Topic 5 Social Bookmarking

I have been trying to get a handle on this but haven’t really succeeded. I still can’t find things curated  easily.

The issues I have are the continual registration and creation of usernames and passwords. My inbox is so full of messages and I don’t have enough time to read everything. I find I end up having to delete a lot. I tried to curate some website for this subject and they ended up on Twitter  as I don’t really know what I am  doing most of the time! I was surprised my friends liked it really. They might learn something from it.  It was quite funny. Suppose it’s all part of the learning process and wasn’t painful. Unlike my 13 year old daughter devastated by her friends breaching her privacy by guessing an easy password and accessing her emails and Skype account. Now that hurts!

Topic 5 Blogs

I have been using Blog ed at school for a number of years. This is the nsw DEC version and it can be selected to only be available internally to staff and students through their DEC portal or be available online. Ours is only available to our school at this stage.

My first was a Blog for the Student Representative Council to communicate what we were working on and for sharing achievements etc. It evolved from a single author (teacher) blog with a few comments made by students a few years ago  to this year’s version which has multiple authors  (the SRC members) who create posts and make many decisions regarding layout etc. They love the sense of ownership they have. They have become the teachers as they have had responsibility to ensure that students and teachers in their classes know how to access the blog  and make comments.

 I also have a general library blog where library related events and info for students  is posted and discussed. There is also a third one which lists all new resources which are added to the collection.  

The issues I have are:

·         finding enough time to keep blogs up to date and relevant.

·         finding time to promote them to students and staff.

·         Students forget about them and only view when reminded or when they are used in library lesson.( Out of sight out of mind.)

topic 5 Web 2.0

Aspects of web 2.0 which will impact on teacher librarians are the following:

• Keeping up to date with what is available
• Broken Links appear to be a big problem as these regularly need checking. It can be frustrating when links are not available or not working and send students elsewhere .
• The overwhelming number of tools available – selecting some that work well for the age of students and the context adding more gradually.
  Time to implement and plan their integration into teaching and learning
• Training other staff to use

Teacher librarians can not afford to ignore web 2.0 as students are motivated and connected to many of these tools already. We will only increase the divide of teacher and learner if we do so.