Thing 1: Blogging
Hello! I have been a university librarian, a medical librarian, a law librarian, a public librarian (for more years than I care to admit!) an elementary librarian and now I am a Middle School Librarian in the Binghamton City School District. I tried blogging for personal communication, and in the school, but I never kept up with it, except on FaceBook, where I keep track of my three grown children! (They blog, but never phone!) I am taking part in this program so that I can learn about more Cool Tools, actually use the Tools, and hopefully promote their use among my colleagues. This lesson reminded me that blogs can be very powerful, very inviting and useful tools for collaboration, communication and publication....and that I should revive the blogs that I started years ago, but abandoned through neglect. Middle Schoolers love blogging; I need to find a way to keep them communicating about the Library, the things that interest them, and the things that they are learning.
Maybe my colleagues and I can set up a communication through a blog, so that the students can share ideas, and hopefully create a virtual community online?!?
I am looking forward to sharing with others in this Cool Tools for Schools Webinar!
Curation! was the title of Joyce Valenza's keynote address and workshop at the 2012 NYLA/SSL Conference, and she introduced the word to hundreds of librarians in one swoop! I have to admit, I was feeling pretty self-satisfied at the time; after all, I had a fat and happy Delicious file, full of handy sites for all occasions. Why, I even searched for useful links through Delicious, adding and sharing with colleagues. Now I see that I am like the old librarian who collects hundreds of back issues of magazines, certain that they will "come in handy some day!". Curation is so much more of a Web3.0 tool: creating web content more than gathering it. So I gave Scoop.It another try. Diigo had scared me away with its daily updates in my email, and Pinterest is my guilty pleasure/personal-rather-than-educational site. I began following other Scoop-ers, three topics, and added a button to my toolbar. I even connected it to my Twitter feed, so that I can post Scoops there...
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Nice to meet you. I just got back to blogging as well. Here's to having fun! :)