Post #5 Harry Potter

Well, today is the day. I will go to work at 6:00pm and work until 3:00am. Why such unusual hours? Well, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” I have to say, though, that I’m looking forward to this evening. It will hopefully be an opportunity to have a little fun in the midst of my fruitless and disheartening job search. I have to admit that I have only read through book 4 but I really admire J.K. Rowling. I think that she was able to create a story that has such classic Heroes and villians. These characters are very real and engaging, which is why they are so appealing. Not only are there great characters, but the setting of the story, and the plots themselves are so imaginative and fun. There is no question that she has tapped into many elements of story telling that kids (and adults) find so appealing.   

      About a year ago I went to the ICE conference and went to a session by Glenda Bequette, who is a former media specialist now working for the Ill. St. Board of Education. Her presentation really opened my eyes to some of the ways we as librarians can use our students reading interests as an opportunity to expand their reading interests or connect to other disciplines. The Harry Potter books offer a perfect opportunity for this. She created a powerpoint that used geography links to such sites as pikes peak and lewis and clark to expand the meaning of the text. She also used the game of Quidditch to draw connections to outside sources of learning about baseball or other sports.

     She also used the obvious science elements of the story to present resources such as Bill Nye, How stuff works, Shedd Aquarium and more. Oh, and I can’t forget The yuckiest site on the internet. She uses the Harry Potter stories as an educational opportunity and try to build those real world connectionsfrom a fictional story. Just thought I’d write about this as it was something that impressed me very much. I think that It really is what makes learning and reading fun. The opportunity to build connections and expand our knowledge. I guess this ties in with constructivist philosophies. I hope at least some of this made some sense! have fun. Ross.

Post #3 Military Blogs

I was at work at the bookstore today and I came across this book called the “Blog of War.” The title caught my attention as well as the cover of the book which shows a soldier writing in the heat of battle. I only had a chance to briefly read through some passages of the book and was immediately moved by the what was essentially a direct link to the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.

      The back of the book refered to a blog at blackfive.net . This blog seems to be a forum for Military personel not all of whom are still on active duty. It was created by Matthew Currier Burden who was the author on “Blog of War”. There are links to news articles of interest as well as other Military related blogs. There is so much power in having the ability to communicate with the world virtually at your fingertips. I have to admit that I’ve just scratched the surface of reading the blogs of soldiers and others connected to the military.       

      It’s such a powerful way to get the story of war in such an unfiltered way. I read that the Pentagon/Military isn’t happy about soldiers having the ability to blog. What a shame it would be if censorship creeped in. This seems like one area where Blogging can can help get the stories out in a very direct and quick way.   

     Most news stations have blogs as well, 360, USA Today, to name just a couple, not to mention all the non military citizen bloggers of the world. It will be interesting to see if soldiers will be able to continue blogging or not. I think they should be allowed this means to communicate what they’re going through. Oh…..I hope none of this was interpreted as partisan in any way. I was mainly just trying to draw attention to the use of blogging in the military.

       

Twitter

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Post #2 Twitter.com

My friend just told me about this Web Site called Twitter.com. I just signed up for it and made my first post which was pretty easy to do. From what I can tell, this site is all about just having a place where people can describe what they are doing at that very minute. The site allows for you to use a real image of yourself, or an avatar.

Right Now I’m reading Stephen Wright’s Twitter page. It’s worth it to sign up just to read his “every day, one quote”

“I intend to live forever, so far, so good”—–”I lost a button hole today”—–”it’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it”

But seriously….This is an interesting example of Web 2.0. It allows for RSS, so you can have a link right to someones Twitter page. It seems like a combination between a Blog and instant messaging, although not quite as instant. In fact, I just successfully added Steven Wright to my aggregator. The company that created Twitter is called Obvious. They have a blog as well. Their goal is “to create things that matter to the world. I don’t know how new Twitter is but I could definately see this being a popular thing for people to add to their MySpace or Facebook pages and it’s certainly kind of fun to check out the types of things other people write about. In fact I’m going to see if I can add the Twitter “Badge” to my Blog. Wish Me luck. In short, I guess this is another fun way to stay connected using Web technology. Apparently you can update your Twitter page by sending a kind of IM through your cell. I haven’t got that far, but there seems to be this circular communication thing happening. (IM, Twitter, MySpace…..)

Twitter has an interesting Blog you can check out as well. They have some interesting links to other people/Articles etc.. through Del.icio.us. (theres a link to a NYT article about the creators of Twitter.) They have an archive on their blog going back to August 2006. So, maybe this is about one year old or so. This seems like one of those things that could be addictive. I think they are on to something here…

Listservs

I just wanted to briefly talk about the Listserv. This is a webbased communication tool that I feel is incredibly helpful and practical to librarians working in all areas of librarianship. In my course of study in the School Library program, we were asked to sign up for 3 Listservs. This was in our School Libraries course and i’ve had about one year or so of experience with these Listservs. Since then I’ve become familiar with a couple other ones as well. I’ve found them to be an enormously helpful way to communicate with a large group of people and find answers to questions, share concerns, share successes, advertise job opportunities, advertise events, help patrons, and many more uses. I’ve gotten so many helpful ideas, and helpful advise from reading these Listserv posts. As a student, I’ve pretty much only been reading what other people have been posting, but i feel that I’ve gleaned so much from just reading. Fom a practical standpoint, It’s a pretty powerful tool that can allow anyone who has a question, or any information need, to communicate with a targeted group of related professionals, and know that they will get a high response to their inquiry. I’ve seen Listservs related to School, Academic, and Public libraries, as well as Music Libraries. The questions have ranged from readers advisory, information literacy, grants, copyright, information instruction, web 2.0, etc…It’s invaluable to be able to get information from collegues who have been through similar situations or worked on similar projects. I feel that the Listserv is a great example of how Librarians and other professionals can use an internet based service as a vital tool for communication between themselves and their collegues   

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