Wikispaces look great for a school library!

While looking for something new at the Web 2.0 Awards site, I found something I thought would be really fun and malleable for a school library. I say school library because Wikispaces is giving away 250,000 free wikispaces to educators right now. I can see a media specialist setting up one of these (after clearing the site with the district so it's not blocked when kids try to use it) really easily. Books and programs could be promoted on it. For example, after a child reads a Golden Sower nominee, s/he could add his or her own "teaser" for others to read and then they might check out the book and add their own "teasers" or "book trailers" like they do at the movies. If the school hosts a summer reading program, it could be accessible through this wiki also. It says that Wikispaces won't see email addresses, that users can choose who can view and edit this wiki, and that it'll be hard to find through a random Google search. I would think these precautions would keep students fairly safe and yet still expose/teach them a safe way to socially interact using Web 2.0 skills. Students might also better understand why a teacher won't accept Wikipedia as a source for research papers, too, after being wiki participants. If I were a school library, I'd try this product...after all, it's free and easy to use!

Google may take over the world?!

As a student in library school, I learned how to use Google Docs last summer. I also learned how to use Microsoft MovieMaker. How do these two statements relate? They don't! When using MovieMaker, I first make a Powerpoint slide show and then save each slide as a JPEG. Well, when trying to make a farewell movie for our library director, I explored the scrapbook page template at Google. It was so neat to be able to put in photos, move embellishments, etc. Then I tried to figure out how to save each slide as a JPEG and couldn't figure out how. So, as Google says, I tried to download my Google docs presentation into Powerpoint itself. No such luck! I'm not sure I'd trust the presentation portion if I were someplace doing a talk and wanting to just download it at my presentation's location. I did use the word processing portion with success, writing papers and saving them so I could work on them over my lunch hour at work or anywhere else I might have access to them. That worked fine for me. It was also a back up storage place because where I attend school, your computer problems are not your teachers' computer problems and your computer problems are taken right off your grade. We talked about kids using Google apps to do group projects and how, as the teacher, you can see who altered the report and when. That would be kind of neat. So in my opinion, Google apps are nice and convenient, but I can't see them obliterating the Microsoft Office market at this point in time.

User Friendly Wiki

I found PB wiki easy to use for this exercise. I had a little too much fun with color, as you can see if you visit the wiki by jbmdolnicek@gtmc.net. It will be fun to compare my favorites with other participants.

Wiki Wiki

Wikis are pretty neat tools to use. Its flexibility for applications in different realms is a great feature. It's nice to have a feature for security so not just anyone can add to the wiki---you have to be an approved editor. It would be a neat thing for bookmobile procedures. That way staff can read updates on procedures and proceed accordingly while out at their stops.

On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0

My thoughts about library 2.0 & web 2.0...The "just in case" collections rang a big bell with me. I am taking a managing collections class this spring semester. I am hoping to learn some new ideas about managing collections. Do we keep those "just in case" collections? Do we get rid of them just because there's an on-line version available and people haven't asked for those old tomes in the deep recesses of our libraries? Where do we draw the line on what we keep and what we don't? I hope to learn different philosophies on these questions and formulate my own opinions. I think it would be really neat to be able to use tags (user centered, not Dewey centered) in a card catalog. I know some libraries do. Tagging is a concept that's familiar to our users. It would eliminate trying to outguess Dewey's subject headings (which, for those of us who haven't worked in libraries for years and years, is problematic when trying to answer reference questions). I think we need to meet our users in interfaces that are comfortable to them, but not get so trendy that we forget our most important rule (in my opinion)...customer service.

Sharing slides?!

Slide share is an interesting site with some neat possibilities! May come in handy when a presentation is done outside the library and people might want to view it again later.
http://www.slideshare.net/HawkeyebethMy Slidespace

This is the tribute I did on behalf of my husband and his siblings, which was shown during the funeral dinner.

Farewell to Dad & Grandpa

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: dad grandpa)

To Twitter or not to Twitter...

Twitter is kind of fun. Nothing I searched for in Twitter came up so I clicked on a couple of links off to the side and found a couple of things about which to Twitter. Since the search for "Hastings" came up empty, I guess it's not a way to reach our Teens about events and resources (which was one use I had come up with before my search). I cannot see myself using this microblogging much since I am without Internet (and sometimes cell phone) service roaming around the county.
http://twitter.com/hawkeyebeth