Online Meetings

Week 3 of 23 Things Kansas has me stretching to learn new things through the use of webinars. I recently was a part of a live webinar on Jan. 21 from Follett - it was a webinar dealing with the updates to Destiny 9.5

Just this morning I chose from a list of archived webinars from the California State Library to attend. It was titled "Finding (Legally Safe) Music and Videos for Presentations, Blogs, and Podcasts." This webinar was presented by Mary Minow and it was about an hour long.

Wow! She is a lawyer and even she had difficulty making sure that we all understood how to avoid a legal battle over using something that we don't have the rights to use. It is a complicated matter. I was pleased with the resources that she presented to us during the webinar. There were many websites given, ideas for how to locate public domain materials, and the best way to stay safe when it comes to using music or video with podcasts, presentations, or blogs.

I also appreciated the section on knowing what to ask when requesting permission from copyright owners.

I will definately use the California State Library archive webinar list more often. Most of the webinars look to be about an hour long - but I think if the topic pertains to you or something you want to learn about - an hour really isn't that long.

I saw where another librarian had mentioned something about using webinars for students to catch up or review on assignments. I also think you could turn this around and have students create a webinar to "instruct" on a topic. You know what they say - to really understand something. . .try teaching it to someone else!

Online Communities

Week 2 of 23 Things Kansas has me thinking about how to use Facebook with my library community. I don't have any problem using it to communicate with other librarians across the state and in my school district or surrounding communities. However, I do see an advantage to creating a Facebook page for my school library that students could access - especially if dealing with the upkeep of a webpage seems daunting to some librarians. This student page would be a great way to share ideas about books, projects, etc. with students and faculty with minimal technology skills. That's the beauty of Facebook - it is so easy to use.

Week One: Blogging

I was impressed with how easy it was to create a blog. Why haven't I been doing this before now? I really need to learn more about using the technology for social reasons - I am way too far over on the academic side. I look forward to adding links to other people's blogs and updating my profile. That will all be done on another day. . .