Social Bookmarking with Diigo & Challenging with Nettrekker

Like course peer Hillary Montroy I had signed up for a social bookmarking site prior to LIBE 477, but hadn't used it much (Diigo).  This past couple of weeks, I decided to give it and the online database subscription Nettrekker a good test drive to compare the two as I had a hunch they would have similar features.

As Will Richardson points out social bookmarking establishes a community of researchers (90).  In Diigo, one can open up that research community to the entire world wide web (WWW) (through Google).  Whereas Nettrekker limits sharing amongst Nettrekker Adminsitrators (the person who manages the account for the school; tis moi at Parkview Elemenatary) and SD83 teachers (and possibly just teachers at schools with Nettrekker).

In my "newbie" test run of Diigo this week, I have both enjoyed the public sharing, but also got lost amidst the plethora of links and recalled the extra time it takes to sift through the extensive hits, especially when using Google.  With Nettrekker, I've come to appreciate the quickness I can find quality educational sites.  The "Refine" search feature in particular can limit to grade level and even by BC provincial learning out comes!  I just tried my first search for "community" (a primary theme) and not only did it list the provincial learning outcome language, but also web links tied specifically to EACH one of those outcomes - does that WOW anyone besides me?

"Community" Example:
Prescribed Learning Outcome D2 It is expected that students will: identify types of work done by people in their community

Click topics below to access aligned content.

• Choosing a Career
• Community Helpers
• Community History

• Neighborhood Associations
• Our Local Community

Neighborhood Associations gave two hits:
1.  http://kids.miamidade.gov/ (American animated city)
2.  http://bensguide.gpo.gov/k-2/neighborhood/index.html (American animated city)

The two links above are American which as a Canadian educator is a continual pitfall of the subscription databases I've worked with thus far (including World Book and EBSCO), but I have been impressed with the Canadian content coming from Nettrekker for some searches.  For example, through my "community" search, I found a Sarcee Reserve, Native community link (a reserve close to Calgary, Alta. - very cool!).  I emailed Aaron my "Community" Nettrekker folder, so we'll see if he gets it and if it works to share it with us.

Overall, I know I need to learn how to refine my searches more to reveal wanted themes & Canadian content for Diigo, Nettrekker, and web crawlers such as Google.

So while it was much faster and produced strong results for my Nettrekker searches for current primary themes such as owls, community, and money (definitions, how to use money, currency), on the other hand, Diigo, turned up a lovely site for virtual owl pellet dissection, and the more I use this site, the more I see its "free" potential.  For example, 158 other people bookmarked this site.  Miz Mercer was the first to bookmark it; this person has been a member since 2007, and follows 145 people, 1 public groups, 2077 public bookmarks and has 149 followers.  While not a lot of profile info for this person, "she" obviously educates 4th, 5th and 6th grade students from the States due to her recent bookmarks, tags, and sidebar "Top Tags."  Miz Mercer has a pile of more experience then me with Diigo!  I found another public librarian and really liked her owl sites and bookmarked many of hers, and wanted to RSS subscribe to her name, but now I can't find her!  The searches produce dynamic results it appears.  Note to self - record names to subscribe to or take the leap and subscribe right away as I can always unsubscribe later!

Overall, I didn't have as much success with the themes above (or at least capped my research time) in Diigo/Google.  Nevertheless, despite using the advanced search features, I know I need to improve my research skills in both of these items.  For example, I need to take Jeff Utech's Ninja Google training course to be a more effective "Googler!"   Albeit  I have a hunch that as I Diigo network with, specifically, other educators (especially Canadian teachers and beloved teacher-librarians), then Diigo sharing will prove very powerful as 100'es if not 1000's+ contributing voices/minds will be much greater than Nettrekker contributors.  I will have to ask Nettrekker what their base number of "nettrekker researchers" are and approximately how many volunteer contributors &/or sites they have.  The latter has paid teachers and teacher-librarians trolling the net for educational sites; Netrrekker patrons can submit requests, which in turn are tested and vetted by the Nettrekker staff.  I have yet to submit and web sites to see how much "they" would involve me in that process.  Hmm, I wonder how much Nettrekker staff use Diigo or Delicious to find web sites!

Well this short'ish post actually took me a day to complete as I kept testing themes in both Nettrekker and Diigo.  The latter was hacked into this week and pirated for a couple of days (!), which caused a learning curve to go to diigo.net instead.  I wonder if info was compromised during that time.  Diigo claims not.

Well, I've got Edmodo up and running for my "Learning Commons Assistants" (new handle for my library student helpers) and wondering if I should start a Diigo, &/or use the nettrekker account with them.  Edmodo also has a "Library" in it; I wonder if it may serve as a gathering and storage area.  Hmmm, after using Diigo this week, I just may go that route with them combined with nettrekker - I think I better have a chat with the principal.

Lastly, I need to search BCTLA t-ls within Diigo and start subscribing to their RSS feeds.  Kay Treadgold was a well-known t-l from Kelowna, but she's retired.  Please recommend some BC t-ls to follow - Aaron Mueller and Gordon Powell already on my list, as well as my LIBE 477 peers!

Great fun.  Great learning.  Podcasting here I come.  S

Parkview Library edited

Parkview Library edited a video by Ardent Librarian on Flickr.

In creating the new Windows Live acct., I somehow ended up uploading an older file and not my new one - which I hadn't finished saving properly - ho hum. Well, b4 and after video viewing potential for you dear viewers!

Parkview Library Video Intro!

Parkview Library a video by Ardent Librarian on Flickr.

MovieMaker was fairly easy to use. I didn't do so well on neatly splitting and trimming, but getting a basic video up and running was almost painless. I didn't save at first and lost my first attempts, but I won't make that mistake again. For now I avoided JayCut after hearing LIBE 477 peers struggling with that software. I'll graduate into that one perhaps when MovieMaker doesn't seem like enough.

I didn't find the uploading the video to my blog particularly easy. I wanted to just embed the file from my computer, but ended up having to create yet another account "Windows Live" so that I could publish it to flickr. At that point posting this video to a new blog post was fairly easy, BUT I want to embed the video along the Parkview Library Blog sidebar as somehow an "About the Parkview Library" so it's easy for students to return to or new viewers to see it. I'll figure that out eventually. Peers suggest away, however, if you have solutions. S

Photosharing Opinions from a Newbie - For What They're Worth!

I was hoping to be able to insert a table to compare/contrast Picasa Web book vs flickr, but I don't see one in this compose page.  Due to the challenge of cutting and pasting from Word into an earlier blog post and finding out I had to import images individually once again, has made me gun shy to create a Word table or spreadsheet and try pasting that in.  Dear more experienced peers - can either be done?  

Onwards ...

Thank you LIBE 477 for encouraging me to try flickr. If I was a photo hobbiest, this site would have grabbed me long ago.  Not having high quality camera equipment, and poor photography skills, well I didn't think I had much to offer flickr.  Will Richardson's "Fun with Flickr" chapter was a real eye opener.  The potential to link youth around the world discussing images and their learning is very exciting.  To share daily events &/or highlights with parents, colleagues and learning commons communities about "field trips, speakers and visitors, special projects, and much more ..." (102), "integrating with Google Earth" (104) sounds like strong ways to build connections and engage students.  To have students take images from the Creative Commons and try such projects as "random writes" and "Make it Mine" (108), sounds so creative.  And yet, when I went to post my library "Year-End Slide Show" images, I couldn't do it!  I couldn't bring myself to post those pictures of young kids to the expansive internet audience.  Hence the quick switch to our cats.  

I realized at that moment how since having kids, photos have been mostly about capturing people, and especially kids.  I'm protective about sharing those images to unknown viewers. Flickr has made me rethink taking pictures for teaching, as well as the potential of using images of animals, places, ... the world as a spring board for learning.

Despite my interest, however, I didn't find the site as easy to navigate as the Picasa one.  First of all the personal info flickr/Yahoo wanted in order for me to create an account was annoying (I was routed to the Yahoo home page and didn't even know how to get to flickr from there; thus, I opened a new tab for flick and signed in).  Once in the editing window, double clicking on each of the images to make them bigger rather than being able to scroll to the next one while already in the enlarged viewing state was frustrating.  Albeit, I'm wondering if I simply need to change some settings.  I found I wanted to go back to Picasa on my laptop to edit with greater ease and then upload the completed images.

In comparison, I found the Picasa software on my computer and the Picasa web book much more intuitive and it appeared to offer more edit capabilities from a side bar or a click on a tab.  Further the no need to work on the account within 90 days before images and work are deleted is a real plus of the free Picasa web book.  The $25/year flickr fee will be worth it if the students and I begin using it well, however.

Thus, for now, I'll keep using picasa on my computer to store, sort, organize, and edit pictures, as well as to create albums.  Picasa web book I'll use for my people photos, but I'll begin experimenting more with flickr for such projects as animal, cultures, countries and more.  As educators start moving towards more learning commons, I see flickr and web sharing products like it to be a "go to" place for images and videos.  As a newbie to flickr and photosharing, I'm going to look at the various examples Richardson lists in chapter seven, and then hopefully get a colleague on board to try a class project out. 

On to video sharing ...

Web 2.0 Exploration, LIBE 477 #3: Photosharing and Blog Posts as Assignment Format

Re -  "A series of Blog Posts, on your own blog, about a different Web 2.0 tool/resource that we will be exploring each week."

I'm behind by a week due to various items, but certainly in part because of tech "fiddle time."  Getting oneself to stop sorting and organizing, trying out tech options, researching and defining the media can be time consuming if not all consuming!  While I'd like to go on to sample more photosharing options such as drop box, photobucket and imgur (thanks Aaron and Karen Lam for the suggestions), I'm going to stop after I finish my concluding statements of my experience with Picasa and flickr and move onto the video sharing ... and more learning curves.

Further, signing up for these various Web 2.0 accounts reminds me of all the plastic in my wallet & the game of collecting consumer information by joining something.  While these companies tout that they want to "make my experience richer," my account information & membership will no doubt be used to try and sell me something.  I decided to be 19 for my flickr/Yahoo account and kept my profile very basic - give me a break from collecting demographic info in the guise of making my experience even better - ugh.  At least my Google account seems to allow me to buy pass yet another new account and passwords to keep track of (& more collection of personal data by companies) for some of the items we've been trying.

As for blogging to post assignments, I'm finding that journey liberating and creative from a student perspective  but from an evaluator's perspective, I think I may dislike tracking down and connecting various posts to link completed projects.  You must find this process fine Aaron as "the series of blog posts" is just that - an assignment that you have to wade through many posts to find our writings.  How do you know when I've completed my assignment (I guess we all will state when it's our final post)?  If students don't use consistent titles, couldn't you miss some writings?

I'm thinking that you're encouraging the dialog process which again is full of learning and networking potential (& also potentially argumentative and negative when someone flames or is inappropriate , but as an evaluator it appears daunting.

Well summation blog post tomorrow for the photosharing project and then hopefully I can get my laptop to recognize my iPhone, so I can download my library video clips.  Until then, Shannon M-A.

Ardent Librarian's photostream

Ardent Librarian's photostream on Flickr.

The end result of my flickr exploration. Kitties to share with you.

Photosharing from Picasa Web Book

Success again - I love it!  I've figured out how to better run my Picasa software on my laptop, then how to upload it into Google+ and from there how to embed it into this post.  The process took way too long, but hopefully I'll get faster!  I still need to see if I can play with sizing; the below scrolling images are quite small.

Below is a completed goal of creating a year-end visual report.  Rather than a paper document, I plan to do a visual, multi-media show each year that I can easily share on the library blog, as well as at assemblies.  School year end slide show, you now have some competition!  Someone teach me how to put this to music that doesn't break copyright!  Next I must try flickr to compare and possibly Drop Box.

Autobiography of a Tech User ... Take Three or Maybe More!

I'm attempting a copy and past from my blog "page" listing of the "Autobiography of a Tech User" as I've learned that my "page" post doesn't show up on the RSS feed to you all.  I'm curious to see if the images will paste in ... and if the links associated with some of them work ...  I'm crossing my fingers.


AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A TECH USER

Go figure - I can't get my images to load from my cut and past from my Word Doc..  Still working on trouble shooting how to get them in.  I'm thinking I have to import each image separately.  I put a question out to Aaron for his ideas.

HIS ANSWER: My strategy is to collect all the artifacts, images, links, videos, etc, that I
plan on using and inserting into any blog post all together in a folder on my
computer.  Then, when I am crafting my blog post, I can easily upload and insert the images
as I write.

pocket calculator

Changes in technology are almost occurring at hurricane force.  I still have my  calculator from grade six and while not stating that year, my husband howls every time he sees it – I still use it for the basic functions it offers, but no scientific calculator options on that fossil.  













Besides that old piece, our house hosts quite a bit of new technology: iPhone, iPad, Samsung Galaxy, Dell Desktop, three laptops (thus far – a 9 yr old not quite asking for his own), and I won’t list the TVs.  I’m not sure if I feel proud or saddened by how much technology has intertwined itself into our household.


My first computer use was at the University of Victoria (UVic) student computer lab.  Goodness  it became a second home as this English and Socials/Geography student pounded out papers.  While I loved getting away from editing pen and paper drafts, the learning curve was painful at times.  After three hours or more typing out a ten page essay, I somehow lost the entire document when I went to print it (“computers are as smart as their users” ho hum).  My first all nighter occurred and a kind person beside me took pity on me and taught me to save every few sentences rather than at the end of writing! 

Like LIBE 477 peer Ben Koning, my first computer was a 386 PC with 5¼ and 3.5 inch floppy disk drive; money saved combined with gift money from parents and I could finally give up living at the computer lab.  Assembling it on my wee card table was a chore: the huge CPU, behemoth monitor and keyboard consumed my makeshift desk and the endless wires were very confusing.  Despite these challenges there’s been no turning back.  The computer was the first thing sacredly placed in my Honda Civic before heading home after my first year of university and computers have been a mainstay in my life since.

In an early job at a high school in Armstrong, we had access to both Macs and PCs, but as cutbacks increased cost savings measures led to streamlining to just PCs.  I’ve missed Macs ever since then, but continued on with PCs in our personal lives so I could easily use files between work and home.

While word processing was my first learned skill, when I started my first teaching job, I then began learning about different floppies and CDs offering software learning tools and encyclopedias.  Soon followed access to the internet and my first web page – the Pleasant Valley Sr. Secondary Library Page all constructed with simple text and html code.  I often went  cross eyed learning html, but I’m glad I learned those basics.

I took a hiatus from web page design and a lot of technology when I had a couple of kids – other priorities.  While computers and software took a back seat for a while, cell phones became the next must-have ticket items for our family: Samsung, LG, blackberry and most recently an iPhone.  I loved my blackberry pearl, but wanted to move beyond just texting and small memory for images into newer smart phone technology.  I chose the iPhone over the android as our school district central staff had purchased them, as well as my administrator, and the educational apps sounded promising.  I found it ironic that a district that had dumped all Mac computers was now buying iPhones for management. 

I refer to my iPhone as my “pufter” phone (as compared to my blackberry pearl) with its minimal vibration alerts (recently dead), often poor audio quality when talking to other cell users (especially iPhones!), terrible email and text capabilities when travelling abroad and yet … the apps get rather addictive.  Check out the top 50 suggested apps for educators  and 60 Best Free iPhone apps 2012.  My favs include Keeper, Evernote, Tim Horton’s finder, i-nigma, SkyView and after reading the above, I downloaded AroundMe, iHandy Level, Photsynth, and Dropbox.

I find myself in amusing conversations and impromptu training sessions about fav apps these days, especially ones related to task organizers and calendars.  I’ve recently ventured onto iPhone forums and after the course, I will make more time for those – very informative.   BTW, I cannot get the iPhone calendar to sync with Google calendar, but Google calendar will sync to my iPhone but not immediately or consistently – if any of you have a great calendar app/experience to share, please tell!  The iPhone forum didn’t solve my issue – “Apple is aware of the problem and is working on it.”  When I had my blackberry pearl, I also had a palm pilot and the iPhone calendar and task manager pales in comparison to the iPhone.

With my kids a little older, and back to work, technology … fascinates me.  How it changed in my approx. four years off of the technology train.  While some think I’m tech savvy, I know I’m a newbie in the land of dynamism.  For example, after reading Ben’s (Koning’s) blog post I was humbled by his wealth of technology knowledge and experience.  Nevertheless, one click and explore at a time, I’ll move in his and Aaron’s direction.   

In the meantime I’ll keep having fun with (and at times overwhelmed by) exploring items such as Kidspiration, Edmodo, Smartboard use and Notebook software, blogging, twitter, Google+, and soon to come podcasts, wikis and more – thanks for the journey Aaron and LIBE 477 peers.

Did My Autobiography of a Tech User Come through on Feeds?

I never did see my above project list on the RSS feed, so I'm thinking because I listed it as a "page" then it won't get added to the feed.  Please respond to let me know if you've seen it or not yet.  Perhaps I need to list it as a regular post.  I was wanting to organize and sort assignments out from blog posts to navigate the site easier (from my biased perspective!).  I've never enjoyed scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.  S

Web 2.0 Exploration, LIBE 477 #2

Re -  "A series of Blog Posts, on your own blog, about a different Web 2.0 tool/resource that we will be exploring each week."

I've been really enjoying Google+ as a meeting forum for LIBE 477.  "First Class," our school district email software, has a weak, weak chat option: you literally have to tape your voice and then send it; no real time interaction unless you type!  Our district has ceased tech requests to download skype because it is a "downloadable file," and thus poses potential virus threats to SD83 computers.  Therefore Google+ is looking very attractive for teacher-librarian meetings and networking professionally and privately - now the challenge is to get my colleagues signed up!   Success with one brave member  thus far (one who was determined to make the time; "time" being a major inhibitor for my colleagues joining yet another new thing).  I have yet to try Elluminate and would love to hear instructor Aaron's thoughts on this software as well as any of the rest of you. When do you use Elluminate vs Google+ - strengths and weaknesses of each ...

I'm still feeling pretty much a dabbler in many Web 2.0 products and a master of none. I keep telling myself it's good that I'm interested and trying.  My students are asking each week for me to get Edmodo up and running for this school year (a must do this weekend!).  In the meantime, I've been spending way too much time or finding, sorting, organizing pictures from both Parkview and home life.  One download from my iPhone alone was 793 pics: Parkview pics intertwined with many family functions - note to self - download pics frequently.  Ahh, yes, but then my next tech glitch, my iPhone will no longer list as a device on my laptop so I haven't been able to download recent pics; hence sifting through files from the last two years on my CPU.  My husband is so glad I've paid over $500 to take this course and finally organize pictures!  

Therein lies the problem of my cohort and possibly generation. "Technology" use can be a steep learning curve for us, so we tend to dabble until we get stuck.  Then we either drop it or it seems to take a long time to progress in the right direction, so we're ... SLOW.  I diligently tried the iPhone forum for solutions and am now at having to reinstall drivers on my laptop - I stopped there as it's not my comfort zone yet.  Rather I will try downloading to another computer in my house and try a network share option (another learning curve) or use a good old fashioned thumb drive to transfer files.

Twitter I have an account and following three people, but tweetless myself.  Sounds like Shannon Curtis and probably others are tweeting out to members in the class - good on you.  I must sign up your accts.  Moodle platforms, RSS feeds, Picassa Web Books other items on my check list and must be delved into.  Thus time to close off this post and "must list" and do some doing instead.  Shannon M-A.