Thing 23 Making It All Work Together

I chose to use Hoopsuit. It wasn´t easy, I wouldn´t say it is user  friendly but in the end I managed to do it. By now I´m less scared of trying things and clicking here and there to see what happens..

I wish the free account gave more space for more than three social networks but it is as it is and time will say whether I stick with these ones or change.

Yes, I find it difficult to keep up with social media. I understand you have to be posting frecuently so your posts are on top of the lists and I´m not devoted to it. There are times when I´m absolutely into it, but not most of the time. What is certainly true is that now I have a better grasp of social media and obviously can give better advice to my students. It´s a matter of time and self esteem, I ´m getting more in control of that part of life which is getting more and more important nowadays.

So thank you so much Rudai23 team, it´s being a really wonderful journey, best use of time, patience with myself, excitement, delightful course. I´m very grateful with you all!!!

Thing 4 #thing4

I have almost finished my course by this time but Thing number 4 was left behind, so here I am happy of going through it again. Mostly is writing the reflective post cause most of the tasks by this time have already been done. Anyways I find it very convenient as I´ve recently acquire a smart phone and will like to try Google photos feature. By now I also have flicker and Instagram so I guess I will have to get to know them all to see which one to use or better, know which use for what!

Google Hangout is great. My library doesn´t have a phone line  and is a bit aside from the rest of the administrative place so this is the perfect solution to get in contact with my colleagues. 

I have used a lot of Google tools as my school uses Google and I´m also a fan after proving how they all integrate. #thing4 

Thing 22 Mobile Things

I have to say that this reading has made me think whether it is still valid to pay a lot of money for the use of my current library software... There are a lot of  free apps out there that might replace many important features that my old system does. Maybe it is not yet time but surely soon will be.

About Beacon, I think it is great to receive in your smartphone cultural information while you are wandering around, but not so good if you start receiving advertisements. That really will against your privacy, but I guess that should be possible to be customized. Sending book overdue recalls to students and other important school information makes it worth acquiring.

Gumit is something I must certainly would like to use in the library although I´m a little concerned on the fact that is not curated and I wouldn´t like my youngest students to read inappropriate  texts, but, again, that´s part of our reality and is better to learn how to deal with it instead of only avoid it. Sadly, I´ve just tried to downloaded to my new Iphone and it is not available at the Ecuadorian App Store...

Looking through the content of 23 Mobile Things I got captivated by the topics and thought that´s something I need to study once I finish the Rudai course. I´m really interested in Storytelling but it is the last one! I guess it will have to be my prize for doing the previous 22 things.

I´m getting a broader vision of the use of technology in school and my objective is to be a resourceful teacher librarian who can suggest and propose interesting activities to students, specially to those reluctant readers. Hence my new Iphone! I didn´t give it too much thinking when I decided to buy one because it is since long time ago that I felt the need of capturing in photos what happens in the library. I missed a lot for not having a camera with me. My vision now is broader than just taking photos and will continue improving.

Thing 20 Presentations

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xNWJsgODS6wRjSE66KaTyM460EGnBKzxsR-TqAwWyEE/edit?usp=sharing<br />

I´m sharing a Power Point presentation I did a year ago to go through Research Essays with students in secondary. I barely remember my reflections after delivering it but now I think I should make it shorter. There are some slides that don´t suggest anything, others are too broad, and what I believe now is that things should be clear and concise. Is not about talking 40 minutes non-stop but letting time for questions, answers, reflections, chatting, it should be fun. I would like to shorten the presentation or maybe divide in it´s sections.
Not so glad that I couldn´t embed the pp into the blog and after failing I decided to upload it to Google slides and share the link. This is something I need to learn to know how. If someone wants to work on it and improve it I don´t mind at all.

My advice is always not forget the audience when talking. Checking constantly on how the audience is feeling the presentation so you can go faster or slow down or just stop. Interact with the audience and continue according to their needs.

Thing 19 The Legal Side of Things

Well, that´s a lot of reading and I´m glad once again that it will be there to visit every time I need to be sure I´m doing things right. 

In the end it all goes down to acknowledge others for the work they have done, a very simple sense of respect when living in community.

I did have a very simple way of acknowledging to be honest. Just the author was mentioned and did not care if it was copyrighted or under Creative Commons.

Thinking about the employer being the owner of any intellectual content created during work is terrifying! How could someone prove a work has been developed not at work but at home?  I need to read more about it. The subject of the invention or creation must be in relation to the type of work of the employment I guess. But being a librarian would compromise the children stories I write?

Copyright and author property is a big issue in my country as most of the people don´t comply with it and many cultural objects can be obtained at low price. That´s how a debate is raised on letting have culture at reach of the people who otherwise wouldn´t have access to it. 

Here is a photo I downloaded from Wikimedia and is great as it provided me the attribution to the author.

"100wikidays books" by Smirkybec - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:100wikidays_books.JPG#/media/File:100wikidays_books.JPG

Insects by Jon Sullivan in Public-Domain-Photos.com

Thing 18 Communicating through Photographs

Now I have accounts in Flicker and Instagram, I´m happy that both have the same user and password so I will not have much trouble to remember!

Here are two photos I´ve downloaded from Flicker, one is an ancient book bus which remind me of my time working in one of those (not so old) and another one of a book display from a group in Flicker who upload photos of nice book displays.

Lake Macquarie Shire mobile library, 20 October 1950, by Sam Hood

                                                                          Shel Silverstein Book Display

In Instagram I´m following the Richland County Public Library which has a beautiful painting of Maurice Sendak´s Where the Wild Things Are. I commented on how magical will be to be reading there!

 How can I use these? Besides having now the possibility to take million of photos of every event, display, activity at my library and uploaded them very easily to Instagram... IDEAS, lots of ideas I can borrow to do at my library and also add them the flavour of my country and uploaded back to collaborate with the librarians world!

Thing 17 Reflective Practice

Reflecting on the course so far and after reading this last thing I realized the importance of reflection in the learning process. I will try to write right now on how would the reflection practice will benefit my library experience.

On one hand I have all the skills that I have learnt up to now and feel that some of them need more practice to feel confidence to use them. Is like having all the ingredients for a recipe but still don´t knowing by heart how much of each should I pour. I do have the instructions and that is great because I know that at any moment I can go back and search on Rudai home and also go to my blog and reread what went wrong the first time. 

It´s important that many things in life are learnt due to necessity. I mean that only when you are urged to accomplish something you strive to do it and finalize it. In certain way this is what the Rudai team is helping me to do. Under my own will I´m gently pushed to go further in my development and reflect on it. That is very nice.

I´m planing on keep practicing the things learnt in R23 and adding them to this blog once the course has finished. This blog will be for me and my improving skills which should merge to obtain outcomes to be used in the future for the library and for my other personal interests.

It has been nice to see how the things get interrelating with each other and all the possibilities they show up. At the very beginning I just couldn´t make myself a clear idea on how this course will develop or what would I get from it. The first tasks were done with the fear of failure. As the course has evolved I can feel myself more confident on trying new things and exploring more assured that I can succeed.

I do feel a bit scared on start showing up my new knowledge but it will come up I´m sure on my next goal to achieve which is a campaign to get more new books to my library. From the top of my head I see I can use Infographic tools to create posters and be shared through social media. From this starting point more things will happen.