Back to School

Sure signs that a new school year is beginning?  Back to school sales fliers fill the Sunday newspapers, morning traffic quadruples, and there are fewer blog posts by my teacher and media specialist friends.  The excitement and business of a new school year have us all busier than a long tailed cat on a porch full of rocking chairs (as the old Southern saying goes).

When I have had time to work on a web site, it hasn’t been this blog.  For my SLIS 761 class this summer, I created a school library media center web site.  Since my principal is pleased with it, we are using it as our official web site and I have been working on its maintenance.  I have thoroughly enjoyed working on the site and hope that it will be beneficial to my school’s faculty and students.

Image attribution

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42328960@N00/1329881901

Flickr Tools

My grad classes at USC in Library and Information Science have made me more aware of copyright laws, to say the least.  That’s why I am always on the lookout for user friendly images to use on my blog or in slideshows.

By sharing Simple Flickr CC Search in a blog post, Cathy Nelson has added to my image toolbox.  I have been using Flickr CC to locate images and now want to locate other search tools for Creative Commons images.

Of course, many tools for using Flickr images exist.  I have used the following, but these generators do not just search for Creative Commons licensed images.  If anyone knows of a way to do that using these tools, please share!

 Spell with flickr

 Splashr  Create slideshows using flickr images.

 Pim Pam Pum Bubblr! Create comic strips using flickr images.

 Big Huge Labs Home of fd’s flickr toys

 Flickr API  Links to a plethora of mashups using Flickr.

What are your favorite Flickr toys?

My Presentation A Splashr slideshow featuring the cast from the upcoming movie, Twilight.

Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/34427466731@N01/82540

Surfing Serendipity

Today I was checking out some of the recommended teacher blogs in “50 Must-Read Up and Coming Blogs by Teachers” and stumbled upon “Labeling Keys.”

Beautifully recited poetry that makes you laugh but also think.  My thanks go out to the Ultimate Teacher, writer of “One crazy teacher to another….” blog.

Subject Guides 2.0

I have been busy wrapping up my course work for SLIS 761 at the University of South Carolina. And though it may seem I haven’t been writing any blog posts of late, I have had to write 5 for this course and post them on Blackboard.  A couple of them might be interesting to others outside of my course, so I will also post them here.

One of the blogs I subscribe to is “iLibrarian” written by Ellyssa Kroski. One of her most popular posts has been one from 2007 entitled  “A Librarian’s Guide to Creating 2.0 Subject Guides.”

  In this post she describes several Web 2.0 tools that can be used to create Subject Guides: 

• The first is Squidoo.  Squidoo is a free service that allows you to create a multimedia Subject Guide called a Lens. Kroski provides links to three example Squidoo Lens created by librarians.  One of them,“Using Web 2.0 Tools to Become Librarian 2.0”, is an excellent example of what you can incorporate into a subject guide using Squidoo. (Because this is a free service, Squidoo inserts advertisements on each Lens page.) 

• Another tool Kroski describes in this post is Libguides. This is a subscription service used by college libraries, but the professional interface is worth a look. 

• Kroski also describes the social bookmarking site del.icio.us.  She links to a helpful Swiss Army Librarian post that describes using this tool to create Subject Guides. As examples she links to Chelmsford Public Library  and  Hilton C. Buley Library . There are school library media centers also using del.icio.us like Creekview High School Media Center in Georgia.

I want to add some Web 2.0 created Subject Guides to my library media center site and feel that del.icio.us will be the least time consuming to utilize. Just one look at Creekview’s del.icio.us account proves how useful and powerful this social bookmarking tool can be for busy library media specialists. Using just the basic del.icio.us format, Buffy Hamilton and Ruth Fleet have created master Subject Guide lists for their faculty and students.  Having been a del.icio.us user for some time, I know that these lists are easy to create and can be added to in a few spare moments here and there. And, using the social aspect of this service, media specialists can choose to collaborate with teachers who can add authoritative annotated links to the Subject Guides.