Secondary Librarian's Workshop

Table 1 - Image Manipulation

Importing from Discovery Education








Importing from Flikr Creative Commons







by suneko


Irfan View - Problem: I have students that print directly from an Irfan View pic. The print default it to an A4 size paper - not letter size. The printer will not print and causes a backload of print jobs until you physically tell it to print. You can change the default print paramaters, but it will not stay permanent. This is a major problem in managing printing in the library!!!! Help!

Powerpoint: I uploaded these two Powerpoint slides to Slide Share first. Then used the embedding configuration. However, it doesn't seem to be loading properly.

Cauliflower

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Image Generators :

ImageChef.com Flower Text



Also ImageChef.com - Custom newspaper headlines.

Table 2 - Audio Manipulation
Using Incompetech
Sonatina in C Minor

Table 3 - Photostory

I feel very comfortable using Photostory. I created a project with the Lone Star books back in 23 Things. It included their jackets along with a summary recorded by me for each slide. Very easy to use - will be great with students!

Table 4 - Video

Thing 23 - Summarize

Let's see...what were my favorites? I think Google documents is a winner. It will be great for sharing and editing documents online. I also think for keeping track of bookmarks, that Del.icio.us will be an asset for students and staff members alike. I also really like the Librarian's Nings that are online. They are super in communicating with librarians around the nation. I joined a couple of the groups and look forward to discussions.
On the fun side, I liked Image Chef and some of the other online generators for making cute odds and ends. The students will have fun with this site! In keeping up with news, the RSS feeds were a good lesson. Now the information will come to me rather than me going to it. I absolutely fell in love with the virtual bookshelf from Shelfari. I ran across this in another of the Library2Play's blog and of course had to have my own. (See it at the bottom of my blog!)
My main problem with all of this is in me being able to remember it all. I may need a refresher course at some time!

As far as how this exercise has helped my lifelong learning skills... I think I would have to say it has given me a little electrical stimulus to get me excited about all the cool 2.0 tools available to everyone. I was amazed and certainly got quite excited about some of them.

I cannot say that there was anything too surprising in this mission. I guess my biggest surprise is in how many people blog. That is something that doesn't interest me much, but obviously it does to many people around the world. I enjoy a limited time on a computer and would have to prioritize the blogs and alerts I subscribe to or feel way overwhelmed.

I think this would be a difficult endeavor during the school year. I am glad I was able to do it during the summer. It is quite time consuming. Maybe make the "class" shorter...

I would definitely like to participate in another online class such as this. I hope the district will offer more online classes.

A word or sentence to describe this activity? Hummmm. An eye-opening experience into cool and useful Web 2.0 tools. Something like that...

That's all folks! Guess I need to go comment on your sites. Good luck and have fun.

Thing 22

Ning's are way too cool! I didn't know these exist. I really liked the two that are related to libraries - especially Texas School Librarian Ning! It is nice to have a site that is particular to your interests. I joined one of the groups and look forward to participating in future discussions. It does look like it is rather new - there aren't very many members. If you are a Texas School Librarian, then I encourage you to join so we can have a better communication base.

I think this Ning will be better than the ListServe I currently subscribe to. I haven't even been checking it lately because it seems that most of the e-mail generated is not of any use or interest to me. I just seem to check all and delete all the time! In the Nings you can select groups that have common interests.

I took a look at Ning for Teachers, but not for very long. The whole page was too cluttered and confusing to even draw me in to look for a group that might be interesting. They need to change its appearance.

I like the fact these teacher/librarian nings are separate from Facebook and MySpace which our students are using. I don't want to run into any of them while socially interacting on the web!
Thank you for showing us Nings!

Thing 21

I think podcasts/vidcasts could be wonderfully beneficial. What if you can't make it to a meeting? I would like to see various school district's meetings recorded and placed on a server where you could access them. I can also see his for lectures. Why not record them and have them available later to students who either missed it or just needs to revisit the content a second time? Seems good to me!
I experimented with PhotoStory. I made up a book review of the current Lone Star Award books. I will be able to use this next year. I can link to my web site or whatever for students to find out more about the books on the list. It is probably a little longer than most - it contains 19 book reviews... Let me know what you think!!

Thing 20

I began with looking for book trailers on YouTube . I had seen some in another blog and thought I would see if I could find any of interest. It would be a different method of getting kids excited about reading. Here is the one on Airman. Ioin Colfer's latest book that I just loved! (more so than his Artemis Fowl books...) I thought it was short and sweet. Some of the ones I looked at were way too long. One to two minutes is about the right length. It is too bad our school district blocks this site.



I had trouble with the TeacherTube videos. They were impossible to watch as they kept buffering every 5 seconds. I am using a wireless connection, so maybe that is the problem. I wouldn't want to use this site if this is a frequent occurence! Did any of you all have difficulty with the videos as well?
I did find a couple that looked promising, but like I said I couldn't finish them. One was a librarian along with teachers talking about how Literature Circles work. It was long - about 30 minutes. Another I looked at was a library tour. Sort of like a virtual tour of a library...

Thing 19

Gosh, I am still amazed at what all we are finding on the web in this journey! Some of these award winners we have already discovered in our lessons! Some I was already familiar with, such as Geni and Craigslist. Our family has quite a geneology outlined in Geni. It is a fun site if you haven't already discovered it. Of course many people use Craigslist to look for items locally to buy or sell.

I first went to some of the book sites other than Library Thing. One of them that deals in used books, Biblio got my attention right away. I was trying to find an old, out of print geneology book of my family. I was not able to find it, but it did look like a promising site if you are looking for rare or out of print books.

I then went to a music site, Last. I have been using an I pod when I go to the gym, so I thought I would check it out to see if they had audio downloads. What I found was quite interesting and I think will be beneficial to the Theatre Arts teacher at my school. She always assigns a Performing Artist project and the students have a hard time finding appropriate information and videos of their chosen artist. Here you can search for an artist and find out all sorts of interesting information about them - including all albums they have made, listen to their songs, biographical information with pictures and what I liked best YouTube videos of them performing their songs. It will link you to sites (of course) where you can buy their music if that suits your fancy.

Thing 18

I explored Google Docs. I was able to copy and paste from an existing Excel spreadsheet into one in Google Docs easily. The whole creation of a spreadsheet was very easy! Here is the link to my Summer Reading 08 shared spreadsheet.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pfxzv2pm_FXH2s4seWJ9xWA

I can see several reasons that could make this advantageous over Microsoft Office. Of course the main reason being the sharing aspect. Being able to make a document "shareable" and then "editable" is super! Their tour gave many reasons for sharing rather than e-mailing a document. I will have to give some thought on how I might utilize this online document creator.
Another reason could be cost. Microsoft Office is quite expensive to for the regular public to buy. Maybe this could be used rather than forking out a lot of cash for the Microsoft product.

A disadvantage to using an online document creator would be that they are not as comprehensive as Office. Office has so many options and features. There is no way that these online document sites could compete.

I would say use these for simple, straight-forward documents that you would like to be able to share.

Thing 17

Dr. B has a Rollyo on the SBISD Library Resources Page, but I never knew exactly what it was or what to use it for. I am learning all sorts of new things.... I reinvestigated and found that it is a way to search for videos. I found an interesting TeacherTube video on a couple's visit to San Francisco. We just got back from there, so I was curious what they did while on their trip. They did some of the same things we did, of course - touristy things that all do when they go to S. F.

I created a customized Rollyo for searching for books. To be honest, I don't know if I will ever use it, but it was fun and interesting to create. Here is the link:
http://rollyo.com/talleris/ll_bit_books/
I included Amazon.com, Scholastic, a discount online book source, BookCloseouts and the public library I use. I tried a several searches and got hits with all but the public library. I am not sure why not. Did anyone else put in the URL for a public library and get positive results? Mine just says Sorry, no items found; check your spelling, etc..

Thing 16

Wikis are not new to me. I took a class last summer and created one. The free wiki site I used wasn't very user friendly, however. I don't even remember its name! So needless to say I didn't continue to use it.
The idea I had was to promote the Lone Star books. I am going to do an reading incentive program with them this upcoming school year. I would like to make a page for each book with the book's jacket picture and review. I would then have the students post their reviews on the books. I think many of the students would like to do this.
This time I will do a little more research and find a site that is easier to use. The PBWiki site looks interesting. I didn't know you could add calendars, etc. so easily to a wiki. I might give them a try!

Thing 15

Library 2.0 is here folks. I believe we are on our way to 3.0. I like the analogy of our profession as librarians to a boat - we are quickly moving up river, like it or not!

The concept of the user having to "go" to a place (library) is rapidly becoming obsolete. The internet is a tool for us to share information. Why have to go to another physical place, when we have it right at our fingertips in our own home? I am all for "sharing" information - especially libraries sharing databases, catalogs, etc. However, to accomplish this businesses and/or libraries need to get rid of the "mine" attitude and see the greater good in information "for all."

Also, the idea that we need to make information easier to find or navigate rings true too. As stated, the ratio of librarians to patrons is small, therefore, we need to have the information be "user friendly" when patrons search.

Thing 14

Wow! I cannot believe how large the blogosphere is! I still am in awe of how much time people spend on the web. It actually is a little scary. The internet can be viewed as a blessing or a curse. There is so much information out there at your fingertips - that is the plus side. The negative side - I believe it is replacing face-to-face interactions. Something to ponder, anyway.

Technorati is a great site for searching for blogs or posts. It is easy to use. I did join, but my e-mail server is down, so I could not retrieve the confirmation e-mail required to finalize the membership. When I can, I plan to add my blog and see what happens. In my searching, I did come across another SBISD blog. What a coincidence!

Thing 13

I did most of my social bookmarking research in del.icio.us . I set up an account, but I had a heck of a time installing the buttons. I had to do it four times before I could get it right. The trick was to not Run the program, but to Save it first. For some reason, the file couldn't be found in the Temp. Folder for the run option.
I added a few bookmarks to my account using the buttons and tags. It was super easy.
I can see this being quite useful if you move locations a lot and use multiple computers. This is what our students do at school, so it certainly would be beneficial to them.
Since I use mostly one computer, I don't know if I will utilize this social bookmarking account much. Maybe, I will just have to play with it a little. It does make it easy with the buttons on the toolbar...
Oh, and I did like the feature in Furl to make a bookmark private. So, in looking in the settings menu I see where you can make that an option in del.icio.us as well. Maybe there are some sites you don't want to share for some reason...

Thing 12

I think most of the sites about commenting are common sense. We need to make sure that we don't do commenting in a hurry. Take time to reflect on your comment and be sure to re-read it several times before posting. Also, I think it important to be kind in your comment, especially if you are disagreeing or criticizing. This may be the hardest of all!
I found several blogs worthly of commenting on. When I got out of the "23 Things" community, it was rather hard to choose a blog to read. I tend to look at those with blog names that are intriguing. One with the title, Gargoyles in the Library, got my attention. I am not sure if I commented on that one, but it made me look. Marketing is an integral part of blogging - the catchier the title, the more likely someone will take a look.

Thing 11

I spent about an hour discovering Library Thing. I guess I am not much into social networking. I looked at some of the groups and even joined one - Read YA Lit, but it didn't make much sense to me. Unless I am mistaken, the posts are in reverse order. You have to scroll all the way to the bottom to see the most current post. Also, this particular group is supposed to be a monthly book discussion, but I could figure out what books they were reading and when. Oh well... Maybe there just isn't that much action in this particular group.

I did create a personal library and rated the books I added. Adding books was super easy. These were books I just finished reading, so I was interested in their reviews. I am not sure I would ever use Library Thing. Maybe if I was looking for recommendations for good reading. But even at that, I don't know if I would use this site. I'd rather look at library journals or check out the blogs of those that have given me good book recommendations in the past.

I am getting the feeling more and more as 23 Things progresses that people spend WAY too much time on the computer!

Thing 10

This was similar to Thing #6. I had already created a Trading Card and visited some of the sites mentioned. So, I stayed clear of those and went to ones I did not discover on #9.

Image Chef was my favorite. It was very simple to use. This is the football jersey I created there. Notice the color - orange! They didn't have the burnt orange shade available. It looks like I am a Tennessee fan!

Another creation of mine was the magazine cover from Custom Sign Generator. At first I had a lot of difficulty figuring out how to upload my photo. But I finally snapped and put a student from my school on the magazine cover of Millionaires magazine. Isnt' he precious?

Here again this can be sooo time consuming! I can see students absolutely loving seeing themselves on a magazine cover or inserting them into various scenes. Great fun!

Thing 9

From a practical standpoint, I cannot see how anybody would use these searches for blogs and be very successful with the amount of time it takes. You could spend hours and hours looking for blogs on various subjects. But then the blog needs to have certain criteria for it to be useful as noted in the Cool aCat Teacher video. There is definitely an overabundance of blogs on the internet and most of them are not high quality.

Of those blog search engines that I perused, Google Blog Search was my favorite. It seemed the easiest to navigate. My least favorite was Syndic8.com. The site was boring and plain. I was disappointed that the librarian search Suprglu was not working. I will have to investigate it later.

I think the best way to find useful blogs is "word of mouth" or I guess those words don't really apply here. I usually will look at what other bloggers that I think highly of have in their blogroll. I have found almost all of the blogs I subscribe to from others.

Thing 8

I created a Google Reader page with about 7 feeds. I then linked Google Reader with my iGoogle page so I don't have to go to two places to view all my up to the minute news. This is too cool!
Yahoo pretty much has this same feature that I have been using for a couple of years. I created a My Yahoo page that has RSS feeds to blogs and news of interest. This seems more comprehensive than Yahoo, however. I will use both for a while and see which I prefer.

As far as RSS feeds go in general, they are great. The information comes to you rather than vice versa saving you valuable time. It keeps you current on most any topic. As a librarian, I believe we need to know a little bit about everything. This will help us in that endeavor. I am also going to keep my eye out for the RSS symbol when I visit new web sites.

I also want to comment on the videos from CommonCraft. They are precise and to the point, but most importantly they are fun to watch. They make me laugh! The hand signals and tossing the cards out of the way are stupidly entertaining. Such low technology to advertise high technology...

Thing 7

Wow! What fun tools Google has! I was familiar with a few already, but found some I had not ever taken the time to explore. Some of the tools I see as useful, and some not so.

Let's take Google Alerts. It is a feature of Google that I am currently using. I am a HUGE Longhorn fan and I have the Google Alerts set up to alert me on news of the Longhorn sports and also of Vince Young. Obviously, these are just personal alerts, but I could see these as being useful as a librarian or teacher. You could certainly keep your eye on current events, politics, etc.
The other feature I chose to blog about was iGoogle. I would compare it to my Yahoo homepage, only more powerful. A great way - here again- to keep tabs on current events, policitics, etc. Sort of like having your own personalized newspaper. I may end up changing my computer homepage to iGoogle. I need to tweak it a bit. Right now it has too much information.

I am not sure this link will work since it is customized for me, but we can try. I moved some of the articles around and created some new pages.

Thing 6

The whole mashup things is confusing. Too many fancy words explaining it all that I don't understand.. Thank goodness there are actual examples. That helped in the understanding - somehwhat! I visited one site that compared items on four different online shopping sites. That looked useful in a personal way.

The Flickr mashups were interesting. I didn't create a Librarian Trading Card because I really didn't see how I would use it. However, I did created a Lone Star Award Book Trading Card. I used the book Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt. Included the photo, along with the summary at the bottom. I don't really like the way the photo uploaded into the card. I'll have to work on that.

I am going to be doing a Lone Star reading incentive program this upcoming year and maybe I could make them into trading cards. The kids after they read the book, could get a trading card. They would trade them in for prizes and rewards. Just a thought!

Another feature I liked was Captioner. I used a photo of some of the students at my school browsing books at the SBISD annual book exhibit. I don't know how I could use this, but it was fun!

Thing 5

Exploring Flickr was easy. I was already familiar with it. I set up a vacation picture album on it this past year as a way to share pictures with family. It works great. I did have some family members have difficulty creating an account and viewing the pictures if they weren't already members...I had to field several calls for help.

I was however, not familiar with the Creative Commons aspect of the site. I am still somewhat confused about all the different copyright categories. I don't see me using photos or pictures from Flickr anyway.

But here is one that I thought was interesting. I might use this somewhere. According to the rules I need to give credit to Paul Keleher for this photo.

Thing 4

Well I sent all the necessary information in to get me registered. Hopefully I will receive a welcome e-mail that tells me I have done everything up until this point correctly. So far so good.
I have completed four things in about 1 1/2 hours on my first day. At least I got started. I am going to try to do at least one thing a day until I finish!

Thing 3

For those of you who remember CB radios...L'l Bit was my "handle!" I have always been petite, so it just fits. And of course, the blog will have a little bit of "this and that" as well.
Creating the avatar was easy. I already have done it for my personal Yahoo mail account anyway. I just imported it into the blog. I love the beach and in my bag are books to read while relaxing my time away. There are sooo many choices, that I do see how people could get bogged down in this particular stage and spend way too much time deciding on the perfect look for your avatar..

Thing 2

I don't usually give too much thought to the concept of life-long learning. I see two reasons for learning.
1. You need to for your vocation. (Which is why I am doing this!)
2. You want to because you like it.

My weakness in the 71/2 habits are Viewing Problems as Challenges and Setting Goals. Unfortunately, it seems that challenges arise at inopportune times, thus not giving one ample time to fully learn or enjoy the learning process. Also, I don't tend to set goals. I begin things without really knowing what I want out of them.
My strengths would be Having Confidence and Using Techology to Your Advantage. Once I begin the project, I almost always have the confidence and commitment to finish. I also don't shy away from technology. So long as the technology is functioning properly, it most always eases jobs and makes it exciting along the way.

Thing 1

I am thrilled that SBISD Library Services created this online learning opportunity for librarians and educators. I am looking forward to learning many new technology skills and applications along the journey. I have two goals in mind. 1. I hope to be able to support the teachers at my campus in their endeavors to incorporate technology into the curriculum at the completion of the class 2. I hope to learn some "cool" technology that I can use on a personal level.
I didn't feel I had the time to devote to this journey during the school year. I am now in the right state of mind to begin as summer as officially begun for me! Yeah!