This was by far the least comfortable of these exercises. I think the idea of social networking is interesting. It would be great to have a place to go to see all of the Vermont librarians and exchange ideas and tips, post pictures etc. It would also be very helpful at school. If our entire staff was part of a group, we could also exchange ideas, reminders etc. more easily than e-mail. On the other hand, I was hesitant to be a part of the whole MySpace community (I actually couldn’t bring myself to post my own picture and put up a picture of my card catalog) (??). I’m sure there’s years of therapy right there! I also know how much time the students in my college classes spend on MySpace and Facebook, and I know how distracting it can be. When I first started teaching college writing, computers were a miraculous timesaver. Now I’m afraid it takes a lot of willpower to turn on a laptop and buckle down to writing an essay without checking e-mail, MySpace etc. I’m sure as a student I would have had the same problem! I checked out the libraries that have MySpace and Facebook accounts. It seems like an interesting way to keep in touch with teen patrons - as an elementary school librarian, I’m not sure there is a small child social network (aside from Club Penguin!) out there. Again, it would be great to stay in touch with other librarians, but I would always have to balance the fun of networking with how much time it uses.
Week 3-Thing#5 March 13, 2008
I forgot to blog about posting a picture to Flickr. I have used Flickr to look at sewing and art projects, but I never had any interest in using it myself. I’m still not sure how the library would use it, but as the yearbook advisor for our school, I am very excited about creating a place where parents can upload photos of sporting events and other school happenings that we can draw from for the yearbook. I would also love to get my family to use Flickr - we live far apart and tend to get out of touch with what our children are doing, how tall they are growing, how deep the snow is way up here in Vermont etc. This would be an easy way to share our pictures.
Week 4 - Thing #8 March 13, 2008
I love RSS feeds! I have been using Google Reader to keep track of some of my favorite blogs. It is so much easier to keep track of new things. Because I have a Google e-mail account, I have started checking my blogs when I check my e-mail. It really saves time. I used to hesitate to bookmark blogs, knowing that I would probably not have time to keep up - now I know that I can easily check everyday. I already have a new list of children’s lit and library blogs I plan to add to Google Reader.
