With the help of my so abliging fellow library staff I have been able to finish the PD one week ahead of my schedule. I am very excited about the things I’ve learned and will need plenty of time to digest it all. However I am going to pick the eyes out and try some bits NOW with some of our students.
I love the idea of making books more accessible. Glad there are people out there prepared to give of their time to make audiobooks as podcasts. I hadn’t thought of that aspect of access to information rather to use the podcasts as a way of sharing ideas about the reading rather than as the reading itself. It surprised me that the Project Gutenberg with its plain text copies would be what people are looking for. Some of the illustrations with the classic Children’s books at World Public Library were really interesting. It would be great o do some work with the students about comparing different sets of illustrations and their time periods – Peter Rabbit for example.
Saw a great program on the ABC or SBS early in 2008 about gaming and virtual worlds like Second Life. The program had a great deal of info about Second Life so I understand what it is about and how it works. I think the Library /Libraries in Second Life seem to be much more fluid than our concept of a library with 4 walls but more like a place for conversation and sharing on a theme, a meeting of like minds in an information space. My mind is grappling with how this will impact the crossover between the idea of a library and the idea of a place of learning (school/university). This should result in more people being able to share, discuss, debate ideas and come up with so whats for our world of the future. I personally can’t get into second life as I have a young family and am madly busy with real life but I can understand the appeal.
’Shift Happens” powerpoint put to U2 music on Teacher Tube.
I know its pretty worn but I like the idea of having to shift our long held beliefs.
Not having such a good time trying to get this part of the PD done. At home I have snail paced dial up with a computer which, since its latest rebuild after a crash, has no sound. At school I have fast access and sound but filtered web access so YouTube is blocked. Will try TeacherTube at school when I return there Thursday.
I was introduced to Podcasts last year and had some PD in finding them and how to best use them in education. Our library thought the use of podcasts to get students to do their own book reviews was such a good idea that we put in a submission to the school for special funding for more tools. We finally have the set up but getting the podcasts ‘out there’ has not happened yet. I am excited by the extra knowledge I’ve gained through this PD and hope to tie all these bits together into a very dynamic library Intranet and Internet presence.
I still find it difficult to find the time to catch and listen to all the potential podcasts I would like to listen to.
This term I am coordinating the Library while the Coordinator is on long service leave. I have limited the goals I am trying to achieve so that I still have puff at the end of Term. I am loving my igoogle page, it gets me to all the bits I want and lets me know what the weather is like in the area my parents come from in Holland. Especially good at the moment as they are there in about 4 hours or so. I have reduced the number of rss feeds as I was finding that I only wanted to read about the ones I was most interested in.
I have also managed to catch up a little on my reviews. I still need to post them on my blog, perhaps today.
Have been around wikis for a while so the concept isn’t so mind boggling. In schools and libraries we should be making much more use of the interactive nature of wikis. Students would be much more engaged if they thought their input was valuable and that they could contribute in a more meaningful way than being asked to regurgitate knowledge.
The volume of material my mind is trying to sift through for threads to tie all the web 2.0 material together is literally mind numbing. It has taken me a few weeks now to digest some of the library 2.0 articles. I think that the concept of users contributing to the knowledge base is fantastic. I have always wanted to have this sort of thing happening especially with our Book Group students which is why I started a book blog for them last year. I am finally beginning to understand better what it is I would like for them. Now I need to begin the building. Like all buildings it needs a good foundation. My early attempts last year are needing refinement and more interactivity.
Like getting cranes on top of tall buildings things happen one step at a time. I’d like to begin with getting students to add reviews and comments to books we have or they have read.
