Week 7: Microblogging

I started a Twitter account last summer and began to follow some people but didn't tweet after trying it a time or two just to learn how it worked. I really liked it from the beginning, but I didn't know many others using it and I didn't want to just send random thoughts out into the universe unless I really had something of value to say. I like the idea of using it as a tool to gather and share information, photos, and links to resources. Marcia McPhail blogged about using Twitter with Delicious, Diigo and Facebook. (Thanks, Marcia!)  I'm still exploring those options, especially using Facebook and Twitter simultaneously to receive tweets directly on my Facebook page.  That sound like a VERY useful feature.

Two of the best ways I have found to find people on Twitter is to see who others are following and to look at the sites for those who post interesting comments.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I enjoy following author Neil Gaiman. He often tweets links to all kinds of things, including photos, music and videos.

I follow School Library Journal. That has been another way for me to keep up with one of my favorite blogs, A Fuse 8 Production, by Elizabeth Bird. Her posts about the Top 100 Children's Novels have been amazing, full of valuable resources. (I can't believe how many links I am putting in this post! I'm actually starting to get good at it!!)

Catherine Trinkle's bio on Twitter reads "365 tweets! I am going to tweet every day for a year on a book, author, information about literacy, etc.." I have found a number of good ideas and learned about some great books from her tweets. Another fun resource for learning about books is KidderLit. From the bio: "KidderLit is a version of TwitterLit for the younger set: Twittering the first lines of kids' books so you don't have to."

We have a Newsflash feature on our school webpages, but I find it really cumbersome to use. I think would be much quicker and easier to use Twitter to send short updates about what is happening in my library and to share resources with parents.

Week 5, Thing 11

I checked out Twitter and am wondering about its possible usefulness as an emergency notification system, especially after reading the stories about people using Twitter to communicate about the recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

We are in a private school near a large university. The university and the local public school district have recently worked on emergency rapid notification plans using cell phones. I need to find out more about their systems.

I don't know if enough of our school families are using text messaging to make this a viable plan for our school. Actually, probably more of our parents use this technology than I realize, particularly the younger set...it's the staff that is most likely to be unfamiliar with the technology and uncomfortable using it. In an emergency, would any of us actually remember how to use this tool even if we had a plan? I'm guessing no. Still, it is something to explore further.

I also checked out Craig's list, which I had heard a lot about but had never explored. I stumbled onto the website of one of our school parents who is an artist. I looks like she just established the site in May and had added new items for sale yesterday. Fun stuff and a great family.. Check out her work at
TheSunPorch.etsy.com