Week 8

Blogs, Wikis...- I had been introduced to blogging in another class, Current Issues also led by Dr. Joe Martinelli. I wasn't sure how I was going to react to blogging. I had participated in a blog set up by my brother-in-law but wasn't really sure how to set up a blog. Once I set up my account on blogger.com I realized how easy it was. I then used blogging in my technical processes class. Most everyone enjoyed it. I had one concern and that was actually a concern voiced by someone else and that is how can we keep up with all of these blogs. I thought it would be nice to have a library blog (assuming my district would allow it) but I did not think that I could keep up with it on a regular basis. My brother-in-laws blog is illustrative of this problem. He started it in 2007. At first he posted several times, as did I. One or two other relatives made a few comments but since the summer of '07 none of us has posted a single new entry.





The chapter on setting up a blog wasn't as valuable to me as I had already set up a blog using google's blogger. I glanced through the information and found it very easy to understand. It would be a good resource for someone setting up a blog for the first time. I agree with Richardson that in order to really get students involved in something is to do it yourself.



Although I enjoyed blogging I never really thought about what a great educational tool it could be. I had thought of some ways to use it in a classroom (and I guess I didn't think about it too much because I know that blogs are blocked in our district; although one teacher found a "safe" blog and she was able to get permission to use it with her class) but hadn't thought about all of the different ways that author, Will Richardson proposes. He says he is from NJ. I would love to meet this guy. He had his class do a blog with the author of one of my favorite books, The Secret Life of Bees. How neat is that? He says that her book had just come out and he contacted her publisher. I am not sure that she would be willing to do something like that now, but what a great experience for Richardson's students.

Eventhough I haven't used a blog in my work experience yet I feel comfortable that I could set one up and could discuss the merits of blogging with coworkers. But when I saw the subject of chapt. 5 was RSS I began to feel a little guilty. I went to a workshop on Web 2.0 for librarians at least a year ago. At the time I felt that RSS was something that I as a librarian needed to do. I also felt that it was something that should be introduced into EDST 6216 Digital Research and Information Literacy. Did I do it? No! I got the concept of RSS feeds but just never got around to setting up any feeds. In my defense I often feel so overwhelmed by all of the information that is out there that I just don't know how to keep up with it all. The book includes directions for setting up an RSS feed using google. I will try it out as soon as I am done blogging. I think for me as a school library media specialist the most important aspect of RSS is that when you are doing research you can set up a feed so that you get instant notifications of new information. How neat will that be for students doing research. Now they can follow a topic of interest without doing much digging. The information will come to them!

The information in Chapt. 6 wasn't new to me. As mentioned above I had attended a workshop on Web 2.0 for librarians. The speakers discusses RSS, Twitter, Face Book, and bookmarking sites. I liked the idea of twitter but didn't get into it. I am not sure that I will because no one that I am close to "tweats." So I am not sure what or who I would twitter about! But as a librarian I do need to keep up with these things. I sometimes feel like I work in a technological backwater. I learn things at SHU or at conferences and come back only to find that none of these innovations can be implemented. It gets very discouraging. I have used de.licio.us but not on a regular basis. Again, I just don't have the time. I have tried to get teachers interested in it but so far we haven't done much. I have to get back on, although I may have to use something other than de.licio.us as I read recently that their entire server crashed and they lost everyone's files. Not a good thing. They were hoping to get it back up and running but I am not sure that they did that. Shows one of the dangers of keeping everything stored in only one place.

I think that the social nature of the web is very fascinating. Something like Wikipedia shows the strength and the weaknesses of the common man as expert. Some of the entries are phenomenal. I once worked with a class on German musicians and looked up the Wikipedia entry on Mozart. It was extremely detailed and appeared to be very accurate. We used that entry as an example of how to use Wikipedia for research. But there are other entries that appear to be written by 6th graders and the information is sketchy at best. But Wikipedia can give you information on topics that you can't find anywhere else. The connectivity of Web 2.0 now means that people aren't sitting isolated behind a computer screen but can rather reach out and meet or reconnect with people with similar interests or backgrounds.