Add at least one new exercise to your workout repertoire.

...Start strength training. Buy a mountain bike. Every new workout gives a stronger foundation to your fitness program. – Amby Burfoot,
Runner’s World magazine



Here we are – one new exercise to add to my repertoire! This week’s social bookmarking topic has been reminiscent of that wonderful children’ picture book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Remember how it goes, the child gives the mouse a cookie and then he asks for a glass of milk, then he has a milk mustache and wants to wash up, then he looks in the mirror and decides to give himself a haircut, and so on, and so on… Exploring the class Trailfire has led me from one aspect of social bookmarking to another and then off on another link to explore another aspect, then back to the Trailfire, then over to Commoncraft and back to Wikipedia, then to the delicious website, to email tech colleagues to question if they use Delicious or Diigo, investigating Twitter to learn more about this app, figuring out how to insert a video into my blog, then back to the Trailfire, making notes in a word document for my blog entry … It was all good, all interesting, all major learning curve but scattered and certainly not lineal and then I realized that something has happened to my brain and my thought processes are beginning to morph and…OMG…I’m turning into my teen-aged son! This computer technology stuff is becoming easier, I can talk about it, problem solve my way through most things, take quantum leaps all over the place from one platform to another and it’s all starting to make sense.

Social Bookmarking, now here’s a topic with instant appeal to my tidy, highly-organized character; after all I’m a teacher librarian. The chaos in the 2.0 Land which is my desktop has gone on long enough and learning a method of “organizing this puppy” and being able to easily retrieve specific information held great appeal. I needed no real convincing like I did with blogs, for I’ve already heard glowing recommendations from colleagues and had the motivation of needing to feel more in control of the “virtual heaps of information” coming my way. The Commoncraft video, Wikipedia article and Richardson’s words in Chapter 6, beautifully set the stage and I jotted down some initial questions which came to mind to guide my inquiries:

• How do spelling errors and capitalization affect tags? (Somewhat, but mistags can be corrected when noted.)
• What are the applications for students? Can the teacher share links? (Many! Yes!)
• Are privacy and safety issues for students with social bookmarking? (No, and you can set different privacy levels)
• If I change from one software to another can I easily transport my URLs and tags or do I start over from scratch? (Yes, easily ported.)
• Will I need to continue to use my computer to bookmark sites? (Social bookmarking software can do it all, personal preference)

Next I went through every Trailfire link, taking notes on all the new things I learned and finding the answers to my guiding questions.

In this age of automation, I find it interesting that the advantages of social bookmarking all point to the use of a human-generated classification framework that uses tags. These tags reflect connections and relationships between items that no robot website spider could ever analyze. The tags help to rank a resource, indicating its usefulness and provide links to other valuable sites through the collaborative aspect of this practice. 7 Things You Should Know about Social Bookmarking, states that the informal organizational structure of these sites actually encourages connections between like-minded individuals and can lead to serendipitous discoveries when we examine how others have tagged their websites. I find it intriguing that this folksonomy of keywords is not static but is constantly changing to “result in a ranking system that functions as a collaborative filter.” Since I haven’t had much experience with tagging (do Dewey subject headings count?) this freedom to choose your own categories is hard to fathom. I wondered about using singular or plural forms of nouns or spelling errors but apparently this flexible system functions regardless. I’m sure I’ll figure out all the quirky bits with practice. In the meantime, I went back and added tags to my blog posts.

Social bookmarking is an amazing 2.0 tool given the ability to save, sort, organize, protect research, allow easy access, share, collaborate, deliver information through feeds and even report if URLs no longer work. In the Trailfire articles I read, the disadvantages of social bookmarking seem minimal given their capacity to simplify information storage. The chief concern is deciding on which software to use given the many options available and then becoming familiar with it. I visited both the Delicious and Diigo sites and found it really tough to decide which to use, given that they were both recommended by colleagues. Our District IT Teacher admitted that she’s using Delicious and probably should be using Diigo but just doesn’t have the time to sit down and relearn a new software. I loved the simple “beginner friendly” look of Delicious and Richardson prefers it but after watching the Diigo introductory video which explained its additional options (and where I learned to pronounce the darn name) and reading Steve Hargadon’s Cool Tools recommendations , I was torn! I’ve decided to set up accounts with each, play about and then choose the one I find most useful and stick with it.

In any case the applications of social bookmarking for teaching are numerous and very practical. This is one 2.0 tool which doesn’t have teachers thinking, “How can I find ways of integrating this technology into the curriculum?” Instead social bookmarking becomes an integral component of the lesson, especially for those topics that are research-based. From a teacher librarian perspective, I love the opportunities it affords to teach search strategies, evaluation of websites, author validity, currency, authority, objectivity and model the act of collaboration. These are important information skills we need to teach our students and working as a community to identify useful sites, bookmarking and tagging these and sharing the wealth of resources helps to level the information literate playing field. I read about setting up class resources on the school library page, structuring tagging to make retrieval easier for specific class studies and want to learn more about how this works. I am interested in contacting others for professional networking and how bookmarking can benefit my areas of interest and study. For years I’ve been photocopying covers of books, recording my comments and annotations and filing these pages in a binder. Now I can explore Shelfari in more detail or consider using LibraryThing to keep track of what I read and gather suggestions from others with similar reading tastes. I can’t wait to embark on these projects and learn how they work so I can promote them with my high school staff and students.

As Richardson points out in Taming the Beast, “developing self-organizational skills in this world of overwhelming information is key to enhancing your professional and personal learning practice. And the good news is, with tags and folksonomies, we’re all in this together.” It will be very empowering for me to be able to use these social bookmarking tools to create sense and order from the many wonderful online resources, or as Hargadon calls them “found treasure on the web”. Once I get my own house in order I will be more confident sharing the advantages of social bookmarking with others.

My Own Commitment to Mastering 2.0 Tools

Enjoy watching A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto, a video affirming a librarian's commitment to implementing Web 2.0 tools and technology.

Paula Radcliffe: I Am A Runner

Finally I figure out how to embed a video!

“Sport, like all life, is about taking risk.”
–Sir Roger Bannister, first person to run a sub-four-minute mile


This week was a risky one for me in Web 2.0 Land, as I have been bravely designing and creating my first ever wiki about the graphic novel Maus as a project for another course. I wanted to add my Wiki to this blog, even though I know we won’t be exploring Wikis for a few weeks, because embedded in it are two great little YouTube video clips which perfectly complemented my subject, plus a video book review by Blue Rectangle. Yes, videos definitely have their uses.

I must admit that I have chastised students who monopolized the school library computers and just watched YouTube videos when they should have been using their study block more productively. Occasionally a student would defend this 2.0 technology by stating “there’s some good stuff on there”. When I ordered my new MacBook Pro I got a great deal which offered a free iPod touch. In the last two months I have tried out the YouTube feature on my iPod and I must admit that it is a fascinating repository of videos – some silly and entertaining and some absolutely bizarre but also there are also some amazing educational and creative videos available for viewing and sharing. In time I have discovered how to use tags to stop wandering about and zero in on my subject and am now quite enjoying this new way to retrieve information. I can now truly appreciate the attraction students have for this videosharing site. I wonder what your favourite videos are?

This week’s Trailfire started at the Wikipedia site for YouTube where the statistics on viewership was staggering to the imagination. The article brought home two points which connected to my summer’s Intellectual Freedom coursework: how Viacom has sued YouTube for data on viewer information and the concern for privacy disclosure and also how YouTube holds their customers responsible for upholding the content criteria instead of previewing and censoring videos before posting. It would seem that YouTube supports intellectual freedom.

The "100 Awesome YouTube Videos for Librarians' really got the ideas flowing for possibilities in my own high school library. What fun to make a introductory video and embed it in the school website. One video which spoke to me was “A Librarian’s 2.0 Manifesto”: “I will become an active participant in moving my Library forward” and “I will take an experiment approach to change and be willing to make a mistake.” I absolutely loved this one because the graphics, the music and the text combined to share a powerful message that immediately inspired and reached me. A firsthand experience validating the magic of this media! I tried to embed this video into my blog so I could share it but couldn't figure out how. I'll keep working on it but if anyone has a suggestion...

In the classroom video has the ability to engage students, it appeals to their methods of communication, it addresses different learning styles and modalities, and, as one article I read mentioned, in some cases helps to close the digital divide for students who do not have this level of technology in their homes. Video clips are wonderful tools to embed into Wikis and blogs or insert into a lesson - the possibilities are limitless. I looked through the TeacherTube site and tried a few key words (Riel, Shakespeare and dissection) and found videos that could even be sorted by grade level or inspired my own creative ideas. Wow! Imagine tech-savvy teachers tapping into the wealth of resources (both video and print) that the TeacherTube site offers and knowing that the materials are teacher-tested and the video clips are safe with none of the “surprises” of other public videosharing sites. I don’t know of any teachers in our school who are using this resource but I would love to hear from anyone who has enjoyed success using TeacherTube or other videosharing resources.

Back to the Trailfire, one aspect of videosharing that was introduced in An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube was the social connection and how it is “linking people and not just information”. Seeing videosharing as a participatory culture and how this has grown from the need for individuals to connect to a sense of community, was new angle. I had been focusing on the access aspect of videosharing and didn’t realize until Michael Wesch mentioned it that 88% of uploads are original creations by the mostly 18–24 year old users seeing this medium as a way of connecting, socializing and reconnecting to humanity.

However, as I watched Wesch share video clip examples during in his entertaining presentation, it also make me think about what happens when someone uploads to a site like YouTube. When you do this you grant YouTube full license to do anything they wish with the video – sell it, edit, remix and even distribute. You can delete but YouTube can still retain their copy. Being a participant in the videosharing culture calls for some discretion. Perhaps one day I will be have a motivation to use my webcam feature and actually post a video. Meanwhile this romp through videosharing has shown me that there are a wealth of terms I have yet to understand: filesizes, metadata, monetize, mashups, flash wrapper…

"Remember, slow and steady comes in 29,000th." - David Letterman

This quote taken from the "Top Ten Thoughts of New York Marathoners" simply pokes fun at the way I'm plodding along, steadily mastering the Web 2.0 tools. However, unlike a marathon that has a set route to follow, I've discovered that the journey toward information literacy is not lineal at all. To begin my investigation of photo sharing this week, I started with our course Trailfire. The In Plain English video about online photo sharing is a tremendous tool to use with beginning students because it so beautifully creates a scaffold on which to attach new knowledge acquisition. Will Richardson's textbook account of "Creating, Publishing and Using Images Online" further enhanced my understanding but once I began following the What Can We Do with Flickr? presentation he recommended, all sense of order degenerated. The process of investigation seemed to morphed out exponentially to encompass a plethora of other interesting online websites and blogs, leading me deeper and deeper into the world on photo sharing. I’m sure that there is a term to describe this phenomenon in the online world but I haven’t come across it yet. If you have, please let me know because I’ve been there this week.

At times I became so confused with this "all over the map" approach to information gathering that I resorted to jotting down notes on paper to help me to remember the trail I took, record new ideas, and help me focus my thinking. I admittedly became hopelessly lost a few times but the back button usually helped me to pick up the original threads. I have also noticed a shift in my thinking this week after experiencing this multi-directional bombardment of information. I have felt much more comfortable about exploring freely, taking chances, attempting new activities and testing the possibilities without worrying so much about “making mistakes”. I have been frantically writing lists of topics I need to investigate further such as including hyperlinks into text (I may be on my way with this one), embedding documents into websites and creating slideshows. I have been making more use of the Help button features in the sites and trying to find my own answers to questions.

Back to Flickr… Tips for Flickr Beginners was worth reading for basic tips. The Jeff Utecht Photo Sharing Using Flickr tutorial was more practical, and although I had difficulty getting it to play through smoothly, I highly recommend it. Jeff demonstrated how to use the direct blog feature, how to plot images on a world map and explained tags and their uses. Jeff also suggested uploading Flickr to speed the interface process and showed how to capture and transfer multiple images. These tips helped as I found that my first attempts at uploading my photos took considerable time.

After joining Flickr I also explored the site capabilities of my blog provider as I tried to implement various Flickr features into my blog. I tried the PicNick editing software that works with Flickr to easily resize several pictures. I admittedly didn’t have much opportunity to explore other photosharing sites. My son led me through ImageShack, the image organizer he uses but we found it has limited features compared to Flickr.

As for classroom applications, there are so many ways online images may be used. Photosharing could be used to highlight field trip pictures, capture class moments in a yearly album, add visuals to online learning logs or keep in touch with a class member who was convalescing. I recalled a class pen pal activity I tried the “olden days” of regular post and could see the possibilities of a class today studying the Arctic using online technology to communicate and exchange photos with a class in the North. I recently received a friend’s slideshow of her Ironman experience and this opened up a realm of possibilities for classroom applications. Imagine exploring topics such as the nature of texture in an art lesson or geometry in the world around and allowing students to capture or retrieve digital images to create a slideshow devoted to their topic of study. WebTool4U2Use includes a additional list of classroom applications and information also worth investigating.

Flickr has indeed has “sharing at its heart” and offers an incredible collection of photographs available for public use. Richardson said that tags can be used to locate photos on almost every subject and all my attempts proved this to be true. One caution to teachers, when I checked out the “Interestingness” feature I did notice a number of photos that included partial nudity. I also wondered about the ethics of publishing photos of students and making these available for public use. I repeatedly tried creating a slide show with my own photos (I ended up using file pictures) but, of course, was unable to add the slideshow to my blog without making the photos public. It would be important to refer to district policies and guidelines about student privacy before beginning activities involving photo sharing and spend time educating students about what they can and can’t use as images as well as issues of privacy.

I feel like I have only scratched the surface of Flickr. Although I successfully started my photo files, and established a connection between Flickr and my blog, I am frustrated with my inability to create slideshows from selected groups of photos and will need to fiddle some more with this aspect. However, I found it very easy to locate photos from the Flickr library and incorporate these into slideshows. Overall I was very impressed with Flickr's capabilities and can understand why blog comments from users overwhelmingly support purchasing a $24.95 yearly subscription.

Joanie & Sandi New York 2006

Joanie & Sandi New York 2006
Originally uploaded by Joanie359

Recovering from torn hamstring
11 miles longest run in training
Did 10 and 1s
Had a perfect day
Couldn't catch Lance Armstrong!

"Just do it!" - Nike Commercial

I am a person who enjoys challenges. I’m very used to setting personal goals, creating an action plan, checking off each step in the process and delighting in seeing tangible progress towards achieving my goal. In order to develop my first ever blog, I decided to apply the same approach. Talk about the best-laid plans…

I read Richardson’s book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, which helped me understand the basics of a good blog and consider some classroom applications. I then spent hours looking at examples of online blogs, trying to create a list of features that I might wish to include in my own first effort and to figure out which blogs to subscribe to. I watched “Blogs in Plain English” on YouTube and I read about tips on how to set up a blog. I noted the URLs of the blog layouts I found the most appealing – perhaps a slightly unorthodox approach - but this was my strategy to finally decide on using the Blogspot blog creation tool.

Before getting down to work, I checked out all the blogs posted by my EDES 501 classmates so I had a vision of the final product. This is when I fell apart! Everyone’s blogs looked so gorgeous and inviting, and included many interesting add-ons and thoughtful comments, and all my anxieties about this project surfaced. I was stalled, I couldn’t start - my brain cells simply shut down. I think you’d call this a meltdown. I’d done hours of work and yet had nothing tangible to show for my efforts. It took a reassuring phone conversation from Joanne to finally realize that it was the journey – the process – upon which I needed to focus and not the final product. Joanne assured me that as I learned more, the blog could be edited and changed and that I wasn’t the only one who was feeling so nervous about starting. This response of being totally overwhelmed was not unlike the experience of total immersion as one learns a new language. It reminded me of former German classes in college and how intensely one had to concentrate on learning new vocabulary, pronunciation and grammatical rules, until finally overload hit and you ceased to function as a rational being.

Obviously, after another day of contemplation and procrastination, I finally did manage to sit down and get started. But I’ve got to say I was just like those students in your class who become suddenly very busy and have to sharpen their pencils, visit the washroom, or throw something in the garbage can – anything to avoid getting started on the task. I can really appreciate these avoidance strategies having found them equally comforting. But once I decided to tackle creating a blog, amazingly the process was easier than I thought. One of the hardest things was creating a title for the blog and finding a URL name.

I still haven’t quite figured out the “big picture” idea behind blogs. I am not used to sharing my private written thoughts and can’t quite understand the reason why individuals would simply publish their innermost reflections and thoughts publicly on the web. In my searching I stumbled across blogs that contained quite personal details. I think as one blogs you really have to think about purpose and your audience, which could be anyone from your school superintendent to a young student. I can certainly appreciate Richardson’s advice about safety and the need to inform parents if you decide to use a blog in your classroom. Give me a few more weeks to get comfortable with this medium and probably the possibilities and ramifications of blogging will begin to emerge more clearly.