Week 9 Thing #23

Throughout this terrific course, I've found new opportunities and functions that I had never thought we could use for both education and pleasure. As the iPhone commercial goes, I had dreamed of these things, but now I can find and use them. Thanks to this course, I've found that because of the marvelous Web, so many of these gifts, are, indeed gifts. They are free (mostly). And fun. And available for me to use, read, enlarge upon, knowing that millions of people are doing the same, and with the ability to share my findings and delights with them. So far as I can find a way to attract those virtual friends!

Week 9 Thing #22

So wonderful to find Worldebooks and through them, the Children's collection and other collections. Such wonderful classics and little known 19th and early 20th century editions. The graphics of the original covers make the experience so rich. Thank heavens for those who love books so much that they volunteer to enter and to those non-profits and universities who develop. Thanks also to the advertisers; if only inappropriate ads would not show up so often on the sites we have explored.

Why not use LibraryThing to "collect" OP or public domain books, catalog them, and put them in my personal library?

I had used Gutenberg before; I'm confused that I need to register. Perhaps I have even done so and do not remember.

I am going to show some of my faculty these sites.

I used to use audio books from my public library years ago when I had a long commute to work during the core (pun intended) time of the Big Dig. We listened to the Odyssey, Moby Dick, as well as Mike Mulligan, Disney books and many others. The audio books for kids (not the Odyssey) often came with the book, so he could look at the pictures and turn the pages as the tape proceeded.

Week 9 Thing #21

One way I find favorite podcasts is simply to go to various NPR stations, find an intriguing show, listen to it, and add it to my RSS if I like it. The thing about widening my online world, is, as I have mentioned before, disorienting and, maybe, off-putting. It's like taking the train into the downtown of a new city - without a map or a GPS. The possible choices sort of start a decision tree; but on the Internet, especially Web 2.0, you can jump from tree to tree. Maybe a better metaphor: being dropped into the middle of a crowd not knowing where in the muddle your friends are.

On a search engine like Google, to find information, just a search term or two will bring up sites that Google suggests, usually with good results. Web 2.0 requires a lot of leisure time; or work time in a situation where one can set aside thinking and playing time.

I did add a favorite Garrison Keillor daily show I hadn't thought might be a podcast, and I'm very happy about that. I bet, though, as I do more Internet noodling around, instead of looking up stuff via Google, I'll be looking for podcasts.

Week 9 Thing #20

One never has a dull time on a video sharing site. I viewed several library-related clips. They tend to be a little tedious and have the feel of a moving PowerPoint. Others are hilarious, and meant to be, like the "Dominoes" clip. Librarians do have a distinctive sense of humor.

However, for quite some time, I've wanted to do a tutorial on the basics of using our catalog for my Web page. I'm told it is complicated to program. But a quick and easier way to do this may be to film a presentation, give it to YouTube, and provide a link from the Webpage!

On the hilarious side of Web 2.0, I wanted to find a clip that my sister-in-law made last fall. She is a school librarian to grades 1-4, the babies I call them. She was a member of an award-winning booktruck performance; I wanted to put it on my blog but I couldn't find keywords that found the clip for me.

Instead I found an amusing tribute to librarians that an undergraduate at William and Mary made. It mostly takes place in his dorm room and dorm hall. I succeeded it using the HTML code and got it to my blog. But it was too large; I could not figure how to size it down to fit on the page and not overwhelm the rest of the add-ins. So I took it back down. I hope I can figure out how to handle the sizing of things I add to the blog.

Week 8 #19

I've had more fun with LibraryThing than with any other tool or site we've looked at in this course. I'll have to edit some of my entries, since my copies are usually earlier editions or earlier printings, or have better covers. I still have a lot of fun to go navigating around the site.

One of my favorite books got a bad review, alas. It's not the best book ever written, but it was written by a former colleague, and the descriptions of the Harvard Business School campus, Peabody Terrace, and Dorchester Lower Mills transported me back fifteen years. All the books in my library right now are ones I acquired from 1954 to 2004!

My books ranged in popularity from 1900 (Raymond Chandler) to 199,000 (Jeff Cruikshank)!

Week 8 #18

Since I already use Google for several functions, I decided to explore Google Docs. The potential to have students work collaboratively on, say, a country presentation, via shared documents is great. They could work each from her own home at night on the group presentation. They could upload it to a Website as one way to publish to the rest of the school.

Trying to teach a collaborative course on research, technology, and history, I can see how much more smoothly the collaboration might go if we could use Google docs to develop common curriculum and schedules.

I started a slide show using Google presentations, which I hope I'll take a shot at uploading to my blog.

Week 7 Thing #16

The wiki I have been fantasizing about would invite students in my research/technology class to express their ideas, frustrations, and triumphs, much like this blog is for this group. Wikis are blogs for a group, aren't they? I think a good way to launch wiki literacy for students would be a simple book review wiki.

As I finish my research course with ninth graders, I am going to introduce them to wikis, just for fun. After over three years of attempting to steer students away from Wikipedia, then relenting a little this year, all the while using Wikipedia constantly, it is time to allow students in on the fun.

By the way, I tried out contributing to Wikipedia myself a few years ago. I was surfing around (is that still a usable phrase?) looking up something to do with John J. Raskob, DuPont and General Motors financial officer, Chairman of the Democratic Party when Al Smith ran, and philanthropist in my hometown. He built the Empire State Building. In the Popular Culture section of the ESB entry, at the time I was looking at the wiki, I saw no reference to James and the Giant Peach. So I figured out how to participate, and wrote that the Peach lands on the ESB spire. Perhaps it was a spoiler, because I just looked at the site for the first time since I put it up, and it is no longer there. But the historical information about the building has been mightly improved.