Revitalize in 2012:)

What a successful first semester!  The library waded into the flex-scheduling pool with much success and little adjustment.  The adjustment was more on the part of the library staff than the students and teachers.  This bodes well for services delivery.  We hosted a parent workshop on reading resources available at our school for emerging readers with great success and turnout.  We are prepared for our school accredidation process in February of 2012, and we have learned to adjust our workload with fewer employees without losing any services.

Perhaps the most exciting new venture was the professional development course held for faculty in the fall; Web 2.0 Collaboration and Learning.  The teachers who attended jumped right into the exciting world of teaching tools and collaborative resources, and presented projects and lessons well-above my expectations.  Participants were surveyed about how they felt about working in a collaborative, project-based environment, and their responses included the following:

1. It was nice not having the pressure of a traditional class/course environment.
2. The way we did this course was perfect because we learned so much from each other. It takes a lot of trial and error and discussion with others.
3. It was great working in a collaborative environment where everyone was working toward the same goal, but everyone was willing to help others.

Now, if I can get them to reflect further and see that their positive responses on a non-traditional classroom are the same as their students would have? 

We are beginning our 2nd semester with a new group of faculty members tomorrow evening.  This group will also contain a few school administrators.  I am excited to continue with this new teaching venture.  Aside from learning so much from the teachers involved in the class, it has also opened up more communication between them and the library!

Happy New Year, and more to come as we grow and emerge at our school library:)

Summer Tweets

I finally set up a Twitter account this week!  My plan is to research how this can be used next year for my library.  One idea that comes to mind is to tweet new titles or events to students, parents, faculty, and alumni.  We'll see...
The first Tweets I elected to follow were more personal than professional, such as the USEF, USDF (I show horses), Auburn University Athletics (love Auburn sports), and of course, the Casey Anthony trial!  I am following one educational twitter account, Teachers 2.0.  I downloaded the free mobile app but it is not as user-friendly as the actual web page.  More to come on this new adventure!

Tweet Time

Last week I went to dinner with my oldest son, a junior at Florida State University.  He casually mentioned that he was now following an array of credible tweets in topics of interest to him.  I was proud and yet amazed how he could be so casual with a social networking tool that I was so methodical about?  A generational gap, to be sure!  My long, mapped out, Web 2.0 journey is part of his everyday life.  But, wasn't that the point of my professional journey;  that I need to utilize new ways to reach students and patrons who easily use these tools as just another part of their life?

The next few weeks I'll move into one of the final phases of my Web 2.0 journey;  tweeting.  First, I need to locate solid information on how tweeting, or microblogging library information, is beneficial to education as a whole and libraries in particular.  Next, I want to explore a specialized education tweet called Edmodo, which is another free tool for educators.  One of the most surprising parts of my journey so far is realizing that most every Web 2.0 tool I find exciting is FREE to educators!
So, its time to tweet!

Review of the various social bookmarking sites

I reviewed Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, Diigo, and CiteULike.  My favorite was Diigo because of its team-based features such as group sticky notes and forums, and a group tag dictionary.  I also was impressed with their awesome education groups you could join. 
Possible uses of social bookmarking in libraries is obvious:  bibliographies, quick and easy subject heading links, reader's advisory/information, etc.  For education, the major use that I see is creating protable reading lists and study-guide bibliographies.  It like the fact that a social bookmarking tool emphasizes browsing over searching, so it would be easier for patrons (students and teachers) to use.

Let's Play Tag!

Today is May 2nd, and its time to move on!  My next venture into Web 2.0 will be to experiment with tagging.  As a librarian, I see this as another branch of the cataloging-tree that we librarians are already so familiar with.  Is this merely another form of subject headings?  Another form of bibliography creation for our patrons?  And, most importantly, can tagging in any way enhance faculty collaboration and student learning?  To begin my journey, I armed myself with a professional reading article by Mary Ann Bell, in Multimedia & Internet Schools, Sept/Oct 2009; "Playing Tag Is Good For You!"
Lets play tag!!

Wiki-Wonderful!!

Discouraged by my recent post, I decided to search again for a library wiki worth contributing to.  I discovered Library Success:  A Best Practices Wiki, and jumped in!
I joined (whew!), studied up on wiki markup (the old follow-the-instructions-manual mentality), and contributed my first article today entitled Moving from Fixed to Flex Scheduling. 
Here is a to my article:  Moving from Fixed to Flex Scheduling

Week 4 and Wiki-confusion

My first attempt at exploring wikis beyond Wikipedia led me to a google search "libraries and wikis."  The results were so-so.  Although I found a few library wikis, and some that focused on school library issues, most had limited discussion.   I expanded my search to "schools and wikis" which located wikis that centered on the discussion of using social media to change online help desks for students.  I found a few school libraries that utilized the wiki format for book trailers and reference help desks.  I am determined to contribute to at least one education-based wiki during my journey, so I will have to use week 5 to stay wiki-focused.  I can see that if I am to eventually use wikis for my library, it will most likely need to be a collaborative page with teachers. Possibly setting up pages based on research assignments, where students can join, ask questions, and contribute their knowledge of the research process to their peers?   And, is that really as inventive as I can get?   Perhaps my problem is that I am so eager to contribute to a wiki as part of my 2.0 quest that I haven't taken the time to focus on what I can contribute.  In other words, is my quest wagging the dog's tail?  Now is the time to remind myself why I whittled the list of 23 to 10...

Week 3 a Success

I enjoyed week 3 of my exploration into Web 2.0.  I am feeling more proficient on Facebook, and enjoy locating and reading the various libary blogs.  Later this week I will post a brief list of my favorites library and education blogs to date.  Last week my eighteen-year-old son taught me 2 valuable Facebook skills; how to delete wall remarks made by friends, and how to delete that friend!  He also cautioned me against deleting a friend whose personal posts appear to be commercial in nature. He reminded me that these post to my news feed, and not my actual wall.  It only took 2 weeks for me to discover that some of these long-lost high school friends are probably making money posting links to products and services.  I suppose the sales-pitch mentality of search engines has found a way into social networking. 
This week, I'm prepared to dive into the wonderful world of wikis!

From 23 to 10

In February I read the article Happy New Year! by Mary Ann Bell in the Jan/Feb issue of Internet @ Schools.  The article suggested that library professionals “reboot” themselves by participating in Web 2.0 tutorials such as 23 Things.  As my school is going through an accreditation self-study process, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect! Any time your library is faced with a reflective self-study, including commendations and recommendations, you are given pause to ponder not only yourself as a professional, but where your library is now and where it is headed.

Always eager to learn something new, I quickly googled 23 Things and came across the original program, along with several library blogs across the country that had also participated.  The idea of the program is to spend 23 weeks learning how to use a new tool, such as blogging, tweeting, social networking, rss feeds, podcasts, etc.  Having what I like to describe as a “unique” learning style, of course I jumped right in, but not in the correct order!  Thus, this blog was born, which I later learned didn’t come until week 2!

Further research brought me to an interesting post by Stephen Abram, The Original 23 Things . . . Irrelevant training?  This was not good.  Was I starting a journey that was already outdated?  Not according to the Mr. Abram. 

So, I have created my “professional reboot project” over the next few months, borrowing from the original 23 Things, Abram’s post, and other’s.

Week 1:  Join a social networking website.  Done!  I joined Facebook and promised my sons I would not, I repeat not, “friend” them!

Week 2:  Set up my own blog and begin to read/share with other professional library blogs. Done!

Week 3:  Take a deep breath and enjoy what I am learning from weeks 1 and 2.  Don’t just read, but participate and share!

Weeks 4 & 5:  Explore wikis and join in at least one discussion.  Is this something a high school research project can participate in by sharing knowledge?  The possible benefits of wikis will need to be explored in detail, so I’ll take my time here. 

Week 6:  Explore Twitter, and attempt to tweet!  This week sounds like fun! 

Week 7:  Learn how to tag.

 

Week 8 & 9:  Explore tools that I absolutely have no earthly idea about.  This would be cover week 6 of 23 things;  Tagging, Folksonomies & Technorati, Del.icio.us.

Week 10:  Take a break, pause and reflect. 

Abram, Stephen. “The Original 23 Things . . . Irrelevant training?” Stephen’s Lighthouse. N.p., 19 July 2010. Web. 10 Mar. 2011. <http://stephenslighthouse.com/‌2010/‌07/‌19/‌the-original-23-things-irrelevant-training/>.

Bell, Mary Ann. “Happy New Year!” Internet @ Schools 18.1 (2011): 26-27. Print.

Jumping in to Web 2.0!

I've always considered myself an information professional on the cutting edge, but aside from accessing shared information online, I had yet to wade into the waters of Web 2.0 and actually participate.  So, I set 2 goals for myself this year:
1.  Participate in a "23 Things" program for librarians. 
2.  Set up a library blog for my patrons.

One goal of this blog is to better promote the services we offer at our library.  After hosting a school technology fair last month, I found that families had no idea of all the exciting online resources and information tools at our library.  These exciting resources can benefit not only students and faculty, but our parents, as well.  I am now challenged to get the word out about these resources.  So, I decided to blog the good word!

As to the 23 Things, there will be more about my experiences in Web 2.0 on upcoming blogs.
Until then, welcome to all the students, faculty, and families that support our library, and all you information/library junkies!