Internet Explorer and Vista are a bad combination!
We were forced to buy a new desktop for the family recently. We bought a Dell Inspiron 530 with some upgrades. We chose Vista knowing it had problems but figuring that XP would soon be obsolete we thought there was no point in staying with it. Little did we know the severity of the problems. Using Internet Explorer was totally frustrating. I finally talked my husband into trying Foxfire and it made a HUGE different in surfing the net. Now links to other pages actually open. The moral of this story is if you are forced to buy a new computer before the next upgrade to Vista, download Foxfire for your browser and don’t bother with Internet Explorer at all.
Post Graduation Update
I have finally graduated!! No more homework, though in some ways I don’t know what to do with myself. I have more time to read and play on the computer. I finally created the long promised wiki for C.L.A.S.S., Children’s Librarians Association of the South Suburbs. Most of the content is there, but I still have to add the graphics from the old web site. It’s at http://classformls.wikispaces.com/ if your interested in taking a look. It’s barebones on purpose to make it easy for the members who haven’t used a wiki before. I hope that the group will enjoy sharing ideas.
For anyone interested in storytelling, the first of the storytellers funded by the grant I wrote is performing on January 26th at 3:30, This is a family program called “Juggling Funny Stories” and it is presented by Chris Fascione. Please call and make a reservation for this free program, Chicago Ridge Public Library, 708.423.7753, ask for the youth services desk.
Del.icio.us and Google Reader
I have found both Del.icio.us and Google Reader very helpful for my work as a youth services librarian. I’m now responsible for YA collection development so I am watching YA blogs to help with selection. With GR I’ve found that I added too many for fun and now have to go back and deselect some of my feeds. In a few days I can have over 500 feeds to read.
I’d like to see a del.icio.us icon on my kid computers at work. I have a lot of patrons who can’t spell well because they are not native speakers. It could help them find frequently used game sites and research sites for common school projects. It just takes so long to get anything new up because the administrator has to unlock deep freeze and upload everything.
My del.icio.us account is on the side of my blog page but here’s another link is in this blog too.
Looking Back
I think LIS 768 is a great class and should be a required course for all GSLIS students. Library 2.0 is the future core of our work and needs to be understood and used by all librarians. It gives us not just more ways to be in touch with each other, but more ways to be in touch with our patrons especially the younger ones for whom this is a routine part of their life that is as natural as walking. Oh to be a digital native!
While I was somewhat familiar with much of what we covered, I had not really used all the different tools. This class gave me enough familiarity with the tools that I have more confidence in using them and integrating them into my personal life and work. The best aspect of the class for me was the hands-on things that we did.
I now have more admiration for the kids that participate in the DDR and Guitar Hero tournaments that my library runs because I know just how hard it is to play the notes at the right time or step on the square at just the right moment.
I also have personal experience with podcasts and vodcasts that I can use to support my arguments to add these to teen programing. I also hope to get the teen blog on my library website to be more interactive and utilized more. Who knows, maybe I can talk them into a MySpace presence.
I would never have become this proactive without taking this class. I even go to YouTube without the prompt of being sent a link by a friend.
Group Project – Podcast/Vodcast
The group project was a good experience and we all got to work with Audacity’s editing and special effects tools. We started by exchanging ideas and making an equipment list on our project wiki. We got together for a test recording and I even took a test video which is up on our wiki http://lis768podcast.pbwiki.com . I know it’s stupid, but it was just for fun. Though I’ve had the camera, a Cannon with 8.0 mp for a while, I haven’t had much time to really learn to use it. I was able to record a longer video than I thought it would, more than 10 minutes. The quality was very good and I’ll probably stop using my not very old video camera and just buy a bigger memory card so I can record longer videos. I regret that we weren’t able to get together for a third time to make the video recording as a group. Mick will put the link up to the blog where he posted our podcast and my video clips. I could not get the longer version up on Youtube because it was over the 10 minute limit so I made the short clips. http://www.youtube.com/judif108 (This is the same as the posting on Mick’s site.)
Audacity is very easy and a lot of fun to work with. I highly recommend it as a recording tool. I hope to finish my story for my library’s website one of these days soon. I’ll keep this blog open and when it’s up I’ll post a link to my library’s web site. I think podcast and vodcast are great teen projects for libraries and I hope to get this going at my library, but I’m not in charge of YA so it makes it more difficult to do.
Gaming part 2
I had an incredible response to my survey, within a couple of days I reached the 100 response limit to the free membership in Surveymonkey. I didn’t even get to correct the problem with the essay questions which I didn’t realize weren’t allowed for the freebie members. Live and learn. I could swear that I had used essay answers when I used it before, perhaps they changed the rules. I’ll read the directions more carefully next time. Still, it was interesting information.
My paper is basically supporting the use of gaming in the public library, not only for the social aspects, but to teach library user instruction which is going on at the university level with increasing frequency, but has not really caught on in public libraries to any great extent. It is also being used in schools at the elementary and high school levels.
I very much support the use of all types of gaming in public libraries. In January, I’m revamping my library’s chess club for middle grades to include video games and other board games to try to boost attendance which has fallen off sharply this year. The younger kids have been asking for a chance to play video games like the teens so I am responding to our patrons requests.
I found that gaming is much more widely accepted and utilized that I thought it was. Even very small and or very poor libraries are finding ways to get get gaming into their programing.
Gaming Survey
Here is a link to my shorter online gaming survey. If you didn’t fill one out in class for the public library where you work or you want to pass it on to your home library or a friend who works in a public library please do so. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=cFI4VUBz5dgc22mh_2b5Hk9Q_3d_3d
The information is being used for my paper. Thanks for your help!
Library Grants
Now that I’ve received my 1st grant I’m always on the lookout for another to apply for. Check out this site for some ideas:
Trends
While using Google Reader to read all of the class blogs and skim through the feeds I’ve subscribed to I noticed a link that I never paid attention to before, “Trends”, on the top left under “Home”. I wondered what it was and decided to click to see where it led. I was quite surprised to find that google was keeping track of what I read on each of the links to which I subscribe. I have read 100% of all the class blogs, not so much on the others but generally over 60% even on those. It will be higher once I no longer have homework.
I’m not sure how I feel about Google keeping such close watch on my comings and goings. While I did find the stats interesting from a personal point of view, I’d like to know why they are watching people so closely. What marketing strategy are they planning based on our feed reading habits or is there something even more sinister in the works? Is Google becoming “Big Brother”?
The End Is in Sight
It is with mixed feelings that I pass the mid-point of this my last semester in graduate school. I’m taking my last two classes, Storytelling and Library 2.0, both of which I am enjoying. I am both looking forward to the free time that not attending classes and doing homework will provide and yet I know I will miss all the people that I have become acquainted with, both professors and other students. In some ways I’ll even miss the classes and homework, I never thought I’d ever say that in a million years. I was never a great fan of school while I was growing up; I was only a fan of learning and I still am.
Storytelling was a three weekend class that created a lot of stress but was also a lot of fun. Since it was spread out over 3 days it wreaked vavoc with my work schedule. Its last weekend coincided with my mother-in-law’s funeral in St. Louis. The professor, Steven Herb, was most understanding when he allowed me to attend just 3/4 of the weekend’s class and double up on my two final presentations (performing two stories within 2 hours of each other isn’t easy) so I could fly down to St. L. to attend the funeral. I really regret missing all the final presentations given by my classmates, a great group of people. I was looking forward to hearing some stories with which I was not familiar. I have finished all my work for this class and turned in my final paper. Being finished with one class is a great relief!
In Library 2.0 we have reached the mid-semester point and I still have much to do, a group project to finish up and a research paper to write. I know the end is out there, but it seems very far away with those two major things to finish along with some blog posts, rss feeds to add, and Delicious post to get on my account.
Library 2.0 and Storytelling have inspired me to combine what I’ve learned in those classes in the form of a podcast for my library web site. I told the story of The Gingerbread Man for one and my group project is a podcast for the other. I am currently working on recording a podcast to post on my library’s web site. Since I can not record straight through without a mistake, it requires rerecording and editing, not difficult using Audacity, but more time consuming than I thought it would be. I probably won’t finish until after the semester is over. I do hope that it won’t be the last story I record for the library web site. I’d like to record the standard folk and fairy tales in my own versions to avoid the worry about copyright infringement. That’s why I’m not making a video and using a book. Since many of my patrons are immigrants, they are not familiar with stories with which American born children grew up hearing.
A new lifestyle awaits me! I think I’ll manage to find many ways to keep busy after the first of the year.
