Method 12

My favorite discoveries in this Web 2.0 journey have been working with Flicker and Delicious.  Having  already been using several of the other organizational applications,  I feel that these two tools of organizing both digital photos and websites will be a great way to help continue to organize both my professional and personal  life.  I'm also very excited to learn how easy it is to set up and use  a blog.  Blogging seemed at one time overwhelming to me, and now it seems like a new and practical way to update families about our library services.

As the world of libraries continues to move in the direction of technology and social media, I am glad to have experience and understanding of some of the applications my patrons will be talking about and to be able to share this information with my patrons.  I believe that learning about these tools will help me shape future goals for my library, the children and teachers that I serve.

As a newbie to Web 2.0 tools, I was surprised at how many I was already using and familiar with such as google applications, searching for you tube videos appropriate for lessons, and wikis.  I was also surprised at how relatively easy most of these tools are to use and share and how many different ways I felt I could share and use the knowledge I gained with others.  I developed a greater sense of self-confidence in myself as a user of technology.

I thought the program  was laid out well and offered great opportunites for learning.  I was able to complete the program during the summer with a colleague in weekly sessions, so it was not too time consuming or
overwhelming.  The discussions I had with my colleague furthered my learning and heightened our understanding of different topics.

If offered, I would be very interested in furthering my learning next summer with the next session, Beyond Two-Stepping.  I believe that it would help me throughout the year knowing that I could take my learning to another level and be somewhat accountable to challenge myself throughout the year to use what I learned in this session.

Method #11

 Just searching for podcasts of interest was a cumbersome task, many didn't download, and many were filled with commercials or lots of chitchat before the actual discussion started, so I think that following others suggestions would be a more time effective was to explore podcasts.

 I did discover an interesting podcast,  childrensbookradio.com  while searching for children's book podcasts.   I enjoyed listening to the author interviews and book reviews and I can imagine using these as resources for lessons in the library and to share them with teachers for classroom use. I love the idea of having student created book review podcasts, or having students create a podcast as a culminatining activity to a unit of study or research.

Method #10

As a librarian within AISD, I have been participating in the wiki page that has been set up for us to share information with each other.  This wiki page stores information that AISD librarians can go to to quickly and  in one place about our district's library policies, calendars, handbooks, and links to valuable webpages.  It is also a place to share ideas, programs, booklists, and so much more.  Librarians can add easily add lesson plans with examples to share with other librarians.  This has been a great way to share and colloborate with my colleagues.  I have used our library wiki, but I had not posted to it, so it was helpful to do so to the Texas State Library 12 Ways to Two-step wiki page.

Method 9

I have watched people using IM and  online chatting, but had never personally used it as a method of communication.  The chat experience was very easy, yet personally I see myself using IM for personal chats, not in the library setting.  The structure of my library day would not be conducive to this form of communication, since I am rarely at my desk/computer.  I can see that in an academic/public library this would be a valuable resource, especially for reference questions.

Method 8

Ugh...Even after looking at the videos and articles, I continue to dislike the whole social networking idea, more specifically...Facebook, MySpace.   I can see some benefits (i.e. keeping parents up to date of library programs, and resources provided by the library) of these types of accounts, but the time and privacy concerns, totally outweigh any benefits for me, especially in the elementary school library.  However, Twitter seems to be a quicker and safer method for getting information to parents quickly and easily, while maintaining privacy. I can see opening a twitter account in the near future for my library to keep parents involved in the library program...library updates, how to login to databases, new books, movies related to books, etc.  I think this would be much less time-consuming and I can control more of the privacy issues that concern me.

Method 7

So far, this has been my favorite Web 2.0 application.  I enjoyed the ease of setting the bookmarks in delicious, and think this will be a super way for me to keep up with all my favorite sites, especially since I use so many different computers at work and home.  I will really enjoy being able to have an easy way to access them all those sites, especially with the ability to create my own tags!  I can also see the Delicious site as a great way to colloborate with my teachers.  I love that I’ll be able to share/post sites that will help teachers with their instruction in the classroom and enhance the role of the library.  I am interested in exploring the social aspect of the delicious tags that other have used to further my searches.  

I also explored LibraryThing and think this will be a great way to create a book community with my students.  I can see posting new books added to the library...with the cover image...always a draw for me.  I would also love to use the talk/groups feature of librarything to create a book share program with the 5th grade students, where they get to suggest titles to their friends, while working on the writing skills.  

Method 6

I have always enjoyed the You Tube site and videos.  I have used some of the videos as extensions to lessons in the library and have sent links to teachers to use in their classroom.  However, I  find the searching on YouTube to be very time consuming. The huge amount of videos posted (a lot not worthy of looking at) that have to be weeded through after typing in a search topic creates frustration for me.     I also find the searches to be difficult because they often bring up unrelated items, or miss videos that I think they should have been included in the search.  For example, when searching for children’s book trailers, there are a lot that are posted on YouTube that I could only find when typing in the title of the book.  They were not found just by searching children’s book trailers.  I would love to include videos in my blog as a way of adding interest  and information to the library program.  

I chose “Thank You Note” because of my own fond memories of reading Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s book in my local library.  Her books were always (and still are) favorites of mine.  
I loved the originality of the paperdoll wandering through the library stacks and this video makes me want to create some beautiful videos of my own.