I have never really got into IMing, so this was a good experience for me. Since I'm not yet in my own library, I tried it at home. Me and my husband both have a gmail account which has a chat program called google chat in its interface. I sent him a note, he sent me a note, I sent him a note...
I have to admit t was pretty nifty. But now I'm trying to picture how IMing could be incorporated in a school library. If high school students were allowed cell phones in school, could they use their phones to send an IM request to the librarian's computer? I could see this working...a student is short on time so they IM the school library about a particular resource they are in need of. Then when they have time to visit the library, the needed source is ready and waiting for them. Of course, this cuts out the very important aspect of having students SEARCH for their own resources which the Librarian at the high school where I am currently doing my practicum just happened to remark on today. She said she had to train herself not to do everything for the students. An integral part of information literacy is being able to find and locate sources.
For this Thing #7 I also participated in a Minitex Webinar on Gale's K-12 Databases available through ELM. Webinars rock! It turned out I was the only participant. I didn't understand at first that I would actually be listening to someone talk via the phone. Good thing my baby decided to take a nap and my 5-year-old was taking his half hour daily screen time in the form of one hour watching Star Wars. During the webinar, I would see on my computer screen at home, exactly what the host of the webinar was doing on her computer. So I would see her mouse moving around on the screen, opening windows, clicking on things, etc. I learned useful information that will help me navigate some of these databases and I didn't even have to leave the comfor of my home. I would most definitely take one of their webinars again.
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