Monday, January 26, 2009

Thing 22 Week 9

This applies to the entry below.

The World Public Library, Ebook Project and Project Gutenberg make available thousands of books and other printed material that would be out of most people's reach without digital technology and the web. It is really quite amazing. However, I do think that the majority of the titles are things very few people will ever use. Thorstein Veblen? Just lots of esoteric stuff. Although I think this will benefit some, these titles will seldom be used by the students at my school. In fact, we have a subscription to a Questia which is a research tool that has a number of similar resources. The problem is that they are all fairly old and mostly very academic. I have watched the students try to use them with very little success. Most of them are more suitable for upper division or graduate students. At any rate, if they are needed these resources are available for the entire world.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Week 9 Thing 21 Podcasts



Podcasts are very handy. I have been using them since about 1999. I upload radio programs that I cannot hear live for listening at a later time. I use the Google Reader and Subscribe to a number of subscriptions. A Couple of them are:

Left Right and Center from KCRW, and National Security with Ian Masters on KPFK, Los Angeles. I also found many new podcasts of interesting programs and will listen to them when I get a chance.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Week Nine You Tube Video Thing # 20

Here is a video of my former school system. I worked in NOPS for two plus years and it was beyond doubt the worst school system in the country. I could tell you stories you would not believe. You would thing I was making them up. Like for example the valedictorian at Fortie High School who could not pass the exit exam. Any way I will try to put a you tube video about this on my blog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WUes3Qgxy4

I don't know how to imbed it. Or, you know have it play and show right in the entry....Where can I find out how to do that? Anyway, I use you tube for entertainment instead of tv. It is real reality TV. Plus, it can be used to show current events and other things to students.

Ciao

Monday, January 19, 2009

Week 8 Thing #19 Library Thing


The library thing is a neat thing, as are many of the things that consitute the 23 things. The thing about this thing is that it is a thing that does lots of things. It serves as a book search, an on line community about books, topical forums, just thing after thing after thing. What a thing this thing is. My books were a wide spread in popularity. One was a very popular books and another had only been added by, I thingk 9 people only had one of the titles.




I did find comments on books on my list.

Zoho Week 8 Thing #18 Done

This is going to put Microsoft out of business. There is no reason to buy Microsoft Office or many other programs. In addition many many other programs are made unnecessary by these on line programs. Another thing that I liked was the presentation application and the web page one. The online notetaking also kind of interesting. Infact, there are so many things to learn on this site I don't know if I will ever have enought time to learn all of the apps. At any rate I created this with Zoho writer.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Thing 17 Week 7

Wiki Wiki Wiki everything wiki. I can see that wikis have potention for teachers and students from the examples I saw on the sites I visited. I see that the potential for collecting organizing and presenting large amounts of invormation and keeping up to date is great with wikis. This can be done with almost any group. I saw suggestions and examples of students, teachers, parents and administrators. For example, students can brainstorm a topic and compile the information ovcer a long period of time with a multimedia information on the subject. This record can bewritten, photos, video, and audio. Furthermore, it can be corrected, updated, edited or expanded at any moment and as long as desired. I really liked the tips on how to organize and construct a wiki. I found this helpful because so many really disturbing wikis that are just a big mess of stuff that is very difficult to follow. Those kind really bugged me. The hurt to look at them. However, I really like the ones organized like wikipedia with a table of contents and bibliography and so on. I can also see how it would be great to use wikis to use as study guides for exams. The information could be complete and available for all, even those who lost their notes. In fact, I am going to think of a way, an appropriate way to start and use one in the library.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Thing Number 16 Week 7

I didn’t know this but:

A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis.[ Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and Knowledge Management systems. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work". "Wiki" (/wiːkiː/) is a Hawaiian word for "fast"."Wiki Wiki" is a reduplication. "Wiki" can be expanded as "What I Know Is", but this is a backronym.

I looked at the Wikis listed on library learning and found their uses to be illuminating. I had only thought of wikis as encyclopedias like in Wikipedia. Stupid of me, but I never thought that they would apply to nearly any body of information that is need to be kept complete and up to date. Now, after having explored the various pages list I see that any body of information can be benefited by putting it into wiki form.
In the sites I visited I saw that procedures for a task, books read, best practices, notes of a meeting, lists of any sort and virtually any body of knowledge applies to the wiki form. The only thing to decide is a. who can entry and modify and b. how it can be accessed. Aside from that, it is almost totally libertarian. Like open source programming or share ware. And, it take the profit motive out of the information if it is open to anyone. How egalitarian.
In schools and school libraries wikis could be used to compile study guides, list of resources, recommended books and reviews loads of stuff. The possibilities are endless..

Monday, January 12, 2009

Thing Number 15 Completed

Away From Icebergs

The first “iceberg” mentioned by Mr. Anderson is the “just in case” collection. This has always been one of my pet peeves. When I was first working in a library I always wondered about those librarians who wanted to keep books that were never checked out and/or in no way corresponded to the curriculum. I remember that my first library had several copies of Dr. Doolittle from the 1920’s. Besides being horrible books that no one wanted to read, the were racist. They were still in my library. It was even worse in New Orleans. I had five copies of a book published by a vanity press that extolled the virtues or slavery on plantations in Louisiana. At any rate, the point is that unless a book will definitely be used on a regular basis there is no reason to have the book, just in case. The internet is what should be used just in case.

User Centric Services

Electronic resources offer great potential in making it easier for anyone to find information. Think about the progress may in the last thirty years. Think back to the card catalogue. When cataloguing a nonfiction book how many “tags” or subject card did the average book have? Five, six, and the time involved? Computers have the potential of making the entire information seeking process totally independent of any help. Of course, there will always be the need for some supervision, but the entire process can be streamlined greatly and result in a far more efficient process of information location.

Come to Us

Lastly, the internet has liberated information from the tyranny of the librarian. Now, the patron does not have to rely upon the librarian as gatekeeper. Pathways to information can be readily available throughout the user’s environment. Links on homepages, imbedded instructional powerpoints and video allow access and intstruction to resources in all places and at all times. In the not too distant there will be no contact between librarian and patron aside from the resources provided remotely.

Library 2.0 Means:

Library 2.0 allows far greater access to patrons for librarians and greater access to resources for patrons. The potential for helping patrons is great with Library 2.0. No longer is it necessary to get patrons to get to the library. Now patrons can access information from a variety of access point. Both direction and instruction can be planned in advance and allow patrons to obtain information in a more timely and efficient manner. With this the librarian will spend more time planning and implementing the structures required to assist patrons in all aspects of information location and also structures to assist and instruct in the planning, formulation and completion of projects. On the other side of the equation, patrons will be able to access information with minimal help from a information specialist. Just tag alone assist in finding information without much prior knowledge, but even more important the information needed to access information can be mad available at the point of access. In the future we will be as much concerned with a surplus of information rather than a shortage.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Thing # 14

1. I searched in the three ways specified. The first yield only two results. The second, tags, got one entire page of results and the search of blogs from list yielded two pages of results. So, to answer the last question. Yes the results were different, but I am unclear on why.

2. I explored the tags, blogs and searched and and a little concerned about, in the time of war and the beginning of a depression that people are concerned about cheat codes and celebreties. But that 's life. I was encourged that the Huffington post was one of the most popular blogs. Although I am not sure I understand what they mean by "authority" Do they mean it in the same way as librarians us it?

3. I discovered two things: a. The most popular site in the world is one I have never heard of. b. Some people are very interested in people I have never heard of. Jennifer Garner?

Tags
Tags can be very helpful in getting blogs exposed to others. A well tagged blog will allow it to shoe up on searches. On the other side of the coin however, this same ability will allow people to tag blogs with words that have nothing to do with the subject at hand and us them for nefarious purposes as well.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Thing #13 Done 10 To Go

I did Thing 13. The entry is below with the Delicious Logo.

Week 5 Done 12 Things Done


I keep forgetting to label the posts. So Week five is done with the Rollyo thing, At this point I have done the first twelve things.

Deeeeeeeeeeeelicious


Deeeeeeeeeeeelicious is very coooooooool! I am forever missing favs on computers that I am useing cuz I use so many 5 at home and a bunch at work. This will be phat.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

OOOOOOOOOOPS! ROLLYOYOOOOOOOO!


I forgot to do the Rollyo. Ooooops again, here is the message I received when I clicked on the Rollyo link on "School Library Learning 2.0":


Hmm.
The link you came here on appears to be from a 'link spammer' trying to promote their site through Rollyo. These links are a nuisance to the community, a nuisance to our site, and ultimately not very nice. If you think you are getting this page in error, drop us a line and we'll try to get to the bottom of it.
Please note: When this spamming and related searching is deemed to be illegal, Rollyo will not hesitate to disclose information to authorities, including but not limited to the FBI and Interpol, if we have a good faith belief that such disclosure is necessary to enforce or apply our policies or to protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Rollyo, our users, our employees, or the public. Please see our privacy policy for more information on the limited circumstances under which we may disclose your personal information.


At any rate I will now compete the Rollyo. I set up a Rollyo account and it is pretty cool. I see alot of potential for the library website. Right now I have links on the library page. It would be cool to link them to different pages. At any rate, here is my link:




Ciao!

Friday, January 2, 2009

Week 5


I guess I am about almost half way done. I believe I have competed about 11 things. As I was doing these things I was thinking about how I resent doing them. Why? Well in the 1980's and into the 90's I spent quite a bit of time learning dos commands, batch files, autoexec.bat files and stuff like that. The with Mac and Windows these all became useless knowledge. At any rate, I then began thinking about a book that really had a profound impact upon me: The High Tech Heretic by Clifford Stoll. In this book he proposes that computers should not be in schools until high school and I agree. Here is a great lecture of his on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk Think about it! Think of all the money, and time, especially time, that has been wasted on computers, software, training and other peripheral activities and what could have been done with that money. More books, teachers smaller class size and on and on. And what are kids doing? Things like Face book and that FD Toy program I just tried to make silly magazine covers. At my school in New Orleans we had, due to grants and the horrible test scores of the school, more than one computer per student. And what did the kids do on them when they had a chance? The most popular site for the middle school girls at my school was to go on the Orleans Parish Jail site and see the boys/men they knew who were in jail....go figure. I think the time and resources invested in computers could be used more efficiently in other activities. Any way, I visited the "I'mCooked" web site and found it interesting. Food is a special interest of mine and I am the Convivium Leader of Slow Food Sacramento here is our web site:http://www.slowfoodsacramento.com/ At any rate, we are having a gumbo party for New Years and I looked at two videos of people making gumbo. One was a funny woman from Baton Rouge and guy from who knows were. Well, thats about it. It's 1:48 on the first day of the new year and I need to get up early to prepare the Cajun Trinity, crack the crabs, peel the shrimp and slice the andoulle. My wife will make the roux. She does in much better than me. Oh, I almost forgot. I started a Ning accout also. It is: http://byebyebushbaby.ning.com/ So, eleven things down, 12 to go?

Week Three

1. I set up a Flickr account. It is at. http://www.flickr.com/photos/elphage/

2. On the 26th and 19th did a Flickr Mashup of a librarian trading card and did an entry in technology.

How do I find out about other participants blogs so that I can comment on someone elses?
Anyway, by my calculations I have completed the first nine things. I hope you agree. If not please let me know if need to do anyting else.

Happy New Year

Still Week Four

I tried to open the CNET Video and nothing happened. I am not sure what is wrong. Another thing is I tried to find my public blogline and never saw a share tab. It said to click the share tab, but there never is one. I really can't see the advantages of the RSS and the newsreaders. Right now I have emails sent to me form news sources and they are listed on my favorites. All Ineed to do is click on them when I have time to read and get them up right away. I really don't see how RSS feeds are necesary. I think the benefit the publisher of the blog more than the subscriber. In fact, I can see is as a great tool to manipulate and control the subscriber. This allows the publisher to control the timing of their message, their message and deflect attention away from a message they may want to avoid.
I went to the "Edublog" award-winning blogs and found it about three years old. I viewed some of the winners and was not impressed. I really don't see the point to most of these and when I read the number of people who comment and see 0 I think most of the people are just blogging to themselves. What kind of social network is that? For example, I went to the school library blogs and found this:

1. Daughter #2 got married to a delightful young man. We couldn’t be morepleased with our new SIL.
2. We visited Daughter #1, meet her boss, viewed her workplace and were impressed.She’s happily settled (and has health insurance!)
3. The wedding of Daughter #2 went off without any serious hitches and a wonderful time was had by all.

What is the point of this? Just plain run of the mill narcissism? Who reads this stuff? I think the best searching for me was google blog search. Most of the others were more confusing. I really didn't find any feeds I thought would be useful so far. I think, however, the very best way to find feeds is to just find them in your daily reading and when you see one of value use it.

Week 4 RSS Feeds

So, there seems to be somewhat of a variety of definitions for RSS. Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. Take your pick. At any rate, I set up a bloglines account and subscribed to 6 RSS feeds. Then, upon more carefully reading the directions learned that I needed to subscribe to at least one specific site. However, when I tried to subscribe to the "Readers Club new review feeds I kept getting this message:


The XML page cannot be displayed
Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the
Refresh button, or try again later.
The stylesheet does not contain a document element. The stylesheet may be empty, or it may not be a well-formed XML documen...

I also tried to subscribe to the library cartoon RSS feed and all I got was a page of Html code. What am I doing wrong I wonder.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Week Three Photos and Images Things 5, 6, & 7

1. I explore Flickr and learned about this popular image hosting site.
2. I had some Flickr fun and discovered some flickr mashups and third party sited.

My Flickr URL is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elphage/

I did the trading card mash up and you can see it on Blogabunga dated Dec. 26, 2008

3. I blogged a post on Technology on December 19 2008.

Week 2 Blogging

1. I set up my blog. The URL is http://www.blogabunga.blogspot.com/
2. I registered my blog and have begun my "my learning 2.0 journey."

Week 1

1. I read the Blog and found out about the program
2. I discovered a few pointers for life long learners and learned how to nurture my own learning process.

Progress

I guess I am about almost half way done. I believe I have competed about 11 things. As I was doing these things I was thinking about how I resent doing them. Why? Well in the 1980's and into the 90's I spent quite a bit of time learning dos commands, batch files, autoexec.bat files and stuff like that. The with Mac and Windows these all became useless knowledge. At any rate, I then began thinking about a book that really had a profound impact upon me: The High Tech Heretic by Clifford Stoll. In this book he proposes that computers should not be in schools until high school and I agree. Here is a great lecture of his on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk Think about it! Think of all the money, and time, especially time, that has been wasted on computers, software, training and other peripheral activities and what could have been done with that money. More books, teachers smaller class size and on and on.
And what are kids doing? Things like Face book and that FD Toy program I just tried to make silly magazine covers. At y school in New Orleans we had, due to grants and the horrible test scores of the school, more than one computer per student. And what did the kids do on them when they had a chance? The most popular site for the middle school girls at my school was to go on the Orleans Parish Jail site and see the boys/men they knew who were in jail....go figure. I think the time and resources invested in computers could be used more efficiently in other activities.
Any way, I visited the "I'mCooked" web site and found it interesting. Food is a special interest of mine and I am the Convivium Leader of Slow Food Sacramento here is our web site:
http://www.slowfoodsacramento.com/ At any rate, we are having a gumbo party for New Years and I looked at two videos of people making gumbo. One was a funny woman from Baton Rouge and guy from who knows were. Well, thats about it. It's 1:48 on the first day of the new year and I need to get up early to prepare the Cajun Trinity, crack the crabs, peel the shrimp and slice the andoulle. My wife will make the roux. She does in much better than me. Oh, I almost forgot. I started a Ning accout also. It is: http://byebyebushbaby.ning.com/
So, eleven things down, 12 to go?