Thing 10 - Future Trends

It is strange to reflect back on the beginning of my career and remember that there were no computers in the media center and the reference section was filled with print encyclopedias and other materials. I can remember when our supervisor was urging us to use online resources. He said he would no longer sign purchase orders for print encyclopedias. We were very upset by this because our internet connections were so slow then and the number of computers we had was low. Online research was not really practical for a class of students. Today there are many computers in the library, two class sized laptop carts, and a lab with 26 stations.  The reference section has shrunk to 6 shelves while our data base subscriptions have grown proportionately. Online research rules. I remember when 24/7 was a dream. Now it's a reality.

10 years from now? Whew! I am not a visionary, but it's clear that school libraries/librarians as we know them are endangered. Articles like this one (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/education/la-oe-murphy-school-layoffs-20110518,0,6427182.story?track=rss) and reading and hearing about the redistribution of staff and closing of school libraries in our area to see the handwriting on the wall.

With the proliferation of ebook readers, I sure can't argue with Thomas Frey's predicition that "within 10 years the ink-on-paper publishing industry will not be a sustainable economic model." Currently I am running our school's Buy-One-Get-One-Free Book Fair. Today I had a student ask me for another sheet of paper for her wish list which was full. I asked her if she thought her parents would let her buy so many books. Her response was that she just got a Nook and her mother asked her to make a list of the Nook books she wanted to buy. She was using the book fair for research.  I gave her another sheet and am curious to find out if she'll buy any books at the book fair. (I do have to say that I have not noticed any drop in book fair sales over the past few year. The kids still crave them.) The next step for school libraries is to find an economically feasible way to provide eBook readers and eBooks to our students.

Joyce Valenza's article was very interesting. I learned that I have a way to go before I can call myself a 21st century librarian. This course has helped me move in the right direction though.  If only I can win that iPad, I'll be a lot closer to my goal.

Thing 9 - eBooks

I can remember a time, not too long ago, when I couldn't imagine reading a book in any other format than a book. Two factors have helped me change my mind. First...the option of larger fonts on eBook readers is a welcome thought for me with large print becoming a necessity to me with my fading eye sight. (I'm up to 250 magnification with my reading glasses...I don't think they go much higher.) Second...with my family living all over the USA and lots of airplane flights in my past and future, I hate to add weight by carrying heavy books in my luggage. How awful to be limited to paperbacks when the book I want to read is only available in hardback format! I've started investigating Kindles and Nooks and had pretty much decided on a color Nook...until a friend recently shared all the capabilities of his iPad with me. Now I am holding myself back from heading to the Apple Store to buy an iPad. I WANT ONE! Kindle and Nook books are both available on an iPad plus many more options. So, yes, they cost more money, but what a world of opportunity. 

Perhaps this course is the justification I need to spend the money to get one. YES! I am going to do it.

Thing 8 #2 - Library on a Donkey

Why can't anything be simple? I've embedded this twice because I couldn't get it the first one to play on my computer. I remembered someone told me to choose the 240 p option instead of a higher one. So that's what I did with the second one and it still didn't play on my computer. However, when I checked it on another computer, they both worked. Oh, well, I'll leave them both here. If anyone else tries them, I'd love to hear if they both work for you.

Thing 8 - Video Week - Library on a Donkey

This assignment could easily use up the entire "hours" that we're supposedly going to use to complete Learning with CDLC.   (Those of us from Niskayuna are getting 10 hours of credit for the course.) I can say, without any fear of "padding the numbers", that I have already more than doubled that amount of time. It's not from lack of desire that I haven't spent more time. As I can see from most of the participant's blogs that I have read, we all suffer from the same problem...lack of time.

Therefore, I decided to take the easy-way-out on this assignment. I can easily spend hours on YouTube. Whenever someone sends me a link to a video, I can't stop myself from looking at others.

I was so happy to find The Little Engine that Could on YouTube. Whenever I walk into my son's house, my 2 1/2 year old grandson's eyes light up when he sees my laptop because he knows that I will sit by his side and watch The Little Engine... and Thomas videos with him on my computer for as long as he wants.

I first saw this video on a different website and loved it. What a perfect thing to share with our 5th graders when they study Latin America. Of course, it's now on YouTube, so here it is, embedded in
my  blog to complete Thing 8.

Thing 7 - Productivity and Collaboration Tools

First I looked at Readability. Since I already have the Firefox add-on called Adblock, it didn't seem much different from that. I do love getting pages without all the annoying ads...especially the ones that flash and blink.

I looked at the password storage programs and decided to stick with my current method...an excel spreadsheet which I have to refer to constantly. OMG, who can possibly remember all their user names and passwords? I am wary of online storage. How secure is it?  I have my computer backed up and I keep print outs of my passwords (in secure places) so I feel okay with that method.

Then I looked at calendars. A group I belong keeps a Google calendar which I find difficult to use. The final product is satisfactory, but I don't find it that easy to update. Fortunately, someone else in the group has taken on that responsibilty.

Even though I had completed the assignment plus one, I decided to look at Making the Net Easier under the List of Tools and hit pay dirt (I think). I use Dreamweaver for the school's website which is a program that no one can just sit down and create a web page without any background knowledge. A committee in my school has been meeting regularly all year to "redesign" our website and find a web page design tool that doesn't have such a big learning curve, is less expensive, and would be easily accessible to people without web design knowledge. While we haven't found the perfect solution to that problem yet, one of the things we all agreed on is that we need a school calendar. But I don't want to be the one who has to do all the updates. I can't be depended upon to have the time to do daily updates.  Voila...Calendar.Net . I easily created a calendar for my school (http://www.my.calendars.net/birchwoodes/) and added a link for it on our home page. Now all that remains is for the committee to have a look at it and figure out who is going to add all the events....something anyone can do.

Thing 6 - Online Meetings and Webinars

Getting caught up...only 2 lessons behind after I finish this one.

I was invited to participate in a GotoMeeting webinar last year for officers of a group I belong to. It was an interesting way to present information, but I must add that it was very easy to get distracted and I often found myself not really paying attention since I was at home and not a part of a "captive" audience. I think video conferences where all the participants are visible might be more effective.

We did a video conference with a school district in Liverpool, NY several years ago. That was an awesome way for us to learn about their Social Studies curriculum without having to travel.

I wish I had been up-to-date with this course and would have seen the opportunity to participate in Diving into Digital Books: Adding eReaders to Your Library.  My colleagues and I have recently been spending some time discussing ebooks and readers and I'm anxious to learn as much as I can about them. So, instead I found an archived Infopeople ebook topic, Can eBooks Fit into the Print Book Paradigm: Publishers and eBook Lending Limits  that sounded interesting. And, indeed it was.  Many points to ponder...Harper Collins is allowing their e-books to have only 26 circulations until the licenses must be renewed. (More publishers may follow suit.) Also, they only allow only one e-book to circulate at a time. Libraries are charged more for e-books than individual patrons. Macmillan and Simon and Schuster will not sell e-books to libraries at all. Libraries cannot buy a kindle e-book for use on the reader, but have to go through 3rd party sources. Publishers are issuing new limitations that make it more restricting & expensive. Libraries should protest. 

Positives - It was very easy to connect. It was interesting to listen to the various speakers and hear their viewpoints.  Having access to hearing leaders in the field is a plus. Archiving a webinar is a great way for people to have access outside of the actual meeting date and time. 

Negatives -  I don't know if there was a Q & A session in the original webinar, but I found the lack of opportunity for participant interaction to be a drawback. Again, I found it difficult to give it my 100% attention. 

I think there's a definite use for online meeting tools. What a great way to get participation from people who aren't local without having to travel. When possible, I think I prefer face-to-face meetings but would have to attend more online ones to say for sure.

Thing 5 - Reflection and Catch up Week

I am really enjoying this course and learning a lot. (Those little Common Craft videos are particularly enlightening.) I like how it's organized in "learning" sections, that we have choices of what to look at, and really appreciate the time you've taken to give us lots of examples and places to check out.

Challenges - I did great for the first 3 weeks and was able to keep up. Once we got to week 4, I had many things going on at work and in my personal life and have fallen behind. I think this is not a course to fall behind in because there's so much to explore each week.

The only improvement I can think of would be for you to have all the links from each assignment open in a new window or tab. After I go to a site and wander around a bit, it would nice to be able to just see the CDLC page to refresh my memory about what I'm supposed to be doing.

Thing 4 Online Communities - continued

I was able to view the David C Barrow Elementary Media Center link on Facebook and thought about how many possibilities a library Facebook page could open. Then I went to check to see if any other elem. schools have a presence on Facebook and immediately was blocked by our district's content filter. Facebook is a no-no for now.  I am wondering if any of our local elementary schools have a Facebook page?

I can't see Twitter as something I would like. It already drives me nuts when my Facebook friends enter those little 140ish character bits like "I'm making soup tonight".  Why not tell what kind of soup and share the recipe when you're posting to 200 some friends. If you want someone specifically to know those kind of insignificant details, why not just text it to them? I guess I "don't get" Twitter.

I looked at GoodReads and LibraryThing. I didn't join either one, but I already belong to Shelfari and share books with friends through that site. I like it a lot. It's been very helpful to me in keeping track of what I've read, what I want to read, and what my friends are reading.

Thing 4 - Online Communities

I thought the clip about the social media revolution. Unfortunately, I was trying to watch it from a hotel internet connection and it took forever to load and play. I am definitely going to watch it again when I get home. The facts and figures were astonishing. It's hard to believe that e-mail is passe (or soon will be).

I am on vacation this week in Florida. (It's been so beautiful here all week. It will be hard to come back to upstate NY.) My internet connectivity has been very spotty so I will wait to finish my thing 4 blog until I return.

Thing 3 - Photo Sharing

I have a Snapfish account and use a Picassa album for a group I'm in so I was interested in finding out about Flickr. I signed up for an account and posted a set from a recent author visit by Nancy Castaldo, to our school. (See pictures which was easy to link to my Blogger account using Flickr's blogging tool.)

I also explored some of the pictures and decided to search for golf in Alaska. My son is moving to Valdez, Alaska in June. I'd like to try to golf when I'm there for a visit, but certainly not in conditions like the one I choose to display on my blog page. I was unable to add this one to the body of this blog. I think the owner of the photo has it protected. But, it worked fine using Flickr's blogging tool and gave all the proper credit to the photographer automatically. 

I have more to learn about Flickr before I decide whether or not I'll continue to use it for the library photos. For personal use, I will continue with Snapfish since they have all the options to create albums, calendars, mugs, etc.

Birchwood Media Center's photostream

Birchwood Media Center's photostream on Flickr.

Here are the pictures from Nancy Castaldo's visit to Birchwood on April 8, 2011.

Arctic Golfing

Arctic Golfing, a photo by David Brannan on Flickr.

Thing 2:RSS #2

Today I added LISNews: The Original #librarianchat to my iGoogle page. It has some interesting blogs.

Thing 2:RSS

Loved the introductory video...clever and funny way to learn about RSS.

I created an igoogle home page and, for a start, successfully subscribed to CNN, Learn with CDLC, and YouTube. I put Snopes on it too. I seem to get so many of those inflamatory e-mails (ie Cell phone numbers going public) and wind up checking Snopes frequently. What a great way to keep abreast of the newest urban legends.

I tried to subscribe to the Learn with CDLC blogs page. I got the gadget to appear, but no information. I guess I'll bookmark that page. It's much easier to keep up with everyone in the class through the NetVibes page. Thanks for that.

I'll spend the rest of the week looking for other RSS feeds that will be useful to me.

Our automated library catalog, OPALS, has recently included a feature allowing us  to add RSS feeds to the home page. Animal of the day was their sample feed. I tried adding another one but couldn't get it to work before I ran out of "play" time.

Thing 1: Blogging

My name is Beth Disque. I am a K-5 librarian at Birchwood Elementary School in Niskayuna School District. I am taking this course because I want to learn more about, try to discover the relevance of, and "catch up" with all the  new tech tools in the online world.

Starting with Thing 1: Blogging...
My past experience is limited and never provided any reason for me to want to keep up with blogging. My colleagues and I had a blog we were using a couple of years ago when we were trying to decide on what product we wanted to use for a new online library catalog. Several members were regular contributors and others never even logged into the blog. I found it to be "one more thing" I had to remember to do each day. To me, group e-mails were just as effective, quicker,  easier to access, and easier to add a comment.

I have a close girlfriend in CA who blogged her experience with cancer from diagnosis to "cure". While writing about a terrible time in her life, she made us all laugh with her marvelous wit and sense of humor. It was a way for her to keep all of us informed without lengthy phone conversations. I don't know if I'd be able to keep a blog if I were faced with a life threatening disease, but it worked for her and all of us who read her blog appreciated her willingness to share her experience.

On the other hand, that same friend blogged about her trip to India which I only looked at so that I could add a comment every now and then and appear to be interested for the sake of friendship.

Now, here I am "learning with CDLC". After reading the article on Webjunction I decided that I would try to "learn to care" about blogs.

Several of the sample blogs looked very interesting, but more like websites than what I think  of as being a blog. I liked The Daily Dragon but think it would take a lot of time and work to keep up-to-date. The same can be said about most of the blogs I viewed.

I had a hard time setting up a blog. I tried WordPress, but for every username I chose (and I spent about 30 minutes trying different ones), I got a message that said that name was available for $17 a month but not as a free one. I finally gave up and came to Blogger. com.

So here I am, posting my first blog for the class. I think using a blog to keep track of learning accomplishments is a good idea. I am looking forward to it.