Week 9 - Thing 23 Copyright & Creative Commons

I find the topic of copyright to be a Pandora's box. The more I learn, the more I know I don't know. I read Lawrence Lessig's book this summer, Remix, and was overwhelmed by all I learned. I ought to read it again. There is so much in there our students need to learn.

When I visited Lessig's blog today, I was surprised to read that his final post was on Aug. 20, 2009. He did state his podcast would remain active, and, now knowing what podcasts are and how to load them, I will look into that access to Mr. Lessig's vast knowledge.

I come to the end of my 23 Things experience with mixed emotions - glad to be done, surprised at all I learned, and encouraged to get out and explore the web more on my own. I hope ESC1 brings in 11 1/2 Things, as I know there is so much more to learn. I walk away from this set of things with RSS feeds that update me daily, an active blog, a photo hosting site keeping watch over my photos, and access to free e and audio books. Whew!

Week 9 - Thing 22 ebooks

Wow! I think I have heard of Project Gutenberg, but never checked it out. I found it to be impressive. Useful to me? I'm not yet sure, since everything is so old the copyright has expired. But what a great way to preserve and share it.

The other site I took a close look at was BookCrossing.com
- where people can release their books into the wild and track them. It is sort of like the website WheresGeorge.com that tracks dollar bills. I like how you can even establish a place for releasing books. Hmmmm... thinking about creating a space for this in my library. People constantly want to make donations and not all are useful. It also prompts online discussions about the books.

Week 9 - Thing 21 Podcasts

This thing turned out to be less about podcasts per se, and more about learning to use iTunes. iTunes came equipped on my computer, but I had never used it. As someone who enjoys silence, I don't have an iPod. (I suspect my daughters would quickly adopt it if I bought one.) So, into iTunes I went where I found podcasts but had great difficulty narrowing things down to just library-related podcasts. Fine... I found books, I'll listen to something here. Now to make it play.

After listening to episodes by LibVibe, Library Geek, and th

I found podcasts to be rather old-fashioned. We have reached an age where video is quick and easy to produce... and I found myself wanting an image to watch. So then I looked for a video podcast. I found iTunes to be difficult to search and ended up watching the ABC nightly news.

When would I make time to listen on a regular basis? How would I use this with students. I found this "thing" to be cumbersome and tedious for the results I acquired. Not my favorie "thing".

Week 9 - Thing 20 YouTube

I wish I had hours to browse YouTube!  There are some truly creative individuals posting things besides baby's first steps. 

Because it's blocked at work, I rarely remember to search for content to support my teaching. Today I stayed on the lighter side, watching the recommended videos from the ESC1 post and then a few book truck drill team performances before retiring to the writing part of this experience. 

The Manifesto video really made me think about the direction the library is moving, or perhaps I should say the direction society is moving.  Most of the comments for that video were rather derogatory which surprised me. The overall mood indicated libraries should not try to keep up with current technology (one cited VHS tapes as an example) but continue to emphasize reading.  That makes me wonder if we can really separate the two. 

Week 8 - Thing 19 Library Thing

On the way to this thing, I added 3 more RSS feeds and got completely sidetracked by our digital world. 

Library Thing --- Wow! Where was this when I became a librarian.  I wish I had been tracking all the books I read so I would have it as a resource when kids come to me for suggestions.  With the recent Destiny upgrade, Follett now provides a Facebook/Library Thing/Wiki type of hybrid where students and I can track books read, discuss, and recommend.  If I didn't have that new tool, I would be all over this one! 

For this thin's assignment, I added the first 5 books that popped into my head.  This proved to be quite an interesting mix - two from my childhood, one from jr. high, a favorite of my daughters', and a recent read.  :-)

Week 7 - Thing 18 Productivity Tools

Zoho looks like a great resource for group work.  I'm thinking of grant writing where it goes back and forth to be edited and reviewed by 2 or 3 people before being sent out.  I can also see having students do group work this way.

Unfortunately, my mind was a blank when I gave it a trial run... Hence, the clever post.  ;-)

I've been using some of Google's resources, but didn't know who else was offering such tools.  Now if I could just figure out how to un-mess-up my calendar that I sync'd the wrong way between Outlook & Google!

Test

The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.