More on how to handle your email

I've written and ranted about email many times before, so I feel like I should share this Email Charter which is being promoted by TED as one of their 'ideas worth sharing.'  I like the main thrust about saving all of our time.

One thing that would help out a lot is keeping this flow chart in mind:

Now I'm not saying don't send your friends and family funny crap that you find online.  I do that too.  But not mass emails to everyone on your list, particularly if that's how you got it.  They've probably seen those things before and if not, don't especially want forwarded stuff anyway.  Send it to certain people sure, but not everyone.  Sheesh.  If you you feel that everyone would like it, post it on Facebook or Reddit or do what I do and share it only with those unlucky few that stumble across my blog.

Different Various

Another funny email sent to all the librarians in the district:
"HELP! the mic is shocking the students when they touch it to try & adjust it - any suggestions?????"

I guess I'm mean because that just cracked me up.

Now there is a Kindle Lending Club.  I'll have to try it out.

No Kindle?  Here's some fun bookshelves.

The ALSC has a nice Notable Children's Books list if you can't get enough of lists.

A pet peeve: those who demonize ADHD medications.

Have a great weekend!

I Get Email

Funny ones from other school librarians like this:

"Does anyone know this book? I have a teacher who is trying to remember  a book about a girl who is copying a duck, turns into a duck, turns back into herself."

Cracks me up every time.

Snopes Strikes Again

In this article in the NYT, "Debunkers of Fiction Sift the Net" we get another insightful look at the work of Barbara and David Mikkelson of Snopes.com (previous post) along with mentions of Factcheck.org and Politifact.com which are becoming more and more necessary as partisan sniping seems to get worse all the time with facts being the first victims.

For the Mikkelsons, the site affirms what cultural critics have bemoaned for years: the rejection of nuance and facts that run contrary to one’s point of view.

“Especially in politics, most everything has infinite shades of gray to it, but people just want things to be true or false,” Mr. Mikkelson said. “In the larger sense, it’s people wanting confirmation of their world view.”

Rumor Has It

David and Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes.com fame are profiled on NPR, so there's a perfect Critical Thinking bit of brain candy for you.

Can you believe these two people, by themselves, have been battling the forces of internet nonsense since 1995?

I've posted about them before, but there was a time when I relied heavily on their site to cut back on forwarded emails both at home and at school. Especially at school.

We almost never have the forwarded email problem at work anymore. I'd like to think that I helped by always going to Snopes, then replying all with the facts. It did work because after a while people started just sending the crap to me only and asking if it was true. Like I was the only one able to type in "Snopes.com" or something. Kind reminds me of "Let Me Google That For You."

So, yeah, I'd like to think everyone is now completely enlightened and checks it themselves, but I suspect this kind of hoo-ha is going through different channels I tend to ignore (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Much of the stuff they get is political in nature, usually bashing politicos from both sides of the aisle. But their forte is urban legends and internet rumors, mostly the kind that fill up your inbox. Another great online site for this kind of stuff is FactCheck.org, which is a non-partisan group dedicated to fact-checking political speech and journalism. For obvious reasons, they are very busy indeed.

Catch the Wave?

This was written for the Georgia Library Media Association.

Empowering Learners encourages us to become early adopters of digital sources of information to better serve our stakeholders. I’ve never considered myself a “tech” person but have always liked to stay relatively current and aware of the exciting and ever-changing digital landscape. I blog, I wiki, I can hold my own in a discussion of cloud computing or mashups or whatever. But I’ve never considered myself an early adopter. I didn’t get a DVD player until the price came down and it was easier to rent a DVD than a VHS. I didn’t get a Gmail until 2005. My blog archive only goes back to 2007. I was a late adopter (and early abandoner) of Twitter.

But now I feel all special and “early adopter”-ish with my invitation to Google’s new digital platform, Wave.

I know, I know, some of you are saying “Huh? What’s that?” and a few might be saying, “I want in!”

Well, for those who don’t know I’ll explain a bit about it and what I think it’s going to be good for, but for those desperate others, don’t get too excited just yet.

Google Wave is in “preview” mode which is even earlier than “beta.” They say it’s their idea of what email would be like if someone were to invent email now rather than 40 years ago. It’s part email, part chat, part wiki.

There’s good and there’s bad.

The bad is that if you get an invite you may sign in and find there’s nobody else in your contact list available to “wave” with you and it can seem like a big lonely place. I’m sure that’ll be corrected as soon as they’ve tweaked it and are ready to roll it out to the public. But there are ways to get into the water, as it were, and soon enough you’ll find yourself figuring things out.

The other drawback to instant domination is that it’s not as immediately intuitive as, say, blogging or most social networking sites. With those you sign up, create a profile, and you’re off. With Wave, you would do well to read something like this which can give you the what’s what on the best way to get around. Yes, that’s an online book that will probably be updated constantly as the bugs in the system are worked out. But unlike most other platforms, Wave isn’t strictly chronological, so it takes a bit of a different mindset than a straightforward up and down list of posts or emails. At it’s best, it’s the best parts of the powerful collaboration tools you’ve been using online. At worst, it’s the worst parts of online chat and discussion forums.

So if you’re still reading, you’re probably asking what’s the good and why should teacher-librarians care?

The good is that when you get it going for you, you realize that this will be a fantastic collaborative tool on many levels and that’s what we are all about. It will blow some current tools out of the water.

When you open it up, it looks kinda like an email platform. You have an inbox and folders. You have contacts. You can use it like email, click on one of your contacts, type a message and send it. They can respond. But instead of separate emails, this “wave” can go on and on as long as you like. And if your friend is online at the same time you are it’s like instant chat. And I do mean instant because you can see each other type and edit live. No more “X is typing” messages as you listen to the clock tick. But it gets better because you can start a wave with one person and start collaborating on, say, a document. Then you can add another contact and they instantly have access to the entire wave and can immediately collaborate. So now it’s like email and/or chat and/or online document collaboration and/or a wiki all at the same time.

You think back-channeling at the AASL conference was cool with Twitter? Just wait until you have the ability to do a wave instead. I don’t have a Twitter account, but I wanted to see what I’d missed so I went there and did a search on #aasl2009 and scrolled through pages and pages of interesting but incredibly repetitive tweets and retweets. With wave a presenter could throw up a wave, and you could all collaborate, take notes, comment on and edit the entire thing live. As it’s happening. And keep it for future use or collaboration. No, really. Check out this post for more on that.

But that scenario won’t happen until Google Wave is out of Preview and at least up to Beta. So don’t rush into it yet unless you don’t mind a little mess and confusion. But do keep it on your radar so when it comes to you, you can be ready to catch the Wave.

Ew. Ha-Ha! Huh?

Ew.
Ok, CNN. There are so many problems with this story, I don't know where to begin. First of all, "Unidentifiable Creature" is the title you go with? And how many biologists did you ask before trotting that out? And "so-called creature" you call it? It's obviously some former living thing, so I don't get that. Kinda looks like those teens killed E.T., which is just sad. A better photo from a distance reveals easily identifiable claws--those of a tree sloth. Many animals lose their hair, bloat, and turn white in the water and exposure to the elements. Guess it was just too much fun to spread around a story without asking an actual expert.

Ha-Ha!
I got a forwarded message that is indeed pretty funny. It's the audio of an Australian accented woman reading the choices for their school's voice messaging service. The text and true story of it's origins can be found here. I only wish they hadn't added that hateful "speak English" bit at the end, but other than that it is quite funny.

Huh?
This confuses people every time, but just switching to electronics rather than paper does not always equal "going green" as I showed off earlier. In today's NYT, they have an article about how out of control our energy needs are getting due to all of our new gadgets. I need to find out about those "smart strips" they mention...

Deal with Yor E-Mail

Scott Rosenberg has some book reviews and links in this Salon article. I agree with him on the power of Gmail. Who needs a bunch of folders when you can archive everything and search it? And it makes it easy to keep my Inbox to zero, but still hang on to stuff I want to review. And I can access it anywhere. And it's free.

I love the internet.

Step Away From the Keyboard

Sorry about the earlier email rant post. My school email inbox was killing me. I counted yesterday and got over forty emails and only nine were actually for me personally. So please stop and think before you email. People are busy and if you need a stamp or a carpet cleaner or a new dentist or some green paper, ask around. Then email a few people. Then maybe email your grade level. But do you really need to email the entire building? It's especially odd at my school. I teach at an elementary school with around 1800 students, so it's easy for email to turn into white noise.

What's funny is that many people complain about the emails, but I'm not sure they remember that when they're at their laptops. It's an extra layer of busy-work that teachers don't really need.

I've gotten away from it by turning off my email alarm and have decided only to check it in the morning, at lunch, and before I leave. If there's anything that needs to be dealt with in-between those times, they'll come get me. Just like they did before email. I'm busy teaching, thanks.

Merlin's Email Article

Merlin over at 43folders wrote a great article about cleaning up email. link. Most of the other sites on the blogroll have something as well. As for my school email, I simply use three folders: Next Actions (things I need to do or respond to), Reference (links or emails I may need to refer to--as few as possible), and Waiting For (usually copies of email requests I've made and am waiting on a response from).

The other best thing you can do is forward reference stuff, fun forwarded emails from friends or colleagues, or anything else you'd like to keep into a big searchable email account like gmail (Google's email) or Yahoo mail. That way you're not tying up precious school server space and you're keeping your work email light and clean (like a ninja!) so you don't have it clogging up and causing stress.

Also, if you get a forwarded email you'd like to pass on, forward it to your personal email, then forward it on from there (and mostly to other friends' personal emails). Then you won't see rants like the one earlier and everyone at work will be happier.

I Don't Care--email rant

I don't care who you recommend to clean my carpets, or if you need a stamp, or if you lost your cell phone, or if you found some plastic earrings on the playground. I especially don't care if you found the funniest or most interesting forwarded email in the world. DO NOT EMAIL that stuff. Email your friends. Email your grade level. Email the tech person to put it on the school website. Email the weekly announcements messenger--that's what it's for. Don't fill up my box with that stuff. I've got stuff to do.

More on email soon.