Podcasts vs. text blogging

So... I've never really been into podcasts. I subscribe to a couple through iTunes, but I always forget to check the podcast section for updates, so I end up with dozens of unheard episodes, and I just delete them all. The way my iPod connects to my car stereo doesn't allow me to play podcasts from the directory on the iPod; I have to put them into a playlist, which is annoying and I forget about. So, podcasts aren't my modus operandi for blog consuming. For blog producing, podcasts are a nice way to add a personal touch, but I'm self-concious of how my recorded voice sounds (on the phone, I've been mistaken for a teenager; I'm 27). Recording is certainly easier than writing, but there's no "delete" button if I make a mistake; I have to either finagle with the cut function in Audacity or re-record the whole thing. Not a big deal for my 2-3 minute podcasts, but could be an issue if I was using podcasts to teach a class, a la Steve.

I really prefer text blogging, as a producer and consumer. With text blogging as a consumer, I can easily skim a post to find information that I'm interested in, and can easily skip the stuff I don't want to read. As a producer, I find that I have a good level of control over a text-based blog. I can save a half-finished draft to finish and post later, I can easily integrate links and pictures, and in general, have more editorial control.

Tell me a story...

My story is about my recent (Christmas 2007) trip to Disney World, with my boyfriend Mike and his parents. One of the things we were really excited to see was his friend Ryan, a stunt actor who plays Indiana Jones in the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular at Hollywood Studios.

Listen!



Here's the mp3 file

Here's Ryan:

Anderson reading 2

So, Anderson defines three forces of the long tail:

1. New producers - Democratized production - populates the Tail
2. New markets - Democratized distribution - makes content freely/widely available
3. New tastemakers - Amplified word of mouth - connects consumers to products, the "new" supply and demand

I can see libraries/librarians fitting in within the first and third forces. Let's first discuss the third force, the amplified word of mouth. Anderson defines the new tastemakers as "people whose opinions are respected." (p 107). Traditionally, libraries are respected as repositories of knowledge, making librarians purveyors of knowledge. It should follow that librari* (my new made-up term for "librarians/libraries") set the standard for what is important to know. After all, librari* decide which new books to acquire, which books to advertise in book clubs, and which books to feature in displays.

Even though librari* influence is over books, they can still have some play in the first force, as "new producers." Librari* can use web services, such as blogs and emails, to advertise books. Anderson discussed a new "exposure culture," where being found is the end-all. Librari* can use blogs to advertise new books and programs, and expose themselves to new users.

The second force, the new markets, really isn't relevant to libraries. The new market is online and available 24/7, worldwide, to anyone with an internet connection. Libraries are open 8-10 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, and are limited to the physical space which contains them. A library's physical market confines it to whatever the library physically holds, plus the holdings of associated libraries. There are a finite number of items and a finite number of people who can use those items at a given time. A pure digital market, such as iTunes, carries millions of holdings, and because they are stored digitally, can be accessed many times by many people.

Personal anecdote time: the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series is extremely popular in my K-5 library. We have 4 or 5 copies of the first (red) book, and 7 of the 2nd (blue) book. They flew off the shelves once school opened, and have been continually on hold ever since. Kids are extremely disappointed when they can't have one of the books right away, and some have said that they'll just have their parents buy it, so they can have it right away. The library cannot compete with Barnes & Noble, where dozens of copies are available at a moment's notice. Even though we physically advertise the book (force 1) and personally discuss it (force 3), we have a finite number of copies for a finite number of users. Simply said, we are an old market.

Library2.0

Found this link on Fark:

Check it out: libraries now happening places

Discusses how libraries in Arizona are catering to teens and the modern public by opening cafes, holding Guitar Hero parties, and generally not shushing people.

SCILS educational experience

My decision to attend SCILS was a result of what I call my "quarter life crisis." I graduated from college with a BA in Elementary Education in 2003. I bounced around with summer camp jobs, substituting, and finally ended up teaching preschool. I worked there for a little over a year, and quit just before Thanksgiving 2006, due to "irreconcilable differences" with the management. I became disenchanted with preschool, and didn't want to stay in the business. I started substituting again, and ended up subbing the libraries in my district. I loved it, and within two months, had taken the GRE and applied to SCILS. I'm enjoying school, but not really getting involved with my classmates or any kind of "extracurricular" activities, like clubs or anything.

Anyway, here's my history at SCILS:
Fall 07: 522 (Cataloging & Classification) and 547 (Materials for Children)
Spring 08: 550 (Info Tech) and 548 (Materials for YA)
Fall 08: 530 (Principles of Searching) and 598 (Social Software)
Spring 09: (hopefully) 540 (Ref. Sources & Services) and 555 (Multimedia Production)
What's left: 510 (Human Info Behavior), 514 (Learning Theory...), 575 (Ed Media Center Mgmt), and 592 (Field Experience)

Even though I'm technically an on-campus student, I spend most of my time between my desk and my car.













You can see more of my pictures here, and the ed experiences of my classmates here.

Google Analytics

I must confess, I set up Google Analytics a few weeks ago (or whenever it was required), and I forgot about it. It took me a few minutes to find it through Gmail, but reading it was interesting.

So far, the bulk of visitors have been using Firefox, with 31 visits (70%). Next up is IE, with 12 visits (27%). Finally, we have one lone visit via Safari (2%). Glad to know I'm not the only one in the class with a Mac :)

Not surprisingly, 30 visits have been via a cable internet connection. 7 have been on DSL, 3 have been using T1, and 2 on dialup (really?). There were 2 visits from an "unknown" connection. GA didn't give any further information on the unknown connection.

I also learned about the network locations from whence these visitors came. The bulk were on Comcast, which is what I use at home - I think I'm unintentionally driving up my own stats.

Some of the information seemed a little random, like the screen resolution of my visitors (68% had 1024x768), all of my visitors have been from NJ (good to know, no out-of-state stalkers), and 6 visits have been via Bloglines. I can see how that information would be valuable to a more serious blogger, but it really doesn't serve me a purpose.

Anderson reading

So, will the library world benefit from the Long Tail effect?

I don't think so. The Long Tail is all about the niche market. Anderson refers to the internet as the "ultimate discovery tool," (p. 37) and the Long Tail is about using the internet to find the myriad non-hits. He discusses how online retailers like amazon.com have eradicated brick and mortar stores by offering a no-boundaries online shop. Online stores are global; they are unfettered by things like walls and location.

Libraries, unfortunately, are limited by walls and location. My local library is four miles from my house. However, via the public library system, I can borrow from any of the 38 libraries in Morris County. There are still walls on those libraries. Borders.com, on the other hand, doesn't have walls. If I can't find a book at my local library, or any of the other 37 libraries in Morris County, you bet I'm going to find it online. Because libraries are only able to hold so many books, I think that as the niches get narrower and the tail gets longer, libraries won't be able to supply the demand.

Wikispaces vs. PBWiki

I have experience using Wetpaint wikis (a former prof used it), and Wikidot didn't look too appealing, so I went with Wikispaces for this comparison. Wikispaces seems to be a pretty basic wiki service. Setting one up was easy, but there was a lot of push towards paying for one, as it would be ad-free and have greater content control. Editing the page was easy, too. However, the layout tools, the "pretty" factor, is where Wikispaces failed. There were only 4 available themes, none of which were fantastic. There was also an option to change the background, text, and link colors, but no options to change the font or basic layout. Again, there was a lot of push to pay for a wiki, to have a wider variety of themes. I only used Wikispaces for about 15 minutes, and I'm sure that if I played with it longer I'd feel more comfortable with it. However, because we've been using PBWiki for the duration of class, I feel more comfortable using it, and if I ever had to set up my own wiki, I'd probably opt for PBWiki.

Google docs, for better or for worse

Google Docs and services like it have their place in both a physical and virtual college campus, particularly with students who are working on group projects. For use as a collaborative document service, Google Docs is great. It's easy to set up and share, and has basic editing tools. Personally, I don't see myself using it as a Microsoft Word replacement, but it serves its purpose as a quick and easy document editor.

However, I can see why some people, both faculty and students, would be opposed to it. If it's a class-wide effort like ours, everyone would need a Google account. Most people already have one and wouldn't be bothered by it, but for the technophobes that somehow still exist, it would be another online account to keep track of. I can see how a prof wouldn't want to have to keep track of various accounts, and how students would not want their prof to be able to "check in" on unfinished work.

Luckily, some of my previous professors have welcomed the idea of document sharing. I had a professor last year who used a wetpaint wiki in lieu of eCompanion. Another professor required the class to keep blogs. She used hers as a general announcement tool, we used ours to turn in assignments. For a "progressive" or "nontraditional" professor, social software such as this can be successfully harnessed to enhance the class. It's a move I'd like to see more people make.

I am my bookmarks.

Wow. I can certainly say that from our little experiment, I learned a lot about my classmates. This was a nice way to get to know everyone. It was a little tedious to read through 264 bookmarks, but it was interesting to see the overlaps, and I learned about some cool new sites from my classmates. I think that with a little tweaking, this could be a great virtual introduction for other online classes.

Some suggestions for making this a more viable "virtual introduction":

• maybe take the number of bookmarks down to five per person. Having 21 people provide 10 bookmarks each is a lot of links to go through - it's great, but it's a lot.
  
• don't require everyone to bookmark the class wiki (I know this was just part of the exercise, but it seems unnecessary to include this as part of a virtual introduction)
  
• make sure people include personalized descriptions with each link, so the rest of the class knows why the sites are important - I felt more connected to people when they did this
• to differentiate between the "virtual introduction" project and other bookmarking projects on delicious, use a specific tag (ex: scils598f08_intro)

Brown & Duguid

(Let me start by saying that I followed the Twitter conversation about these chapters, and I agree with everyone else who complained about B&D. It's boring and dense and I just don't get it. Disclaimer: I work with children and am more well-versed in picture books than "academic" readings. I am not an "academic" in any traditional sense of the word, though I do wear glasses and read a lot.)

One point that I took away from the B&D readings this week were the differences between knowledge and information. Particularly, I was interested in their description of how each is acquired. Information is a commodity, while knowledge is a possesion. When you want to learn about something, you need information. When you want to learn to be something, you need knowledge (p. 128).

This relates to their discussion of learning by doing (pgs. 130-131). They discussed a study done by educational psychologists on how children best learn language - by practice, or by reading a dictionary. Children who learned by practice learned far more than children who learned via a book. I saw this firsthand when I taught pre-K. I taught my class the "theory" of letters - what they look like, the sounds they make. Some kids had trouble with the rote learning, but they all blossomed when we played with the letter mats. I scrambled up letter mats on the floor, and had children jump to certain letters - random at first, then spelling out their names and sight words. Learning the theory of something is important, and gives you a lot of information. Learning by practicing something gives you knowledge. If information gives you power, knowledge gives you success.

As far as implications for the US education system - teachers should be concerned with cultivating knowledge, not just delivering information. B&D say on p. 136 that "people learn in response to need." Shouldn't it be a teacher's job to ensure that there is no need? When my private school preschoolers moved on to public school kindergarten, several parents said that their children were miles ahead of the other kids, because they already knew letters, numbers, counting, writing, etc. They possessed that knowledge, which made them better students. Teachers, especially elementary school teachers, have the incredibly important job of delivering information and helping students convert that information into knowledge.

Delicious vs. Magnolia

First of all, what's with the periods in del.icio.us and ma.gnolia? What purpose do those periods serve? They bother me. (It wouldn't bother me as much in ma.gnolia if it was placed at the syllable - mag.nolia - but it would still bother me.)

Now that that's out of the way, each service has its pros and cons. So... list time!

Delicious...
- has a simple, clean interface.
- intuitive bookmarking - comes up with suggested title, tags
- integrates with Firefox (and probably other browsers too)
- separates tags with a space, so you have to tag with oneword or one_word (which annoys me, but not as much as the periods in the middle of words thing)

Magnolia...
- has an aesthetically pleasing website
- adding a bookmark through the site is cumbersome - it doesn't suggest title or tags
- separates tags with commas, not spaces, so no oneword or one_word tags
- puts the "social" in "social bookmarking" with its many public groups

That said, I'm a Delicious user. It's become a web standard, and I don't think I'd switch. Maybe it was just me, but I had a lot of problems logging into Magnolia and bookmarking sites (had to click the "go" link several times before it would let me bookmark something, had to copy and paste the link directly from the browser).

Digg

As with many other social softwares (is that the right plural?), I had a passing knowledge of Digg. I had seen Digg chicklets and read about Digg, but never really explored it. I chose to review Digg because I'm a (very passive) user of Goodreads, and a quick look at Librarything and Shelfari told me they were very similar services. After another quick look at the other three options, Digg had the most asthetic appeal, so it won my review for this week.

Digg is essentially a user-edited "news" aggregator. I use the term "news" very loosely, as recent headlines include blog posts about last (Tuesday) night's debate, an article about a video game for wannabe DJs, and a picture of a cow with a child's toy car stuck on it's head. Digg is very easy to set up and has a pleasing interface. There are various categories at the top, and a small arrow next to each heading lists several subcategories, which is helpful if you're looking for something specific. However, the point of the site isn't to search for a specific article, it's to discover news that really is new to you. Submitting a link is fairly easy as well, though the several links I tried to submit were already on the site. However, you can make something more popular by "digging it," clicking the "digg it" link next to a headline. If you click on the number of diggs, it goes to a statistics screen about the link - when it was "dugg," who has "dugg" it, who has blogged about it, etc. On the negative side, because the site is user-edited, there are a huge variety of sources, and you never know what you're going to get. For some, this may be exciting and interesting. For others, it may be overwhelming.

Although there were a lot of interesting and positive points about Digg, I don't know that I would continue to use it in my personal life. The immense variety of sources, both authoritative and not, was a little off-putting. Additionally, though the categorization is great, I would get annoyed by having to click back and forth between categories. Overall, Digg is a very well-designed site with lots of interesting features, but it's just not for me.

RSS and Information Overload

Depending on how you use it, RSS can either mitigate or aggravate the problem of information overload. In last week's exercises, the use of RSS as a consumer greatly controlled my information overload problem. Instead of visiting numerous sites and checking individually for updates, updates are sent to me in real time (or close to real time). It was somewhat overwhelming to log into Google Reader for the first time and see nearly one hundred new updates. However, since I don't read every post on every feed, it was easy to get through, and now I keep on top of it.

However, in this week's exercises, RSS as producer, I found RSS to be somewhat aggravating. Part of this week's exercises included creating a feed digest on our wiki. I understand the point of the exercise - to become familiar with digests - but I don't understand the greater purpose of feed digests. It only served to clutter my wiki page and annoy me (I don't like clutter). I don't check my wiki page very often, so even though I created the feed myself, I'd never use it. I'd rather check each page either manually on Google Reader. I think I'd be afraid of missing something by only using a digest.

Social Software that's new to me part 2...

I hate to admit it, but Facebook is a "new to me" social software site. So new in fact, that I'm not a part of it yet. I'm one of the only people - if not the only person I know -who is not a registered user. I was even chided by a member of this class for not being on it, for the simple reason that everyone else is, so I should be too. I never got into Friendster or MySpace, so this whole online social networking thing is pretty new to me. I'm torn about whether or not I want to join, so may I present a list of points-counterpoints (as I see them) of Facebook:

point: I can keep in touch with college friends who are now spread out all over the country.
counterpoint: That's what the phone and email are for.

point: I can join interest groups.
counterpoint: I've never really been interested in making online friends. I find it all a little Dateline: To Catch a Predator. You never know who's out there. (Maybe I'm grasping at straws here.)

point: Most of my friends are on it.
counterpoint: So are many of the 40something-year-old teachers I work with, as well as the teenagers I worked with in summer camp a few years ago.

point: I can put reconnect with my old high school friends.
counterpoint: Let's face it, I wasn't all that popular in high school, and I've stayed in touch with the people (ok, person) I really care about.

point: But all the cool kids are doing it.
counterpoint: .... (whatever I say here will make me sound like an overbearing mother - which I am not - so I'm just going to stop)

I feel pretty safe in saying that unless it's absolutely necessary for whatever reason, I'm probably not going to join. I'm not one to really worry about identity theft or privacy issues, but I'm happy in my anonymity.

Feed, pt. 2

So I guess I went a little overboard with my first post on Feed. This one will be shorter :) I both enjoyed and disliked the book. As a stand-alone piece of literature, it was great. I'm not a big sci-fi fan (unless you consider Harry Potter sci-fi, which is a whole 'nother discussion), but as a piece of literature, I thought it was well written.

However, as a societal commentary, I was a little disturbed by it. I hope this isn't where society is going. The idea of feeds literally becoming parts of our bodies disgusts me. I believe that it's important for everyone, not just kids and teens, to "disconnect" every once in a while. As much as I enjoy my general internet tomfoolery, there are some days when I just don't want to be around the computer. The children in Feed didn't have that opportunity, and it makes me sad that some people actually want a life so connected.

The dumbing-down of language, or "teenspeak," is another disconcerting point. I hear it all the time, and it drives me crazy. Many of the students at my school, and many of the students in my graduate courses (about 20 years dividing the two groups) pepper their sentences with the words, "like, um, yeah, uh, y'know, I dunno." Not only is it difficult for them to be understood, it makes them sound unintelligent.

Overall, I think the book was written as something of a warning. If we continue at the path we're going, look at where we'll end up - feeds in our heads, hacking our own bodies, disconnect and die. Anderson seems to believe that we're too connected for our own collective good.