#23 Reflections and what's next

Participating in the CSLA's School Library Learning 2.0 program has been beneficial to me. Even though I was familiar with some of the tools that were discussed, I really took the time to reflect on how I can use these in my instructional practice and how my colleagues can use them with students.

Prior to beginning the program, I used many of these tools in my personal life (blogging, flickr, YouTube) as a way to record the things that are going on in my family and so that relatives and friends who live far from us are still able to keep up on what is going on with my children. I've even used my blog as a professional journal to track the things I want to remember related to work, like articles I've read, things I've done in the classroom that have worked well, and my notes on previous professional goals like last year's collection analysis and comparison to the other secondary schools in my district. I've struggled with what's appropriate to put on that personal blog and found that for my own comfort, I really need to keep my personal and professional blogging separate. I expect I'll continue to use this blog professionally because I want to be reflective about my instructional practices.

One of the things that happened this year in my school was very exciting to me: I had a teacher whose professional goal was to have her students blog. A few years ago, I created a blog that I host from our home server called Read Write Think Repeat. We used it briefly during a summer reading program and I also used it to post announcements about new materials as they were purchased. I worked with Robyn and her students to begin using that blog for student-created book reviews and discussion. The students voted to change the name to Rockin' Reads so that's its current title.

Changes in the way our network is administered meant that I can no longer make that page the library computers' homepage. I cannot even add it to the bookmarks on computers as everything is wiped from the history and bookmarks on our computers when someone logs out of them. One of my biggest personal frustrations about technology in our schools is the lack of communication and information sharing that goes on.

To get to my school library site, one has to start at the district website (every computer lab and library computer's homepage), click on schools, click on schools again and find my school in the dropdown list, click on library and the click on website in that dropdown list. It can't be bookmarked by students at school. (Teachers can bookmark it, but based on the phone and email requests I get, I'm pretty sure no one has.)
Because it's not used, I'm not very motivated to work on the site. Because the site has limited use, it's not used. It's a Catch-22. I think I could use the library blog site to be the library website adding pages to it, but that probably involves negotiations with the district technology department to figure out how to make that work. At least it is a relatively easy address to remember.

As a district we applied for the Improving Literacy through School Libraries grant. Technology and technology training is a significant portion of that proposal. Some of the things that teachers said they wanted to learn more about are PowerLibrary (our state-provided online databases), pod/vodcasts, wikis and blogs. I will probably be involved in providing some of those trainings, so participating in SLL2.0 has helped to prepare me for that--but I'll certainly need additional work to provide the best possible training. I've signed up for some training at our state conference and I'll probably do some additional self-discovery and learning to supplement what I've learned from the CSLA program.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this to any teacher, administrator or librarian who wants to learn more about web 2.0 tools. Thank you to CSLA for making it available to anyone! I was supposed to have a partner working on the tutorials with me, someone from LM_NET, but she ended up not posting much after her initial few posts and the emails that I've sent to her asking if she needed help or support have gone unanswered, so I'm not sure what happened to make her abandon the tutorials. We're also supposed to discuss a book we were planning to read together, but I suspect that will go by the wayside as well. I hope it does not impact my evaluation because she hasn't followed through.

A few weeks ago, I found reference to the next 23 things (Library 2.1) from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library and I believe I will continue my learning by doing those things as I have time.

#17 Wiki on curriculum uses of web 2.0 applications

In perusing the California Curriculum Connections Wiki, I looked at suggested applications of social bookmarking tools. I followed a link to The Clever Sheep and found some great suggestions. I can really see applications for del.icio.us and ease of creating weblinks for coursework--whether it's me or a teacher doing it. This suggestion:

7] Teachers can invent unique tags for each of their classes using the subject or course code as a tag. Students could then access any site deemed worthy... anyplace, anytime! Tags for a grade 11 science course might be found in a place like this: http://del.icio.us/mrteacher/sci3u. Better yet, if a teacher shares a really unique tagging code like 'luciersci3u' then students could add bookmarks to their own del.icio.us accounts, and since you can search bookmarks by any and all users at once in the root of del.icio.us, students would be able to conveniently access the bookmarks made by any and all members of the class.

looks particularly useful to me. I think it's something I can recommend to colleagues and they can implement as they have time. I can begin to create links for class projects that happen annually and not have to use district server space to store the data!

I posted a link to my student book discussion blog Rockin' Reads in the Sandbox. Blogging was a colleague's professional goal this year and we've been working on encouraging students to use the blog. I hope I can get these kids to continue to use it in the coming years.

I was a little disappointed that people who are taking the course couldn't add to the Wiki itself--that seems like it would be the best way to use the wiki and would save people from having to visit all of the different blogs linked on the main SLL2.o page, but I can also understand wanting some editorial control of the wiki.

Editorial Note: On March 31, I got a comment from another participant correcting my misconception that I couldn't contribute to the California Curriculum Connections Wiki. Today I posted a link to our book discussion blog on the Blogs and Avatars page.

# 9 Blog and news feeds

As I said, I've been reading blogs for a while now. I did add some education related and SLL2.o feeds though so I can see what other participants are doing in the course of this project

Christopher Harris's School Librarian SuprGlu page
Information Literacy Weblog
Experiencing E-Learning
Cool Cat Teacher Blog
Library Alive!
Page Space
Red Couch Reader TL2

I used Technorati, the SLL2.0 Blogroll, and "Discover" on Google Reader to add to my feeds. Library Mum, author of PageSpace has been reading and commenting on my blog, so that's how I selected her. I'll have to see who else I should add as things move along.

#8 RSS Readers

I've used Bloglines for about 2 years now to stay current on library and technology blogs, although I do find that I'm not keeping up with posts as frequently as I should as things get busier at school. I've also recently found several friends with feeds and it's nice to follow their blogs without having to remember to stop by and see what they're doing.

One of my biggest frustrations is bloggers who force you to come to their site to read posts. It is so much more convenient to read everything in one window. I stopped reading Joyce Valenza's posts on a regular basis when she gave up her personal blog to write for SLJ. I miss her insight, and I try to pop by SLJ every once in a while, but it's just a nuisance to have access to only a teaser. Pretty much any blogger that does that cuts down on the frequency of my reading. I guess I'm only hurting myself, but with limited time I have to make choices!

I use gmail for my primary email and it makes sense to add my feeds to Google Reader, so I decided to set up feeds there--it is definitely more user-friendly and easier to add feeds to than bloglines. I'll have to see how I like following my feeds with it.

My public Bloglines blogroll is accessible here.