Week 8: Thing #19 Library Thing

I played with Library Thing early on in the course when I began seeing other class participants' book lists in their blogs. The lists are visually appealing and make any blog look more attractive! I added titles for an upcoming summer class that I am teaching this summer and practiced adding tags for those books. I also learned how to add a book list to the sidebar on my blog. It looks like the format for adding a book list as a widget has changed since then, and I like the older version better. You were able to select size, as well as determine fixed height or width. Unless I overlooked something, I don't see as many of those options available anymore. I needed to use both the advanced and customize options to create the look I wanted for this assignment's widget.

Because I had more experience with tags through the Technorati assignment, I did spend more time using the tags feature. I even created my own "tagmash" by combining elementary and graphic novels. Unfortunately, I only got one result - The Invention of Hugo Cabret, but the results page offered related tags and tagmashes to help improve my search. I decided to add some of the books from the Must Have Graphic Novels Primary list found on Joyce Valenza's teacherlibrarianwiki space, which I mentioned in an earlier posting on wikis. I tagged each entry and created a widget for this post.

Here is my Elementary Graphic Novel book list:

Week 7: Thing #16 Wikis

Wikis are Web 2.0 tools that I was fairly familiar with before taking this class. I contributed to a class wiki as part of the Librarian Leadership Academy in Anchorage this past summer and came away inspired to create and use one to help encourage collaboration between teachers and between students at Glacier Valley. I worked and collaborated with several teachers on a Storytelling unit and initiated a gvstorytellers wiki to document our process. Even though the Storytelling unit involved the integrated efforts of classroom, library, visual art, special education and extended learning teachers, I ended up being the only one documenting the process on our wiki. I think the wiki format was still too new for folks to feel comfortable adding their perspective and lessons to it, so I made sure to act as the role of documentarian for the project. My hope is that this unit will be used by other teachers to serve as a resource and reflection on what did and did not work. Teachers can continue to add to it to refine and enrich the unit.

I just started an after-school Digital Storytelling club and hope to create a wikispace for students to write and share their scripts, as well as edit them after reading comments from fellow club members. It will also help me keep all of their writings in one easily accessible place and allow them to work on their scripts and react to others from their home. I could also see using a wiki for student-generated book reviews.

Of all of the wikis I explored, I found Joyce Valenza's teacherlibrarianwiki space the most useful. It serves as a knowledge base: a gathering space for school librarians to share ideas, lists and effective teaching practices. I particularly liked the book lists for students, including the Must Have Graphic Novels Primary list and Booklists for Elementary Students.