Week #9, thing #23--Finis!

In my library, I have a laminated page from an EGM magazine, which is a paid advertisement from a man who was sentenced for videogame piracy. (The ad is part of carrying out his sentence.) I show this to many of my students who hold the position that nothing is wrong unless you get caught: cheating, dodging copyright, anything, in short. And the cut & paste culture of students on the web is their practiced community of "I'm right as long as you don't catch me!" (And then they argue that it was the other kid who copied them...) We all face it.
I keep a manual of what constitutes fair use, and what does not. But I also believe that the work I do should be shared by whoever likes it well enough to want to use it. I suppose I'm a creative commons kind of girl. But, it's also not my paycheck.

My favorite parts of this were wikis and LibraryThing. I liked reading the other linked blogs on the course page, and reading the histories on the wiki pages. I think that I will like the other tools when I have a need for them, but without a defined purpose, it's hard to choose what they should do.

I'm glad I stuck it out, when I thought I had left it too long to come back and finish. I would have missed out on some good stuff.

Week #9, thing #22

World eBook Fair was a lot to poke through. I liked LibriVox better. Reading their explanation of copyright and public domain was amusing, too, in a sort of odd way. The examples they gave of how people might use their recordings, well... what do you say to that! I have in the past used short text from POWER Library's ebook collection when looking for things my teachers ask about-- giving them the exact wording or the context, and so forth. A good resource, but I don't think it will ever really replace bound books. I wonder, too, with the difference in how we read online and how we read in print, will thought patterns of our readers adjust?

Week #8, thing #21

I find myself to be a bit impatient with podcasts. But that's me. My son (20, and in school for CST and networking) loves the Leo Laporte podcasts. He listens to/ watches them quite constantly. While he's doing that, I find that I will tune in for some bits, and tune out the rest.
Leo's Tech Guy stuff is a lot like a radio talkshow, with the topic of the day, segments from other contributors and q&a time.

Part of the problem with the exercise, though, was a couple of the links not working. I did get through, and looked around for cool stuff.

Week #9, thing #20

Playing on YouTube is fun. My favorite animal is a hedgehog, even though I don't have any as pets. So I want to share the cute little beasties, with this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0A13d1UxfA&feature=related

It is a very different sort of fun, though, that playing on Library Thing. I'm not such a fan of the total "anything goes" mindset, liking things a bit more categorized myself. Various bits frequently come up on the site relating to the district I work in, and they range from the kudos to 'what a shame!'

Week #8, Thing #19

LOVE IT! I had so much fun on Library Thing, adding my books and seeing how my reading tases are really all over the map. With the small part of my collection (my personal one) I added, I shared titles with from over 15000 to 81 others. And I'm going looking for some of the reccommendations as soon as I can.

first try

   

Week #8, thing #18

 

 

So, trying my hand at Zoho Writer... I use spreadsheets in GoogleDocs with my teaching team at school, but another team member set that up.  This promises to have the same real-time and sharing capabilities.  Is it maybe just a matter of personal preference?!

When I get frustrated with myself in this course, I start looking at the other blogs linked on the course page. One of the ones I just read (while waiting to find out what the invite key is to complete thing #18) suggested requiring participants to follow others' blogs. I agree!

Week #7 thing #17

Played around on the wiki, and I pretty much hold with what I said in my last post-- it would be great to collaborate with students to create a class wiki in the library. But I also still feel that in my district, it would get very little use from my students independently. That's sad, to me.

Week #7, thing #16

Looking and clicking through the wikis that were linked on the page, I was surprised at the variety of 'looks' that they had. I think designing a class wiki could be a really fun, collaborative project for students and faculty together. Having students' reviews available on a wiki for following classes could be very convenient, and date/time tags on the posts (or edits?) would be a good way of verifying that a student had "turned in" their assignment on time, if needed. Good stuff!

Week #6 thing #15

It feels like my school exists in a different world from the possiblilties of Library 2.0. Most of my students only have internet access in school, and are determined to view it as a plaything, rather than a tool. My current struggle in our school is convincing our students that there is value in finding the answers, beyond just filling in the blanks on their pages. I would love to be interactive with Web 2.0 in library services, but so much of it is shaped by the attitudes of the community to be served. I read most of the links, as well as the one (not linked) called "A Ripple Effect." I'm not giving up on possibilities, I just have to keep in perspective the community I serve.

Week #6 Thing #14

Looking around Technorati was interesting. My computer wouldn't show me the screencasts I tried to get though, which was disappointing. There's a lot out there to ponder....

Week # 6 thing #13

Del.icio.us can be fun. What I liked best was reading the comments people put on their bookmarks. Better than the bookmarks themselves! I will be poking around this one when I can, for sure. A collection of bookmarks for a specific class (like the one linked) is certainly useful, as we just experienced ourselves....

Week #5 thing 12

Well, I did try... but I found Rollyo really not my thing. To the point that I simply couldn't create my own. The "Free Photos" link was a bogus one, too. And nothing that I tried searching a Rollyo for was findable. I suppose it seems actually more limiting to me than to look at the whole web. I can see, however, if a teacher or librarian only wanted the students searching selected sites it would be useful. But I'm old-fashioned enough to just incorporate those specific links in the assignment.... I know, I'm a bit simple. That's me!

Week #5 thing #11

How Cool! With a teen daughter, we sometimes find ourselves in music "wars", especially when the topic of song remakes comes up. I have often pulled up songs on Last.fm to play her the original of the song she has "just discovered." It's very encouraging to find that I have already been using some of the tools we're exploring here. Maybe I'm not as far behind the technology as I thought.
My GoogleDocs that I use at school, with my teaching team, is also on the short list for this exercise. I checked out a few others for this, but the ones I already use continue to be my favorites. I think I may be one of those who must have a need for the capability to like the service... I know, I'm odd!

Week #5, thing #10

Here's my tri-colored German Shepherd mix in lovely sepia-tone. I did it on BigHugeLabs, from Flickr Toys. This seemed easy to use, and pretty straight-forward to me. I'm still not in a hurry, though, to upload my own photos to a site like Flickr. I do like playing with, and then sending them back to my own computer!

Week #4, Thing #9

From sites that look just like Google's front page (just type in a keyword, there's nothing else for it...) to sites that looked like the index of a major newspaper! Looking through the feed locators and blog locators was an adventure. In my present state of mind, I'd have to say that Sindic8 was the most useful to me. While there I subscribed to another teen book review feed, since my students run such a wide gamut, I need all the input I can get for them!

Week #4, thing #8

Rss feeds:
I set mine up on Bloglines, but was rather disappointed when I found that the NextReads reviews didn't have the Rss symbol. I suppose that they don't because they email subscribers every month (and that does make sense). Is this the "More!More!More!" mindset that we are accused of giving in to, when I look to get an Rss feed of a newsletter that is automatically emailed to me? Ironically, I can't really decide that I truly need many of the feeds that are available out there. Still, it's fun stuff, and quite interesting, too.