Thing 17, Week 7

Tooled around the California Curriculum Wiki and looked at four or five of 2.0 topics. I found the ideas and links in the image generators and the tagging, Technorati sections the most helpful. The section on recommended 2.0 reading seemed a little sparse. The ideas outlined in the basic "wikis" section were great. Now, I'm not sure whether to use a wiki or a blog for our book club discussions. I think either one would work. Maybe the wiki would be better for creating recommended reading lists and the blog for book club discussion. The ability to add links on the sidebar of the wiki or embedded in the blog or a page element in the blog would be helpful in either situation. What a pleasure to have so many options! Eventually, the best use of wikis will probably be in helping faculty members to develop them for use in classroom instruction which will really increase opportunities for teacher/librarian collaboration.

I added a post to the Region One Sandbox which was pretty easy to do. I chose one of my ideas for a curriculum connection (Rollyo) but I am just awash with ideas from all the applications we've learned about.

Thing 15, Week 6

I read pretty much all of the articles with the exception of the Horizons Report (a little overwhelming for right now). I really like Dr. Wendy Schultz's article entitled "A temporary place in time" the best as it really summed up what everyone else had to say. Libraries have really always been a collaborative community if run the right way and librarians have pretty much always seen themselves as instruments of communication and service if they were any kind of a librarian. I think the library will remain as a physical place because it is a "community" and will remain a gathering place not only for patrons but for ideas and collaborative effort within whatever community or communities it serves.

All of the articles pointed to the importance of such collaboration in the future of libraries and an open mindedness on the part of library administrators to the dissemination of information in a variety of formats. School librarians I think have been particularly aware of this need because of our desire to see not only the physical facilities of the library in use by students but all of the resources we work so hard to place in their hands being used as well. Libraries and librarians have always pointed the way and will continue to do so as long as we are willing to be open to the input of those we serve.