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. 

Thing 16 Collaboration Tools

I do know Google docs and use it all the time as my school has adopted it as the regular way of communication between teachers and students.

At the beginning there was a bit of reluctance to use it but in a year everyone has familiarized with it and now is our best tool for work. Google drive allow us to classify our documents and have it available quickly. The only con is that at my country we are used to have frequent internet issues and even if these are solved then power goes off and we are left with nothing but our own creativity and resourceful skills.

Time ago I discovered Linoit which is an app that gives you a digital board to stick your notes and save them. I found it very useful and now I depend on it. I have it classified in year groups and write down the name of the books I´ve read to each school year. It´s useful because I can easily see what I have worked with each group and also read any suggestions I need to remember or recall for the next day I see them. Remainders and also links can be stuck on the board.

Recently I asked Year 7 students to open an account in Linoit and post information about Charles Dickens. They all contributed and the result is great as you can have a panoramic view of lots of Dickens facts of his life. There are also pictures and animation videos stuck to the board. 

I like the idea of Doodle and will give it some time to try it out. I have already recommended it to some people that I know struggle with setting up meetings with groups of people. In my school we use Google calendar.

Here is a picture of my board in Linoit.

Thing 15 Advocacy for Libraries

ooks

Librarians are versatile.

I can see that many of the advocacy campaigns have used  the ability to upload photos and I really love it. It is so creative and shows the interest that people puts on doing this. And pictures show a so many things at the same time. Looking at smiley librarians in different scenarios makes me think on how versatile is our profession and how everyone enjoy their different roles. There are thousands of little posters talking about library´s values and that´s exactly the number of  possible appreciations, everyone has its own.

Libraries never have been more seen and think about them than ever before and I do feel proud of being part of this group of people that encourage others to get closer to literature and to get to know such pleasant way of growing to be a better human being.  I love to be part of this group of people who think that libraries are almost sanctuaries where memory and future blend to provide us a sense of  identity and community at the same time.

The illustrations from Library A to Z  are fabulous and I´m so glad they´ve come to me just in time to be used  in the book drive campaign happening at my school soon.

Thing 14 Augmented Reality

I haven´t used AR, knew a little about it but didn´t learn more because it seemed to be too futuristic! I guess we´ve arrived to the future!

While I was watching the related videos many ideas came to my mind about how all these innovations could benefit libraries. Could libraries be the center of technologies like AR in every educational institution? Or, on the contrary, apps like this one will just accelerate the moving of research, knowledge and information out of the library and into the movable devices that can be some other place and not necessarily in a library?

I think it all depends on how things develop. Years ago the textbooks that included a DVD were preferred over the traditional ones. But that didn´t last long, links for the internet did a better job than downloading the content a DVD and increasing trash.

I can imagine a library loaded with possibilities such as those presented by librARI and I´m sure it would soon become a very popular place to visit, or at least it will definitely attract more people and more will get engaged with reading. It looks like a great way to solve circulation issues inside the library too.

Undeniably it is a great pro for education. Having the opportunity to see all science topics coming to live in front of us is revolutionary for the teaching learning process.

At present we are already looking how the insertion of technology is switching the classroom scenarios and are still struggling to deal with their associated issues of students getting engaged in social media instead of using their devices for educational matters when being at school.

And now comes AR to add more content to this incredible fascinating world of learning.

On my end I think it will take a bit longer to have it in our classrooms but anyhow I will play a thing or two to get initiated!

Thing 2 How I became a Librarian

This Thing must be done before I go any further. I started being a librarian since I was 23 after gaining a position at the National Library in my country. I only had a technological preparation for it as there were not librarianship university degrees at that time. After one year cataloguing I was moved to be part of a new project that involved a book bus being taken to unprivileged places surrounding Quito. It was a demanding job because we didn´t had a limit of hours to dedicate to our tasks every day. We were so excited with this activity that usually got commited more hours than those in our work contract. We not only gave on loan books but organised festivals and projected films at night. I greatly enjoyed that time and now I can see how influential it was for my life because from that experiences grew my love for books and libraries. The relationship and the magical connections between books and children were so clear and marvellous that did drew the path for other things I´ve done in my life.
The book bus project ended due to lack of budget and after that experience I worked in a bookshop, then as an editor in several publishing houses and finally as librarian at my current job in an international school. Three years ago I had again the opportunity to get enrolled in another book bus experience, The Bisee Book Bus, and travelled to different parts of Ecuador with students to promote reading  and implement small reading corners in little schools in need. Once more this project went down due to budgets and administrative problems in Ecuador and at the moment we are trying to find a way to make it work.
Lately I´ve started to teach primary students, since this year because my school can´t afford having two librarians. It´s new for me but very enriching and I really enjoy it. Every time I can I find myself looking for a nice short story to retell the children and thinking how to make it more attractive and interactive. Teaching library skills to primary students is also more easy than to secondary students. Maybe sec students are more into more complex studies and I feel they need to learn things that will help them immediately. They are the generation that want all to come fast and be quick. With primary students there is more enjoyment, at least till now.
I also write books for children and teenagers, actually only two published, one for each group age. Having being recommended for publication after participating in the contests has brought happiness and a sense of accomplishment in my profession and my life. All these activities and experiences interwine and make me who I am.

Thing 13 Professional Organizations

Great, I searched in Internet if there was a Library Association at my county and found their blog, Facebook page and Google circles page! I wasn´t aware of this. I do remember attending like a million years ago to a meeting of people thinking on founding an association when I just started working as a librarian. Lots of things happened in my life since then and although I´ve always been working with books, the last 13 years have been at an international school so I´ve been unaware of what they have being doing.
During these past years I´ve being in contact with librarians from other international schools and from time to time we organize a meeting to reflect on our jobs. It´s always difficult to get organized and find the time that suits everyone so we can get together.
I´ve got excited with this discovery and would follow them and maybe get to participate more actively. There is an event which they are promoting for November 10th which would be nice to attend, only that  it would have been better to be up to date with Rudai, then I would have applied for this event sooner. Probably I´m not going to obtain permission from my school... I´ll try anyways. People who attend to this event are considered members of the Ecuadorian Association of Librarians.
I´ve just skimmed the sites but already found an invitation to apply for a grant to attend the IFLA 2016 conference in Ohio!!

These are the links
http://aeb-nacional.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Aso.BibliotecariosEcuador
https://plus.google.com/114330356036953863765/posts

Thing 12 Attending Conferences

The most recent conference I´ve atended was the one organised by the school I work for at the begining of this academic year. It was called ¨Making Classrooms Better¨ and was lectured by Tracy Tokuhama Ph.D, who is an education researcher and Professor of Neuroscience of Learning at Harvard University. She has written many books about teaching and learning and works with 25 schools around the world among a long list of accomplishes in the education field.
It was a two day seminar where all teaching staff had the chance to meet and get to know each other. This year we had many new teachers coming from different parts of the English speaking world.
It was nice to listen to different points of view and experiences in education. Tracey focus ed on these main key messages

• How does the learning process takes place, Mind, Brain and Education involved
• The process to move from a problem to a question
• The flipped classroom

Was a captivating lecture and got us all initiated in a long time study about how to improve our practices at school.
I had a notebook to take notes and almost near to the end I realized that I should have kept drawing mind maps on my notebook as I always used to do. This prove to be more useful to me than just writing down some unconnected phrases. Sadly on this ocassion, as it was a long time I hadn´t attended to a conference, I forgot to do that and just wrote down some keywords that could help me find complete information on the Internet. The truth is I haven´t got back to my notes until right now.
So it´s a good opportunity to affirm my way of taking notes and also to get some reading about this fascinating theme.

Thing 11 Reflective Practice

I hate procrastination. I´m the kind of librarian that wants to get everything done because can´t bear having tasks on a cue. But being a librarian is just that. There are always things to do in the library, it´s difficult to find a moment where all the orders have been done, all the books catalogued, shelved, mended, outstanding books being recalled... there is no way to have an ¨ I´ve finished moment ¨ in any library. You might finish for the day but not totally finished. So, being a person who feels that everything should be done as soon as possible to avoid procrastination is not actually totally good. It might be good for your boss in terms of having administrative things done and on time but not so good for the mystic of librarianship. When you feel that is imperative to be done with those boring tasks before having the pleasure of browsing a new book or enjoying a nice reading moment with students or extending a chat with a patron or retelling a story to a child who requests it... you really need to stop and reflect on priorities. It will always be nice to have an assistant to help with those tasks but is not my case and from what I can see the trend is to reduce staff.

At the moment I´m in half term holidays so I can catch up with Rudai things and feel so glad to accomplish them. At one moment I just thought that I will never finish it and that anyway what was done until then was fine. But I keep progressing and getting over the shyness of being exposed which I feel is a strong impediment that holds me back in this process.  My plan for this holiday is to do at least one thing per day, if two are done I´ll be done by next Wednesday! I like the way how the Rudai team nurture us, this is a great experience and I´m very thankful!

Thing 10 Live Streaming

Finally!!! I did it! I  created a private event and talked about the books I need to go through and are at the moment sitting around my bedroom. It´s called Libros and the URL is https://youtu.be/BBdKUDLFC24
I only shared with Rudai 23,  I hope it doesn´t go public in anyway as this is something I didn´t prepared, just done it to learn how things work. I had to read a lot from the support pages of Google, it was easy for me as these were in Spanish, my mother tongue, so I didn´t got too stuck as normally. It feels so good to finally having accomplish this thing. Now I see that with more preparation there are lots of alternative ways of doing live streaming. I am thinking of this student who had to leave the country due to family problems and will have to be absent for two or three months. Her parents have asked for school support with the lessons she will be missing. Live streaming would be a great help if teachers could record some of their lessons for her.

Thing 9 My first video to Youtube

One of the reasons I got behind was Thing 9. I tried many times to work with ScreencastOmatic and every time I got stuck, so I left it for later and procrastinate.
Tonight I looked for other ways to go around so I managed to do the video with Quickplay and once done I could continue with the learning on how to uploaded to Youtube and make annotations. Great learning! And very useful indeed. I´m eager to show how to do things and help people who struggle with technology (like myself!).

Thing 8 Curator Tools. Pinterest

I love Pinterest too!! I started with a few craft things long time ago and now I have almost everything that matters to me in there! I found good to get organised my library ideas under a file named Library but then realized it was not enough and created Primary Library and Secondary Library. There is a file for animation and others for films, music, books, jewelry, cats, storytelling and just other things I like but have not yet a name for them. It´s great, If it only was on me I would organise the whole library books in Pinterest according to the Dewey Decimal System. I might do it!
And another thing I really love of Pinterest is the icon on my browser that allows me so easily to add things to my site.
I will try to learn or use Storify and Flipboard at some time, maybe once I catch up with these Rudai lessons. For now it was good I already have been working with Pinterest so I can move on.
My Pinterest account is under Magdalena Novoa https://es.pinterest.com/magdalenanovoa/

Thing 21 Infographics. Today

Here is an infografic I´ve managed to do with Easel.ly. Fun to work on this!
I´m very behind due to the start of the new school year, there has been so much to do. Also I got stuck somewhere and forced myself to keep accomplishing the tasks in order... Now I realized that it shouldn´t really matter as long as I do them. So here is this one, not even know what Rudai number is,  I couldn´t find it in my email list...
This is something I can think I will use in the future and in the library. I think it will also be enjoyed by the students. Great to create contents!! Very educational!!

Thing 7 Podcast Trial

Here is a podcast of myself reading a page of my book Le preguntaré cuál es su nombre, published this year.


https://soundcloud.com/magdalena-novoa-549883247/trial/s-GlmEe

Thing 6 Reflection

This is amazing! I´m into this fast spinning world of information and every time I´m ready to write a new entry to my blog I get distracted by some other upcoming notes from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs I´ve started to follow and Google plus groups. On top of these I´m recently adding some Podcast places to follow. After calming down and thinking more thoroughly, I´m delighted.
Yes, it´s all about of selecting what really benefits me and my work and then scan the rest as if it´s a big and colorful magazine. I will also need to trust on the ways of life and just let things come and go without desperately trying to read every single thing and getting involved in all.
It´s such an amazing world of ideas out there! I´m grateful to be part of it.

Thing 5 Following Rudai23

I´m coming back to Thing 5 to write my reflection on Online Networks. I was doubting on opening a new entry after my last post or doing what I´m doing right now, that is editing an old post. I decided to choose this option with the hope to have some feedback on whether this is wrong or against some sort of protocol we should learn when dealing with online networks.

There must be a lot of things still to be learnt about how to better manage social media. Recently I attended a conference on how to write texts for the web and I got some pickings on SEO, rankings, Google keywords, hot maps... We didn´t got too deep in any of this topics but we were asked to keep researching about them in internet because there is a lot information available.

I feel I´m new in this field and need to keep learning more instead of just getting along with what I know now.

For the moment Twitter is my way to show what I liked from somebody else´s tweets and to have any important information available in my twitter account. I would like to be more creative and tweet my own original thoughts.

I´m using Facebook for social personal, friends and family activity and tend to use Twitter for more professional related things. Anyway, sometimes information just gets mixed up. I guess it is something that I will be gaining control some how with more practice and time. What really matters is that I´m getting to know lots of interesting people, organizations, associations, events and these enrich my own activity. Being connected is a sustancial part of being a professional in current times and collaboration is not only a nice word but a necessity.

Thing 3 Linkedin

I had an account for Linkedin but I didn´t use it at all. From time to time I used to check on it and see if there was something to add or improve, but honestly... I didn´t  really care because I didn´t find the use of it.
So now thanks to this course it is different, I´ve engaged all the afternoon playing around and learning more to make it reflect my work and experience. I haven´t finish yet but I am in a good path.
I would like it to show my love for books, reading and the promotion of the joy of reading. That is very important but I also work with proofreading texts and translation so I will need to add my experience with this skill to promote myself and get some freelance jobs.
In order to keep on the track here is the link to follow.

Thing 1

Excited to start this course! Here are some important links to follow.