This year one of CNN’s 10 nominees for its “hero of the year” award is a children’s librarian and children’s book author. Yohannes Gebregeorgis came to America as an Ethiopian political refugee, became a children’s librarian, and then returned to Ethiopia to work with children and literacy there.   School Library Journal

Go to CNN to see the other nominees and to vote.

“It’s official: The iPhone is more popular than Amazon.com’s Kindle. And not just in the obvious categories like listening to music, browsing the Web or the other applications where Kindle barely competes. Now, the iPhone is also muscling into Amazon’s home turf: reading books.”

From “iPhone Steals Lead Over Kindle” by Andy Greenberg and James Erik Abels in Forbes.

I had used a number of these tools already, but I really enjoyed learning from everyone riding the ELL. I picked up new insights, new websites, and new ways of thinking about the tools. Though prizes are great fun, I really did this to be part of a learning community and to share ideas with others. And mad props to Heather for coordinating this journey! I found the time element to be challenging. There’s really no way to learn at the pace or depth I would like on work time with so many other demands. That part is frustrating, and invariably, I continue to explore much of this at home.

Some of the things I’d love to do/learn further on work time (to use for work related purposes (the following are not necessarily strictly social networking, but would feed in to it):

• Video editing
• Video game design + related programming languages
• Animation (Flash and other)
• Photoshop
• Dreamweaver
• Webpage design
• Time to practice Guitar Hero

I think there are unlimited possibilities of great things to do with a variety of tools. Del.icio.us is one I’m still exploring for library use. But I want to use it well and explore the deep web with it. Maximizing the potential of tagging in our catalog would be great. After making and editing a video, I really understand how time-consuming it is, and how difficult it is to achieve quality with certain equipment, file space, time, editing equipment, etc.  But I’m totally hooked. As for blogs, I happened upon some interesting topics about which libraries blog in addition to the staples such as books and activity blogs. I found one for parents of children, going green, reference/fun facts, nonfiction..

• Going Green Blog
• Did you Know? blog – topical, timely, and fun facts
• Mostly Nonfiction blog – books, but it’s a neat idea to focus on nonfiction, though it looks like this blog stopped a year ago

And a great new wiki: Wikia Green.

We are currently working on homework assignment wikis, and we are trying to consolidate them so we can get to them with one click/link. Right now I’m working on one for Chute assignments. I started one a while back for YA readalikes, and abandoned it for a bit, but went back to because it was getting a lot of hits. Now several other colleagues have joined.

Tools are terrific, and the amount to explore is exciting and mind-boggling.

Though at times I feel inundated with “noise.” There is just so much out there. After wading through my google reader, frequently I just want to curl up with a very, very good book, get to know it very well, revisit it every so often on a hammock under a favorite tree with no outlets in the near vicinity. Add my dog, family, friends, some very good wine, homemade butternut squash soup, string instruments…

Thank you, Jeeves, (Wodehouse, P. G.) for giving me the incentive to download the Audiobook. It’s really a staged adaptation, banjo and all, and iPod compatible. And just the kind of humorous diversion I needed.

Downloading the OverDrive Media Console application was pretty straightforward. I added the Zune application for my husband, John, who has a Zune. I’m still transfering my iTunes account from my laptop to our new desktop computer, which has much more capability. There aren’t very many iPod compatible items I’m interested in, but hopefully that collection will grow. I also downloaded ImmersionPlus Spanish and a video: 25 Years of Improv Comedy.

I’m really glad I did this. Our old computer was so clunky that I stuck to downloading an occasional eBook (mostly cookbooks), but now I look forward to downloading more audiobooks. And I do feel I’ll be better able to assist patrons.

Still figuring out the editing and saving process…how not to lose clarity between the two…a continuing discovery process!

I’ve been listening to podcasts for a while (wait wait don’t tell me is a weekly favorite), for pleasure and some work-related. I used to upload audio, and now that I have a podcast program coming up, I downloaded Audacity and am creating a few trial podcasts.

I would recommend imbee to parents and teachers of elementary and middle school youth. It’s a social network site designed specifically for kids. It’s a great way for teachers and/or parents to explore social networking with kids, and to reinforce safe and smart use of the sites before youth want and need more independence online.

I’m working on my Spanish with SpanishPod. I think it would be great if all the language sites (Livemocha, Mango Languages and the Pods) could integrate an interactive, real time, audio tool for two-way conversation into their sites.

A short while ago another grant possibility landed in my email. A wise person would have ignored it. I did not. What really caught my attention with the grant is that the project (which would be well-funded) needs to be driven by youth. Every day that I walk into the Loft, I am reminded of just how transformative youth-led projects can be.

So I am now immersed in collaborative grant writing with a group of high school students, the literacy coordinator, and the community service coordinator at ETHS. We adults have had a number of meetings, but last Thursday we met with the students. I asked them a few questions and, 1 1/2 hours later, we were all sorry to have to end the conversation. The adults that were present were all blown away by the students’ ideas and talents. Now we have an incredibly exciting, collaborative project underway, grant or not.

I created a google doc for our 19-page collaborative grant-writing process.

I added Lulu’s to the library wiki.

There are so many wonderful, collaborative uses of wikis.

Nice link to homeschooling resources on this library wiki.