Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

Nancy Keane (booktalk queen!) just posted her latest creation on LM_NET. She is now podcasting on her long running Booktalks Quick and Simple site http://www.nancykeane.com/booktalks and she plans to publish a new podcast booktalk everyday. I was delighted to discover the first talk was on my favorite YA read of the year–Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin.

I plan to use these with teachers and students and to listen regularly myself to figure out what I should be reading next. What a great way to expand the potential for podcasting!

To go directly to the podcasts: http://nancykeane.com/rss.html

Here are Nancy’s instructions for subscribing to the podcast:

1. Run iTunes.
2. Click on Podcasts in the left-hand column.
3. Go to the Advanced menu (up top) and select Subscribe to podcast.
4. When you are asked for the URL, enter
http://www.nancykeane.com/rss.xml
5. And you’ll be subscribed. iTunes will check for updates
automatically, and download them for you to listen to or transfer to
your MP3 player.

When I visited with EdTechTalk hosts, Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow, on Wednesday, they turned me onto Second Life. I am so very green in this space, but from what I understand, this highly populated (by nearly 200,000 people) virtual environment–an artifical world with its own economy and real estate–is home to a whole universe of creative folks.  And it is now being explored and adopted by both educators and librarians. 

It’s not just for MMORPGers. Can school libraries exist in new synthetic environments?  Can we reach new groups of users with our avatars?  Can we convincingly represent the feel of a virtual school library in an artificial reality environment? I am eager to play with this concept.

Yes, the Second Life landscape is home to gambling and sex activities, but I think we can look forward to a growing number of zones that will be safe for our educational experiments and projects.  And I suspect, my students would love to see our own Virtual Library move into this kind of exciting and far more interactive environment. 

After my discussion with Jeff and Dave, I discovered other library bloggers are exploring Second Life’s potential.  Much of what is happening seems to be happening in the public library realm. 

Take a look at Shifted Librarian Jenny Levine’s thoughts on Second Life http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2006/04/12/second_library.html

And Michael Stephen’s Tame the Web blog: http://tametheweb.com/2006/05/second_life_library_20_introdu.html

The Alliance Library System and OPAL are collaborating and hope to offer programs and library services via Second Life. http://secondlife.com/education

Also see:  Alliance Second Life Library 2.0 to track the future and meet the Second Life Library movers and shakers http://secondlifelibrary.blogspot.com/2006/05/introduction-to-alliance-second-life.html

Teen Grid now exists for ages 13-17  http://teen.secondlife.com/

Wednesday night at EdTechTalk the discussion focused on a different type of application for wiki technology.  Mark Hemphill from the University of Prince Edward Island examined the possibility of wiki books from a cultural angle and, as an old storyteller, my mind raced with the possibilities. 

Like wikis, folktales, folk music, oral histories, in fact the oral tradition, are all embedded in their own kind of open source environments.  Developers build on the work of those who come before.  These folk products are collective and dynamic, often in the public domain, and generally enriched and happily modified by contributors who follow.

Perhaps wikis are just the right space for such collections as:

• a community’s oral histories contributed by its seniors, its veterans, others . .
• a region’s archive of stories in authentic dialect
• variants of folktales from different cultures
• variants of folksongs as they’ve been adapted through time and the different groups who have used them
• understandings of the jargon of a discipline or classroom or organization

Any other folkwiki ideas?