I'm Finished!!!!!

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I can't believe I actually did it! Yowza! I really loved what I learned and wish I had taken my time to learn at a more leisurely pace; it would have given me much more time to explore. I would most certainly participate in another online learning program if our gracious organization decides to make one. Right now, I am also completing an InfoPeople online social networking class with Meredith Farkas, so I'm getting the information in lots of different ways. By Tuesday, I will have a proposal written for my school implementing some Web 2.0 tool. At this point I am debating between a book review blog by me, and a wiki contributed by the kids and I. The second idea is winning out so far, I just need to create a way to monitor is so the "powers that be" will be happy.

My favorite discoveries were:

• that I have downloadable audiobooks available to me through my local Contra Costa Library.
• how cool blogs could be as a tool for communication and marketing.
  
• Ning in all its varieties of uses (I joined two groups)
• my google RSS reader--how did I ever live without this!!!!!

The only thing I could think of that you could do differently is somehow inspire people to continue and finish all the weeks. I noticed many people got off to a good start, me included, but faded out during summer. Maybe a weekly group email with lots of positive ideas would help us keep it more on the front burner...

Week 9 # 22

I think I just don't get it. I don't see a whole lot of value in reading books online, perhaps future readers will find it less uncomfortable with less eye strain/headaches. I can see purchasing ebooks for reference in a library; one of my friends is trying this out right now.

As far as audio books go, I think I'm a snob. I would rather borrow one from the library in person that is professionally read, than have one online read by any number of volunteer readers.

However, some libraries are making audio books downloadable, this is AWESOME!

Here are some libraries that are doing this:

New Hampshire Downloadable Audio Books

Central Connecticut's Library Connection libraries

Oregon Digital Library Consortium

and our own

Califa Digital Library Consortium Northern California Collection

While I don't see my little library being able to afford these, I would certainly like to encourage our county (Solano) to be a part of this program. Our ELL teachers would love to use audiobooks for their English Learners, and I suspect the special education department would take advantage of this also.

Week 9 #21

I commute about 30 miles to work so I am a huge books-on-tape (now cd) fan. Seems to be that podcasts can work the same way so I'm thrilled to find so many book reviews. Guess I'm the last person in library land to know that Nancy Pearl has a book review radio show. I also found Nancy Keene's booktalks on podcast. I've used her compendium of booktalks since I became a librarian, and believe I even have a couple on her website.

Her RSS feed isn't set up correctly from her webpage, but here is a link to the page with the podcasts: http://nancykeane.com/booktalks/mp3/

Week 9 #20

I am already a fan of YouTube and play there erratically. I used to to learn about web 2.0 and found some great Second Life tutorials there. Here is a very interesting music video I found, the first I've seen about libraries. A little stereotypical, but fun anyway.



Here is a link to a video taken from SNL last season. It is Justin Timberlake and one of the cast doing a so-bad-it's-funny video. It might be offensive to some viewers.

Week 8 #19

I played with Library Thing and liked it much more than I did when I tried it last time. The discovery exercises forced me to look around and try different things. I think this would be a good way to add books to pathfinders for my students. Using their recommendations with my knowledge, it would be easy to create the kind that say:

If you liked A Child Called It, try...

Here are some random books from my library.

Week 8 #18

I played with the Zoho Writer - Online Word Processor and was totally impressed. I looked at the Google app. last week and loved it, too. I can really see this being useful for students to use at school, especially for group projects. I told my dd about it, and she will probably use to for her screen writing class for quicker access to feedback from the other students. I especially liked the fact that you can export the document in different formats, including PDF & HTML for easy access on a webpage.

Week 7 #16 & 17

I really liked looking at the different wikis. I especially appreciated that wikis can use different formats, like the one for November's CSLA conference. I absolutely loved the BookLoversWiki and might try something like this for my high school students. I've been trying to figure out a way for them to recommend books to each other online, and this might work better than a blog.

I wonder what kind of permission I need to post the book covers to one of these tools...

Here is my wiki post:
# 47 One way that I would really like to use a wiki is for online book reviews by students. I have so many avid readers, and this would be a good way for them to be able to recommend books to each other.