Sites for students

I'm writing this on Zoho Writer!  We'll see how it goes ...

The resources in this lesson look a lot more practical than something like Twitter.  (Although playing in Twitter helped me understand what the people in that Alli commercial are doing.)  The organizing and notetaking possibilities for students blow my mind -- I'll bet when the current generation grows up we really will be able to get closer to a paperless society.

I enjoy organizing things, so first I tried to look at Stikkit, but when I clicked on the screencast links I got blank screens.  I'll check some other day, because I really want to see how that works.

Jobster was interesting.  I learned I could make a lot more money as a GS-12 cataloger at Library of Congress, if I wanted to live in Washington, DC, rather than Washington State.  I think not, though.  Their cost of living is much higher, and their climate is appalling. 

The welcome screen for Zoho writer said that with Zoho you could use tags as folders.  What a wonderful idea!!!  I can't always remember which folder my document is in.  How can we convince Microsoft to do this?

Changing type fonts.  Hmm, this one is a little small.  Changing the point size.  The older I get, the larger the type font I enjoy.   Nice assortment of emoticons!

1234567890-=qwertyuiop[]\asdfghjkl;'zxcvbnm,./ (WingDings. Cute, aren't they?)

ISBN	Title
9781406542608	Bardelys the magnificent
9781594482731	Teahouse

Tables work well.

I like Zoho writer and now that I have an account with them I'll investigate their other applications.  Free word processing, free spreadsheets, free lots of things that are good for students and for people at home who don't want to pay for Microsoft products.

Twitter

Hmm. I created my Twitter account (I'm Cataloger), started following Udweller, Jeannie, and the library, and I've put a couple of tweets out there. Underground Dweller was kind enough to do a tweet so I could see if I'd done everything correctly. :-)

I looked at five library accounts and found that they're using Twitter for short announcements-- classes, building hours, computer downtime, additions to the catalog, etc. I can see that this is an easy way to get such information out to people, but I noticed that none of the libraries has many followers, so I'm not sure how useful this could be. Stillwater free library has eight followers. Houston Library has only 58 followers, and that must be a big library. When we add new formats to the collection (CDs, DVDs, etc.) we wait until a large number of people have the equipment and start asking for them. We probably should do the same with a lot of the krl2pt0 technology-- see what lots of people are actually using, and focus on that. Blogs before Twitter, for instance.

Facebook

I think the three most important points in Meredith Farkas' post about libraries on Facebook and MySpace are that libraries should put themselves where their customers are, that the library's presence should be more than just a picture of the building and a profile, and that libraries could educate young people and their parents about privacy issues. Brooklyn College Library and Hennepin County Library have presences on Facebook that are useful, and it would be nice if we could do something similar. I doubt that IT has the time to do this-- would this be a good, ongoing project for volunteers?

After saying all of that, though, I have to admit that I don't understand the appeal of sites like this. A face to face visit is best, then a phone call, then a nice, long letter that you can read and think about and then re-read. I just don't think that something like "hi, cute picture!" is real social networking.