Sunday, February 28, 2010

Websites, Wiki's, Blogs and Google Docs

Another week full of interesting new tools and topics. The information on how to create a good school library website was very useful, especially after seeing so many different examples of how websites can be set up. It sounds like Blogs are an excellent addition for interactive, collaborative input and information on school websites and they are easy and inexpensive to set up. The examples that I looked at were fun to look at and read, especially if they were regularly updated. The work involved in keeping them updated may be the only drawback for a librarian short on time. You should also enjoy writing, something that I need more practice doing before I will feel totally comfortable, especially the reflective content. I created a twitter account this week as a way to learn how to micro-blog. I just don't know who to twitter with! Most of my friends think twittering is silly. I like to be open-minded and have not formed an opinion yet. I have added a few comedians and the infamous Lance Armstrong, but who else should I follow? Last word on blogs, it is nice to have added Will Richardson's blog to my diigo library, as he is the expert on the web 2.0 technologies that we need to know about. He is also a very engaging writer.

Wiki's on a school website can help students access organized information and resources to succeed with interactive class projects. I have had a great experience so far using the Wetpaint wiki for LIS 568 and feel the Blackboard courseware is outdated and boring to use by comparison. My son has a wiki he uses for his Robotics team that give the students the specific information they need by teams, subteams, projects, calendars, point accumulated, etc. It is also a place where discussions take place about progress with the building of the robot. I can see many uses for this format. I did look at the Flatclassroomproject, planetmath the Welker's Wikinomics wiki's. They were very impressive with loads of information, visuals, podcasts, online discussions, personal profiles and more. The Flatclassroom wiki even showed you on a map where all the participants were located by dots. If you moved the cursor over the dot, you would get the profile and sometimes a picture of that student. Cool stuff!

Using Google Docs will require more practice to be really useful, I think. It seems like collaboration should require an initial gathering of parties, maybe through a chat room to clarify the goals and visions of the participants. With a plan in place, I think this is a good tool to use. For now though, I think I am googled out and will think more on ways to use this format for collaboration in the school environment later.

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