School Library Learning 2.0 Week 5, Exercise 10

Online Image Generators. Here is a photo I took from the airplane on my recent trip. The image generator sites *are* fun to explore. It is very cool to personalize photos for my MySpace friends (including my mother!).

Balinese Room - Galveston, Texas

The Balinese Room was a well-known nightclub in Galveston, Texas built on a pier stretching 600 feet from the Galveston Seawall over the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. For decades a dance hall and illegal casino, the Balinese Room was remodeled and reopened in 2001 (minus the gambling). It also operated for a time in the 1970's or 1980's. In 1997 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

After sitting vacant for 20 years, the Balinese Room and its pier are now owned by the state of Texas. A local attorney, Scott Arnold, took out a 60-year lease on the pier, and as of 2001 had reopened the Balinese Room for business. In addition to the Balinese Room itself, which is used for live music, parties, and weekend public dining, the pier has a salon, retail shops and a massage therapy room with a glass floor. It is located at the intersection of 21st Street and Seawall Boulevard.

from
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balinese_Room

School Library Learning 2.0 Week 4, Exercise 9

#9 (Week 4) Locate a few useful School Library related blogs and/or new feeds

Some of this was covered for me in #8. Also, I added School Library Blogs on SuprGlu to my Google Reader. Cool site.

When I searched "school library learning 2.0" on Google’s Blog finder I got 92 hits in 32 seconds. I appreciate the feature that lets you limit your hits by time (last hour, last 12 hours, last day, past week, past month). I found myself in the hits :) I added the feed to my Google Reader (now there is a sentence I won’t have written before this class!).

I also evaluated topix.net and used it to find more interesting sites for my Google Reader. The blue bar that shows when the most activity is taking place is enlightening. I also found an amusing blog titled Everything I know about librarianship I learned from Star Wars from the Inquiring Librarian's blog.

Voice Thread - Too Cool

This is one of the new tech finds I discovered from my blog searching.

School Library Learning 2.0 Week 4, Exercise 8

Google Reader,
originally uploaded by Kyle Jones.

#8 (Week 4) Learn about RSS feeds and set up a blog reader account. I was worried about this week since I had no idea what RSS were. I kind of thought they were like little, ever changing reader boards that were at the bottom of a blog. Don’t know where I got that idea. I couldn’t find the blog posting that discusses the difference between the 2 feed readers, but I did find plenty of other information the differences including an interesting comparison from Lifehacker.

I created a Google Reader and put in several newsfeeds. They include:

o Book Lust by Nancy Pearl
o My other library friend in Washington State working on this with me
o Unshelved (the library comic) http://www.unshelved.com/blog.aspx?post=844
o A cross country bicycle trip my work friend’s sons are taking http://mccaffreyjoh07.blogspot.com/
o My Flickr Account – new photos and comments
o Lifehaker http://lifehacker.com/

There are other ones reflecting my hobbies and interests.

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders? I really like them, though I can see the number of hits can become overwhelming. But what a delightful way to be exposed to a variety of different thoughts & ideas.

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your school or personal life? I think that I could use this technology to stay on topic of trends in the library/information field. I wonder if I can get into my Google Reader at school, so many of the sites end up being blocked. Personally it will be a time saver to go to one spot to check out the most recent postings. It makes my bookmarking my favorite blogs look quaint.

How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology? I’m imaging them setting up different RSS on topics for Patrons. Maybe one on different aspects of a city.

Optional: If you're up to the challenge, you can provide the URL address to your public bloglines account (find where to find this below) Since I went with the Google Reader, I don’t have this option. Though I’m sure Google will have it soon.

School Library Learning 2.0 Week 3, Exercise 7

Create a post about anything technologically related that interest you.

I am reading Totally wired : what teens and tweens are really doing online by Anastasia Goodstein. While many of us in the library biz consider ourselves to be tech savvy, it is really today's young people that think nothing of using the technology during their day to day lives. These middle & high school students have MySpace accounts (or something similar), they are on a computer every day and they have even created their own language to be used for text messaging.

It doesn't matter if the more seasoned adults think the new wired generation is going down a good or bad path, it only matters that we guide them to use the tools safely and efficiently. That is why it is so important to go outside of our comfort level by challenging ourselves to learn new things.

The photo was taken in my backyard of ladybugs doing social networking. :)

Social Networking in Plain English

School Library Learning 2.0 Week 3, Exercise 6b

This is a very simple explanation of social networking.