beccablog, teacher-librarian

I am constantly thinking of ways to engage students with our great resources. I think Joyce Valenza said at the AASL conference session (paraphrase) – “students go for information that is just ‘good enough’ not necessarily the best.” I believe that is why Wikipedia is such an attractive source – easy, seamless, and good enough (but not always the best source).

We can continue to debate the Wikipedia issue or try new ways to involve students in discovering new ways to learn – web 2.0 features. I have been exploring iGoogle and Pageflakes & I want the best resources to be a part of those features – our online databases. How does this happen? How do we direct them to the best?

1. Create a google gadget. I am currently trying to get one that would send information to students pages that subscribe to a google gadget. Anyone can create their own gadget & then invite people to use it through email. (it is in the very beginning stages – if I create a better one, I will post).

2. Widgets – you can create a widget that can be posted on websites, rss readers, facebook, etc.   I am using widgetbox to create widgets that students can grab a hold of through the sites they already use.  I post one to our website – inspired by Twitterlit (which is the neatest thing!) – we created our own first lines (we call them pick-up lines) of books in our library with a link to the online catalog.  Go to our Find a Book page & see the widget on the left hand side.  Click get widget to grab the widget to add to a blog, pageflake, igoogle, etc. 
http://www.bv229.k12.ks.us/bvw_lmc/findabook1.htm 

I hope to create some that are research-minded soon – so students can access from facebook or another source that they use.

3.  Poll Daddy - What are some ways to create an interactive library site?  Poll Daddy is a free site that allows users to create polls and post to their website, blog, etc.  Our first question – Would you use the library web page if it were on facebook?  Click here to see the results.  This week’s question – “Is the library out-of-touch by discouraging Wikipedia?”.  Click on view results to see the answers so far.  Each week we will try to ask engaging questions (not just library related).