Final thoughts & applications

First and foremost, I'd like to thank the NLC for providing the 23 learning opportunities we have all experienced together. It was fun to gather around a computer to help one another when technology wasn't cooperating with us. It was also fun seeing what others put on their blogs. My creativity level is different than everyone else's and that is great!

I really enjoyed Flickr and learning to PB wiki. I hadn't ever edited a wiki before! It's kind of fun! The most frustrating experience during these past weeks was lack of cooperation in the technology department.

My library class this semester requires us to use Delicious for four of our assignments, so the practice on using Delicious (or is it Delicious practice?) was a good refresher before I turn in my first assignment on Sunday. I think I will also use Blogger more. We are taking my nine year old to Washington D.C. for a whilrwind tour in February. I thought he could post photos he has taken of different sites and write some posts each day and then we could email the link to his teacher for classroom use (and for our own use later on). In case he is not allowed to blog at school, I think it will be an educational opportunity for him. I'm looking forward to it!

Podcasting is fun!

I am here to tell you that finding podcasts and actually making your own podcasts are both fun, but a lot of work! I used Google and found a podcast on scrapbooking, so I subscribed to it in my Google reader (I never did set up a Bloglines account since I already had Google reader set up). It was easy to find these podcasts via Google. The RSS feed works well for me. This past summer, I took a class for library school that required us to make an enhanced podcast (a podcast with pictures, for those of you unfamiliar with this term). I did it using Powerpoint and Microsoft MovieMaker. My son and I made a 4-H project this summer and I took pictures for scrapbooking purposes. I decided to use them for this podcast. My purpose was to help other families making some of these sewing projects for the first time. Feel free to check it out here:

http://myweb.unomaha.edu/~bdolnicek\SewingForFunPillow3Stripes.wmv

YouTube

YouTube has, I think, a reputation for having a lot of inappropriate things on it and so schools block it from student view. However, I watched a video for my first class assignment in library school this semester! I had to write a paragraph about how it related to information literacy after I watched it. There are some good things on YouTube...even the inaugural address of President Barak Obama (which I missed due to bookmobiling without a wireless connection earlier this week).

Here's a funny video on medieval people first learning the concept of books and turning pages! Guess I needed some humor today (maybe some of my readers do, too) so I embedded it here.

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.