Thing 7: Web 2.0 Communication Tools

At this time, my library doesn't promote the use of email too much. Most of this is staff to librarian and not student to librarian. I've had a few student email me with questions, but they weren't solicited. It's something I may explore, although I may need to direct these to my para at the desk. I can hardly keep up with my emails the way it is with teaching so much and also trying to be technology coordinator for my building and running the media center. The only problem is that I'm not sure she'd be able to help with the online research questions.

IM would be a similar challenge. I'd probably need to train my para to do this. It seems kids text much more than IM now. That has really changed in the past 6 months. However, students are not allowed to use cell phones during class, and after school, there probably wouldn't be a reference person available to answer them. Kids do have IM access between classes, but that's a busy time for my para with passes and supervision. I think email would be the best unless we could set up some sort of integrated online chat within my web page, but again, time and training would need to be addressed.

Personally, I'm not a big IMer to text messager. My cell phone is a pay as you go unit, so texting is not economical. I have done IMs, but it's not my first choice. I'd rather email or call a person. I'll call if I want to talk now and email if the response can wait. A phone call is faster for me than IM and cuts down misunderstandings. The benefit of IM would be if it was a bigger group online at one time, sort of like a conference call. That would be OK. Texting is also slow for me, but my kids are addicted.

I checked out the OPAL on web conferencing. Actually, I've been involved in 3 web conference recently at school. One was for state online testing. One was for a testing diagnostic tool, and the third one was a training session on Moodle. I really like the web conferencing. It is saving us money with training too, which is nice. We plan to do some staff Moodle training with a webinar, and this will save us over $100.

I think with any of these, you need to pick your poison and go with it. Find what works for you and use it.