Tech+Radar+-+Kathy+Ishizuka's+thoughts

Hello, conference goers. The NCCE Teacher Librarian Summit promises to be a great event, providing an opportunity to connect and recharge with your peers and, perhaps more importantly, to reach out to other partners in your community. In that spirit, Lisa Layera Brunkan, "Spokane Mom," reached out to me to do a bit of sharing. Here's what's on my radar right now. "Fear is the number one emotion in 2010." So said Chris Brogan, social media expert, speaking at the [|Tools of Change for Publishing] (TOC) conference, which I attended last week here in New York. Now that might seem a strange, unsettling thing to tell a bunch of forward-thinking new media types or for me to share with you. But I think it's true and the elephant in the room that needs to be addressed. Fear is a powerful emotion and given the revolutionary changes and challenges wrought by technology, the economy and an uncertain future, it's what's driving a lot of us. In the reaction to a fearful situation, I've witnessed a real dichotomy; there are those that see the end of the world, while others see opportunity. The former quietly assume a fetal tuck, the latter spring into action. Reconciling that gulf, I believe, is the real task at hand for leadership. I think about this a lot. Social media will inevitably become, simply, media. For now, Twitter continues to dominate in this area. As Joe Murphy, a librarian at the Yale Science Library, says, Twitter is now part of the "fixed tech landscape." Moreover, it will inform the service model for future mobile library applications, his area of expertise. It certainly is an essential tool for me, both as a source of information and connection. So — and this gets back to the aforementioned gulf — individuals need to acquaint themselves with the service and bring their communities along. Some resources: [|People Who Need People] : How 11 intrepid users get the most out of social media [|Pleased to Tweet You] : Making a case for Twitter in the classroom [|How to Build A PLN Using Twitter]
 * Change. Big change**.
 * Social media**
 * 1) edchat - a regular weekly chat on Twitter related to K-12 education created by [|Shelly Terrell]

According to the International Telecommunication Union, there will be five billion cell phone subscriptions in 2010 worldwide (this despite the economy). Mobile applications continue to grow in importance across many fields. In an interesting twist that lends new relevancy to bricks and mortar, geolocation applications, such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and MyTown are being integrated into [|libraries]. Enoch Pratt library is running a [|FourSquare program] via their twitter feed. And have you seen LibraryThing’s [|new app] for finding book sources locally? Add your library! Buffy Hamilton's [|unquiet library] is on there. At TOC, I saw some really interesting mobile concepts — augmented reality, and reading and writing tools — and will be covering them for the magazine. The lines are becoming blurred in this area, as innovation continually expands the very concept of what a book is and the role that publishers, readers, and libraries will play in the future. A new service [|Copia] adds social networking to the reading experience and also allows users to post and syndicate notes. Innovation in the textbook arena includes Macmillan's new Dynamic Book program, which allows professors to edit and customize textbooks without having to obtain permission. The Internet Archive is expanding the notion of book distribution with its just announced [|BookServer], an open system for lending books, with libraries included in the mix. A slew of reading devices are in the market, and the influence of the iPad—we'll have to see.
 * Mobile applications**
 * Books and technology**

Thank you, and have a great conference.

Regards, Kathy Ishizuka Technology editor [|School Library Journal] [|@kishizuka] [|@sljournal]

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