Final Blog Post

      I am walking away from this class with a much broader understanding of the basic Google Tools.  In my position as a School Library Media Specialist, many people (students and staff) look to me for help with some of the technology.  I really hated not being sure how to help with a lot of their questions.  I don't feel like I am now a Google Tools expert - there were so many Tools we learned about that at times it was (and for some Tools, still is) very overwhelming.  However, I feel confident enough to know how to find the tools and be able to "play around" with them a bit to refresh my memory and be able to say, "Oh yeah - do this" if I needed to.  I think the key will be to keep doing that at different intervals to keep my memory fairly fresh, especially for the Tools I am less familiar and/or comfortable with.  I should probably go back to the practice activities and challenges to re-read or re-watch the instructions/explanations of the various Tools.  Just like our students, we do require multiple exposures and practice to truly learn something.
      As for PLNs, I hadn't thought about it in that term before, but I have been an active member of 1 for several years.  The Vermont School Library Association (VSLA) has a Listserve that I have subscribed to.  I first joined when I was going through my coursework at UVM and found it very helpful to stay current and "in the loop" between when I finished my training and got my first library job (a 2 year period!).  I could see questions that even experienced librarians had and saw the broad level of support for everyone.  When I started my job last fall, I certainly had several questions and received a lot of helpful responses and suggestions.  Before the end of my first year I found I was even responding to others' questions sometimes too, which I would not have expected to feel comfortable or knowledgeable enough to do!
       Last spring I also attended the Dynamic Landscapes conference and went to the Twitter presentation.  At that session I created a Twitter account and selected 2 librarians (1 national - our keynote speaker and 1 local - the session presenter) to follow, since these seemed to be a good starting point.  I might have followed them for about a week and then the "end of the school year crunch" happened and I haven't checked back in since.  I need to find a way to remember to check my Twitter account at least a few times per week to build the habit.  Since I know I check several e-mail accounts daily and a Facebook account several times per week (usually) I know I can do this too.  The difference seems to me is that I can do all the others on my desktop or laptop, but associate Twitter with my iPod Touch not my computer.

YouTube, blog & Goodreads

So much great information and so many great ideas today!  Inserting a YouTube video would allow me to include a book trailer for the book I want people to discuss.  I had thought about being able to include an image of the book cover (pictures almost always work as attention grabbers) but hadn't thought about the video aspect.  I've starting using QR codes around the library to get people to go to an author's site, etc. so this would be an extension of that.  It would be really amazing if I could get students to create their own book trailer and post it to the blog!

Our previous librarian was using "Goodreads" as a book discussion forum, which allows students to create their own shelves of books they've read, are currently reading, or want to read.  Only a few students seemed to be still using this, but I had planned to "relaunch" it with a lot of advertising.  Now I'm thinking about the blog & the things I can and can't do with it, I have to decide which way to proceed.  I also have to figure out the way to make the blog work with the "weebly" site - working out the links, etc. although that might be the least of my worries.  I guess I should be sure I can connect the 2 before I go too far if I decide to use the blog!

Gadgets

If I end up going with a blog on my library website the gadget of "follow by e-mail" could be a good addition.    That way, students and staff who choose that option can be notified if I add something to the blog - a new question or reflection, etc.  (I think I am understanding that correctly anyway!)  That could help bring students back to the site more often if they receive reminders about it - keep in their awareness.  I will have to explore what other options for gadgets will make sense for the same/similar purpose.

I also saw that there was an event gadget as well.  Although my site will have updates posted to the home page with events listed there, this would allow people to see them when they go to the blog as well (or instead).  The more I can advertise an event, the better!

Blog or group?

In my first post, I talked about possibly using a blog as part of my library website to encourage book discussions.  This morning in class we talked about creating "groups" and how to use them.  I think it was Matt that clarified the difference in purpose between a blog and a group.  He said a blog is for personal reflections that others can read & respond to.  A group is for a group of people to talk about/discuss a topic.    That makes it sound like a group would be the correct choice for what I want, but I'm still unclear of how to form the group & will need to possibly look into this more.  I have seen other librarians use the blog format, so I know that it can be used.  I'm not sure if one really will be more advantageous over the other.  Part of "more advantageous" might include ease of use for me and the students/staff.  It sounds like with the blog, if it's on the site, anyone can respond (although I will want to monitor what ultimately gets published) and no one will need to be "invited" to participate.   Hmmmm.   Thoughts?  Reactions?  Suggestions?

Getting started

Here we go!


So I now have a blog, like everyone else in the group.  I think I am going to be exploring how to use Blogger  as a tool for on-line book discussions at our school.  I'm looking forward to learning more about this tool as well as some of the others to help me with my library "publicity" as well as to collaborate with classroom teachers on what they are doing with their students.