Thing 7~Web 2.0 Communication Tools

Email Productivity
I use email on a daily basis to check school announcements, interact with teachers, and email friends and family. This is cheap way for me to keep in contact with friends that are not local. This year, I got the media center and the computer labs set up on a calendar that staff can access through their email. We were having difficulty with staff booking two or three places and others were not able to get in. Staff can email me any time of day to notify me that they would like to schedule time down in the media center. I have pretty much full control of the calendar so that I know who is coming and what time. I find that teachers are using the calendar more. It says them time from walking all the way down here to schedule time, that may or may not be available. This has helped with our office to be able to track down classes when they are not in their classrooms. I find that I check my email on a hour to hour bases depending on how busy I am. I tend to leave my email open and then it appears that there is one new message at the bottom. I can click on it and then view or ignore.

Instant Messaging
Our school prohibits the use of instant messaging on the computers. So for now, I don't think that I will encourage students to use instant messaging to get in contact with my boss or myself. I think that it is more important that students come and ask then instant message. I feel I can spend more time and it is more personal than sending a small message.

Text Messaging
I had never text messaged anyone before. I decided to give it a try. I text messaged my friend about some plans for a weekend. I am not sure that it would be cost effective for the library to text message students. There is a lot of things to learn in text messaging. I don't know all of the abbreviated forms of words and these students are really good at it. Most of the students are now carrying cell phones and texting their friends all the time. I just don't see our media center using text messaging any time soon.

Web Conferencing
I decided to take a look at one of the web conferences offered by Minitex, that has already aired. I viewed the Library 2 web conference with Carla Pfahl. I wanted to see what their impression of Library 2 means. I was surprised at some of things that they talked about, I was currently working on with the 23 things. What seemed to be the most important point was that the Library 2.0 is the upcoming thing for library world wide. If you want students to get the most out of your library, you will have to take an active stance in keeping your blog, MySpace, and Facebook up to date. Every media center/library wants patrons to utilize them and we have to be creating in getting existing and new patrons the information. It is important that we stay active in learning new technology and using the technology.
I think web conferencing could be a very inexpensive way to learn new things but can have some draw backs. I very rarely have an hour or more to devote to sitting, watching, and participating in a web conference. Most of my time during the day is spent working with students and monitoring students. Watching web conferences that have happened in the past can help, but if there were questions that you have, you might not be able to get as many answers or solutions to our questions.