Article in Library Journal

There is an article in October's library journal titled: "Talkin Blogs: Library bloggers discuss the impact of their work." It highlights a round table discussion concerning the professional impact of blogs; the ethics of blogging; blogs and print journalism; and what makes a blog good. I find it interesting that much of the conversation touches on various aspects discussed by our panel at the ALAO conference.

Coference Congrats!

Congratulations, thanks, and a job well done to Jen, Jp, Debi, and Mary for their panel presentation last Friday (November 4th) at the ALAO conference in Columbus. The session was well attended, especially for an interest group sponsored event, showing an interest in the topic at hand: blogs!

Many thanks for your hard work.

Education Podcasts

Kathy Schrock highlighted a site that collects links to education podcasts. According to it's web site:

The Education Podcast Networkis an effort to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century.

Blogger for Word

Has anyone used the blogger for word option? Looks like if you download the add-in, posting is possible from Microsoft Word and your pc. A blogger account is still required, naturally, but it might make things easier for students already familiar with Word and hesitant to use the online wysiwyg editor. About Blogger for Word has more detailed information and links to a FAQ help page as well.

I'm a bit hesitant to show this to my grad students. They are comfortable with posting weekly using the blog editor. A new way to post may add stress and they are a bit overwhelmed with technology at this point.

Are weblogs Internet faculty rooms?

I just finished reading an article on blogs and teachers. It likens, rightly so after reading various instances presented, weblogs to faculty rooms. The article is available through OhioLINK's database Academic Search Premier. Here's a link to the post, or at least what I hope is a persistent link to the post, if you are interested: This Time, It's Personal.

Blogiversity.org

I received an email this morning from this organization. Is anyone familiar with it? There is not a specific subject area for education (sadly), but other genres are represented.

AU's IRC Blog

Diane - your IRC blog looks great. Have you had much response to the blog from students or faculty? Have you been able to determine if it's being used (is that the right word for a blog?) Did the blog replace some previous form of communication, such as a written or electronic newsletter?

Thanks,
Greg

New List Serv

In keeping with the podcasting thread, an email announcement was brought to my attention this morning introducing a new list serv from Syracuse University called Bibliocasting. Here is the information from the email announcement posted to the ILI list by Gerry Mckiernan on behalf of Dave Lankes:

The bibliocasting listserv (bibliocasting@listserv.syr.edu) is dedicated to a discussion of streaming media in the library environment. This list grows out of the increasing popularity of "Podcasting," or the use of RSS and the Internet to download audio programs (like audio blogs) to computers and MP3 players.

So what to post on the list? Examples of how libraries can build on the growing excitement of Podcasting; Questions on how libraries can use podcasting and other multimedia information they create to promote themselves and provide better service; Questions on how to podcast and other technical questions on streaming media including QuickTime Streaming, RealProducer, and others. In addition, the list will include postings of key articles, reports, and news about podcating and other streaming media in general and in the the library context.

Bottom Line: We are looking to build a community of individuals interested in the application of multimedia in the library environment.

Subscribe 2 ways: The first is through e-mail. To subscribe to the list send an e-mail to listserv@listserv.syr.edu with the entire message (no subject line): subscribe bibliocasting FirstName LastName

A podcast is set up for the list. Each post is transformed from text-to-speech, and syndicated using RSS. The RSS feed (podcast feed) for the list is at: http://drew.syr.edu/iis4/pod/pod.xml

Library Blogging Article

I saw an article entitled Why and How to Use Blogs to Promote Your Library's Services on the Information Today web site this morning. It focuses on libraries creating blogs to market services. I thought we might all want to check this out.

Podcasting from the Blog?

Hi -- For a couple of terms I had my students looking a blogs with audio (like tofuhut.blogspot.com.) Now one of our teacher education faculty is having her students identify podcasts and is also encouraging them to do their own podcasts. I'm wondering if we can not-so-sublty work audio or podcasting into our presentation, too. I'm doing the children's literature focus and thinking that surely someone is reading kid's books aloud on their blog??? Actually, it might be an interesting way to practice oral interpretation / dramatic readings. -- Mary

ALAO Leadership Retreat

Monday and Tuesday (June 13 & 14) the annual ALAO leadership retreat was held at the Inn at Honeyrun in Millersburg, OH. During the business meeting, it was my responsibility to contribute CMCIG's yearly report for 2004-2005 and indicate something new, or of interest, being considered by the Interest Group. I was happy to report we had a new co-chair, Greg Martin, and that we were currently working with a CMCIG blog for the November conference.

Our blog generated a great deal of interest among board members (an ALAO blog is being considered) and other IG chairs. As promised, I did not reveal the topic currently under discussion, or divulge the blog address. I did encourage attendance at the CMCIG sponsored session in November!

Thanks for your continued work on this worthwhile project.

Books on Blogs and Blogging

I recently purchased two books for the library with blogging as a topic. The first is Who Let the Blogs Out, by Biz Stone (reviews on amazon.com). This book includes background information on blogs and a chapter (6) titled 'Politics and Pupils: The impact of Blogging on Society' which is of interest to our endeavor as it discusses instances of blogging in education. The second title is Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq, by Riverbend (reviews on amazon.com). It is hard copy of the author's blog accounting of the war in Iraq and is a personal statement on how blogging has changed the landscape of reporting and first hand accounts of people and countries at war.

Is anyone familair with either of these titles? I have read the first and just checked out the second (fresh off of the new book shelf) today.

Blogging - in general

It is one of life's great mysteries; decide on a topic of interest and suddenly there is a plethora of information delivered to you. After our CMCIG workshop, and subsequent decision to tackle this blog project, two articles published in Library Journal landed in my mailbox.

The first, an editorial in the April 2005 issue, defended a decision made by the journal to publish an article titled "Revenge of the Blog People!" Intrigued, I searched for the article to read what all the commotion was about. While I do not agree with the broad stroke definition presented, or the attitude of the author concerning bloggers and blogs, one of the points raised is that of accountability. We have a responsibility to provide current information in a professional manner.

The second article, published in the Spring 2005 netconnect supplement, discusses blog ethics. "The Ethical Blogger" details a few simple ideas blogs and bloggers should follow. According to author Karen Schneider, there are five rules or "concepts: transparaency, fairness, cite it, get it right, and if you broke it, fix it. We should keep in mind everyone is not thrilled with blogs, their technology, or what their place should be in an academic library. It is important to represent ourselves, our IG, in a professional manner.

I'm In!

Hello All -- Do we want to talk about or contrast blogs with discussion groups like Children's Literature at Yahoo or the Childrens' Books discussion group on About. I get those in one of my news readers and had assumed that the difference between them and a blog was that the blog was a one-person venture. I did not know that we could all co-author this blog. Cool!

Educator Blogs Online

I came across this today as I was looking for Praxis resources. It's seems to blog about examples of educator blogs. I haven't really had a chance to look too closely, but wanted to make sure I shared it with the group. It's called Edblogger Praxis. It appears to link to many education blogs, with a split between higher ed and PreK-12.

First Year Teachers Are Blogging

So, I guess I'll start off the conversation with a blog I've seen a few times. It's called hipteacher and is done by a first year teacher. Might give our education students some insight into what to expect their first year on the job. Also, an example of how they can reach out to one another for ideas and suggestions to use in their own classrooms. A professional development tool!

Welcome

Welcome to the CMCIG blog about education blogging.