The Librain

This week, I am trying to sort out in my mind all of the amazing Web2.0 tools and apps I have been playing around with, how useful I think they are for my own work, what I need to do to get the best out of them and which ones I will try with teachers and students when I have the opportunity. It is a tall order as my head is buzzing with all of the new things that I find every day. But I think I need to slow down and take stock. I seem to be skimming the surface and moving on again before I have really learned what each one can do.

A colleague, Caroline Roche in “Playing in my sandbox“, posted very wisely about this very thing on her blog – yes, I think that I am probably one of the “butterflies” in that I just play around with something for a while and then my attention is caught by a new thing to try! My husband has always said that I have a butterfly mind (wouldn’t mind the wings!)

Another librarian, Meredith Farkas in “Looking beyond the technolust“, has also recently written about those of us who are advocates for technology and our attitude to people who are maybe more measured in their approach to new things and ideas:

I think sometimes we all need to try and step outside of our personal feelings about these technologies, which isn’t easy when we think they’re the best thing since sliced bread. When we are talking to others about technology, we need to realize that what we find useful may not be useful to them (and that’s ok).

So, I need to think carefully when I advocate tools that I use myself – as many of you may not love them so much – and that is your prerogative!

The list here is very much a personal one. These are the things that are working for me at the moment!

Organising

To organise my working day, and sometimes my personal stuff I find Netvibes invaluable. I used to use Outlook and Pageflakes in my last job,  but we don’t use Outlook in my new school and Pageflakes got a bit flakey(!) recently.

The Librain’s Netvibe Pages

I have already posted about my use of Netvibes before, so I won’t repeat it all! But I do wonder what I will do if it goes!

Communication

Well, I still use email a lot – apparently younger people are moving away from it now. I don’t text very much as most of my family and friends don’t. I also don’t use my mobile phone very much either – this may cause some shock amongst readers!

I like email as I have a record of the correspondence, I can take the time to think about what I want to say, although I am known for jumping in a bit too quickly with it sometimes. I still have too many accounts – Hotmail and Yahoo Mail are old ones that I rarely use these days. My main account is Gmail, which I use for personal and semi-professional stuff and I also use the school official email. None of these are Web2.0, but email still forms the basis of my daily communications.

Twitter

Twitter is becoming a really important source of news, information, professional development, support etc. My Twitter network is growing, although I try to keep the number of those I follow to a reasonable number. I also stick to people who I think will be interesting and ignore those who lock down their tweets or who don’t have a profile. It will be interesting to see if I, and others, are using it to the same extent a year from now!

I am also experimenting with Meebo. I have this on my library website and have used it to communicate with some students – I am not sure about this and will think about the issues surrounding “chat” with young students. It was used successfully by a group of school librarians during a recent online course and I hope that we try it out as a group in the future.

Of course, blogging is also a way of communicating. I write something here and, if I am lucky, I get a response from other librarian colleagues that makes me think. Blogs are a wonderful way of sharing ideas – that’s why I have so many on my Netvibes page!

This post has been long enough and I will continue with other ways I use Web2.0 tools another day. I will cover collaboration, presentation, social bookmarking, note-taking, picture/photo sites, organising books, and maybe more as I think of categories!

First of all, I want to apologise to anyone who saw my previous version of this post. It was not professional to let off steam on here and so I have now removed it completely.

I did finish the course, although I skimmed over the last few presentations and did not post very much to the discussions. This was because my personal life was encroaching too much and I was feeling under pressure.

I will return to the presentations at a later date and think through how I am going to move forward and feed back to the school. As I am new in post, I am not sure of the best way to do this, or, in fact, whether I should just wait for a more appropriate time. My main focus now has to be on developing the new library, getting it up and running in the autumn and then starting the process of encouraging teachers to make use of it and myself. So it may not be until this time next year that I can actually begin to use some of the amazing things that I have learned.

In the meantime, I will continue to try out these things for myself, and maybe draw up a plan of action. I can use tools such as VoiceThread with my Reading Group, perhaps. And, of course, I can enjoy using them in the library website.

Via Twitter, I saw a link to this downloadable book “21st Century Technology Tools : Tutorials“. It looks really useful for helping teachers and others who are not very confident about using a lot of Web2.0 – and in fact I will read some of the chapters myself!

When I have had more time for reflection, I may post some more about the course.

This is my response to the thoughts going through my head after reading Ken Eustace’s Web3.0 presentation and Judith Comfort’s post. I am copying it across from Sosius as I am really tired today and I need to do something else!

If I feel up to it, I will try to sort out my ideas a little better.

I must be getting tired! Or real life is grabbing hold of me again? I feel I have become so immersed in a Web2.0 world and am so excited and inspired by all that I am reading and experiencing that I cannot immediately look up and engage with a real person!

The podcasting presentation was excellent and I feel that I could try this out, when the opportunity presents itself. I have saved the presentation and also all of the links so that I can return to it later on.

I also dropped in on the “chat” session just to see that it works OK before our session at 8.00 pm tonight. If I have the energy, I may add to this post after that.

This afternoon, I tried the session on The Seamless School Library – well, that had me bowled over but totally drained at the same time. This is not a quick Word document or a .pdf, but a whole website to explore. It was too much for an afternoon – trying to fit this between the normal library stuff. I am also getting quite tired as I have been staying up too late reading stuff and then I cannot sleep as so much is whirring around my head!

Anyway, I will again come back to that section at a later date as I cannot cope with it today.

So, I spent some time working on the Library Online website. Having watched the social bookmarking presentation, I was reminded that I could use the “link rolls” script from Delicious to show visitors to the Subject pages the latest links for each subject that I have added to Delicious. I have only made a few of these pages as yet, because I have not reached the point where I am working closely with teachers. I just made these as examples – although the English one is starting to develop because the Sixth Form students are starting to ask me for help – wonderful!

Update: What great fun it was chatting to other school librarians on Meebo last night. Now I can see why teenagers get so addicted to MSN! Then I spent some time setting up Skype and got through to a friend in Australia. I still feel so starry-eyed by the power of technology! Maybe that is why I chose the picture below as my main avatar!

Well, I have had a short play with VoiceThread to see how it works. As I don’t have a microphone on this work PC, I have had to type the comments. But I now know how easy it is to use.

Please don’t make comments about this as I know it is very basic! I will try to do something a bit better when I can find the time and a quiet space!

A more difficult day for me this one. I dipped in and out of the course all day and switched between various things that I needed to do in the library. I read Judy O’Connell’s blog regularly, so I already had an idea about her presentation. I continue to be in awe of the things that she does. But it is obvious that she is enabled to work on a different level to most of us in the UK as she has a huge library (we can see it developing on her blog), she has staff and as a teacher-librarian she is able to have her own classes.

Anyway, I will carry on following her as I pick up so many ideas from influential librarians like her!

David’s presentation, and the live session, was really amazing. I now know that I love something that has the human voice as well as a visual presentation! Although this kind of media center would not be possible or very appropriate in my present school, it was wonderful to see the things that are possible elsewhere.

Also, I must admit that I find I am still able to be awed by the power of technology! Whereas students have grown up with this, and so very rarely get that wow factor, I say “Wow” all of the time. From someone who used a dip-pen then later a sliderule at school to this…

…truly awesome!

I have watched the presentation about Social Bookmarking – nice to have another one with a voice narrating. I think that I learn a lot from this kind. I really like VoiceThread in particular as the commenting is nice!

Anyway, back to the presentation. Again, I don’t think that I found out a lot of new stuff as I have been using both Delicious and Diigo for some time. But it did remind me of some things and introduced me to some new terms. I have favourited it on SlideShare and will return to it at a later date to think about it some more. I was interested in the RISAL project and will certainly explore that more when I have the time.

The second presentation : “The Os of Web 2.0: Openness, Originality and Others” is in PDf format and I have downloaded it and printed it out to read. I find it difficult to read long articles like this these days as they take a lot of concentration and I don’t really get the space and time for that – at school, everything is very busy; at home – well, mayhem would be a good word! Also, I am not used to it – I think that I am out of practise these days.

Anyway, I have begun a bubbl.us to show my learning network (I have used this before to create a sitemap for my Library Online site – although this needs updating).

Well, I am actually writing this on day 4, but that is because for some reason I couldn’t get to my blog last night. So I will have to write something for day 4 this evening, if I have the time!

I started the day thinking about participation on the course. A lot of SLN members from the UK have joined and yet I could see only a handful online and posting comments. Also it was apparent that many people were struggling with Sosius before they could actually get to work on the course. So I decided to  write a quick guide to getting started and then I uploaded it to a couple of areas and notified everyone – I hope that it helps.

Also, thinking about all of the wonderful resources mentioned in the posts, I had begun to tag them on Diigo for myself and so I thought that it would be helpful to others if I offered to do this for everyone. Now, I know that it is a huge task and may be a bit impossible to achieve successfully. But I will try to do it as best I can.

So, to the actual course. What did I learn yesterday? I have only just begun my new job and the focus for my first year must be on designing and developing the new library. It is such a small school and so it is easy to talk to staff face to face. However, I have also been given the remit that I will help the school develop ICT in the future. I hope that I have opportunities to show some of these Web2.0 tools to staff – maybe at a training day. So, I will take the chance to learn as much as I can and try to suggest things to teachers where appropriate. I will also use the Library Online website to demonstrate some of them also and maybe develop a wiki for the Reading Group. Then I will have some practical examples to show.

We are in a difficult situation when a lot of the staff do not read their official emails! But I will have to try to find my way around this. So these are my thoughts about the presentation on professional development for staff with Web2.0.

As to the other presentation on mashups! This was a really steep learning curve for me. At least I think that I understand a little more about what they are, but I couldn’t get to grips with Yahoo Pipes. Maybe that was because I was trying to do this in too much of a hurry. It is difficult to make the mental space and time at home on an evening, when my boys are fighting me for the computer!

I will have to come back to this at a later date, when I can find a quiet time to really concentrate!

I am writing this with my laptop on my knee after everyone else has gone to bed – just about the only time I can find on a Saturday! I did sneak two hours this afternoon to work through presentations and discussions, but I think that the time zones have an effect as it was very quiet.

It has been interesting to read what others are doing, although I don’t feel that I have personally found much that is totally new to me so far. What is different is the ability some people have to use new technologies in their schools, either because they are teacher-librarians or because of the ethos of their particular school. So, I have heard of wikis etc before and have tried some of the tools myself, but not had much opportunity to use them in a teaching context – apart from the wiki I used at NCTC.

My present school is a very academic one and I am not sure as yet when I will be able to start encouraging the use of Web2.0. I did try with one department and gave them a detailed list and offered help – but there was no response.

I am supposed to be getting involved in ICT development in the school, when I have got the new library up and running – so maybe I will get more chance then.

|What I have tried out today is VoiceThread – this laptop has a microphone, so I was able to add some voice comments to someone else’s presentation. I would like to make one myself, so may try this out soon. Not sure what I will do as yet.

An interesting training opportunity is taking place from the 20th February to the 1st March. A group of us from SLN (School Librarians’ Network) are joining an international group on an online course – “21st Century Learning : Professional development to transform school libraries with Web 2.0“.

I remember many years ago a lot of school librarians doing online ICT training (can someone remind me what it was called?). This, however, is a huge step further as we are taking part alongside school librarians, teachers, ICT specialists and many others from across the globe. Exciting times!

First of all, we need to get to grips with Sosius – an online collaboration tool. I am feeling my way around this and have made contact with most of the participants in the course. Also, I have now posted a few comments to discussions.

I will be blogging here, hopefully on a daily basis, throughout the course to show the progress that I am making!