Minor Musings

In which I attempt to clear my GoogleReader…

Wish I had more time to implement these ideas for a more relevant library… getting some help with creating things like this would be a good start (and I think I know some students to ask!)  Another thing to integrate into our website: Book Trailers

While this might not be every tablet worth knowing about it’s certainly a start… I’m still waiting for an iPad/netbook combo that makes producing and consuming information easy … and it’s good to know that not everyone is on the iPad bandwagon (E-Tech has given hers up)

More to think about in terms of how we prepare our students for college And thanks to Doug for sharing this pdf on the lifelong role of libraries

There was a kerfluffle over Netflix and it got me thinking.  We have a subscription for our teachers, but I also have a Movie USA License and I think between the two we’re covered.  My rationale is that sometimes teachers need to preview a film before making the decision to use it (or ask us to purchase it).

We use Noodletools at Hackley, despite my students preference for EasyBib (why?  because you can add an ISBN or an URL and get the metadata in much the same way Zotero works).  Buffy posted a few reflections on the citation issue, which made me think about a conversation I had with the creator of Noodletools, in which he argued against EasyBib because the accuracy wasn’t quite there (so when our students get to college and use Zotero, they’re in trouble?).  I agree with Buffy et al.: citation shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all, the goal should be that of pointing people to additional/credited information.  As Aravis said, “why can’t I just say… Google it?”

Thanks to Sassy Librarian, I’ve got two new screencase tools to play with: Screencastle and Screenr (Jing just isn’t doing it for me).

Minor Musings

All year (it seems) I’ve been collecting blog posts and tweets and in an effort to declutter my inboxes, I’m going to just post links them with perhaps a couple of words of “why I saved this”.  Feel free to add commentary and links of your own:

• Doug Johnson’s series of posts on budgeting.  He’s only done three so far, but the Internet v. Books and Budgeting for Lean Times are going to be read and reread as I prepare AY2011′s budget!  (I’ll also be evaluating the school’s ROI)
• From across the pond, The Librain’s take on Flipping This Library is serious food for thought.
• YALSA’s series of posts entitled Dollars and Sense.  As a member of YALSA (I’m on the Strategic Plan Committee and I’m presenting at the ALAMW YALSA Institute), keeping on top of what my public library colleagues are facing is important.  I’d also argue vice-versa, as school budgets (see Doug’s posts!) get cut.  Can you say partnership?
• Gwyneth Jones’ list of Twitter applications you Must Have/Use. Some of my faves? Twitterfeed and TwitterDigest.
• I read Buffy’s Carrots post just after having had a conversation with a colleague.  She was so excited about some of the ideas I had for bringing technology into her class… but “I don’t have time to revamp the project right now”… but “I don’t know when I can play with this to see if it could work”.  Time to think about carrots that will make that comment a thing of the past. (my suggestion?  let’s play now and plan for next year) Imagine how something like The Alice Project could change students’ experience of learning.
• Two guides worth a second (and third and fourth) look: Using Web 2.0 in Libraries and Improving Libraries for Learners. (via iLibrarian)
• End of the Year/Decade Lists: 10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2010, Scholastic’s 10 Big Ideas in Education, 5 K-12 Technology Trends in 2010,
• Share this to your department chairs (I did, back in July when it first came out): Not Enough Time in the Library and How College Students Look for Information. (E-Tech does a good roundup of the implications)
• What’s a Library? Linda Braun, Beth Friese, LizB, StephenB, Peter Godwin
• Yes, change hurts but it is not an option.  Thinking about the implications of “web 2.0″ on our profession is also not an option.
• Collection Development issues: what do we buy?  what format?  In this day of limited budgets, knowing our readers’ preferences is critical.
• I’ve been railing against the terms “Web 2.0″ and “21st Century Skills” for a while.  It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.  Not sure that Information and Digital Literacies is any better, but it’s a start.
• Britannica Forum did a wonderful series on multitasking (on the other hand, Bob’s High School Curriculum seems a bit too Dead White Male for current trends)
• Digital Literacy – what are we doing about it?  E-tech’s summary of her presentation at Blended Librarian Online Learning Community is a must read. On the other hand, it may be a myth.
• I loved Scot McLeod’s presentation at NECC earlier this year, and now it’s online for those that weren’t there.

My PLN

Time to share: here are some of the professional places I go for inspiration on how to do my job better (pedagogically and programatically). These are not the “usual suspect” sites, but other, less known blogs:

• Students 2.0. Few posts, but written by students reflecting on education, all that is 2.0 and how it affect them.
• Information Literacy Meets Library 2.0. Self-explanatory.
• Not So Distant Future. Interesting ideas on how technology and new tools can help move libraries forward.
• The Librarian Edge. Thinking about, and working through, many of the same issues I am (we all are?).
• The Librain. From the UK, but still dealing with the same stuff we’re dealing with here in the US (strength in numbers, right?)
• The Unquiet Librarian. Great ideas – all relatively doable without much muss/fuss. Plus some great thinking about what it all means to be a school librarian today.
• Archipelago. Always thought-provoking posts about how best to use these new tools, from someone trying to figure it all out.
• E-Tech. I’ve mentioned Elyssa before – if you’re not reading what she’s up to at Penn State, you’re missing out.

At last!

According to the completely objective and nuanced source, Annoyed Librarian, I learned about Google Highbrow. I agree, it’s about time!

While the article doesn’t state the beta release date, my guess is sometime around the First Day, Fourth Month next year.

Good educational fun

This past week I taught two sections of our sixth grade about “bogus” websites. Some sites were real (like the one I blogged about earlier) and some were clearly fake.

The first class met on April 2, so I started the lesson talking about pranks and hoaxes (like Google’s Wake-Up Kit) and moved on to why you need to check the authority and bias of a site. I talked about how some “bad” sites (like the MLK one) can actually be valuable for research purposes, particularly if you want to talk about disinformation and hate. The second class met on Friday, the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, so we started there and ended up with the really funny stuff.

Some of the sites we looked at made the students laugh (eg, the Tree Octopus site), others grossed them out (GenPets, anyone?). We looked at PETA’s response to the BonsaiKitten site, and talked about how people – intelligent adults, presumably – could just as easily get fooled by a website as a middle school student. Finally, I showed them Snopes and we played with a couple of urban myths.

There was a lot of chatter and I’m sure that some of the students will only remember the really gross or exceptionally silly, but I know that a few will remember the bigger lesson and start thinking more critically about their searches and what they find when the “just Google it”. Some librarians may set the bar higher and want all their captive darlings to get it and start using their new information (or skills), but I’m realistic. For middle school, a few is fine.

Google Bombing

A few posts ago I wrote about Google Bombing (based on Chris‘ post). Joyce had some thoughts about it as well.

Today I read EdCompBlog‘s post

Try entering the query:

What is the answer to life the universe and everything?

into Google. (Note – no quotation marks!)

It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

Link Responsibly

One of the things we librarians do is link to sites that are helpful to our communities. We also like to teach people how to find information that is valid, useful, authoratative. However, as Chris Harris points out, that linking can help create a so-called Google bomb:

Page Rank technology weighs quite heavily the incoming links from other pages. The text that is the link becomes the search term. A classical example of this is the “miserable failure” Google bomb where overwhelming numbers of people linked the text “miserable failure” to the White House page for President Bush. Therefore, when you search on Google for “miserable failure“the first hit is for President Bush [more info]

This wouldn’t be a problem if all we linked to were sites like the Library of Congress’ American Memory Project. The reality is, we also link to sites that are “bad” – examples of things that we want our communities to learn are false sites (extremely biased, inaccurate, whatever). Some are quite funny. Others are not.

Some evil people created a site to spread lies about Martin Luther King, Jr. and then through a combination of their evil practices and many unwitting accomplices, got their site to the top of Google searches for MLK. But we can change this!

Step 1) Do NOT and I mean NEVER, EVER, EVER again link to or type out the url for martin|luther|king|dot|org. Every time you link to it for a lesson on bad websites, you increase its rank on Google. We say it is bad, but Google sees the links as an endorsement.

Step 2) We can take steps to ease the damage that has been done by all of the links by promoting other links for the phrase Martin Luther King Jr. This is done by linking to various pages using “Martin Luther King Jr.” as the link text within your blog posts. Thanks to Tom Hoffman for the code to make this a quick and easy post.

Step 3) Actually do this
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.

We need to use our Voice to influence the Search. If you have a blog where you can post this, please take a few minutes to help out. Thank you. And thank you to Tom Hoffman for getting this started!

Go forth and do likewise!

ETA: If you use Mamma, Yahoo or another search engine, the offending website does not appear in the top links.

Time to share

(aka “my new To Do/To Look At list”)

Over the past 24 hours I’ve been bored and challenged. Usually not by the same presenter, luckily (unless you count restraining myself from heckling “challenged”). I’ve gotten some great new ideas for things to look at and explore. Since Alice just exhorted us to share, I’ll do so here.

• ecoproducts
• Writely
• Occupied Minds
• seismic monitor
• ProQuest/EBSCO feeds
• Bound by Law
• Eric Anderson
• Eduscapes
• ASLA
• Lawrence HS
• Palmerston
• bcps.org
• E-Z Proxy
• NDSL
• MERLOT
• Endica
• ICT Assessment
• College Life @ Google
• WPOpac

There. That should keep me busy for a while. Right?

In my never-ending search to replace Google

Usually I use Mamma for websearching, but today, thanks to Free Range Librarian, I’ve learned about A9. According to their site, “We provide a unique set of powerful features to find information, organize it, and remember it—all in one place. A9.com is a powerful search engine, using web search and image search results enhanced by Google, Search Inside the Book™ results from Amazon.com, reference results from GuruNet, movies results from IMDb, and more.” Can’t wait to try it out!

How are you getting your news?

Wired News: New Media’s Age of Anxiety: “More readers than ever are getting their news on the Net, while newspaper readership continues to hemorrhage and TV news outlets struggle. While a little more than 50 percent of Americans admit to reading a newspaper each week, a growing number — 15 percent and rising — are turning to the Internet.”

Adam L. Penenberg is writing a series about news in this Internet age, and how publishers are responding. Since I edit the website for Knowledge Quest, this sort of thing interests me. I’ve not joined the read-the-newspaper-on-line movement, because I find that my eyes start to wander and I just can’t focus. I’m also a big believer in the efficacy of print — not veracity, because there’s an inherent bias in all “news”, but the font, clarity of type, ease of use, etc. make it my newsdelivery source of choice.

One neat tool I’ve found that helps with finding news on the web is Columbia Newsblaster, a summary of what’s new (NB: it doesn’t get updated every day).

Even more disturbing to me, however, is that many people — particularly those under 40 — seem to be getting their news from places like “The Daily Show”. I like John Stewart and enjoy the show, but I don’t think he’s providing me with news.