learning 2.0 for Media Clerks professional study team will begin on January 16, 2008, meeting every Wednesday from 4-5:30 pm at Skyline High School. Watch this site for the introduction to the program.

FAQ

As our February 6 class has been postponed due to parent/teacher conferences, this post will address some of your questions that have been voiced throughout the blogs and emails. This week off will also give you lots of time to practice your new skills and work on your discovery & homework activities! Please add any comments and/or expanded answers in response to any of the questions. If you have more questions, send those via email and answers will be listed on this post. This post will continually change as questions and answers are added. Check back often! This post will be stored at the very bottom of the page, so use the Post Topics, on the sidebar, to find the link to this post.

Why can't I have more than 3 sets on Flickr? What are my limits with a free account?

• Unfortunately, with Flickr, Free = limited
• "When you have a free Flickr account, you can upload 100MB worth of photos each calendar month. This is a bandwidth limit, and not an amount of space that you have on Flickr servers.Your bandwidth allowance is reset to zero at midnight in Pacific Time Zone (Flickr headquarters time) on the first of each calendar month. You can't recover any of your monthly allowance by deleting photos. If you have a free account, you'll see your limit on the upload page.If you find yourself hitting your limit, try a Pro account. Or, you can shoot your photos at a lower resolution or resize them to be more "web-friendly" (like 300KB instead of 5MB)." http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/#65
• Reducing the size (resolution) certainly negates the main reason you would want to archive your photos. They would still be available for web projects and use in presentations and documents, however.

With a free account, you get:

• 100 MB monthly upload limit (5MB per photo)
• 3 sets
• Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images
• Post any of your photos in up to 10 group pools
• Only smaller (resized) images accessible (though the originals are saved in case you upgrade later) A PRO account is $24.95/year. You need to decide if you want to use it to that degree. My opinion: still a great deal for archiving your photos (in high resolution) and using them for a multitude of projects.

How do I add a Yahoo avatar?

• Log in on the Yahoo Avatar main page. (this log in will also work on Flickr)
• If you need to create a new avatar, you can do so at this time – be sure to save.
• If you have already completed your avatar, go to the Yahoo Export page. You should see your avatar on this page. Here you will find the HTML code or the image URL to place on your webpage or blog.
• To save your avatar for use in other applications, click " download your avatar to use in web pages, email, mobile phones, and instant messages". This will take you to a page with options to save as a *.jpg or *.png file. You now can save this image file on your hard drive to use in any application.
• You can add this full photo to your blog – go to Blogger’s Quick Tutorial to learn how to insert photos.
• You can use your avatar on your profile page.
• Now that you know how to use Flickr, upload your avatar image into Flickr to easily edit and store.
• We will spend more time on Working With Photos in a couple of weeks. Have fun practicing!

My comments aren't showing on my blog posts. Classmates still have to word verify their comments. How can I change these? What should my comments settings be?

• Open your blog. Sign in. Go to Customize. From your Settings page, go to Comments.
• Here’s what your answers should be (you may want different settings after the classes are over, but during our class use these settings):
  
  *Comments= SHOW
  *Who can comments: Registered Users - includes OpenID
  *Comments Default for Posts: New posts have comments
  *Backlinks: SHOW
  *Show comments in a popupwindow= NO
  *Show word verification for comments? NO
  *Show profile images on comments? YES
  *Comment Notification Email = Enter the email address where you want to be notified of new comments.

I have questions on using Flickr. Where do I find answers? How do I add a photo to my blog? How do I edit my photo on Flickr?

• How can I find photos posted by other users with permission to use on my blog? A good rule is to only use photos where permission has been granted through Creative Commons. Click here for the Creative Commons explanation.
• Look at the toolbar above one of your photos. You can edit, print, resize, email, and add notations to your photos. Click the Blog This icon -- just follow the directions. The advantage of using this feature is that it will automatically add the photo attribution. You can also insert the photo by adding it from your blog post. That is covered in the Thing #5 Flickr post.

• Check out the Flickr Help Forum for answers on all the tools, tricks, and tips for using features of Flickr.

My blog title isn't showing. How can I fix that?

• Open your blog. Sign in. Go to Customize. From your Settings page, go to Formatting.
• Make sure the Show Title field option is set to YES. Be sure to save your options.
• Make sure your blog title shows on the Basic tab under the Settings tab.
• If changing those options doesn't work, try changing your template. You can use the same template (or try another template). If you have made any font or color changes, those will be lost if you use this option.

How can I add a section on the sidebar to index all my posts?

• To display your tags (labels), you can add a section to your sidebar. Then, your labels will be clickable and take readers directly to that post. Go to your TEMPLATE, then ADD PAGE ELEMENT.
• Choose the element: Labels Show all the labels of posts in your blog.
• Instant clickable "table of contents"!

Hint: Try several of the Page elements to add different elements to your blog. Depending on your template, you will have a top header (you can add a photo here and change your title text), the sidebar (lots of different possible page elements), and the bottom bar (add photos or any page elements).

Hint: Practice using hyperlinks in your posts. A hyperlink is simply a 'pointer' to another part of your blog, another website, or a document. It makes a word, group of words, or an image a clickable link to another place. This makes your blog more readable, helps your readers navigate, and adds to the credibility of your post.

All your questions can be answered by exploring the HELP forums and pages. If you have questions on any of the "Things" we have covered, try these links:

• Bloglines
• Technorati
• Blogger
• Flickr
• Each Image Generator site has help forums or pages. Check those out to learn to use each site's features.

How can I add more sets to my Flickr account?

• Open your Flickr account
• Click on Organize
• Click on Your Sets and Collections
• Create a new: collection or set.

Hint: Remember, when you upload your photos, you can highlight MANY photos to upload at once. You don't have to do them one at a time.

List of the "23 Things"

Listed below are 23 Things that you can do on the web to explore and expand your knowledge of the Internet and Web 2.0.

”23 Things” for Library Learning 2.0 for Media Clerks

Week 1

1. Learning about Web 2.0 – the Read/Write Web
2. Learn about blogging and set up your own blog.

Week 2

3. Learn about RSS feeds and setup your own Bloglines newsreader account.
4. Explore Technorati and learn how tags work with blog posts.

Week 3

5. Explore Flickr and learn about this popular image hosting site. Have some Flickr fun and discover some Flickr mashups & 3rd party sites.
6. Play around with an online image generator.

Week 4

7. Set up a del.icio.us account and learn about social bookmarking and tagging.
8. Take a look at LibraryThing and catalog some of your favorite books.

Week 5

Play week – take time to explore, practice, and work on your blogs!

Week 6

9. Explore your favorite technology and write about it in your blog.
10. Learn about editing and Working with Photos.

Week 7

11. Learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them.
Add to your section of the Media Clerks wiki.

Week 8

12. Open Source Applications -- downloadable and web-based productivity applications
13. Explore Google Apps

Week 9

14. Podcasting -- Searching and Listening
15. Audiobooks and eBooks
16. Learning a Language via Social-Networking

Week 10

17. Explore Web 2.0 Award-Winning Apps
18. YouTube, TeacherTube & User-Generated Video

Week 11

19. Microblogging -- Explore Twitter
20. Explore Social Networking -- Facebook, MySpace, and Nings
21. Copyright and Freedom of Information
22.Your Cellphone as a Learning & Productivity Tool

Week 12

23. Expand Your Mind
Congratulations! You Did It!