Week Two

“What did we do this week that you can apply in your school or job and how might you use it?”

My choices for what I could use in my job or school would be Twitter and the wiki. Being in an elementary school, I think I would rule out the wiki. With the ability to change what is posted I would rather stay away from that with children. I am really liking the blogs, and I think I would probably use that over the wiki. Now, all I have to do is figure out how to do it and make it look as good as some of the blogs I have seen and I’ll be good to go.

But for this week, I’m choosing Twitter. Up until now I have been the biggest skeptic when it comes to Twitter. But, after some of the reading I have been doing, and talking to some of my colleagues, I can actually envision me using it for a practical purpose. The high school teacher I did my practicum with told me about Twitter and how she uses it to get answers to questions about libraries or technology. I’m thinking it probably works something like a listserve. I would post a question and then any other tweeting librarian or media specialist that would have an answer could tweet me back. I really don’t see myself doing this for fun, but I really do see the merit of using it as a network for information.

Week one reflection

Sometimes its really hard to concentrate when I'm reading, because the reading content starts me thinking about how I could possibly use this stuff with the kids at school. Then the mind starts wondering and I have to start all over again. Just the whole idea of using a blog with children never really seemed like anything that I would want to do, until I started reading the book the other night. One of the ideas that made reading difficult was, figuring out a way that I could use the suggestion about contacting a children's author and having dialog between the students and the author. Barbara Joosse is a local author that has written many books for children, and has even been to our school for an author visit. I think it would be fun to have the students pick different books by her and, using the blog ask her questions about the different books that they have read. You can visit Barbara at:
http://www.barbarajoosse.com/

Another thought I had would be to collaborate with another elementary librarian in the district or neighboring district. We could have the students in one grade, say 4th grade, read some of the same books. It would be fun for the students have a blog where they could post their thoughts about the books and see what the students in the other school thought. They could contrast and compare their thoughts. Maybe they could even conduct a pole to see which books the boys like best vs. the books that the girls liked best....or worst, as a kind of conclusion to the project. This would also be a project that the parents could look in on if we wanted them to, so they could see what we are doing. Maybe they would have their own opinions.