Using the Library Catalog Destiny and Introducing Online Resources

I have finally started getting the English classes to come into the Media Center to use our school district library catalog and to introduce the online resources. It has been fun and interesting. Although I am in my first year at a high school I am finding the needs and understanding to be as varied as middle school was. 

The Basics. There is always a need to cover the basics. While most students know about a library catalog, there are enough in each class who have no idea how to use one that it is fun and energetic. We used both the basic Library Search and the Destiny Quest.

As one teacher pointed out, the students don't really see the correlation between what is on the computer screen and that there is a book in the media center that is THAT thing. 

Research for History Day is starting--at least the thinking point. Finding a wealth of primary sources in the World Book Online was an unexpected bonus. I knew that ELM sources would be good for these but it is always good to find more.

Too often we try to soar before we have mastered baby steps. I thought that--being a high school--students would be able to use catalogs backwards and forwards. Not so. In fact, I was just interrupted by a young man who is staying after school. He is an immigrant. He asked what an encyclopedia was. He had just seen the print set as he walked out of the lab with his class. He is so curious. I have so much to learn.

Data Bases & Online resources

Donna said it in her blog--we all stay in our comfort zone and that includes our involvement with databases. I know my weakness is to stay with Google and not venture into databases. Now not too many years ago, I was a better researcher. Remember the Periodic Guide? I followed that timeperiod with a CD tower that held SIRS and EBSCO subscriptions. These got too expensive, morphed into online resources and I confess to have forgotten about them.

So tonight I searched, researched, and learned. 

Destiny, Atomic Learning and Tumblebooks are well known.

New are the resources of ELM.

I think the Junior Reference Collection will be a good place to start with some classes and history day research.

The Kids Infobits should have images integrated into the text.

In the Academic Search Premier I found searches for people produced different results if I put the person's last name in first of last. I had fun searching for a variety of things in this database.

The Discovering Collection is amazing. I did the Metronet checklist with this database. Gale is a very reliable reference supplier and this product is excellent.

BLOG—Thing 7—Going Deeper Search Engines

I got carried away with the different search engines listed in this thing. I looked for people I know and such.
In the real world students, and I, need to have a REASON to go beyond Google. A few years ago there was Ask Jeeves and Yahoo and Dogpile but Google has topped these. Going to a different search engine is hard to do as I am becoming more comfortable with Google, including images and calendar. I really like the calendar and have 5 different calendars going, involving my husband, multiple calendars, and me at school. Using a search engine other than Google reminds me of moving from the local lending library to a college’s daunting collection. The local library is something comfortable where you find what you’re looking for. The college has too much and you can get lost.
Once again, I need to not be scared away while seeing a reason to take the risk of learning something new. Especially now with the country making moves from local newspapers to conglomerates owning everything and no independent news. This could be reason enough to learn other search engines.

As always, I LOVE the Common Craft Show as a way to learn about things. I also went back and really revisited RSS (Really Simple Syndication)—but I had to look this up in Wikipedia. Now I see where the RSS symbol is at the end of the URL dialog box. I expected it to be orange always. Not so. And not all sites have RSS, some have a star. For instance, the forum for kitchens that I am somewhat addicted to does not have RSS. I don’t know what the star is for.
I spent time looking for things through the different search engines and looking at the sites that I like and seeing if they had the RSS system. Time flew.

Social Networks

An unexpected family emergency now finds me sitting in the offices of an online marketing company. So I am doing Thing 13-Social Networking.
No one in this office of 6 is over 28. All are college graduates. All have had other jobs since graduation. My way of applying for a job is to use a resume on nice bond paper. These folks used Facebook, My Space, Craigs List and in person networking.
Watching them in action, they are listening to info on “Hubspot”, sharing computer screens (there are at least 2 computers per person—some have 3), things are rather quiet except for a lot of keyboarding. They text on Blackberries a lot. There have been some conference calls. The company does marketing for clients, putting info on to Facebook and MySpace and into blogs where interest has been shown in their clients. They went to a concert last night as the guest of a band and that band might stop by today to discuss and advertising campaign to keep their name in the buzz until their new CD is released in mid-winter. Interesting.
So this is a good atmosphere to read Thing 13 and the Pew Internet & American Life Project . I am happy with the info in the report that students continue to be active off line, with the percentage involved in sports and school clubs, etc. Wonder if some of the data is already out of date, for instance why instant message when you can text with your cell phone, and so many people have gotten new cellphones with texting capacity since this was written.
(DIGG? What is this? It was an option in the 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally article.. )
Before MILI I joined both My Space and Facebook with pseudonyms! I was interested in having entities for the school, not for me. This was too time consuming AND I could not access either one from the school’s protective firewall. In addition, I was part of the Gardenweb Kitchen Forum, which is a place to share questions & answers on kitchen remodels. Viewing photos of works in progress became an obsession, as I dream of what I’d like to do if only….
I also got to post both questions and answers. Kind of fun to see what responses.
I joined Facebook but again with a different name. Call me chicken. Both of my children found me, which lead to just about everyone in our worlds trying to join me as friend. If you have your own page and you have friends, they can post photos and comments, which need monitoring, even if you have the page restricted. My son removed his picture from his Facebook page and replaced it with his x-ray --no verbiage. It really sparked communication. A picture WAS worth a thousand words
I find it interesting. I am the oldest of 4 girls & 1 boy, the youngest being 45. Our parents are getting older and, at the request of 3 siblings, I set up a blog with Google. That did not work, as that 6th sib refused to use it & 1 could not log in. But 3 sibs have contacted my Pseudonym Facebook and asked to be friends! How much time are people—older people—spending on social networks? It’s not like we don’t talk on the phone or have mom fill each one of us in on what the others are doing.
I did have a student teacher for about a month this year. She used a Minnesota library blog to post a question I had about funding sources. IF there was more time, this might be interesting to belong to. As it is, I am fortunate to have so many colleagues in the Minneapolis system who usually will respond to a group e-mail. Although e-mails may be going out of vogue, according to this reading, I still find it helpful.

The Election and technology

It is inconceivable to me, how all the ballots get counted so quickly. I voted on the Thursday before the official day and gasped when I was directed to FOLD my ballot and put it into an envelope! How would that go through the scanner? What about all the absentee votes sent through the mail? Are these done by a special machine?
But I was smugly satisfied while watching the news reports on Election night. The number of interactive white boards was cool. The way they were used was cool. What a cool tool.
Enough said.
Happy day.

End of the Quarter

Friday I experienced my first Last Day of the Quarter at a high school. Wow, was the Media Center busy! There was the expected flurry of students sent on passes to finish papers and reports. There were math classes doing end of quarter assessments. These things were on my radar. The BIG revelation were the number of students who had papers saved on flash drives that they could not open with the programs on our Macs. What a great need for Google Docs. Now that I see a need, I will take to heart all the good things about this feature. I need to use it and teach it.
Also, I started using the Google Calendar feature. It is perfect. I am using it to keep track of my life and the things that need to be posted on our building website--both the dates things go up and the time to remove them. I recommend this product!

Flying High

10-26-08
I am expanding my horizons. I am on an airplane using a computer. A “first” for me. Before leaving home, I downloaded a number of the MILI “23 Things” to my desktop and I am reading them here, where I have time and no distractions. It is 6 AM EST and I am not sure my sleep seatmates are too pleased with me, but I am feeling very smug.

I’m now an hour into the flight. I read 3 of the “Things” documents and kept cutting and pasting into a Word document. It has been interesting, informative and just a bit frustrating. I am amazed at how I take for granted that I can log on to the Web whenever I want. I want to RIGHT NOW, as I did not put enough of the linked pages onto my desktop before the flight! Kevin Hodgson’s Darfur project with 6th graders—how inspiring! I want to check it out as soon as I get home.

By the way, the reason I am traveling was to visit my ailing, aging parents outside of Boston. A sister from North Carolina and another from Albany, New York joined me. We haven’t seen each other in a year, and that time we had very extended families with us, so this visit was quite different. I pulled out this laptop to use YouTube to share videos of my grandchildren. The 3 sisters ended up sneaking into the kitchen where we shared outrageous YouTube videos our children had shared with us. Picture three
50-something year-olds laughing until tears ran down our cheeks, trying to croak out “Don’t wake Dad” in a cautionary whisper, but not being able to get it out for the laughter, and our poor mom, in her 80s asking if she can come into her kitchen. So we invite her in and she starts with the “I can’t hear” and “What are they doing” and the sisters collapsing again. It was a nice visit. Back to MILI

I added a blog by a non-MILI participant to my Reader account. I have sent him comments and communications. It was fun to send him an article that I read in an online publication and have him blog about that! Turns out that he had interned with a contributor of the article. Small world.

Interesting side note—When I put the download on my desktop, each page came with a folder of the pieces, the files, from the web that created the page, so there is a listing of gifs and jpegs and such. I did not have time to open the folders before the flight, so I thought the folders might contain more of the documents. QUESTION: what is a widget?,

next time

I started this blog entry in October. Found this draft and others when I logged in today, so I might as well tweak and publish them.
These were the things on my mind:
Dr. Green's initiatives
23 Things
Reader working?
Paranoid--who are the 3 followers
family blog--only works if log in able and want
smart boards and Promethean Boards

I find that here in May, I am still thinking about these things:
What is the Big Picture for the school district and how long will what is currently being given importance last?
How can I learn the MILI 23 things?
When I logged into my blog, there were "3 followers". That freaked me out!
I had set up a family blog, at the pleading of 5 siblings. No one used it!
We were swamped with the gift of new technology by the district and the thought of trying to master it, the new job and the 23 things was stressing me out.

Technology on my mind

It's the statewide teacher staff development weekend and I have technology on the mind. I spent Thursday working on the school Website. It is woefully out of date. It was wonderful to sit for a long span of time with folks who where right there to answer questions. I also felt like such a Pro, as I was working on my own laptop. I actually cannot express how much fun this has been, having my own computer. I really am doing more work at home. Wait, perhaps that should not be fun! Anyway, I learned that although there are parts of the Website that are not seen because they are "off" or password protected, a Google search WILL bring these things up! So I am getting paranoid. I MUST go through all layers of this high school website and bring it up to date. But it will take an eternity--and new current things will be happening every day, too.
With that in mind, what should I be working on this beautiful Sunday afternoon? My top choices are this blog, a Student brochure/orientation handbook that I MUST get done, one of the "23 Things", or the school Staff handbook which was given out with absolutely next to no correct information about the media center--including the names of the staff
I think I'll take the dog for a walk.

I feel like such a Grandmother

Was at the family gathering this weekend and the buzz was about Weezer's YouTube video for Pork and Beans. It is a catchy tune that shows classic famous YouTube people involved in this video and the band involved in the videos that made these people folk heros on the web. Did I learn things--mentos and coke, who knew? It was fun to watch, to talk about, to enjoy --but also to realize that I was the only one who needed to be told why and what each association was. All the 20 somethings and young people in their 30s knew this--had watched these videos from day one. So that was my "a-ha" for the weekend.
I also learned that if I log onto Gmail in 1 account and start blogging, open another window and log onto my other gmail account the machine automatically closes the 1st gmail account and I cannot save the posting. It's the little things that mean a lot!

Interesting look at Web 2.0

This blog's look at a Tiger Woods ad pointed out a fun clarity about Web 2.0. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Hope I find the perfect student to share it with, too
http://www.bigmethod.com/blog/

Information Literacy and Web 2.0

I am so glad that this assignment is as thorough as it is.
I enjoyed reviewing Ann's Introductory Presentation of the MILI pdf. It was so good that I sent it on to a favorite young person who makes his living doing all things for Web marketing. I am curious to get his reaction.
I also am quite taken by the article "Truth: Can You Handle It". I am new to the high school scene. I am amazed at the number of students who are coming into the media lab asking for formatting help on "their" work, when it is obviously a cut and paste from the Internet. "Information has replaced knowledge" is applicable to the students and to me. I know where to look things up. Always enjoyed that part of the librarian's job. But now it is far too rampant, as this article points out. I see the students and their "growing impatience and real passivity". This article is scary in that it affirms what I am seeing in real life.
I can't wait to spend more of my time doing collaboration with teachers and students. This reading has whetted my desire to polish my skills and get out there and do some lesson planning.

One step forward and two steps back....

Well, this seems to be the dance that I am doing this year. One step forward....
For instance, I got the e-mail directions for how to change our blog subscriptions to this Reader but I did not come with the attachment--and I could not tell that there was supposed to be an attachment.
Then, I got my Mac but no cords, so it ran out of power the first night and it still sits--dead.
To top things off, I was asked to take care of the high school's web site. The request came the first week of school, when my wonderful Tech was calmly doing so many things and he was so capable. So I said YES, I would love to have a bit more training and then take on the website. Needless to day, things fell apart. So Friday, I am trying to put a few things on the webpage and I accidentally erased half of the first page--links and all!!! PANIC!! Thank the stars above for the patient IT folks at the District, who got on the phone and talked me through some of the things I could do to fix things.

So

I never realized how often I start things with "SO"!

Interesting

So I really WAS successful in creating a blog for my siblings using Blogger.com. I found out by logging on this morning and seeing that 2 of my sisters had already commented. I have a brother and 2 sisters who live in the Boston area, a sister outside of Albany, New York, and the last sister lives in North Carolina. So all are living on the East coast. I replied to their posts and learned the following funny fact. Even though I posted about an hour after they did, my posting was listed as earlier than theirs because Blogger does not take into account the time zones! Ya learn something new everyday!

Wednesday night

So. I think I set up a blog for my siblings. I'm not sure if they got the "invitation" but I feel pretty good about it. We need a forum to keep our parent's medical conditions known to all, without missing getting the information to any of the siblings and also not letting the parents know how much they are on our mind--in a worrysome way. Also, while everyone wants the information, some do not want to get personal e-mails at work and that is the only place to get e-mail. Makes it tough. So a blog seems to be a good solution. I am just not sure that an invitation to look at the blog and comment on the blog was sent to all the 5 e-mail addresses. I tried to put my address in as a --oh I don't remember what the proper word was--but not just the person who set it up but a contributor, too. That didn't work. Interesting. I am learning. I felt good that I succeeded in uploading a picture. That was the good part of tonight. The humbling part of tonight was that I was not able to follow Karen's directions to set up the Reader for the group....RATS!

Tom's stroke

Aug 07 2008

So I got in the house after the MILI training today and no sooner had I let the dog out the back door than there was a knock on the front door. It was my wonderful friend Emmett. He told me my husband, Tom, hadn’t been feeling well at work and that he was here to take me to Tom at the hospital.

I wondered what I was going to blog about. Tonight I just have to have someone to talk to. You are it.

Tom had a stroke. There was Emmett saying things would be fine and the voice mail Tom left me on my cell phone, saying he was fine. (That’s me and technology–I had the phone with me all day and it was turned off…) But you never know if you are being told the truth in cases involving the hospital. "Let’s just get her here and then give her the bad news face-to-face".

So I got to Fairview Southdale and found my daughter, Jessica, and Tom’s friend & colleague, Rick, were waiting–had been waiting for over an hour and a half. Tom was having an MRI. Rick told me of Tom at work--his drooling and slurring of words, of the sparkle that was missing from Tom’s eyes and voice, of the paramedics being called, over Tom’s protestations. But told it in a way that was funny and real and spoke of Tom.

When Tom finished with the scan, I saw that the left side of his face was not quite matching up with his right. Particularly his mouth was not responding on one side. Other than that, he looked quite himself. And he is! I have just left him–and his roommate–on the 5th floor. He is ready to get out of there. But there is the echocardiogram scheduled for tomorrow... He had a heart attack 3 years ago and I hope the medical professionals take a real good look at everything tomorrow. Tom is a good man and I will miss him tonight and for the next few nights. I can’t imagine any more than that.