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Ahoy, matey! Witch Baby has been born! Yes, I played Puzzle Pirates. It took a while to download, but then I was off to some tropical island, then on a ship learning to bilge and carpent. I was better at bilging that carpenting. Would I spend much time playing this game? Nope. It's not bad, but I had a hard time reading what the other players were saying. Besides, I prefer to play by myself - I work with people all day - I'd more likely play a computer game to escape from people! But the game site was very attractive and I can imagine that it would be quite appealing to anyone who enjoys this kind of activity. At school our students aren't allowed access to games (unless staff specifically requests a game be unblocked). At the public library, this is what lots of people (especially young people) are doing on our computers. They're chatting, in MySpace, or playing online games. So it's something we need to be familiar with. If we had someone with the expertise and willingness, we could offer a gaming club for the kids - I think it would be a hit.
I'd heard about LibrarThing some time ago, but had never thought about using it myself until now. I'd always thought of it as a tool to catalog books that I own, and honestly, I don't have much of a personal library (I work in a library - I borrow books, I don't buy them!!). But now I see that this could be a very useful tool. For the past ten years or more, I have kept a journal in which I record all the books I read. With a written journal, however, it's hard to quickly find which books by a certain author I've already read - no more! LibraryThing is so easy to search - this is going to be great! At school, I ask my 5th and 6th graders to keep reading logs - we do this on paper. Now I am definitely considering having the kids keep their logs using LibraryThing. Hopefully this will be more fun for them. It would also be a good way for me to feature new books, award books, etc. from my home page - I had thought about using a blog for that, but LibraryThing might work even better.
After playing around in iGoogle, PageFlakes, and MyYahoo, I decided to go with iGoogle. I like the simplicity of its look. Even though I have a Yahoo e-mail account, I found the ads really distracting! Google is so much more peaceful. :-)
I added a few widgets: I have the calendar and Google Reader on my home page. I will use this at home, but not at work. When I'm at school, I use the school's Web site as my home page. When I'm at the public library, the LARL Website is our home page. I signed up for the Ta-Da List and created my first list - I don't know how much I'll actually use this, but if you're into making lists, I guess this would be a good tool. I took a look at the Backpack - that was very cool, especially to use with coworkers. We already have intranets at my workplaces, but I was impressed with the Backpack. Zamzar looks like a great tool - there sure have been times when I could have used this but didn't know about it. I'm glad I know now. Of course, the free version is pretty limited, but I think it would have worked for me on those occasions when I needed it. I looked at Sticky Notes - that's not for me. I also tried to add the countdown widget to this blog but each time I tried it got an illegal operation message. I'll try again on another computer...
No, I don't. But I Mixx. I looked at each of the sites and liked Mixx the best - I just liked the way it was set up. The categories (popular, news, entertainment, tech, etc.) made it feel easier to use. I read an article on the NYTimes Web site and shared it on Mixx - it was an article about health insurance, a topic that becomes more important to me as my husband and I consider retirement before we can qualify for Medicare. Yikes! Anyway, it was very easy to sign up and to share.
But the question remains: how could I use these tools in my library or at home?? I am no newshound and I refuse to listen to talk radio or television and I generally don't care much for reality TV shows - am I totally out of step with the world? And really, should I care about how much karma I've accumulated? There are only 24 hours in a day and I don't really want to spend any more of them staring at a computer screen than I have to, so I don't expect to be making much use of my Mixx account (but we'll see). All I can say is that I've only checked my GoogleReader account twice since I signed up - I'm afraid of how much is there now! I cannot imagine this being anything but a productivity detractor. Yes, I read the comment about how librarians should be on top of the popular topics because people will come to the library wanting more information. Wouldn't it be something if we had enough staff to be able to spend the time on these social media sites preparing to offer more our customers more information - this is not the world I live in.
This is something I started last year, but never really did much with it. I work part-time at school and part-time at the public library, and I always thought it would be great to be able to have ALL of my bookmarks at each workplace - and this is great for that. I have added just a few bookmarks so far, but hope to get lots more included soon. I've tagged a few of my blog entries. And I can see where it becomes really important to tag photos on Flickr. I explored the Minn23 De.li.cious account and discovered a great new game: Babble. This is the fun part of social bookmarking - you start off looking at one thing and it leads to to something completely new or different
At my school library, I have bookmarks on my homepage, but I've tried to be careful about limiting the number so that students don't have to scroll to see them. This would certainly be a great way for me to lead them to many more good sites. I looked at the public libraries' pages and found it interesting that Menasha Pub. Lib. has theirs organized by subject and the San Mateo Library actually organizes them by Dewey numbers; the Seldovia Library simply arranges them in an alphabetical list. So much to think about! Hmm.
First off, the Commoncraft video was very helpful - aren't they always? I think wikis are wonderful!! I hope this makes up for my bah humbug attitude about GoogleDocs and Zoho. This is truly a simple way to collaborate. I saw some interesting school library wikis. I'm considering using a wiki now for my upper elementary students to post their recommended books. The only possible drawback to wikis is (and I don't really consider this a drawback) that anyone taking information from a wiki needs to understand that it has to be evaluated just like any other information source. So do I think teachers should ban Wikipedia as a source for student research? I don't know. For sure, any info should be corroborated. Hey, we read books that have errors, don't we? Just because something's printed in a book that doesn't make it true. Yes, I know... at least with a book there is editorial oversight. But we should always be reminding our students: buyer beware! They need to be taught to evaluate all information. So Wikipedia would be one source, but absolutley not the only source. I added my two bits to the 23 Things on a Stick wiki.
I believe I have successfully edited the Declaration of Independence using both Zoho and GoogleDocs. It was not a pleasant experience and I'm not sure why I would ever want to use these tools. I think a Wiki would be better. Maybe I just wasn't using it correctly, but all I could do was write my revision outside of the document itself - what's the point of that??? I didn't find one easier to use than the other - just plain didn't care for either one. There, I said it.
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