Personally, I LOVE Flikr. I love taking photos and looking at them and making comments and sharing them! What a great concept!. Professionally, I think learning about wikis and more about del.icio.us will benefit me professionally. I never quite got the hang of RSS feeds, although I do understand their use.

  An unexpected outcome from this course was that I didn’t expect all this stuff to be so much FUN! I found it very interesting and although there is still a bit of a generation gap, I was glad to learn that the baby boomers are embracing this technology as well.

The only thing I would suggest to improve upon the program would be for the presenters and facilitators “dumb” things down a little. Be aware that not everyone knows what you are talking about. Many times during the presentations, words were being thrown around and I had no clue what they meant. Even though a word may be in your everyday vocabulary, it doesn’t mean it’s in everyone’s. And even if it is a word we’ve heard, we still might not know exactly what it is or what it can do. At least this is the way I felt. When I read to the younger grades I always stop when I come across a unfamiliar word and make sure they understand it.

For  quite awhile now, I have wanted to move up to the middle school or high school level from elementary. One of my reasons is that I am and always have been a “media” person. I love teaching media literacy and Power Point and always wanted to teach kids video production but have never had the means or the time to do it. After taking this class, I want to move up even more since these sites having to do with social networking are much more doable at the higher levels. Yes, I know it is possible to have blogs, wikis, etc at the elementary level, just like it’s possible to teach video production, but it is just easier with more mature kids.  This week, I enjoyed learning about Flickr and as someone else mentioned, it’s fun. I’ll enjoy periodically checking out my groups and I plan to add some pictures of my school library and the local public library. (we have a really neat sculpture) Interesting what I learned about MySpace. It seems that now it’s not as cool as it once was since 40% of its users are old like me and just the fact that libraries have a presence on MySpace now makes it not as edgy. I understand that high school and university libraries decided that this would be a good way to reach their patrons, but in the process have they actually turned them away?  Wouldn’t this be kinda like a teenage girl thinking an outfit is really great until she sees her mother wearing it?  Anyway, if I move up to the high school level, I would look into MySpace as a way to reach the students but there is no way I can at the elementary. 

I had heard little about MMOG’s, and really was not interested in them. The first computer game I played was Pong.  And then I became an expert at Centipede. So these games were beyond me and I really didn’t expect to have anything to do with them until I saw a paragraph from my ISTE listserv:

I have to admit I am at a loss as to how I could use Wikis in an elementary school setting. I was trying to think about a way to use it with students but I’m worried about security issues and I know my tech people would be, too. Then I tried to think of a way to use it with my staff  but some of them still won’t access their email. My fellow librarians? A possibility but we already use something called an Eboard to collaborate online.

While listening to Gabriel Lundeen’s Screencast - Tagging, Folksonomies and the Collective Consciousness of Online Communities, I started thinking how hard it is to teach my 5^th graders proper search techniques when using a search engine. For the most part, I try to steer them to websites that I already have posted on the school’s website for their research. Most students ignore me and insist on using Google. Sometimes they find something, sometimes they don’t. At the beginning of the school year, these students were required to do a Native American research project.

The tutorial for Bloglines was great. I actually had already registered with them but now was able to go in and save  blogs and podcasts. I also figured out how to make a folder and saved 5 blogs for my husband. I showed it to him but he's pretty tech illiterate so I'll have to show him a few more times, I'm sure. I was extrememly proud of myself that I already had a delicious account and have some sites tagged. But after watching the webcast today I see that there is a lot more to it and I need to explore more. I understand RSS but everytime I hear the word "feed" it gives me the heebie jeebies because of the young adult book by the same title by M.T.

I took the leap, after completing some readings and activities from class. I started a blog.  I thought I would like edublog, I guess the “edu” part made me feel it’s more legitimate and I thought I would like to join the “largest educational blogging site on the web”. But as soon as I signed up, I was totally confused. I went into Blogger and signed up there and found it much easier, but I still really don’t know what I’m doing. I tried to put up a picture using Hello and couldn’t figure that out either, although I did manage to insert a picture. I noticed other blogs had hyperlinks-how do you do that? Help! In my district I am one of the most technological savvy people employed. With you people, I feel like a five year old. I am familiar with FrontPage, I’m webmaster of 3 websites….Anyway, Blogger seems to be a favorite with a lot of people and it’s the one I hear the most about. Probably not the best reason to choose a blogging tool but a good enough reason for a beginner. Although now I’m starting to think about Wordpress. Like any good librarian,  I have to do more research! But it will have to wait until Monday as I am going away for the weekend. Have a good one.

In the academic setting, what I think makes a blog work is the posting of news and information. As an elementary school librarian, I was especially impressed with Cold Spring Elementary School Library in California.

The librarian, Janet Pedersen, updates her blog every week, discussing what each grade level did in the library, discussing favorite titles and displaying pictures of students. Our school district is very strict about putting student’s pictures “out there”. I doubt I would be allowed to do this. But I do want to start a blog. I used to publish a monthly news letter, this would be much easier. I also was impressed with the page layout of this blog, easy to read and user friendly. My goal is to start a book discussion blog with my students.

Well, I'm feeling a little out of place and intimidated. I'm only a lowly elementary school librarian. However, I do hope to move up to the high school level, possibly next year. I've always tried to stay on the "cutting edge" ( I really don't like that term) and I love technology. I don't want to be left behind and, as one of my classmates mentioned, as a parent of two  soon-to-be-teenagers, I feel I need to keep up with them in terms of technology.  I've been reading about Blogging, RSS, etc. in my professional journals for quite a while now and this course will give me the opportunity for some hands-on experience. I live and work in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and I have held several district-level positions, including Instructional Television Coordinator and Distance Learning Coordinator. Looking forward to working with everyone.