First Zoho Writer doc

Zoho Writer looks like a Microsoft document. There are many of the same tools in the tool bar and some new ones. I am going to figure out how to save and share documents. This could be beneficial. I'm trying to figure out how this would be used differently than wikis to share a document.

I like how easy it is to share a document and have access without being at my personal computer. I can now begin work on a document or continue working on a document by copying it to Zoho Writer and then continue working on it without lugging my computer with me if I have access somewhere else. Then I can e-mail it or just copy the document to a Word document on my computer. Hmmmmmm....some real possibilities. And I like the sharing aspect also, although the receiver must be registered with Zoho Writer to see the document.

Oops...just learned that I can export the document and save it as a Word document, PDF, HTML, a text file, and others. This is great! Forget my last paragraph!

I will now try the anchor icon. Cool...it is a hidden text box. The emoticon choices are also cool.

There's also a way to digitally sign documents, but you must register with Echo Sign.

I really like this online tool.

Week 7: Exercise 17, Learning 2.0 SandBox wiki

I placed my avatar with some text in the Sandbox portion of the California Curriculum Connections wiki. It wasn't too difficult to do.

I visited the California Curriculum Connections wiki and looked through all of the activities that had been posted in each area. What a great resource! There are some good curriculum activities posted. Once again, there is a need to get some of these Web 2.0 tools unblocked in our district. To ask students to use these tools at home when some students do not have access to a computer would be unfair and we would be adding to the digital divide. These activities have sparked some needed conversations with our Asst. Supt. of Curriculum & Instruction and our Tech Dept.

I am beginning to see the value of wikis and how they can be used with student groups in library projects.

Week 7: Exercise 16, Wikis

Before I respond to this Exercise, I want to note that I figured out how to add my Shopping Rollyo Search bar to my blog from Week 5, Exercise 12. It's posted in the left column. I actually had it figured out back then, but my search bar looked different. After reading CSLA's tips, I figured out that I had to select the gray, white, or red search roll in order for it to look like the Rollyo search bar. Yeah!!!!

I also was able to figure out how to make my blogline public (Week 4, Exercise 8). You can find it at: http://www.bloglines.com/public/cldoerk Another success!!!!

Now back to this week's exercise......
SJCPL Subject Guides - I looked at the Harry Potter subject guide. I liked the "If you liked Harry Potter..." then a list of books were given. Only librarians at SJCPL can edit the wiki and add books to the list. What a great selection tool!

Book Lovers Wiki - What great book recommendations! I'm going to read some of these!

Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki - WOW!!! What a wealth of information! Another tag for Del.icio.us.

CSLA Conference 2007 Wiki - This has potential, especially as we get closer to conference time. I am looking forward to hearing about the restaurants in the Ontario area.

The Albany County Public Library Staff Wiki - Interesting. It could work for our district libraries by having LMTs/techs post how they do certain things in order to come up with standardized procedures for some areas. Rather than having me collect all of the responses/data, they could be posted from each school site where everyone could see and contribute. Then I could compile the results.

Library Bloggers Wiki - A great place to find school library blogs.

Sample school wikis - It was good to see how classroom teachers use wikis with their students. I sent the AP World History wiki site to our high school AP teacher. The teacherlibrarianwiki was great! Another tag on Del.icious!

The library wikis I viewed are controlled by who can edit them--registered librarians only from the wiki library site. What great resources these wikis are! I was reluctant to use wikis and didn't know there were wikis for library resources. This exercise was very enlightening to me. I particularly am interested in the library wikis--I think I can trust them. As mentioned above, I would like to start a library staff wiki in our district in order to cut down on all of the e-mails sent back and forth with needed information. Now, I need to find out if I can get a wiki-hosting site unblocked.

Week 6: Exercise 15, Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and Future

The article that really caught my attention was Dr. Schultz' article, "To a Temporary Place in Time..." This article went beyond Web 2.0! Web 3D, Library 3D, Library 4.0 - Oh no! I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, "Lions and tigers and bears--oh my! I'm barely feeling better about Web 2.0 after these exercises I've been doing. I can't imagine "virtual collections in the 3D world, where books themselves may have avatars and online personalities." I think I will be retired by the time Library 4.0 comes into existence with "libraries as mind gyms; libraries as idea labs; libraries as art salons." This is beyond my comprehension right now.

I really liked Michael Stephen's article, "Into a New World of Librarianship," because he discussed the skills we will need to deal with the Library 2.0 world. I totally agree with him. Stephens states that Librarians 2.0 need to embrace Web 2.0 tools (which many of us are doing now by partipating in this online tutorial). We need to be on the cutting edge of technology/Web 2.0 or the public is not going to see a need for librarians (as we are seeing in some cases now). I have really struggled with using the Internet totally for research--we try to have teachers have the students use both print and non-print in their projects. However, if Internet access is where districts are going, we, as LMTs, need to make sure that we make ourselves indispensible in teaching Internet/Web 2.0 research skills. However, many of the 2.0 tools we are learning in this tutorial cannot be accessed at the school sites because they are blocked. We need to be proponents of Web 2.0 and convince administrators and the Tech Dept. of the advantages to using Web 2.0 tools. For example, I really like Del.cio.us and was going to tag a website at school but Del.cio.us was blocked. I will be talking to the head of our Tech Dept. next week. It is crucial to have access. I have the password to unblock the site, but I want to make sure he knows that I am doing so and it has educational value. I think teachers should have access and be taught how to use Del.cio.us. In fact, they need to go through this tutuorial and learn about Web 2.0 and understand what their students are doing, particularly at the middle school and high school levels.

Library 2.0, for me, means library media teachers need to meet the students at their Web 2.0 level and provide them with opportunities to perform using the tools they use everyday. We need to guide students who don't have access to computers with projects that use the Web 2.0 tools so that they aren't left behind and the digital divide can close. Last, as Michael Stephens says, we need to be "trendspotters." We need to pave the way for technological advances in our district.

Week 6: Exercise 14, Technorati and Tags

I searched "School Library Learning 2.0" under the searches suggested and came up with the following observations:
Posts - Actual posts from people regarding the 2.0 assignments and other non-related School Library Learning 2.0 posts - Search resulted in 1060 blog posts
Tags -Tags are highlighted in the posts. When I searched again putting quotations around "School Library Learning 2.0" I then received relevant postings from the 2.0 group. Tags are very important.
Blog Directory - You get the actual blog websites of people - Search resulted in 10 blogs. When I put quotation marks around the topic, the results were 5 relevant blog sites related to the 2.0 group.

Popular Searches:
Blogs - Ranked according to how many people have added the blog to their Favorites and according to how many times it has been linked to
Top Searches - Posts and blogs of all the most popular things that are in the news or the latest rage--YouTube, iPhone, Paris Hilton --Who has time for all of this?
Tags - The music, videos, movies, games, DVDs, news, and blogs that people are talking about right now. They are rated by how many links have been made in Amazon.com, YouTube, Internet Movie Database, etc.
I found it very interesting that we don't know how good these popular posts/sites/reviews are, only that people are linking to them, so that must mean they are authoritative/reputable. HA! Of course, I was interested in the Movie postings.
These popular searches are a fun way to learn about the popular culture of today and to keep up with those teenagers!

I really like tagging. I can see why students would like it also. Using Sear's or Library of Congress subject headings causes you to think about the "proper" way of cataloging items, but tagging is much freer and can use key words that most people would use to search. However, you need to be very careful in using quotation marks around specific searches as seen in "School Library Learning 2.0" or you will get some irrelevant results. I especially like tagging in Del.icio.us. What a time saver!

I was able to tag this post with a Technorati tag, created a link for others to save my blog to their Favorites. and I claimed my blog. I haven't created a watchlist yet, but I think that will be very beneficial.

SJLibrary2.0

Week 6: Exercise 13, Tagging and Del.icio.us

I really see the value in Del.icio.us. I have an account and have started "bookmarking" sites from this Web 2.0 experience. I really like the ability to view others' web sites that they have tagged on certain topics. And tagging is great! You can use key words to find websites that you have bookmarked which can be difficult to find using regular bookmarks or favorites. I haven't transferred all of my favorites to Del.icio.us yet, bet I'm working on it. The video tutorial on Del.icio.us was good, too.

Week 5: Exercise 12, Rollyo

I made a "Shopping" Rollyo with my favorite stores: Anthropologie, Liz Claiborne, Banana Republic, J. Crew, Nordstroms, Macy's, and Eddie Bauer. Then I searched for "white sweatshirt women" and it worked! I couldn't get the search box on my blog, though. That was very frustrating. I tried to follow CSLA's instructions, but it didn't work. I got a search box which didn't work, but it wasn't the red Rollyo search box which I have seen on other blog sites for CSLA 2.0. Oh, well. I can see a use for Rollyos when students are conducting research and you want to limit them as to where to search. BUT, that would require figuring out how to put the Search Box on the library website!

These activities are taking much longer than I thought. There are so many parts to each Week. I think I better just do what I can do quickly and not worry so much about doing optional activities. I don't want this to become frustrating because then I will not finish. And I do want to complete the "23 Things."