A bibliophile's delight. Milllions of books and thoughts about books, with the chance to share and discuss one's faves. LibraryThing is easy to set up and operate, easy to link to this blog.
All but one of the books I entered in my library were contained in someone else's library. I purposely put in at least one "odd" title, to see how the site would handle it. It found the "cataloging" for the book, but no one else appears to have it. It was astonishing to see how many Jane Austen lovers there are, and how strongly opinioned.
This is clearly not a children's site, as the list contents prove. Very few children's things visible. I'm not counting the widely read Harry Potter. This wouldn't, therefore, be useful for my students, although teachers might enjoy it.
Love the Zeitgeist stuff, especially learning I'd read most of the 25 most reviewed books. Having read the entire J.K. Rowling ouevre helps. Like the links to authors in LibraryThing, and the list of favorite authors. It's troubling to see the 50 lowest-rated authors. Seems a bit snarky and pointless. Would be interested in another view.
This is a good tool for any teen-age and older book lover. It has (uppper grade) classroom as well as social appeal. I can easily see English teachers finding ways to use LibraryThing.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Week 8--Thing 18: Zoho
Trying out Zoho for the second time. Accidentally deleted the first attempt in Preview. Watch out for the Revert button.
Happily, blogger let me paste my test text into the blog, so two birds, one stone, etc., etc.
The learning curve is manageable. Anyone familiar with Word will be able to adapt easily.
The offline option requires installation of Google Gears, currently in Beta version only. Right now it only runs on Firefox, according to what I read, though it's available for Mac 10.2 and up, Windows, Windows Mobile and Linux, so it has broad platform accessibility.
The toolbar is clean, compact, and user-friendly. So far I'm finding the word processor to offer most of the most-used functions.
The sharing features look like they'll support collaborative projects well. Student group work should benefit tremendously. This is very 2.0!
The spellcheck works, though anyone wedded to Word's automatic underlining will have to switch to the "old fashioned" manual spell check method. I haven't found a grammar check yet. It it's not there, some people will either skip it, or want to copy and past their work into Word for that option. It does paste into Word.
The tagging feature is brilliant. Persons using Zoho who tag regularly will be able to find their documents easily.
The spreadsheet function is easy for me to use. I'm a basic spreadsheet user, anyway, not needing the higher calculation functions for most of what I do. An interesting test would be to see if I could use this program when importing student files from the office, which I currently do through Excel and a flash drive.
I miss the keyboard command shortcuts I get with an installed program. Everything seems to be controlled from the toolbar.
I didn't spend a lot of time with the presentation tool, but it looks okay, except I couldn't find a help section in the time I had to experiment with this. I couldn't see how to import a picture into my test show, and had to give up. I found a demo of the program on a separate page, but that didn't help while I was working on the test slide. Consequently, I won't recommend this to a beginner. ZohoShow accepts presentations from PowerPoint and OpenOffice, which is a clever way to get OpenOffice users to migrate to Zoho. My experiences with OpenOffice on the Mac have not been pretty.
All in all, Zoho has a lot to offer. Collaboration projects, tight budgets, 2.0 afficionados will all like this.
Major drawbacks are two-fold. Being web-based, Internet access is a factor. Then, there is the nagging feeling I always carry concerning any tool--email especially--that is so accessible to the world at large. I have issues with Gmail's archiving practices (see my earlier blog post), and I think Zoho may fall into the same category. Privacy is important, and I am not at all convinced that any of these tools are very secure. So, while it has a lot to offer, bottom line isI would use this tool cautiously.
Happily, blogger let me paste my test text into the blog, so two birds, one stone, etc., etc.
The learning curve is manageable. Anyone familiar with Word will be able to adapt easily.
The offline option requires installation of Google Gears, currently in Beta version only. Right now it only runs on Firefox, according to what I read, though it's available for Mac 10.2 and up, Windows, Windows Mobile and Linux, so it has broad platform accessibility.
The toolbar is clean, compact, and user-friendly. So far I'm finding the word processor to offer most of the most-used functions.
The sharing features look like they'll support collaborative projects well. Student group work should benefit tremendously. This is very 2.0!
The spellcheck works, though anyone wedded to Word's automatic underlining will have to switch to the "old fashioned" manual spell check method. I haven't found a grammar check yet. It it's not there, some people will either skip it, or want to copy and past their work into Word for that option. It does paste into Word.
The tagging feature is brilliant. Persons using Zoho who tag regularly will be able to find their documents easily.
The spreadsheet function is easy for me to use. I'm a basic spreadsheet user, anyway, not needing the higher calculation functions for most of what I do. An interesting test would be to see if I could use this program when importing student files from the office, which I currently do through Excel and a flash drive.
I miss the keyboard command shortcuts I get with an installed program. Everything seems to be controlled from the toolbar.
I didn't spend a lot of time with the presentation tool, but it looks okay, except I couldn't find a help section in the time I had to experiment with this. I couldn't see how to import a picture into my test show, and had to give up. I found a demo of the program on a separate page, but that didn't help while I was working on the test slide. Consequently, I won't recommend this to a beginner. ZohoShow accepts presentations from PowerPoint and OpenOffice, which is a clever way to get OpenOffice users to migrate to Zoho. My experiences with OpenOffice on the Mac have not been pretty.
All in all, Zoho has a lot to offer. Collaboration projects, tight budgets, 2.0 afficionados will all like this.
Major drawbacks are two-fold. Being web-based, Internet access is a factor. Then, there is the nagging feeling I always carry concerning any tool--email especially--that is so accessible to the world at large. I have issues with Gmail's archiving practices (see my earlier blog post), and I think Zoho may fall into the same category. Privacy is important, and I am not at all convinced that any of these tools are very secure. So, while it has a lot to offer, bottom line isI would use this tool cautiously.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Week 7--Thing 17--Sandbox
Followed Kathy's advice and posted a comment in the Library 2.0 sandbox. It's fun to read the other comments. The MSLA stuff seemed to be at the bottom, which is where I posted.
Week 7--Thing 16--Wikis
The Wiki idea of user-created information sources is terrific. I especially liked the high school wikis, where students can both access content and provide feedback.
Wikis are great for any group that benefits from a virtual message board and the like.
About half our sixth graders use Wikipedia. As an exercise to teach how Wikipedia works, I had several classes collaborate on two articles. I cleaned up the writing for the first one to conform to Wikipedia's style. It is still on the website. We posted the second article without my edits, leaving in all the young adolescent opinion language, and Wikipedia pulled it down within 15 minutes. Now the students think Wikipedia is boring, but they understand that just because "anyone" can write to it, no one can write just anything. I couldn't have planned it better myself.
Wikis are great for any group that benefits from a virtual message board and the like.
About half our sixth graders use Wikipedia. As an exercise to teach how Wikipedia works, I had several classes collaborate on two articles. I cleaned up the writing for the first one to conform to Wikipedia's style. It is still on the website. We posted the second article without my edits, leaving in all the young adolescent opinion language, and Wikipedia pulled it down within 15 minutes. Now the students think Wikipedia is boring, but they understand that just because "anyone" can write to it, no one can write just anything. I couldn't have planned it better myself.
Week 6--Thing 15--2.0 and the Future of Libraries
Hurrah for Thing 15, which asks us to consider and blog about what we've probably been mulling for the past 14 Things. Libraries have to stay relevant or shut down. OCLC's Rick Anderson has it right in "Away from Icebergs" when he says that "it no longer makes sense to collect information products as if they were hard to get." I'm right there with him when he says we have to "find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually." Michael Stephens explores this in "Into a New World of Librarianship", where he describes the contemporary librarian as someone who designs programs and services in response to user needs. Of course libraries and librarians have been doing this for a long, long time. One of the arguments, described in the Wikipedia article, makes the case that many of the pillars of Library 2.0 procedures are nothing new. What is new is the way people both use and access the Internet--and by extension information. Libraries are in competition with computers, cell phones and whatever comes next.
Here's where the role of the school librarian is pivotal. Rick Anderson says that libraries are poorly equipped for teaching the new technologies, so it's up to libraries to eliminate the barriers between people and information. With all due respect, I doubt he's spent time in an educational setting watching students evaluate information--or not. Information alone will not provide our civilization with the tools it needs to meet the future. We need the skills to weigh and evaluate, and these skills must be taught--often in a school library.
In the words of that old Girl Scout song, "Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold."
Here's where the role of the school librarian is pivotal. Rick Anderson says that libraries are poorly equipped for teaching the new technologies, so it's up to libraries to eliminate the barriers between people and information. With all due respect, I doubt he's spent time in an educational setting watching students evaluate information--or not. Information alone will not provide our civilization with the tools it needs to meet the future. We need the skills to weigh and evaluate, and these skills must be taught--often in a school library.
In the words of that old Girl Scout song, "Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold."
Week 6--Thing 14--Technorati
Before I get to the part about my discoveries on Technorati, here's a link to something I found there, , in which the author first blogs about the olden days of library research (pain and torment, and too little information) then points out the contemporary pain and torment of too much information. Amen to that. He goes on to deliver an eloquent description of why RSS feeds are so very useful (the information comes to him), and drops the statement that even his (young-ish) friends don't know how. He kindly offers a tutorial. So, Web 2.0 librarians, we ain't behind the 8-ball yet.
Technorati is another terrific mall-like website: something for everyone and thousands of choices. But like a mall, it's easy to be distracted and side-tracked, and I have a hard time (yet again) seeing how it can be useful professionally in my elementary school. I can't see that the results will be worth the effort of teaching this tool when there are simpler ways of getting at the information. Children just want to find the information they need and move on. I noticed that some of the same sites and blogs popped up when I searched for School Library Learning 2.0 in different places (blog posts and tags). That lent authenticity to the process, and the value of the sites. I find two things very annoying. One are the ads, and the second is the peculiarities of searching in Technorati. I get cranky having to re-learn search protocols.
I'm going to like tagging--for the most part. It's authentic and quick. But, there are students who are more comfortable learning and applying a concrete set of rules. Tagging may not work for them.
Technorati is another terrific mall-like website: something for everyone and thousands of choices. But like a mall, it's easy to be distracted and side-tracked, and I have a hard time (yet again) seeing how it can be useful professionally in my elementary school. I can't see that the results will be worth the effort of teaching this tool when there are simpler ways of getting at the information. Children just want to find the information they need and move on. I noticed that some of the same sites and blogs popped up when I searched for School Library Learning 2.0 in different places (blog posts and tags). That lent authenticity to the process, and the value of the sites. I find two things very annoying. One are the ads, and the second is the peculiarities of searching in Technorati. I get cranky having to re-learn search protocols.
I'm going to like tagging--for the most part. It's authentic and quick. But, there are students who are more comfortable learning and applying a concrete set of rules. Tagging may not work for them.
Week 6--Thing 13, Tagging and de.licio.us
Tagging makes sense. If people are to take control of their own learning, why shouldn't they be able to construct their own subject headings? It fits right in with teaching to learning styles. I can even see book publishers using common tags in future subject indexes.
De.licio.us strikes me as a marvelous mashup of sorts: oodles of interesting sites to explore, reader comments to consider, tagging opportunities galore, and the opportunity to join in the fun and send all my bookmarks to one spot. This is a tool for secondary students and motivated teachers. People with a lot of internet experience, drive, and time on their hands. I got lost, actually, as in a great museum or the Brimfield Flea Market. I'll be looking for ways to use de.licio.us in my elementary school, but so far haven't seen how. We are very comfortable using teacher-directed Internet searching. Anyone have any ideas?
De.licio.us strikes me as a marvelous mashup of sorts: oodles of interesting sites to explore, reader comments to consider, tagging opportunities galore, and the opportunity to join in the fun and send all my bookmarks to one spot. This is a tool for secondary students and motivated teachers. People with a lot of internet experience, drive, and time on their hands. I got lost, actually, as in a great museum or the Brimfield Flea Market. I'll be looking for ways to use de.licio.us in my elementary school, but so far haven't seen how. We are very comfortable using teacher-directed Internet searching. Anyone have any ideas?
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