Method #8--Social Networking

I have chosen not to set up a FaceBook or MySpace account at this time.  I am concerned about privacy issues, especially after reading that FaceBook and other social networking sites keep user profiles virtually forever!  Moreover, I really can't decide how badly I want to reconnect with people from all points in my past, which seems to me to be at least one main reason to have a FaceBook page. Does that make me the most anti-social person ever?  I realize most people also use it to put personal information out to current friends and colleagues.  Again, I just can't get excited about that.  However, the idea of a professional account or a library account on FaceBook or Twitter, sounds much more appealing.  I like the idea of putting out information, PR notices, and new book blurbs on social networking sites.  From the articles I read, it seems this is mainly happening at academic and public libraries, although I'm sure there are K-12 librarians using these tools also.  However, it definitely is not happening in my school district.  Just last week we received notice that the district tech dept. was opening up YouTube to teachers and staff only, for the first time ever.  FaceBook, MySpace, and Twitter are all still blocked for the time being.  I have hope that that will not always be the case, but for now, setting up an account for my library would mean doing everything from home.  I'm not willing to commit myself to that kind of  "homework."
       Should the day ever come that social networking sites are opened up at my high school, I have to wonder if it would really serve any purpose.  It seems to me that high school students would be much more reticent about joining a library group or friending a librarian or teacher than older students and adults would be.  It should be fun to find out though, if I ever get the chance!

New video embedded

Since my other video was removed, I've found another video to embed in this blog post




It's a pretty strange rap, but serves the purpose.  I'm really sad my other video didn't stay.

YouTube update

Just a quick post to say that the video from YouTube that I embedded on this blog a few days ago has been taken off.  Apparently it was not a legal one to use.  I'll have to find something else, and figure out what is OK to use in my stuff and what is not.

Method #7--Social Bookmarking

I heard about Delicious a couple of years ago at some workshop. I even set up a Delicious account at that time.  And there ended my Delicious experience.  I never did a thing with it.  Yesterday, I got into my account and uploaded my favorites.  I still haven't tagged them or organized them in any way.  My curiosity is piqued with the idea of creating a library account, adding bookmarks to wonderful research sites, checking what sites other libraries are using, and sharing sites with colleagues and students.  I'm afraid I don't completely understand how to do all of this, and I'm not convinced the students in my high school would ever really use it.  I might be surprised.  Right now, it sounds like one more thing that would take quite a bit of time to set up in any way that would prove useful and appealing to high school students.  I am intrigued, though, and will definitely find time to play with the site after I've processed the 200 new books I have sitting in my workroom and office!  Yes, they are the old-fashioned paper kind.  I will have to relisten to the tutorial, reread the article and watch the Delicious intro again at that time, no doubt.

Method #6--YouTube continued

I've tried for a couple of days now to watch the Wesch video--the anthropological intro to YouTube. Just can't seem to get enough bandwidth to watch it straight through.  But I think I've watched enough to get the drift--that YouTube has created this whole new way for people to create community, something we all yearn for, whether we know it or not.  The question is, "Can we really create community with an unknown group of people, no matter how large the group may be?"  Doesn't this redefine community significantly?  There's no doubt that it's possible to engage in some sort of relationship with people you don't know and really don't even talk to, but that's not community. It seems a little sad to me that huge numbers of people so long for connection with others that they will make comments on just about anything--blogs of every subject, videos of the stupidest sort, photographs--when often there is no reciprocity at all.  As a person of faith in which community is an integral part, I have thought about this "respond to everything online" mentality in a couple of ways.  Perhaps this is not the venue for sharing those thoughts, but at the very least, I have to say that I find it hard to believe that there can be community in any real or meaningful or lasting way around a video on YouTube.

        With that said, I do understand that You Tube can be fun.  If a person wants to spend his free time uploading a video of himself doing something silly, or informational, or even boring, who's to say that that is not just as entertaining a hobby as stamp collecting and knitting.  Moreover, just as I commented in the blog on Flickr, the sharing of all these videos provides such an incredible wealth of material that can be used in the classroom or library, that we as educators would be really foolish to ignore completely the value of this resource.

Method #6--Video

I have certainly watched a number of videos on You Tube.  And for at least two years I've heard about the many brave and gifted librarians in Texas who are creating their own book trailers and posting them on Teacher Tube.  It is a goal of mine to attempt to create one of my own.  This is definitely another area of insecurity for me.  Knowing about and doing myself are two entirely different things.  I will try to download my favorite You Tube video. At least this is the one I've watched the most often.  Not education or library related, but defintiely an "upper."





Enjoy!

More on RSS

I really am enjoying my Google Reader.  I just added a new subscription today to the School Library Journal newsletter.  I may never be able to keep up with all this reading, but at least it's all in one place so I can try!  A really great tool.

Method #5--Flickr, etc.

Yet again I am surprised at what is available online.  Of course, I've heard of Flickr and like sites for years.  It's the whole social networking around photos that has surprised me.  I looked at one recently posted photo which had something like 28 responses to it.  Don't these people work?  It's all I can do to keep up with my email at school.  I can't imagine spending my own free time looking at other people's pictures and making comments on them.  These virtual "friendships" make me a little crazy.  I'd rather have breakfast face to face with a friend of 30 years.  However, I'd have to be a block of wood not to see the potential of having access to thousands of public photos which might be used in a variety of ways if attribution is given.  On the most basic level, I love having an online place to save my photos and to share them with those near and dear to me.

So here's the Flickr photo I uploaded.  It's by Rona Keller who loaded it on Flickr day before yesterday.  Pretty cool.  However, I couldn't seem to upload it directly from the website.  I had to download it to my computer first.  Maybe I have to create a Flickr account first?

Method #4 RSS feeds

I continue to be amazed at how much I don't know and how many really useful things there are on the web.  I set up a Google Reader and added 6 subscriptions, mostly from NPR, my favorite radio station.  I'll continue to play with it, and try to figure out what it means to "create my stuff."  I never did find a place that says "Discover."  Could that be the same thing as Explore?  Anyway, very cool.

More on privacy

I heard more on the privacy story on NPR this past week, confirming that it's not such a bad thing that I'm uneasy with the Internet.  The law simply hasn't kept up with the technology which allows just about anyone with the know-how to retrieve what used to be private information on people from the Internet.  If I understood what the reporter was saying, possession still tends to by nine-tenths of the law. So, if your information is on your own computer, there is some protection under the law.  But all the information stored on third-party servers is not so safe under the law.  Interestingly enough, law-makers were on the verge of passing more stringent privacy laws when 9/11 hit.  Since then, Congress has lost its will to pass the laws that would protect people's information.  I'm sure this is a vastly simplified summary of what the reality is, and even what was said on the report, but it did cause me to want to go slow with this whole idea of transferring all my information online.

Method 3--Cloud Computing

I found this discussion about cloud computing really interesting. The idea of all of our personal data, in whatever format, being out there in cyberland, not residing on my personal computer, and the elimination of applications purchased for individual work stations, is not a new one. For me, however, it is new in the sense that before, cloud computing was more like sci-fi.  I confess I am something of a Trekkie.  Even back in the 60's when the original show aired, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock accessed vast amounts of information on the Enterprise computer.  They spoke their log entries on whatever star date directly to the computer wherever they happened to be.  I can only assume that their pretend security protocols were much better than ours currently are.  But in later spinoffs, everyone's databases seemed to be shared.  All that to say that as I mentioned in my last post, there is this tension for me between making use of all the online resources out there and teaching my students to do the same, and my discomfort with the whole world knowing my business.  I guess Captain Kirk had ways to hide his own "stuff."
        I would be really interested in knowing the ages of some of the people who wrote about privacy issues.  I'd be willing to bet that the more cautious of the writers I read today, tend to be older than those who are ready to go and blow.  I heard a report on NPR in the last couple of days that asked the question, "Is privacy dead?"  A comment was made that most young adults probably don't even give that question much thought.  All the social networking is just a part of their world.  They deal with the setting up of "friends" and the restricting access with facility.  Consequently, I think they have a much higher tolerance for having all their information out in the cloud than I and others of my generation do.
         And back to cloud computing.  Supposing I were ready to jump into the cloud and encourage the students in my high school to do the same, I believe I would be fighting a battle on two fronts. First, the technology department, as knowledgeable as they are, have the responsiblity to protect students from inappropriate web places, and the need to take into consideration the expectations and desires of parents to protect their children while at school.  Throw in their not insignificant job of keeping the network operational with limited resources, and they tend to be a pretty conservative lot when it cmes to student usage of the Internet.  The second battle is against teachers, even young, savvy teachers, many of whom are more concerned about "information sharing" (i.e. cheating) among students than they are in learning to incorporate technology in a meaningful and relevant way in their classrooms.  I fully understand that teachers must be able to trust and evaluate individual student's comprehension of information, but I am also fully convinced that the best teachers are going to be the ones who find ways to do that while encouraging collaboration and information sharing.  I don't envy them their task.  And I just hope I can figure out my own place as librarian in this scary (exhilarating?) new world.  I was quite taken with the online wp programs like Googledocs.  It seems to me that I should be pushing the use of that little niche of the cloud for at least some things at school.

Methods 1 and 2

Stephen Abrams’s article on Web 2.0 and Librarian 2.0 is just exactly what has caused me to drag my feet on starting this Web 2.0 training—A dozen Ways to Two-Step. The article is filled with phrases and ideas which are totally foreign to me, and it seems exhausting to do the work necessary to bring myself up to speed. Abrams’s article was written over a year ago—what has changed since he wrote the article? What new things have been developed in the last year? Technology evolves at a breakneck speed.  I am 57 years old. I grew up in a non-digital world. When I was a senior in high school, there was one group of geeks taking a computer class. We still used the slide rule in chemistry. I used little pieces of correction tape to fix my mistakes while typing research papers. Bottom line, I’m terrified that no matter how much I work, I won’t be able to catch up.

I’ve been a school librarian for 16 years. We got connected to the Internet in our district during my second year. Perhaps it really became useful 3 or 4 years later. So within 10 years, we’ve (I’ve) gone from its being an interesting concept to its being absolutely essential to life on this planet. I love the Internet, the instant access to just about any information I could possibly want, the instant communication with everyone important (or unimportant) to me, the incredible ease with which I can do my job—everything from ordering books online to helping students find reliable information in a fraction of the time it took me at their age. I have to wonder, though, what the consequences will be. There is something about the Web and where it is going that feels very invasive to me. That is one reason I’ve resisted making a Facebook page (that, and the fact that my children wouldn’t want to be my friends.)

So, I’m looking to this little course to move me a little closer to tech-savviness and away from fear of the whole thing!

P.S. My one point of tech pride is that I do have another blog—one I created a couple of years ago to post book reviews on for my students. See it at http://lorenahslibrary.blogspot.com/

Starting From Scratch

OK, I've just spent an hour trying to get this blog to look they way I want it to look.  Not there yet, but will continue to play with it later.  On to more important posts!