Thing 22: Staying Current

As I come to the sunset of my Neflin 23 Things Blog I thought I'd share my motivations for the future.

Yes, I will do my best to keep blogging...I'm thinking of starting something new and different. Something where I can share my thoughts and ideas. Something akin to my favorite blog to catch up with, Josh Jubinsky's Library Storytime Blog. His blog is wonderful and very inspiring!

I'm not sure if it will be a librarianship related...youth services related...still thinking about it.

Just this week I made my first YouTube video for the Library's homepage. Let me tell you, it was harder than it seems but I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I'm glad we are embracing this new way to reach out to patrons.

I've been looking back at my previous posts and some are more interesting than others - some are very wordy, others short, but all will certainly clue you in to my opinions of this process. Blogs are supposed to be opinionated, right??

Thing 21: Student 2.0 Tools

When I was in high school, I had a well meaning English teacher who forced us to map our entire research paper onto index cards. We had to assign subject headings, sources, discussion topics...the works. I hated it. I felt like I was writing the paper ten times before I actually got to touch the page.

To me, my brain just doesn't work in a linear 1...2...3...you're done! sort of way. I like to jump all over the place, diving in where needed, cutting things out at the last minute, shifting direction as I see the need...

These tools are facinating and interesting, but they are so formulaic. I think the process of actually committing the information from understanding to knowledge is not as easy as these tools make it seem. If you going to demonstrate true mastery of the topic you might need to deviate from this "schedule." Also, by the time you are in college you should be beyond the "what is a thesis" question.

I thought, okay, I'll give the Assignment Calculator another go...perhaps as a project reminder service, and that email function is only for UM students.

I think that these resources are neat and I'd recommend them for a student that just didn't know where to start. Otherwise, I think they are a distraction from the task at hand. I'm not against "Student 2.0" just against trying to dictate the pattern by which we learn.

Off my soapbox now.

p.s. The handouts on RPC are neat, I bookmarked those.

Thing 20: Books 2.0

Booooooks!

Thank you for bringing Books 2.0 into this discussion. I secretly want a Kindle because it gives me massive techno-envy. I mean, I can be on the beach and download a novel right then and there. Wowee zowee. Anyone have one I could play with for a while?

I played around with Books on My Phone, which I would TOTALLY do if I wasn't too cheap to decline the data plan for my phone. Although I love the printed page I think the features of electronic books are awesome and right up my alley.

I was VERY sad to see that LookyBook has gone away. Britta and I shared some free moments there a few months ago enjoying the full page electronic versions of these contemporary kids books. Bye Bye Lookybook, so nice to know you...

I have Visual Bookshelf on my Facebook profile...this reminds me that I need to update it soon.

I also found some great wallpapers for my computer from the Vintage Children's Book Flickr pool. Beautiful!