Pickwick Blog

This is an experiment to see if I can successfully embed a widget into this blog.

I’m very sad to come to the end of “23 Things.” This has been one of the absolute best and most useful and meaningful courses I’ve ever taken, and I am constantly emailing my colleagues at school to urge them to sign up for this class. I am dizzy with the prospects of all I can do with what I’ve learned. If anything, my greatest difficulty is going to be reviewing and sorting through all the information. However, I’ve picked up some tools along the way that will be helpful in sorting through information – Google Reader, Del.i.cious, LibraryThing – these will be wonderful for helping me keep track of copious amountss of information. I believe that the two most valuable tools I discovered are creating a blog and creating a wiki. The blogging is going to be very useful for me as I establish a library blog for my school this coming fall. I want to use the blog to showcase new materials, foster discussion and teen input, showcase our Jane Austen Society and our student book club (Pickwick Club), as well as market the library and events that take place through out the year as part of library programming. The wiki concept will be valuable for me in order to partner with classroom teachers as they collect and share information pertinent to their courses and to class research projects. Partnering with teachers is a major part of my job as a school librarian, and I feel that I have a much better hold on how to foster that collaboration whether working with teachers or students. One of my favorite tools is LetterPop. I have always wanted to make organized and lovely newsletters. I am committed to learning to use this tool very well. I’m also excited about the various graphic organizers that were part of this course, and I will be using them to enliven displays both online and elsewhere. Perhaps most of all, I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone and will be doing a great deal more collaboration, rather than just going it alone, which has generally been my style. I have been introduced to an infinite world of educational partners who have already given me so many wonderful ideas and such encouragement. I believe that this may have been the most valuable “lesson” of all. After all, is that not the heart of Web 2.0??

I just discovered a fantastic new Jane Austen blog entitled Jane Austen Today. This blog explores Jane Austen as we see her today in movies, print, sequels, websites, and other modern day media. This is a topic I’ve long been interested in as it seems every day brings some new element of Jane Austen into the modern era. Most recently the book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith has caused quite an uproar in the Jane Austen community.

This Jane Auten blog is very thorough and beautifully done. See the video below for an example of modern promotion of Jane Austen’s major characters.

http://www.youtube.com/user/tugger29

I was quite blown away by this assignment examining Classroom 2.0, a social networking site for educators and others interested in Web 2.0 concepts and applications. Amazing – what a goldmine of information!! I found that by searching other topics by adding a tag, specifically the library, wonderful connections were made with members of Classroom 2.0. Please take a look at this link on libraries! I found so many helpful ideas. It will take me quite a while to go through this, but as pointed out in class, you really can’t go through all of it – you just have to sift through what is useful where and when you can.  Ning was really interesting also. There is a ton of information and lots of people with whom to connect – all interested in the same things I’m interested in! I know that I can make great use of social networking in my professional and personal learning, but right now I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed by all that I’ve learned and been exposed to in this course. I may have to set a goal for myself of going back and reviewing and experimenting with 2 or 3 things each week. I don’t know how people keep all of this straight and do their “real” job. I know it’s supposed to make your “real” job easier, and I can see where it would really help, but there is also only so much you can absorb and employ in your everyday life and job. I’m truly excited, but very uncertain if I can keep up with all this. I will have to concentrate on just a few things that are really useful that I can honestly use on a consistent basis. Mostly, I will likely read it all for great ideas to use in my work and life, but go slow on participating beyond observation.

In Google Reader this week, I enjoyed reading a description of Sandra Dallas‘ s new novel, “Prayers for Sale,” and I can’t wait to read it. I have always been a fan of Sandra Dallas, and her new book is set in one of my favorite time periods for historical ficiton – The Great Depression. Ms. Dallas’s novels are set in the West, and having been the Denver bureau chief for “Business Week” magazine, she has a great understanding for the grit and adventurous spirit of women who settled and/or lived in the West.

“Hennie Comfort is eighty-six and has lived in the mountains of Middle Swan, Colorado since before it was Colorado.  Nit Spindle is just seventeen and newly married.  She and her husband have just moved to the high country in search of work.  It’s 1936 and the depression has ravaged the country and Nit and her husband have suffered greatly.  Hennie notices the young woman loitering near the old sign outside of her house that promises “Prayers For Sale”.  Hennie doesn’t sell prayers, never has, but there’s something about the young woman that she’s drawn to.  The harsh conditions of life that each have endured create an instant bond and an unlikely friendship is formed, one in which the deepest of hardships are shared and the darkest of secrets are confessed.” (Macmillan Publishers Description)

My favorite Sandra Dallas book is “The Diary of Mattie Spenser.”  “The buoyancy and simple, uncloying sweetness of spirit of Dallas’s appealing protagonist–the young wife of a homesteader in Colorado Territory–give a bright, fresh shading to the tragedies and small sharp joys of 19th-century frontier life. A modest, appealing novel with a convincing reach into Colorado’s plains and skies.” (Kirkus Reviews) I have owned five copies of this book at one time or another, and I always wind up giving them away to a friend to read. Ms. Dallas’s other novels include:

• The Persian Pickle Club
• Tallgrass
• Alice’s Tulips: A Novel
• The Chili Queen: A Novel
• Buster Midnight’s Cafe
• Prayers for Sale
• New Mercies

Okay, here’s something I’ve never even heard of – Pageflakes. Apparently, you get this really amazing opening page customized with items of interest and personal preferences with all sorts of helpful access to news, podcasts, blogs, music, and neat educational or other topical items. This was a little aggravating to get going, but I can see where you could make a really personalized and helpful shortcut to anything. The example given was a teacher who used Pageflakes to make a student portal for the study of Darfur. The page was amazing with feeds from news, blogs, podcasts, etc. that were really up-to-date and helpful for students who want to keep up with current information on that topic. I absolutely LOVE Grammar Girl!

Here’s a link to my first efforts with Pageflakes:

http://www.pageflakes.com/cwalton/27431277.

I will add another post later and work on this again in order to improve my page.

When my kindergarten teacher told me to share, I never knew it would become so complicated at times or technologically driven! For the past year in my workplace all I’ve heard is Google Docs, Google Docs. I had experimented very little, but just recently and quite conveniently for a real life scenario, Google Docs has become a very timely and useful method of sharing. I have been doing volunteer work for The Bascom Center for the Visual Arts in Highlands, NC. The center has a small research library that is in its initial stages, and I have volunteered to help get it off the ground. Our wonderful, but small, library committee is collaborating on a mission statement as a starting point. The ladies had not heard of Google Docs, and I looked pretty darn competent as an “information specialist” when I told them how we could use Google Docs to collaborate on our mission statement. Anyway, in playing around with Google Docs, I have also begun to use the spreadsheet option to outline my library budget. I can think of many ways that Google Docs and all the applications would be useful for me in my work. The presentation applications of project management/research projects would be great for library projects and/or student research projects. As stated before, I could obviously make great use of the spreadsheet option to create and edit the library budget, and Google Docs could also be used for the calendar presentation to outline library programming and upcoming and/or special events. My school will be requiring teachers to use Google Docs to place their course assignments online as well.

I’m experimenting with embedding a Wordle into my blog. This is the beginning of the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. In checking, it will not automatically pull up the Wordle here, but if you click on the link below and be a little bit patient it will appear. It’s such a creative and interesting way to present text – like visual word poetry. Exploring the Wordle sight is fun and interesting with regards to all the creative ways words and phrases are presented.

title=”Wordle: Untitled”>
src=”http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/970517/Untitled”
alt=”Wordle: Untitled”
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Eureka! I have created my very first podcast! This is the “thing” of the “23 Things” that I most dreaded. It gives me particular satisfaction as I had a friend who thought that I might not be able to complete this task, but I was determined to do so. This task was a barebones podcast but even so, it was particularly difficult for me as there were many complex steps but I had great instructions and guidance and was able to prevail after much trial and error. I had the most difficulty creating the original sound recording and converting it from a WAV file to an MP3 file. Just writing that last sentence gives me great satisfaction! Who’d have thought that I would ever be discussing converting audio files! How funny! Can you tell I’m deliriously happy?! Anyway, it was not too difficult once the first steps were over. The class used the free audio recorder on our PC’s by going to All Programs, Accessories, Sound Recorder (sometimes under Entertainment) to record our originial material. We then used a free site, Zamzar, to convert the WAV file to an MP3 file. Then we used a free podcast host site called Gcast in order to publish and share our podcast. My stretch task for this assignment is to embed my podcast in this blog posting. Let’s see if it works!

I imagine that I could find all sorts of uses in the library for podcasting. Book Talks come to mind first and foremost. It would be a much more creative way to outline books for students to try and draw them in to reading the book. It could also be used to showcase certain events or speakers in the library as well.

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I’ve spent some time looking at YouTube but not a lot. At times it seemed as though I was one of the few people in the world not spending a great deal of time looking at YouTube. This assignment was good in that it forced me to spend more time examining YouTube and all it had to offer. I believe, along with Shelley, that you still need to examine the content of YouTube with a critical eye if you are using it for educational purposes. Again, many students seem to feel that if something is portrayed in film, especially in some kind of documentary type format, that it must be reliable and accurate. I did not know about TeacherTube so I’m really glad to find a source that can be used more reliably. In looking at various YouTube content, I think that I could make great use of the book to movie trailers in marketing the library’s content. Trailers such as My Sister’s Keeper and Twilight would be very popular ways of directing students to read the books as well as see the films. For instruction, I spent time looking at various sewing footage – particularly how to applique. This is something that I am very interested in learning about and so the footage was really helpful there. For fun I took a look at librarian footage and found lots of funny and crazy/zany type footage such as a librarian losing her cool at a patron who randomly puts a book back on a shelf and librarians heralded in song and film. Obviously humor is a big part of the YouTube attraction. I do love how it does seem to tie all of us together at times such as the “Stand By Me” international video or Britain’s Got Talent’s Susan Boyle. TeacherTube provided me with several library skills videos such as 21st Century Skills and what a 21st century library should be.