Podcasts

I've never been a huge fan of podcasts. I had a professor who gave a few podcast lectures and I didn't seem to get as much from them. I guess that I'm just not an auditory learner, which I realize does not reflect the rest of the world. I was not very impressed with the school library podcasts- some were taking forever to load, some were missing altogether. One school library had some audio trailers for books that appeared to be recorded by students. The quality was okay. I moved on to the other library podcasts. Sunnyvale had a good quality lecture on podcast. (I didn't listen to all 75 minutes.) The storytelling podcasts from the Orange County Library were also good quality and I could see myself using something like this in my school library. I skipped over some of the technical podcasts. A special exhibit at one library was described in a podcast. I've seen similar usage of podcasts at museums. My overall feeling on podcasts is that audio is more effective when paired with something visual in most cases. We have the technology to do both, so podcasts seem a little outdated.

You Tube

The first time I went to You Tube was probably a few years ago and I've continued to visit every once in a while. The last time, my daughter and I were looking at trailers for the latest Harry Potter movie. To be honest, I never looked up library stuff until this week. I started out with a book cart drill team performance. I thought the song ("I Want to be a Librarian" by Haunted Love) featured in the performance was a crack-up, so I looked up the video. I went on to watch a few trailers- for txshare, for a school library, for databases... I thought one library tour I watched was a good idea and I enjoyed a library contest submission. There were a number of interviews- I watched one with Stephenie Meyer at TLA. There were clips from a game in which I'm guessing the objective is to annoy the librarian. (Many of the clips enforce the librarian stereotype.) You Tube is potentially a very useful tool, but you would have to let people know where to find anything that you've uploaded- on your webpage, newsletter, etc. because people aren't likely to happen upon it serendipitously. Because of copyright and legal issues with posting pictures of students online, I would be leery to create something of my own and put it out there for the whole world to see. For professional development and instructional purposes, I would use the mini tutorials. I saw a Facts on File database tutorial, for example. This is particularly helpful with your visual learners. When I'm struggling with something, I might check You Tube for help from now on.