Module 3.2 Good short things – tweets and twitter

Posted on December 1, 2015 by abond

#iicsreads

“Good things, when short, are twice as good.” Baltasar Gracian #twitterquotes (Collins, 2009)

While I do follow some useful Twitter accounts I find the hashtags are the most useful way to follow events or broadcast to a group of people with similar interests. During conferences I tweet using the official conference hashtag. I often read back using the hashtag to see what my colleagues have noted or commented on. A hashtag can connect you with a group of like minded professional such as #tlchat which Teacher Librarians (TL) around the world use (Valenza, 2010). This particular hashtag not only collates posts from some leading TLs but it is now used for regular monthly discussions on topics with one session ‘live’ (TLChat Live, 2015). There are many blog posts giving TLs guidance on how to tune in to valuable discussion about their work (Rodriguez, 2014).

At the moment our Professional Learning Community (PLC) is focusing on how to buld a school culture of independent reading and our hashtag is #iicsreads. Not only do we tweet articles and photos to that hashtag as members of the PLC our students are using noticeboards with that hashtag to write up their reading quotes and tweets by hand.

(Kayabali, 2013)

One twitter hashtag my colleagues and I followed throughout the months of May and June in 2013 in Istanbul was #occupygezi. We all lived within a five minute walk of Gezi Park and Isitklal Cadessi. Both these areas saw clashes between protesters and riot police. There were clouds of tear gas, fireworks used as weapons and many people were injured. Each day we would follow the hashtag to see what protests were planned, see photos and video footage. We would decide on the safest route to walk home from the bus and alert each other as to what might be happening on our own streets next. Twitter was used as a way for the protesters to communicate with one another.

I do of course follow some key people, Joyce Valenza, Jude O’Connell and Ewan McIntosh are a few people I have had the privilege of hearing speak at conferences (a great source of people to follow). School Library Journal, Mashable, Scholastic, Awesome stories all constitute great sources of tweets. Then there are your favourite authors – many of whom are on twitter now as well.

At first I was worried about missing someone’s important tweet – the twitter sphere is very noisy at times. Then I was introduced to paperli. Paperli is a free web tool which uses the twitter content you are interested in and creates a daily paper (Paperli, n.d.). I have created my own daily paperli called “Librarybond” which curates my entire twitter feed. This year I created a new paperli for middle students following current events “News and Current Events Daily”.

Follow, hashtag, curate and retweet – twitter is a way to stay up date with breaking news in your neighbourhood and trends in your professional life.

References

Collins, T. (2009, June 5). “Good things, when short, are twice as good.” Baltasar Gracian #twitterquotes [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/TheLittleBookOf

Kayabali, Y. (2013, July 31). [Gezi park protest twitter bird]. Retrieved from http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2013/july/protest-art-in-real-time/

Paperli. (n.d.). Save Time and Money. Retrieved December 1, 2015, from http://paper.li/learn-more.html

Rodriguez, M. (2014, May 27). Top Twitter Hashtags for Librarians. Retrieved from http://hacklibraryschool.com/2014/05/27/hashtags/

TLChat Live. (2015, November 10). https://twitter.com/TLChat [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/TLChat

Valenza, J. (2010, December 30). For newbies: Just Heart the (#) Hashtag! [Blog post]. Retrieved from Never ending Search website: http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2010/12/30/for-newbies-just-heart-the-hashtag/

Social networking – beginning INF506

Posted on November 22, 2015 by abond

Social Networking
Social networking is about sharing. On social networks people can come together and share ideas, information, stories, photos, videos. Social networking is about people connecting with others through digital tools.

Networking technologies most frequently used

Facebook I try to keep Facebook for my personal life; however, many of my friends are also my colleagues. My timeline is filled with articles about libraries and technology in between friends’ family and travel photos. I post library information on our school Facebook page as it is used by our parents.

Twitter I use Twitter as a professional learning tool, following note worthy colleagues. I discovered Paperli a website takes your twitter feed and turns it into a daily newspaper. I can scan the headlines, read what I am interested in without feeling like I might miss something important. This year I created a current events paperli as a trial for our middle school students.

Diigo I save websites and articles on this bookmarking website daily. We have been using Diigo with our debate teams as a research tool. All members of the team belong to the group and share articles and discuss them through Diigo. Our Professional Learning Community is now using this tool to share websites and articles.

Youtube I have been creating i-movies to showcase visiting authors, battle of the books and aspects of learning in our library. This year I have been using Screencastomatic to show students how to use Noodletools, EBSCO and our online catalogue Destiny. I post these videos to Youtube.

Google We are a Google school and use almost the entire Google suite of tools for collaboration and organisation.

Good Reads and LibraryThing Our Istanbul Librarians’ Network has a monthly book chat meeting and we record all the books we chat about on our group page. Our February book chat meeting was held on Google Hangouts due to a snow storm. We recorded it and posted it to the group page. I use Librarything to record all the books I read so I can remember titles when I am recommending books to students.

Learning in INF506
I would like to learn how to harness social network technologies to promote the work of our library. I want to let our community know about the great resources we have in the library and how they can access them. I think social networking is a way to achieve these goals.

Content curating – so many ways

Posted on March 15, 2014 by abond

Website content curation is something I have always wanted to explore but it seems so daunting at times. One of the librarians I follow is Joyce Valenza. She has such detailed libguides which she makes freely available through her library website.

One I think is of most value to us in our Masters studies is her Masters course libguide found at:

http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com/content.php?pid=324183&sid=2771792#

She is using present.me to make video slide shows about the topics she is lecturing. I viewed the one on curation tools. She also has the TL libguides for all TL’s to use TLguides http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com/friendly.php?s=tlguides

What I didn’t realise is that I am already in some way curating content. As I watched Valenza’s webcast I saw two methods I use now and which are very easy to maintain. I use Diigo as an online bookmarking tool. My library is https://www.diigo.com/user/librarybond We have also used Diigo with our high school speech and debate team and in the various committee I participate in Academic Integrity is one of them. I like Diigo because you can add a tool to your web browser and simply click on it when you want to add something to your library. I have my Diigo account syncing with me Delicious account as well.

My newspaper – librarybond

I also use twitter and while I found it a great tool for following people I found all the tweets overwhelming at times until I discovered paperli. I have my own newspaper librarybond using the tweets I receive. It is emailed to me each morning and other people can subscribe to it as well. I read the headlines as you do with any newspaper and select the best, most interesting articles to pass on to colleagues or to add to my Diigo library.

When looking for other curation sites I found this article

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/15_topnotch_content_curation_tools_15378.aspx 15 tools for curation.

The one I think I will play with for school is livebinders. I like the idea of the tabs so if I made a livebinder for History at IICS for example I could organise the different subject areas by using the tabs.Here is an example of the livebinder for apple i-pad http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=26195 Though it does look time consuming. I like the idea of Scoop.it for quick and easy curation. I will try both tools and see which one I like the best. Here is an example of a 21st century libraries scoop from Dr. Steve Matthews. http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-libraries

References

15 top-notch content curation tools. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2014, from http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/15_topnotch_content_curation_tools_15378.aspx

Bond, A. Diigo library – Librarybond. (n.d.) Retrieved March 15, 2014 from https://www.diigo.com/user/librarybond

Bond, A. Librarybond – paperli. (n.d.) Retrieved March 15, 2014 from https://paper.li/kiwionthego/1308979532

IPads in Schools – LiveBinder. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2014, from http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=26195

Matthews, S. Dr.,21st Century libraries – Scoop – it (n.d) Retrieved March 15 from http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-libraries

Present.me | Free online video presentation software | Make a slideshow with your powerpoint & web cam. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2014, from http://present.me/

Valenza, J. Dr. Sandbox and resources for Joyce Valenza’s Mansfield course. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2014, from http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com/content.php?pid=324183&sid=2771792

Valenza, J. Dr. TL Guides. (n.d.). Retrieved March 15, 2014, from http://libraryschool.libguidescms.com/friendly.php?s=tlguides