GoogleDocs and Collaboration

Here is a picture of a collaborate effort between three teenagers to create a snow army in my backyard. This was taking place as I was inside of the house working on the collaborative SLMC website paper. Collaboration everywhere! Click here for more fun!

I have decided that I absolutely HATE GoogleDocs (GD)! I really love the idea of being able to collaborate online with a group of people to work on a project, but GD is clumsy to use. Personally, I would rather write a document using Microsoft Word and email it back and forth before using GD again. I am wondering if there is a better collaboration format out there for writing documents. I see so many possibilities for a tool such as GD. Too bad it is so clumsy to work with. I read Christopher Case's article entitled GoogelDocs and Spreadsheets: Collaborating in the Classroom or Library. In fact, I read it twice. Once before I started using GD for this week's project and again today because I honestly wanted to be convinced of all he says it is. I am wondering what is wrong with me that I don't like it. Am I missing something? Maybe I am just spoiled by all the things that Microsoft Word has to offer. Of course GD can't copy it because that would be breaking copyright!

I thought working together on one article this way was challenging in many respects. There were times that I wanted to communicate quickly with my fellow collaborator(s), but had to wait for them. I understand this because we all have our own time constraints and schedules. On the flip side, I thought it was interesting that we could write a paper together and share ideas from a distance. Technology is pretty amazing. So here I am in a town south-east of Rochester, collaborating with people in the Buffalo area and coming up with a finished paper. I have never met either of my two group members face to face. Overall, it was a great learning experience.

This all brings to mind a memory that I have from the late 1980's. I had just gotten a job at a bank and was introduced to the fax machine for the first time. I was just amazed that someone could take a document and feed it into this machine at the branch I was working in and a copy of it could come out in an entirely different branch! I thought it was a wonderful invention. I find that memory to be amusing now because of how far technology has come since!

I enjoyed the discussion group this week on how we would use (or wouldn't use) web 2.0 in the school library. I like the idea of online book discussions. My classmates had so many other great ideas on how to use them too. I've been looking at quite a few blogs for school libraries. Some of them are blogs that I read regularly. I love all the ideas I'm getting from them and some day I hope to be involved more directly with a school library blog of my own. I happened to find the library blog for the high school that my son attends. I liked feeling connected with the happenings there.

Our family's digital footprints and more...

This week I spent quite a bit of time going over internet safety. I liked Doug Johnson's article,“Staying Safe on the Read-Write Web” in particular. It just makes so much sense to me. The points he makes were driven further home when I talked to a couple of SLMS last week. They are frustrated by internet filters that filter out web 2.0 tools that could lead to perfectly legitimate teaching sites...all because of scared and misinformed adults. Can the damage that CIPA has brought be reversed? I agree with Doug that the opportunity to teach students how to use these tools responsibly has been largely lost now.

I spent time googling the name of each person in our family. I've done that in the past, but not in a while. I'm happy to say, that we all have clean digital footprints. I was surprised to find my husband's name on the blog of an entire stranger. No,...it wasn't creepy! It was because my husband played the piano in the background of a couple of recordings that a friend of his, a local Christian musician and song writer had made during the 1980's. Eventually he published his collection of music. The blogger writes reviews of Christian music (well known artists...and not so well known artists). He wrote down all the names of the musicians involved when he reviewed the collection that my husband's friend had created. The good news is that he liked the music!

I was also shocked to find there were 100's of hits for the name of my 10 year old daughter! Does she live a double life? Does she look like an innocent little girl? You decide. I thought she was just playing with her American Girl dolls in the other room! Who knew? Actually, almost all of the hits were for some woman of the same name who must live in a Hispanic country since everything was written in Spanish. This was no problem at all thanks to my new and improved google searching tools. I was able to eliminate all but one hit...which brought me down to 3 hits for my little girl. What was mentioned? She won a "character counts" banner design contest a few years ago in her school district and she competed in a local 5k race.

I also ought to state that I took the time during this exercise to explain what I was doing to my children and why. This naturally brought up the topic of how we must be careful about what we put on the web. I gave them examples of the mistakes of others. I think it was a good discussion.

I've been brainstorming with the girls in my collaboration group, creating a list of things that a good library web site must include. I think we are off to a good start. I like working in groups. There is strength in numbers. What I didn't think of, they did. Also, as a result of trying out Google Docs, I can see many possibilities for its use in education.

I also started the iSafe curriculum.

Browsing the Catalogs...and Searching

I've been reading the articles about searching. I liked the 6 strategies suggested in "Web 2.0 Strategies for Searching," by Pam Berger. I tried some of the search engines mentioned in some of the article. Not all of them worked, but I liked clusty.com in particular. I've been trying to do searches on some of the databases that I know schools typically have. I'm kind of concerned that I might not be a good searcher and I'm supposed to be the expert! It is all new to me and I'm determined not to end up being the librarian who doesn't know how to search efficiently! It was a nice relief to find the 21st Century Information Fluency site. I may have to spend quite a bit of time on that.

I checked out Google Squared and was completely amazed. I created a square for constellations. My son has been interested in them lately. I can't wait to show it to him. Too bad we don't have a telescope or live out in the country where we can really see the stars!

I really must say that I enjoyed all of the readings this week. They were all very practical and informative. The copyright reading in Simpson was helpful too. This is a book I plan on keeping.

I liked looking at the different catalogs available. I would have to say ease of use and visual appeal is important. I love catalog systems that show covers of books. I like features that include suggestion lists such as new books, teacher favorites/suggestions, certain genres, black history month books, etc. Kids being able to write reviews, make a wish list, browse a shelf of books or see suggested books that are similar to others they like are a plus. Search features should include suggestions for misspellings, and advanced search capabilities. It is also important to have ease of use behind the scenes for uploading books into the system and being able to add your own keywords or tags to a book's marc records.

I had fun this week. I actually visited 3 school libraries, which I found most informative. I also visited 1 public library for another class. I figured out that in the past week, I have been in 7 different libraries. This coming week is winter break for the schools around here...so no visits to school libraries for a while.

Learning by Piano Concierto

I thought that the information in this week's readings were just fascinating. I particularly enjoyed learning more about creative commons. Of course I had heard about CC, and even have borrowed pictures from CC. The information behind the creation of CC was just so informative and quite inspiring! As I write this, I am listening to some great piano instrumental by Kendra Springer that I found over at CC. I encourage you to listen to it as well.

I'm really glad that I took the time to watch the presentation by Laurence Lessing about copyright that he gave. It took about an hour, but was well worth it! I think it is a total tragedy about the documentaries in America! This is a HUGE piece of our history, people!

Going through the webquest was quite informative. I think I could go over it a hundred times and still find something new each time. I am determined to get to know this stuff. Right now, I can read it and learn it...but the real test of knowing it is being able to speak the language and teach it to others. That reminds me of when I first went to library school in the summer of 2008. I was taking 505 and 506. I didn't know the basics of the language. I had to go interview a librarian. I ended up talking with the SLMS in a local elementary school. She mentioned her "OPAC," and I didn't even know what that meant. I've come a long way already so I'm confident that I will go even farther.

I really thought that the TILT exercise on the webquest was great. I already knew most of it already...but I think it is a great tool to point people to in order to help them become information literate. I think I need to design one of these tutorials for my students some day once I get a library job.

Also...I am a fan of graphic novels. Somehow learning about something in this format is not quite as intimidating as reading it textbook style. I just loved Bound by law, about public domain. I admit that it really helped me read with more interest. I didn't get to read the whole thing yet, but I plan on doing that.

Learning and enjoying it. Until next week!

(Photo by Gotham Guy, Creative Commons)