Wordle - Tag Clouds

I really like Wordle! It is so fun to use. And you can pick and choose the colors and fonts you want to use for your tag cloud. Pretty neat huh?

I used the option of using the tags from a blog. I used the School Library Monthly Blog.

Podcasting

I have listened to a lot of podcasts, but I have never made one myself. It's weird listening to myself talk.

I found a cool website that does podcasts about books that could be beneficial for a school library to listen to in order to find new books for the library.The 2011/2012 Isinglass Booktalk Podcasts are pretty cool. It is a real project that Hopkinton High School & Hopkinton Middle School Library students have been part of. 


The website says, "Welcome to our Library's podcast series. We chose Isinglass booktalks because the Isinglass Teen Read Award is such a great project. It is real! Actual 7th & 8th graders (as opposed to their parents, teachers, or their librarians...) nominate the books, read the books, and choose the winner each year. Our hats are off to the Barrington Public Library, Amy Inglis, and the teens who have spearheaded this effort since 2002."


I listened to the booktalk for Matched by Ally Condie. You can listen to it here. I've read the book and agreed with most of what the podcast stated. Overall, I learned that podcasting is a great way to get out information to a lot of people. And it is nice because it is a break from reading. In one of my classes, we got to listen to NPR stories instead of reading. It's nice to have multiple ways to learn about a subject. Plus, with NPR, there is usually a transcription of the story as well as the audio.

I like subscribing to podcasts via iTunes. One of my favorite podcasts I subscribe to is Stuff You Should Know by How Stuff Works. It is all about random facts and I love learning about random things. This podcast also gives you a great way to start conversations with random facts.

YouTube

I really like YouTube (for the most part). I actually posted a holiday song video from YouTube every single day in December on my personal blog (if you want to check it out, let me know). Another video website is Vimeo. It's pretty cool as well.

This video is for "libraries of the future" and even though it's on the long side, it brings up a good point that libraries need to stay on top of technology in order to be successful. It starts with a 1950s movie about libraries and then moves into a parody by Mr. Eugene Oregon. Libraries will still be needed, maybe not for the same use, but are still important.


This video brings me back to my childhood. It's from Arthur and it's pretty funny. But you know, "having fun isn't hard, when you've got a library card!" It's a catchy song.

Twitter

I never thought I would get a Twitter account. I have other social media sites to keep track of, why would I need another one?


After playing around with Twitter for a while, I enjoyed finding libraries, news stations, and TV shows to follow. It's nice to have one place to get updates (it's like Google Reader, but more condensed). I have not started following my friends and family that have Twitter, but I am sure once I get more into "tweeting," I will have more conversations with them via Twitter. It's also nice to keep my profile and tweets private.


Once I got over the fact I didn't want a Twitter account, I found that Twitter isn't that bad. And I actually enjoy reading the headlines and fun facts from my favorite sources.


I think Twitter is a great way for libraries to get information about events or cool news out to huge amounts of people in a very short time. As long as the library has a lot of followers, it can use Twitter for its benefit. I know I would love to know what's going on with libraries and what events are happening at the library.


Tweet Tweet!!!

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.