Second Life Experience

Even after almost a full week of exploration, I am still not a fan of Second Life--I found it very confusing and difficult to navigate. I do like the idea of it, but I just found myself bewildered and frustrated as I tried to figure out to how to more than wander around aimlessly. I did manage to visit Info Island, which seems like it would be a cool place, if I had known how to do more while I was there.

Here's my screenshot.

I also tried World of Warcraft, to see if I could get into any aspect of immersive gaming. I found WoW to be a little more user friendly--at least the gave me tips and guidance as I worked my way through.

Best practices: screencasting

Here are my discoveries for what it takes to create a successful screencast:

• Know your content, and your audience. Don't try to create a screencast on something you are just learning yourself. And create a screencast that will keep your target audience engaged.
• Know your equipment! Be familiar with how your mike, computer and screencasting software work. This helps eliminate "technical difficulties" once you are ready to start recording.
• Practice, practice, practice! Do a run-through or two, especially if you are self-conscious when recording yourself. It will help you rehearse timings and transitions and also help you feel more comfortable with your presentation.
  

Which console for you?

So I really just have to say that if this decision were actually to be made in real life, I should NOT be the one to make it! I don't know much about gaming at all.

That said, I would of course undertake a lot of research before making a selection. Let's say I'm working in a school library, and we want to implement some gaming that can be used to both A) attract students to library events and B) increase learning. I'd start by surveying the students themselves, and faculty as well. I love the site SurveyMonkey
for purpose of creating quick and easy online surveys that people can fill out.

What are some other criteria I'd use in making my selection, besides the survey results? Here are some questions I'd ask:

• How popular is it? Older consoles are pretty much out--no one's going to be interested in say, old-school Nintendo with Mario Brothers!
• What level of interactivity does it offer? We don't want users to just come in and then sit in isolation in front of the console. We want them to interact with each other.
• What games are available--specifically what educational games? I'm working in a school library, I want the kids to learn!

Based on the above criteria, and my limited knowledge of gaming consoles, I think I would probably end up going with Wii or Xbox 360. Not only are those popular and likely to draw kids in, but they also seem like they'd offer the degree of interactivity I'm looking for.

Online Gaming Screencast

I love Literati on Yahoo! Games.

Unfortunately, the girl I was playing with wasn't too fast, so this screen is mostly me waiting for her to make a move....

Literati

Ning

I think Ning is amazing! Libraries could do so much with it. While Facebook groups and MySpace pages are a great way for libraries to get the word out about what they offer, Ning offers so much more, because the library can have a whole social network all of its own. People joining the library Ning network can feel a real sense of belonging, and it might encourage them to take more advantage of the library's offerings in person.

Facebook How-To Screencast

Here's a quick screencast on one of the many applications Facebook offers, how to add it to your page and how to use it once it's there.

2008-04-13_1248

Sticky Social Network Sites

I believe that sites like Facebook and MySpace are "sticky" for a few reasons. First of all, they offer a quick and easy way to stay in touch with, and/or "keep tabs on," people from all of one's many different social circles. I first got into Facebook because it was a great way to stay in touch with college friends, and to disperse life updates to all my friends quickly and easily. I think that's what initially draws a lot of people to the site. And, being able to be in touch so easily is addictive for many people, myself included.

And then came the applications. They are what keeps these sites sticky. There is so much to do, check, update and so on with any given visit to MySpace or Facebook that you really can spend hours at a time there.

My Favorite Class Video

I thought that Carina's video on how to teach your dog to sit was great! It looked very finished and was enjoyable to watch as well as being educational. AND I learned something that I can use! :)

Sitting Success by Carina

Snapz Pro X Screencast

I'm a Mac devotee, so I used Snapz Pro X to create a screencast about how to use a program called Mastery Manager, which my school district uses to track student achievement.


Click to play

Jing Screencast

For my first attempt at screencasting, I gave a quickie tour of my favorite lesson planning site, Web English Teacher. I did a sample search for lesson ideas using an upcoming unit I am planning for my 8th grade English classes.


Lesson Planning Fun!

Our Flickr Photos

In the first group, I loved seeing the photos of everyone's pets. I noticed a lot of photos of homes and children, too--seems all of us are happy to share our families!

I thought that the edexperience photos were really great--some really artistic approaches from people! Obviously with online learning lots of people shared photos of their computers. I liked noting the photos that showed workstations and how everyone finds a different spot where they're productive.

A fun project!

Embedded Video 2

This is my "educational" video, which is a clip of some of my 9th grade girls telling you a bit about their school.

Vodcasting: Entertainment v. Education

The thing that's important to understand about educational videos is that to be effective, they also have to be entertaining. As any teacher can tell you, if the manner of presentation is boring, the content will be lost on your students. I think that those who set out to produce educational videos should keep in mind the elements of what makes the most popular entertainment videos so successful. The YouTube video "The Machine Is Us/ing Us" is a very good example.

Embedded Video 1

My first video was made using iMovie (SO easy!) and it is a compilation of photographs from my wedding in January.

My Podcasting Adventure

I am very apprehensive about recording anything, so this was a big adventure for me! Here's my story.

I told a very short story little story about my spring break. I went to Canada on my honeymoon--opposite end of the earth from south Texas! We had a great time skiing and enjoying mountains and snow. I hope you all enjoy my little podcast!

Podcasting v. Blogging

The benefit that I see to podcasting over blogging is that it is a little more personal, a little easier to express yourself as you share material. As we all know, text can sometimes be misinterpreted. With a podcast, you have the added benefit of hearing the voice of the podcaster and it becomes less difficult to interpret their true intentions, meaning and emotions as you listen to the material.

I think podcasting would be a great way for a school librarian, or a children's librarian, to share the joy of reading aloud with online patrons.

Libraries and the Long Tail

Libraries and librarians have to actively make a decision to utilize the "long tail" of their collections. It can't and doesn't just happen. However, with strategic practices in place to make the long tail a useful tool, not an unnecessary obstacle, I think the idea of it presents a lot to offer libraries striving to fully enter the 21st century through the services they provide and the materials in their collections.

Flickr and my EdExperience

I've known about the existence of Flickr for a long time, but never used it. Now, I'm not sure why, because--as with just about everything else I've encountered in the course of this class--I love it, and I see the potential for so many different sorts of projects that could incorporate it.

And now on to the real topic of this post--my educational experience at RU. I was a little unsure about online learning when I first started the program a little over a year ago, but I have grown to love it. Even in my far south, almost-Mexico locale, my online learning experience has made a great education very accessible to me. With the benefits of my MacBook and wireless internet at home, it's also very easy to be connected and get work done, even when collaborating with my classmates.

Check out all the photos at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/scils598s08-edexperience/

Collaborating with Google

I can see lots of potential benefits to using Google Docs in collaborative projects for class. Using it for our group project this week has been a good way to share notes and thoughts. However, I think that wikis are better, for a number of reasons.

• Sites like PBWiki seem generally more user-friendly than Google Docs
• This is important when trying to sell less technologically advanced group members (or faculty members!) on the value of the tool
• PBWiki has a more polished look to it, I feel

Nevertheless, Google Docs are a great way to get where you're going, if not for use as the finished product.

Look what we did!

I love del.icio.us! I'd never used it before last week and I don't quite know what I did without it. :) It's such a great way to share favorite sites, and I loved getting to see everyone else's bookmarks. I think this would be a fabulous way to get to know each other in a virtual classroom.

Wikispaces v. PB Wiki

I am more familiar with PBWiki and so I'm inclined to say I like it more, but I want to give Wikispaces a fair chance. I did like it. Both PBWiki and Wikispaces are very user friendly. I found that the introduction on Wikispaces was very nice--it popped right up after I created my account so I didn't have to hunt around for a tutorial or anything. And it was very thorough--possibly more so than the introductory info on PBWiki. But again, I didn't need much of an orientation to PBWiki. Both of these sites, however, are wonderful and would lend themselves well to classroom or school library needs.

Shelfari

Since I tried out LibraryThing last week, I thought this week I would take a stab at Shelfari. I like it--and I actually think I like it better than LibraryThing, at least for the purposes for which I would use it (a classroom library online catalog, to be shared on a class blog or wiki.) Here are some features of Shelfari that jumped out at me:

• Very easy, with the click of a button, to add your shelf to your blog.
• Books easily divided up into "reading" "read" and "want to read."
• Fun bookshelf graphic display would appeal to my students.
• It's super-easy to navigate and to add books--even if you don't know the complete title or author.
  

New to me: LibraryThing

At a classmate's suggestion, I tried LibraryThing this week for my "new to me" social software experience. I really didn't like Cataloging when I took it, but I'm not turned off by LibraryThing--I even like it, in fact!

I think what got me really sold on LibraryThing was thinking about how I could use it in conjunction with a class blog or wiki (I teach middle school English). It would be a great way to add just another little interactive component to getting students invested in books and reading.

Feed, take 2

I felt depressed after finishing this book. As I tried to put my finger on why, I came up with a couple of reasons.

I think that we are close to the society of Feed. Perhaps not literally, but our culture is already so incredibly consumer-driven. (Think about the amount of money invested in Superbowl commericals for example.) And when it comes to the internet, that consumer-driven culture just expands exponentially. With so much technology surrounding us, we need to be careful not to get overwhelmed and lose touch, which is what's happened in the novel.

And in the novel, that consumer-driven culture, taken to the extreme, has stripped humanity of, well, its humanity. I think that's really what made me so depressed about the way the novel ended. If people hadn't let it go so far, it wouldn't have ended so badly.

Bloglines vs. Google Reader

I am newly obsessed with Bloglines. As I delve deeper into the world of blogging, I'm looking forward to using it to track not the blogs of my fellow students, but also the many other blogs out there that I'm getting more addicted to every day! I like being able to sort blogs into folders. Makes it easy to stay organized.

Google Reader, I don't like as well, probably because I just haven't spent as much time with it. I set up an account merely for comparison, after already getting sucked into Bloglines. I'll keep using it though, and see if it grows on me.

Oh, and one last thing that I liked about both sites: they suggested feeds I might like to subscribe to. That was great for someone like me, who wants to read blogs more but doesn't really know what's out there.

Feed

I have to admit, I found Feed a little hard to get into at first. However, I kept at it and it wasn't long before I got sucked in.

Being an English teacher, I naturally found an excuse to discuss it with a couple of my students. I gave them the run-down of what it was about, and asked if they thought it was in any way a realistic portrayal of what the future could be. One of them said it sounded like a metaphor or a fable, and I think that's how I see it, too.

What are our "feeds" in society today? To the teens I talked to, their feeds were peer pressure, or even pressure from teachers and parents and everyone else who "tells them what to think." I think it is certainly a very, very interesting parallel to draw.

New to me: Bloglines!

I logged on to Bloglines for the first time on Sunday night. It is now Tuesday, and having used it for the first time to read my classmates' blog entries, I'm an addict. In my next post I'll be comparing it with Google Reader (also new to me).

For now, let me just say that I love the idea of sites like both Bloglines and Google Reader. When I used to use an LJ account, I had something similar in the "Friends Page" feature that LJ offers, but the feature for that service is very limiting in that one can only subscribe to other LJ blogs. Bloglines has opened up a whole new world to me!

I can't wait to explore more of the possiblities! :)

Thoughts on Brown & Durgid

Brown & Durgid's text The Social Life of Information offers some great take-aways for libraries regarding the use of blogging and other social software. The title of the text alone suggests that information is becoming more and more an interactive, "group effort" so to speak. I've listed a couple more specific thoughts below:

Technology, while offering valuable new paths to information access, is and always must be seen as a means to an end. Without librarians to help guide the process and assist users with the technology, the social software itself would just get in the way. Some might raise the argument that a library blog takes the place of a face-to-face conversation with a librarian--but they would be seeing through a narrow lens. Librarians use blogs as one of many ways to do what they do best--provide information.

That said, it is important for libraries to be deliberate in what technology and social software they choose to implement, and how they choose to use it. Used without a plan or clear goal, they can indeed seem to just get in the way of the user-librarian interaction.

Blogs and other social software have a lot to offer libraries. But the bottom line for implementation really needs to be "proceed with caution" to eliminate misunderstandings and confusion about the intent and purpose of these tools.

Blogger vs. Livejournal

On my first forays into the world of blogging, during my senior year of college, I was a stauch Livejournal fan. Livejournal does offer a lot of features that I like, and that I miss with Blogger. But now, I feel Blogger has more to offer me than Livejournal.
Here's my breakdown comparison.

Benefits of Livejournal:

• Livejournal features community blogs, which are missing on Blogger.
• Livejournal also allows bloggers to have a "Friends" page on their blog, linked to other LJ blogs they enjoy reading. No such feature seems to be available on Blogger.
• Livejournal's personalizations options include user pics, which can be highly customized. Different pictures can be used for different entries--a kind of visual tagging.

Benefits of Blogger:

• Blogger has a much more professional reputation, it seems. Livejournal is a lot more social and informal, while I feel I could use Blogger for a blended professional/personal library blog.
• Blogger's layout menu, while more limited than LJ's in terms of skins, allows more customization options for "page elements," which can be as numerous and varied as the blogger desires.

The biggest reason I'm sold on Blogger for library blogging is that it looks and feels more professional to me. Livejournal, on the other hand, is much more social--like a MySpace for bloggers.

School Library Blogs

Blogs, in my opinion, hold a world of possiblities for school libraries. As social software, sites like MySpace and Facebook, and free blogging sites become more and more a part of everyday life, library blogs are a great way to draw students in. Of course, the same principle would hold true in any library, but it seems especially relevant for school libraries.

Here are a couple of school library blogs that I like:

Valley View Middle School Library - This "Book Blog" serves a great model from which to get a school library blog started. It consists pretty much entirely of book reviews. The tagging is great; it allows students to search for reviews in subject areas of interest. One improvement I personally would make to this blog would be to allow student volunteers access, to act as student reviewers.

Newton North High School Library - This high school library blog goes a step beyond the VVMS blog, incorporating not only book reviews but pop culture connections and book news, such as notice about upcoming movie adaptations of popular books. The librarian also includes a links list to further engage students' interest. Again, the addition of student reviewers would help to take this blog even further.