Mid Summer Update

Members of the CSLA 2.0 Team met f2f for the first time since putting this program together. Here are some of our team members gathered in the AT&T Executive Briefing Center in San Francisco (Front: Connie Williams, CSLA VP of Communications; Jackie Siminutus, Library Advocate from AT&T. Back: Jamie Boston, LMT from Davis Joint Union School District, Rob Darrow, Coordinator of Libraries, Clovis Unified School District.)
Our group learned that at this point in the summer, there are 125 participants in California and another 65 people from outside of California participating. Over the next months, the members of the CSLA 2.0 Team will be presenting the SLL2.0 concept at a variety of workshops. We will have a special awards ceremony at the CSLA conference in November.
There is still time for you to join!

June is here!

• School Library Learning 2.0 runs from June 1-September 1, 2007. The URL is http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com/
• I have been through the course as a "test driver" and it is the best "road trip" I have ever taken.
• California School Library Association (CSLA) members who have been through the course will "cheer on" participants that take the course over the summer. It is the cheering and encouraging one another along the way is a key part of the "summer 2.0 fun" experience.
• School Library Learning 2.0 is the first and only learning 2.0 program designed especially for K12 and California Curriculum Connections.
• School Library Learning 2.0 is the first and only learning 2.0 program that includes librarian AVATARS. Why? Because in addition to it being FUN, school teacher-librarians and their colleagues need to model safe Internet behavior to students -- student photos and glamour shots don't belong on blogs for the whole wide world to see!
• School Library Learning 2.0 participants can also get academic credit (2 units) -- a nice incentive for teacher-librarians and other teachers. The link to Fresno Pacific University's Continuing Education registration site is now "live." See http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com and go to the "ABOUT" section for details.
• I have already used so many tools that I discovered on this journey. Put on your traveling duds and jump onboard!

CSLA and School Library 23 Things

A team of technophiles from the California School Library Association have spent the past four months refining the 23 Things activities originated by Helene Blowers of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg in North Carolina, for school librarians. Thanks to Jackie Siminitus and lead by Connie Williams, our new CSLA president-elect, we are going live! We are excited to roll this out primarily for California school library personnel. However, we are welcoming friends and lurkers from anywhere in the world!

Join us for School Library Learning 2.0 - it will be a summer to remember!

You are welcome to participate in many ways:

Join us and learn with us! We “officially” begin on June 1.
Look at what we’ve done and re-do it to make it your own for your school library group or organization. Add to our “curriculum connection” ideas on our wiki
What we’ve learned from others…and are implementing with this management iteration:

We have a set of “virtual cheerleaders” (2.0 leaders) who will each have a group of about 30 participants to follow, post on their blogs, email and cheer on to encourage them to complete all 23 Things.
We have used our CSLA online registration system to have people register so we have a list of names and email addresses.
We are using bloglines to keep track of our groups and will divide the group up according to our main 2.0 blog leader.
For the things we thought were important but didn’t exactly fit with the 23 Things experience, we created the curriculum connections wiki.
We will be using Moodle a bit for participants who are purchasing continuing education credit.
We are offering up to 2 units of continuing education credit for participants through Fresno Pacific University.

For us in California, it will be a summer to remember! We hope you’ll join us, too!!

#23 Summary

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
My favorite was LibriVox. It will be such a useful source of material for my students.
How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
It confirmed my fears that I can't possibly retire or I will never be able to keep up with what is going on. These advances are way too much fun to just let the
young people play with them.
What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
It will be interesting to see how we can keep track of what is going on with those who are taking it for credit - or will that be the university's problem. If folks jump around like I did, it makes it harder to track. It was much easier to do then the classes I have taken and taught through PBS TeacherLine as you really can do it at your own time, pace and sequence.
How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote CSLA learning activities?
Mind Expanding!

Week 6 #15

I was particularly struck by John Reimer's article, To better bibliographic services. His main thesis is that libraries should get much greater mileage out of the metadata they create. If libraries can begin to move away from proprietary software and begin using 2.0 tools to provide access to their holdings, then tagging can greatly increase the functionality of our data.

#14 Week 6 Technorati

I did explore this and practiced putting tags on some of my postings. I then went back and took them out. I tend to be a private person - note that I didn't even want to creat an avatar that would in any personify me. I realize that much of what I have out on the web is searchable and viewable. I also realize that the current generation is all about sharing and going public. That is fine and dandy for them, and having explored all these tools, I can help them with what they want to do and perhaps guide them to do it in a responsible manner. I just don't want to be out there with them.

Week 8 - #19 Library Thing

I am addicted to mysteries written by female authors. I share books with several friends and we are always losing track of what we have read and what we haven't. We have been using Library Thing since last year to help us keep track. We have yet to do a complete retrospective listing however.