At Last – Conclusion!

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So, it’s over.

I can say that I was genuinely surprised by the number of things I did learn. I was also surprised by how little other people seemed to know. I think I must almost have “my finger on the pulse”.

Most of the tutorials, suggestions, links, exercises worked fairly well. I think there needs to be something included in the sections where people had problems accessing the information or software tools. Perhaps a suggestion like “Note: you may need to be outside of your school’s network to access this material”

We had a number of people attempting the course who were not Library people. Some of them found it really difficult and, frankly, a little boring. They skipped large sections as “it was just about libraries!”. Yeah, I know that was the focus but they were keen to learn about Web 2.0 and the course looked perfect for them.

I understand the need to have a time limit but I think a reminder the week before might have been in order. Accumulating hours for our VIT PD requirement can be an absolute pain and it’s heartbreaking to be told that “rest of the course doesn’t count”. How were the hours counted anyway? One colleague spent twice as long as me working through some of the sections as she knew nothing about the topic. In fact, I suspect she won’t be created with any as she had so much trouble registering her blog so it looks like she hasn’t completed anything.

Did I think it was worthwhile? Yes, I do. I’m glad I participated and appreciate all the effort that went into trying to coordinate a recalcitrant bunch of teacher librarians and teachers and other staff.

Well done everyone! Thank you for the course.

Week 12 – Ebooks and Audiobooks

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I’m not a fan of ebooks. I do recommend them to other people but I tend to find them a little too difficult to read due to problems with my eyesight. I assume that as the readers get better, so too will my ability to read the books. At the moment it just hurts too much!

I didn’t know about worldebooksfair, though I had heard of and used Project Gutenberg. I have bookmarked it for future consideration and will probably add a link on our library’s homepage.

LibriVox was also new to me. We listen to a lot of Books on Tape/CD in our household (via our ipods) so this is of great interest to me. Additionally, we could use it to access titles for our students with literacy problems. I have every intention of promoting the site to our head of Learning Support.

Week 11 – Second Life

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Our school has a presence on Second Life. We have a three level building which I believe is only available to those who are part of the Second Life project.

I’ve been on Second Life probably about 5 or 6 times. Most of them have been just about me getting familiar with the operation of the site and spending some time exploring the world and making my way through the tutorial.

Even though the school has a fairly open policy in regards to Internet access, there seems to be a restriction on being able to download the Second Life client. It runs on two computers in the school and they are the ones that belong to the two coordinators of the project.  There are plans to set up Teen Second Life for the students as the school but that is currently restricted due to access issues. We don’t really know how we can use it at the moment but we have watched a number of videos created by schools that operate a virtual campus.

I’d like to see it used for VCE revision and questions – as in the teacher will be available between “these” times on Second Life if you wish to ask a question. Might even be a good tool for presenting addition lectures on some topics. I guess it’s one of those things that are only limited by the imagination of the users!

I thought the videos linked to in the instructions for this topic were very interesting and a much friendlier way of learning about Second Life. It’s a visual tool, it needs to be presented in a visual format!

Week 10 – Youtube/Teachertube

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there anyone using the Internet who *isn’t* familiar with youtube? lol – I guess there must be.

We have open access to Youtube at my school and it’s used by teachers and students alike. Very popular with the international students to watch their favourite anime program.

Most of the staff have picked up Teachertube in the last couple of months after our Studywiz training sessions. As we were able to embed videos, word soon spread of the “safe” nature of the videos

One of my favourites from that session was:
Sock Monkey’s do the Dewey

and the one we found by accident that has become a hit at the school:

Mr Duey Raps the Fractions

I was going to embed the videos like we did at school with Studywiz but Teachertube caused a virus error on my computer so I’m staying away from it for a while until the IT guys can have a look at it.

okay – this is my attempt to embed the video now that I’m at home and not using the school computer:

It doesn’t seem to work 🙁 How annoying, it worked fine on studywiz!

Week 10 – Podcasts

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I’ve been listening to podcasts for a while and have regular downloads for a number of them through itunes. It’s one of the reasons I purchased the largest iPod that was available – I want to relisten to the podcasts over and over again!

Here are some of the podcasts I listen to:

http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/podcasts/ – a silly podcast related to the creation of a webcomic. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the webcomic at all..

http://www.abc.net.au/melbourne/podcast/stubbs.xml – I like his radio style and only get to listen to him live if I’m not at work for some reason. This is a great way to catch up with his radio show. It’s not every show but it’s better than nothing.

I listen to quite a few others but as I access them through itunes, I’m not entirely sure they have webpages – I guess they must have but I’ve never needed to search for them that way.

I haven’t listened to any library-related podcasts or anything about books. I guess that’s something I should consider during those long drives to work everyday.

 I didn’t put a RSS feed into my blog reader as I already access them through itunes. I have a permanent link within my itunes set up and it seems silly to have to duplicate it here just for the sake of the exercise.

Maybe one day I’ll create a podcast. First I have to find a topic that I could do justice to!

Week 9 – Rollyo

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Of all the topics that have been covered in this course, Rollyo was the one that I knew the least about. I didn’t even have the slightest bit knowledge about what it was all about.

From a personal point-of-view I really like it. It can be an absolute pain to have to search a number of sites just to locate some basic information. It has the potential in the school setting – you could set up a number of rollyos for different topics and subjects according to the types of information they require. I guess this means that you have some control over the pages that students can search with without having to worry about them finding inaccurate or inappropriate information.

Here is a link to my Rollyo where you can see the search roll I created for Lego shopping

Week 9 – Wikis

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Wikis, I love them.

I’m just as guilty as the average school student when it comes to using wikis as a primary source.  I start with Wikipedia, for example, and have a look at what it says on a topic and then, if need be, progress to another information source. I find it particularly useful in looking up pop culture topics or to identifying basic information. I encourage students to use it much the same way – use it find some basic facts then confirm the information from another source or two. Some students used Wikipedia the other day when they didn’t know where a particular tribe of indigenous people came from. We had tried books with no success but, by locating their country on Wikipedia, we were able to return to the books to find more information.

There’s a lot of potential in wikis. I’m always disappointed when I come across a wiki that looks like it has potential, only to find that no-one has maintained it for a while or that it contains only the basic information.

1. Yarra Plenty Reader’s Advisory Wiki

I’m not sure if I missed something with this wiki but it didn’t work for me. There is a bit of any issue with font crime (too much variation in font use) but I guess that could be a reflection on the nature of it as a collaborative site. It wasn’t easier for me to read and I didn’t feel comfortable using it.

2. CSLA Conference 2007 wiki

This one worked much better for me. The information was easy to find and it wasn’t painful on the eyes. I notice both this one and the Yarra Plenty wiki were made with PBWiki. I haven’t used this to create a wiki but I guess it restricts the structure in some way. I’m particularly fond of wikis that have the same structure as wikipedia. Why? Because it’s easier to use the familiar of course!

3. Sample school wiki

This one worked more for me than the other two. It was made with wikispaces which probably has something to do with it. Great way to keep people up-to-date with the activities of a school and much easier to put together than a webpage!

I think wikis have great potential as an information source within the educational setting – especially for long-term projects or plans. Information can be updated by a number of people as it comes to hand. Perfect for the development of a school production, details about a school camp, collaborative research projects or even as information pages for various topics or subjects. Unlimited potential!

Week 8 – Library 2.0

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I’m really keen to hear about Library 2.0 in terms of school libraries in Australia. Most of what I have read seems to be about Library 2.0 in public libraries in the US. Perhaps this is a reflection of the state of play in school libraries around the world. I can’t make a statement about this as I haven’t read enough or researched enough about this topic. In idle conversation with colleagues within my network, a number of them stared at me blankly. Most of them are fighting to keeo their libraries let alone look for new ways of interacting with their clientele. Perhaps this is what they *should* be doing. It’s free and it only takes time (although that is precious too!). School libraries started to re-invent themselves in the mid-1990s. I guess it’s time to re-invent ourselves again. We need to collaborate with our clients and realise what it is that *they* want out of their library service as opposed to what *we* think they want.

I’m planning to have a look on del.icio.us to find some bookmarks from other people in this topic. It requires further investigation. 

Week 8 – del.icio.us

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del.icio.us is a very useful tool. I use it all the time to keep track of interesting pages and articles I’ve located on the web. Very useful when doing research on a particular topic.

I really like being able to browse other people’s bookmarks – takes some of the effort out of locating stuff and it’s fun just to pick a topic at random and see what people have bookmarked. I haven’t friended anyone or become part of any network but I’m really looking forward to having a look through the topics that interest my friends and colleagues. Yes, we have some things in common, but what else piques their interest.

This could be a brilliant tool for collaborative work and has some interesting applications within the school setting. Kids could log in wherever they are and share the sites they have found with the other members of their work group. I like the fact that it’s based online and gives the individual the opportunity to access their bookmarks from wherever they are in the world – it doesn’t matter that they are using a different computer.

Would I use it much? I have used it a little bit whilst completing my Masters when I was using my spare time at work to continue flicking through articles and webpages.

This is definitely a tool I’d encourage teachers to use with their classes and for their collaborative PD sessions.

Week 7 – iGoogle

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Hmm.. not entirely convinced by iGoogle. This is definitely one that I’d have to use a lot to be convinced of it’s value but that might just be me and the way I use the Internet. I’ve become rather proficient at using bookmarks and have many urls memorized so having an easy-to-access desktop feature like iGoogle doesn’t seem worth it. I can imagine that for other people it would be really good to have those things at their fingertips. The basic information (weather, time etc) is just a replication of what I already have via the dashboard feature on my Mac so it’s not much use to me. A lot of the other stuff just seem to be gimmicks to me. Perhaps my opinion will change once I’ve played with it some more.

I did like the ability to customize the design and content. I can see that there are a number of gadgets that *might* be useful but none of them really appealed to me.

A summary of my gadget exploration:

  1. Facebook gadget – I tried a couple of these and I didn’t see the point to them. I *like* going to the Facebook page. I actually had to try a couple of different gadgets before I got one that worked at all and even then it doesn’t work properly at work but does work okay at home
  2. Google Book search gadget – why bother? It’s only a click away anyway
  3. Google Map gadget – again why bother? It’s only a click away!
  4. Google Docs and spreadsheet – really, if you’re signed in to use iGoogle, why would you use these gadgets?

The Google workplace video… well, we can all dream of working in a place like that. I’m just happy that we get *some* form of morning tea everyday at my current location. Much better than my last few schools!