What commitment, to a better future in Columbia!

This is an awesome video about a man's lifelong commitment to be useful to the community he belongs to in Columbia. Most areas in Columbia do not have access to libraries. He travels to villages carrying 120 books on a donkey for the joy and benefit of the kids in those villages. He reads to them and helps them with their homework. He is helping to build Columbia's future. This video inspires me!

Chirp, Chirp Twitter

Twitter is another great way to stay in touch with people. I found joining and adding a gadget for twitter was pretty painless. I like the 140 character limit when sending a "tweet". That way the message can be a short and "sweet tweet". Twitter would definitely be useful as a school librarian. I could send out short messages about events and new resources. I could also twitter with other school librarians. We could ask each other questions, share links and successes. Twitter could also be used to post technology tips or share a new found website or blog. I found the twellow directory very helpful when looking for librarians who twitter. The 200 pages of results was a bit daunting, but I found several librarians to follow including Utah State Library (USL_Library) who use twitter for training Utah Librarians in social media. They claim to follow the most brilliant minds in the library world. Let's follow them too! (My husband wondered if one would be called a "twit" if they used twitter. I said a person should be called a "twit" if they didn't use twitter-maybe now he'll join too)

RSS, Newsreaders and finding GOOD BLOGS!

Another good day exploring! Today I learned about RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Now I know what that little orange icon stands for on many of the blogs I follow. With a simple click of that icon I can keep track of web pages and blogs by subscribing to them. Bloglines was easy to understand and set up. Now I subscribe to the blogs I am most interested in and they feed to Bloglines. I also added googlenews-library by clicking on the RSS icon which simply added the newsfeed to my Blogline account. Flickr was added as a photo feed to my Blogline account as well. Then it was time to find some really good blogs! I went to the blog search engine, "technorati" and searched under the key word library. This resulted in 2801 blogs. A few to many to browse through, so I looked for the higher authority numbers and found "i Librarian" (authority #656). This is a great blog about news and resources on Library 2.0 and the information revolution. I plan to follow "I Librarian" because it will help keep me up-to-date on the latest information and technology I want for my library. Next I went to "Bloglines" to find more good blogs and I liked the search options they offered. I could search anywhere, only my feeds, or excluding my feeds. When I typed in the keyword library, I received 3,800,000 posts, too many! I went to edit query and searched: school librarian with 35,600 posts. I went back to edit query and searched: school librarian elementary best, which narrowed results to 1,190. I did RSS feed for "Classroom 2.0 Live". This blog has a wonderful archive and resource area I plan to follow. It was fun to look at the "100 Best Blogs" list. I found "wired librarian" which listed the 2009 Edublog Awards and listed each blog that won and the features on their blog that won them an award. Each year 10 blogs are chosen based on certain criteria such as; best individual bog, best class blog, best resources sharing blog and best educational wiki to name a few. "WebTool4u2use" won the best educational wiki. This is an excellent blog you'll want to follow! It was fun to visit these blogs and mark "Wired Librarian" so I can follow and find out what blogs will win the 2010 Edublog Awards. This blog also listed the past winners, so you can visit those blogs too. By following good blogs, I can keep up better on the latest and greatest!