Week #7 Thing #17 Sandbox

It was neat getting to look at some of the other curriculum ideas for other school library 2.0 topics. I posted Idea #32 I will have my students research topics like planets, states, animals, california history. They have to create a report and list sources. Other students can go into wiki and add things that they learn. For example:
Students could compile facts on a wiki that they know about an animal or planets. Other students could add facts as they find them out.

I could also see using wikis for kids to post questions that they think are on an exam and have other kids try to answer them. Teachers throughout the district could also post lesson plans tips and ideas on a wiki and that way others could get ideas without having to go to meetings. I could also see wikis used for student council meetings. Kids could read others idea and comment if they like or not.

What do we know about Pluto?
- It was discovered in 1930.
-It is very cold, because its far away from the sun.
It takes 248 years to orbit the sun, so a year on Pluto is 48 years.
Sometimes Pluto is closer than Neptune
Pluto has three moons. Two are small, but one Charon is just as large as Pluto.

Wikis could also be used for debating pros and cons and answering questions without knowing their identify. For example, we could discuss what will happen in 2012 when the space probe makes it to Pluto, why or why not we could live on Pluto, what would life on Pluto be like.

Week #7 Thing #16 Wikis

Tonight it was my nephew's 28th birthday. He is a high school history teacher. Interesting how we got into a converstaion about Wikipedia. Many students use it thinking it will give them information for their research. The problem is anyone can make a wikipedia entry. Do some searches on Wikipedia you can find articles about private schools you thought no one knew about or even information about authors I like such as Susan Grant or Angela Knight. I know that I am not their only fan or the only one who reads their books. The neat things about Wikipedia is that if you look under External links you can actually find more reliable websites that may have more accurate information.

What is a Wiki? Well School Library Learning 2.0 defines it as "A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content". That might be fun to try, maybe if I ever have time to spare, i'll edit and add some new information on my favorite authors.

I liked looking at some of the school wikis. Wikis could be a fun tool for maybe upper elementary and up to use to list information they know and then edits as they learn. If students are doing an animal or planet report they could list what they think is the answer to a question, then as they explore they can also make a bibliography lists websites they use to find the answers. I think it might also be fun for students to read a wiki on a famous person, then do research and see what they can add or delete.

Problems I see with Wikis are they could be time consuming especially if students have no internet access at home and also if someone does not like someone they could delete and change their information. I really enjoyed looking at Wiki's a beginner ways and how they summed up pros and cons.
Pros ( easy to use, anyone can make changes, flexible and expandable, )
Cons ( disorganzed, vandalism and spam, too open, not enough control). I also like the mention that Wikis we not for everyone. To me they are fun to read, but I will not use information from a Wiki like Wikipedia for my report.

I decided to add the Wiki Way graphic. To me, it means that there are different ways we may use Wikis. I would use a Wiki to get some basic information and to lead me to more reliable sources. I also feel it is important that students know that Wikipedia is not a reliable reference tool, but may lead you to reliable references.

New book by Susan Grant is out of this world

How to Lose and Extraterrestial in 10 days by Susan Grant

Our hero
You are kidnapped as a young child taken away from a planet and turned into a REEF(Robotically Engineered Enemy Fighter). You are a terminator like human with bio implants and computer in you. You are a deadly assassin trained to kill with no memories of your past. Your mission to kill someone who has escaped to Planet Earth fails. Your internal computers are down, your formers employers want you dead, and the men in black want you. Your cyberpowers are gone, and you are now a weak earthling.



Our heroine

You think of yourself as the family blacksheep. Your sister is a California State Senator, your brother is married to a Queen. You are a junior college dropout, who got knocked up at age 19. Your cheating ex-husband left you and your 2 kids. Now your fledging chocolate business is mistaken as a money laundering mob business. You need a bodyguard. Your sister and her husband who the REEF tried to kill want you to shelter an alien hitman. You doubt he will last ten days with you and your two teenagers. You are desperate. He is incredibly sexy.


What happens when a divorced thirty-something soccer mom and an former killing machine who is now remembering his past get together? This final book in the Outwordly men series is the best. Mom may even let high school girls read it because it has romantic scenes but not hard-core steamy sex. As if Roswell, New Mexico and Hangar 18 fascinate you, you may enjoy and find answers to where what is in hanger 18 came from.

Book #1 Your Planet or Minehad a silly cover and was humorous.
Book #2 My favorite Earthling had a lot of steamy love scenes and showed that sex does sell. Book #3 How to lose an extraterrestial in ten daysis the best yet, lots of romance, great plot, great story, alien technology, action, and suspense. You will love Evie and REEF and their chemistry.

Week #6 Thing #15: Perspectives on Web 2.0 The future of Libraries

A few months before I graduated from SJSU with an MLIS (1999), I had to undergo the dreaded 9 weeks culminating experience. For those of you who don't know what that is. You have 9 weeks to research two topics and write 2 up to 20 pages papers. One of my papers interestingly enough dealt with library schools elminating the word "library" from their names. I ended my paper with the following concluding paragraph :

There are no answers at this moment. Library schools need to help their current and prospective graduates to be part of the chnaging environment brought on by technology. The most successful method is notknown. However, it is recognized that technology will give birth to a new breed of librarians in the nextcentrut. the librarian is not dead. Long live the librarian!!!

Ironically, my other paper was entitled Digital Libraries: The Impact on the Future of the Library and Libraians. One book that has had an impact on me is J Mander (1991) In absence of the sacred; the failure of technology and survival in the Indian Nations. The first paper I wrote in library school was called "Technology and employment: Good or bad?". i concluded: "If we look back into history, there has always been technology and it has always harmed and benefitted society. Among the animal kingdom, humans have always stood apart bec ause oftheir ability to gain and use knowledge, Without this ability to develop and use a great deal of tehcnology, humans would never be where we are today".

Written in 1999, 8 years ago. Now we are in 2007, the 21st century is here. Web 2.0, a concept taht includes blogs, wikis, and podcasting is here. I just finished reading an article not on the list that my district library and technology director gave me several months ago (Derringer, P. (2007). Making the most of New Media: Library 2.0 Scholastic Administrator48-52. I also looked at Wikipedia 2.0 and Harris, Christopher. (2006) School Library 2.0, School Library Journal, May 1, 2006.

One problem that I find as an LMT is that too many kids rely on the Internet for all their information. I have also seen lots of plagarism. One of the kids in the GATE program had an article on pandas in the Gate newsletter. It sounds too good to be written by a 4th grader. i typed in one sentence using Google and voila! I found that the article was plagarized to the max. It was not the students work at all. It was just copied directly from the Internet. Sadly, this shows that students know longer think for themselves. i informed the GATE teacher and principal nothing happened. The student moved away.

As an LMT, I need to not only update my library website to serve my users from home but in my lessons include teaching both old methods for research and new technology resources. Not that easy to do in a forty minute block which is actually about 20 if you give students time to check out books. i tried collaborating with teachers but many either don't want to make the time or are technophobic. To me Library 2.0 means that the library I work in needs to also be technofriendly and I need to use and teach both print and online to my patrons.

Week #6, Thing #14: Explore Technorati and learn how tags work with blog posts

When I first looked at Technorati in Week #4, I didn't like it, but now that I got to play with it a little more my opinions changed. When I searched School library learning 2.0 in blogs, I picked up some blogs of others doing the school library learning 2.0 course. A tag search basically only picked up words like 2.0.

I explored the popular blog searches and of course Harry Potter came up. Would you believe that i have never read any Harry Potter. I saw the movies. Harry Potter just does not interest me. Maybe because I don't like reading thick books about 300 pages to 4oo is my limit. I like Philip Pullman's His dark Materials trilogy and can't wait till Golden Compass comes out as a movie. I did find the technorati help site to be very informative and explain lots of blog terms to me. Its fun looking at blogs and if I was looking for a specific blog I might used technorati, but blogs don't always have the information that I would need to do research. I did a search on my blog and it came up. It said no authority yet. Wonder what that means.

Problem with tagging is that it's not structured. I find it easier if I want to search for something to find it with a google search. I enjoy blogging but not sure yet if I want to register with techorati and claim it. I also think we need to be careful when having students search as I did get some not so nice sites.

Week #6, Thing #13: Learn about Tagging and discover Del.icio.us

This is not going to well. The 12 minute tutorial for Del.icio.us is not working. I keep getting an error message. Then I went and looked at SJLibrarylearnings 2 account.
New tools for learning: workshop resources had a lot of great links even though I don;'t know what some of the terms like Wiki mean yet. I read about the five must powerful social bookmarking services and some interesting comments about Del.icio.us were: that it was the most popular, you could put your tags in alphabetical order, and that it offered what average user needed.

I like the idea that I can save all of my favorite bookmarks and bookmarks that I find useful for the students and not worry about losing them when a computer is upgraded. I tried to set up a del.icio.us account but had problems with user name and password. Maybe i am just too tired so I'll try again tomorrow.

Week 5 Thing #12: Rollyo

Select...GoogleReferenceAnswers.comSearch The Web

I Did it!!! I am halfway done with school library 2.0. Each time I say its too hard and then I try to do the tasks and they get easier. Its been hard for me because I am teaching summer school to 3rd graders that don't want to be there and I don't have alot of time to spend, but hey I have until September to get this done. I will get done maybe not as fast as others but I will get there.

Rollyo may work for others who always go to more specific sites. I tend to use google I need. If I want something safe for kids I'll use kids click, Google safe search or yahooligans. I usually can find everything I need via google. Going to library school and working in a public library plus being a numbut has helped me to search through websites found by google and find things fast.

I could see rollyo working if I want my students to only look and search on specific websites for example like animal, state, or planet reports. Maybe I'll play around more with Rollyo and set up some good search pathfinders in the fall. Right now I'm happy just using google.

I did one week in several hours now on to week #6.