RSS Feeds & Google Reader

I have been using Google Reader for years and years now. I absolutely love it. It's neat to categorize the blogs I subscribe to and have them all in one place! That makes it super easy to read everything I am subscribed to all at one time. I have been following a few library, instructional design, and elearning blogs for a while, but I will just write about a couple of ones I found that are pretty cool.

I found iLibrarian through some other blogs I had been reading. I really like the fact that it about how libraries are trying to keep up with the new technology and everything that is happening with libraries transforming to being online. iLibrarian also tells the reader how to use the technology that is out there for the library's benefit. For example, there is a post about how to use Pinterest for a Business. It pulls ideas from other blogs to give new and innovative ideas to librarians and people in general.

I also have an interest in elearning. I found the elearnspace blog when I first started graduate school and it has been eye opening. This blog focuses on the open courses for anyone to view and the pros and cons of the courses. This post is about the future of education and how it will be with the openness of education and how to analyze students. I may not agree with everything on the blog, but it is a good way to get me thinking about education and where its future will be.

Here are the URLs for the blogs if you didn't click on the links in the post. iLibrarian: http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/ and elearnspace: http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/.

Library 2.0 Article

While reading this article, I realized that adapting to technological change is how libraries will survive. I am not a librarian or an educator, but I do enjoy books and getting information to the masses in the best ways possible. I think that school libraries need to stay true to themselves, but at the same time, they must adapt to their environment nowadays (kids that won't put technology down). 


It is imperative that these kids learn how to be information literate in all forms. Sometimes I think that we are becoming so dependent on technology, that we forget how to do a simple task. For example, why would someone haul a huge dictionary to a table when he or she could simply search for the word or term online? I do that all the time. I am not saying that technology is bad, but I believe that students need to know how to use reference materials and other library materials without technology.


I liked what Christopher Harris said about librarians new interaction with people, "Consequently, librarians, while still based in the media center, will interact more directly with students as well as their teacher peers in new spaces." Library 2.0 is a good thing for librarians to teach the students new ways to engage in learning and finding information. 

Harris writes about how the library does not need to get rid of the traditional values, but just adapt to the new 2.0 skills that work best with the library they are part of. Harris ends his article with a "2.0 Primer" with ideas and websites on how to adapt to the new ways. I think he has some good thoughts about learning 2.0.

I find it funny that this article was published online and instead of printing it out and reading it that way, I simply read it online. Oh how times have changed!

Technorati

Who knew there was a place dedicated to search for blogs?! I sure didn't. 


When I went to Technorati's blog directory, I didn't know what to expect. 


There are major categories and within those big categories, there are sub-categories. For example, entertainment, business, sports, politics, autos, technology, living, green, and science are represented someway. The categories that are well represented are entertainment, business, politics, technology, and living. The categories that are lacking compared to those categories are sports, autos, green, and science.


I searched the blogs for "books." I got 11 results out of the 1193066 blogs on the site. I was surprised that I only got that many results. When I searched blog posts for "books" I got 1129 results about books.  It is interesting to see the difference of searching the blogs versus the blog posts. I think it depends on how the blogs define themselves and the tags on the blog posts give more results.

Diigo

I have heard of Diigo, but never used it. I think it would be beneficial to use to have a way to keep your favorite websites together. Also, it is a good resource of how to keep your research together when you are writing a paper or designing a learning module.

I looked through this Diigo group about elearning 2.0 and social software. It has a lot of links to social media, cloud software, computer issues, and learning processes. Some comments and questions are though provoking from the links on this group. I think this certain group would benefit educators or people that want to know more about social software on the Internet.

Rollyo

Well, I tried to create a Rollyo: Roll Your Own Search Engine. I registered, set up a search engine for this blog. Here is a screenshot of what I did:

I made a Rollyo with sites for learning and reference. It is just a simple one with a few websites for educational purposes. I think Rollyo would be beneficial for media specialists or educators that want their students to search only sites they think would give the students the best results. It's neat to create your very own searchroll that will only search what you want it to. Pretty cool.

LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a pretty neat tool to use for anyone to use. It's fun to pick and choose the books to link to your profile. I had a great time searching for my favorite books and adding them to my collection. I could have stayed on the site for a long time putting all sorts of books into my collection.

For librarians, it would be a good way to separate books into different topics and have the collections ready for students. For example, one collection could be about the Civil War and another about Photosynthesis. It would be an easy way to teach kids how to find books. LibraryThing is a cool technology to use for anyone.

Generated Image

I made up a newspaper article image via here. It was fun to input the information and have it generated for me.

Skype Me!

Skype is a neat way to stay in contact with your loved ones, but it is also a great way to bring in guest speakers or chat with another colleague. Skype is fun to play around with and especially for me, since I am far from my hometown, it is a great way to see my parents and talk to them.

Perhaps a cool idea would be to have people that cannot make it into the library for story time or reading time and use Skype for them to see and hear the kids. I also think that Skype would be beneficial for a kid if they are stuck at home with a contagious disease, but can still learn. Skype would alleviate the contagious disease but also let the kid learn!

I think back to when I was growing up, and instant messaging was all the rage. Now it is video calling via Skype or another video conferencing program. Skype would be a great way to include those that are not usually included in a lesson. You can also employ the instant messaging with Skype. It is pretty cool.

Another point for Skype is that you can call phones from the program (if you pay a subscription fee).

So, download Skype and get calling.

Wiki What?

Wikis are a great way to get information out to the public in a way that most people can understand. Wikis are also a way to collaborate and combine ideas with multiple people. It is great to have a space where a group of people can come together and work on a single project.

I am using a wiki for one of my courses and so far, it's been great. I really enjoy being able to design, edit, delete, add, etc. to the wiki. We've been collaborating and editing our wiki. We are learning as we go along and now I know even more about wikis than I did before.

It is an easy way to start a site for a topic to get out information. I think it's pretty neat that libraries can use wikis as a way to have a web presence. And the best part, if you don't have a lot of money, it's FREE! I know that you can buy packages that allow you to do more with the wiki, but just for a small library, a free wiki would be a great start.

I also think that wikis are a good starting point to any research question or if you just want some background on a topic. Most of the time I search Wikipedia to get a base for the topic, I rarely use Wikipedia in academic papers, but it's a good place to start. It's hard to trust Wikipedia unless it has reliable sources.

I found a Harry Potter wiki that looks pretty awesome. It has a lot of information regarding all things Harry Potter. Enjoy!