iPhone4 as a travel tool, esp camera

I've been using my new iPhone4 while being a tourist in Rio de Janiero for the last few days. I'll be presenting at a conference following my stay here so I have brought my laptop so I have not been totally dependent on the device, but I've tried to give it a pretty good workout.

As a phone
I went with ATT's service when buying the phone since Verizon's phone will not roam in other countries. But when I discovered the per minute rate from Brazil to the US is about three bucks, I didn't even bother to sign up. I suppose in an emergency situation the roaming would be good to have, but I didn't even want to accidentally use this feature. I guess roaming data services have really provided some nasty surprises to travelers as well.

But the iPhone Skypes just fine if you have a wi-fi connection which even my two star hotel has here (mostly). For those daily calls home, the iPhone is great.

As a GPS
One of the primary reasons I brought the phone is that I've become a GPS junkie. Since I don't have a roaming data connection, GoogleMaps or Mapquest don't work with the GPS, but I downloaded a couple city maps of Rio and these work pretty well. I usually seem to be within about 100 yards of the little blue dot on the map so at least I can tell if I am walking in the right direction. Fun to watch while riding a bus too. I'm still hugging my print maps, however, and I've not tried to geo-tag any photos.

As an e-book reader
Surprisingly, I find reading the Kindle app on the iPhone better than I'd hoped, especially during the multitude of short waits that seem to always crop up during travel. I would NOT take the iPhone as my only source of reading material, though.

E-mail, web-browser, etc.
The iPhone is great for deleting e-mail messages, RSS feeds and other stuff you should be ignoring on vacation anyway. For e-mails that demand quick responses it works fine as well. Depending on the website, the phone is good for finding information on the web. I stored a number of documents in Evernote and these have been useful on the iPhone.

As a camera
This has been a real experiment for me - traveling without a "real" camera. And I would say it is a mixed bag. It's nice not to have to carry a separate device and at 5 megapixels, the iPhone camera is pretty good. The camera's controls, however, take some getting used to. Among the downsides:

• Not being able to see the screen in bright light (no rangefinder). Big drawback for me.
• No optical zoom. You can bring up a zoom slidebar which may or may not respond to sweaty fingers, but since it is digital, one may as well shoot and then crop.
• I find it tough to hold steady without your finger over the lens! I seem to have more blurry shots with the iPhone than with my regular camera.
• It's hard for strangers to operate so they can take your pictures. I tend to choose people who don't look like they can run too fast so maybe that's a part of the problem.
• No quick shots. Even if you leave the camera app open, you still have to turn the iPhone on and swiped to unlock the device (see sweaty fingers comment above). It takes only a couple seconds to do this, but a couple seconds often means getting the shot or not.
• I worry constantly about battery-life, unlike with a real camera for which you can tote an extra battery, memory card etc. I think limits the shots I take.
• It's not a device for recreational activities like the beach, hiking etc. I've dropped cameras in water before and I hate to think of this expensive device winding up waterlogged. I just don't know how rugged my new toy is. I've already acquired a few scratches on the case.

That being said, the quality of the pictures is pretty good, they upload into iPhone nicely, and the auto-correct usually brightens the dim ones right up. Here are a few shots from my trip:

 

Favela (slum) overlooking Leblon area. Taken from moving jeep.

 

View from Cordoba (Christ the Reemer) mountain.

Street art in Ipanema? Note big finger in lower right.

Painting from Museo Nacional de Belas Artes (no flash, por favor)

Sand art on Copacabana beach.

Harbor at Angra Dos Rios (Bay of Kings)

One thing the guide books don't tell you is that all tour guides are required to sing The Girl from Impanema at least once during the tour - usually rather badly. Just so you know.

Positive interactions

Gary Hartzell reminds us that often the only thing that principals learn about libraries while getting their administrative degrees is about handling book challenges. In other words, libraries = problems. Unfortunately, the negative connotation probably continues for too many principals.

What does your principal hear from you? Complaints about too few resources? Dealings with difficult kids? Teachers not cooperating? Technical problems? Others wanting to you use "your" space?

I know as a supervisor I am expected to be a problem-solver. It's a job I relish and enjoy. But I also know the thrill of hearing the positives as well. What have you shared of a positive nature with your principal lately - that's personal, concrete and good for students and staff?

And do our positive interactions extend to parents? Leigh Ann Jones at Shelf Consumed suggests a simple thing librarians can do to build a positive relationship with parents - call one each day with good things to say about working with their child in the library. Wow. What powerful idea. (Read her post!)

A few years back I wrote a column about the Power of Parents. While it might have had a good idea or two in it, Leigh Ann's suggestion trumps any advice I gave.

If we don't have parents understanding, appreciating and backing our library programs, I really and truly believe we are sunk as a profession.

Call a mom or dad today. And relay a positive story to your boss.

Spoof websites - still a good tool?

The Information Jungle

Research for most of us who finished our formal education prior to 1995 operated in an Information Desert. Those five or ten sources required for a research paper were tough to find in our school and public libraries. The final product of our information quest was usually a written compilation of information, often verging on plagiarism to fulfill an assignment that neither requested nor encouraged the creation of new knowledge or innovative solutions to real problems.

Today’s student who has access to online sources of information operates in an Information Jungle. A quick search using an Internet search engine can yield thousands of possible sources of information. Savvy teachers today are asking students not just find and organize information, but to do so to answer genuine questions, offer original solutions to problems, and communicate their findings using a variety of media.

While technology can be enriching, the Information Jungle and projects that call for the demonstration of higher level thinking skills contain perils as well. The role of the teacher and library media specialist has rapidly changed from one of a desert guide (helping learners locate scarce resources) to one of jungle guide (helping learners evaluate and select resources of value). This change has been so rapid that many educators have not had time to learn the skills necessary for their new roles. But for those who do, the rewards for doing information problem solving in the Information Jungle can be tremendous. Survival Skills for the Information Jungle: Information Problem-Solving Activities Are More Important Than Ever Creative Classroom August 2001

Many people first heard about Mankato, MN, because of a website designed by Don Descy, a library professor at the local state university.* Don's Mankato site has been used by probably thousands of teachers as a humorous object lesson in why one should always check the veracity of information found on the web. I was honored to play Sheik Yabouti, visiting professor, at Mandota University on the site, wearing the garb I'd collected during my stay in Saudi Arabia.

Spoof websites have long been a staple of Internet instruction as all of us learned both the benefits and perils of the Internet. I always thought these were among the best. (And am surprised to see them all up and running!)

• California’s Velcro Crop Under Challenge http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html
• Feline Reactions to Bearded Men http://www.improb.com/airchives/classical/cat/cat.html 
• Mankato MN Homepage http://city-mankato.us
• Dihydrogen Monoxide http://www.dhmo.org/
• Clones-R-Us http://www.d-b.net/dti/
• Northwest Tree Octopus http://www.zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/
• First Male Pregnancy http://www.malepregnancy.com/
• National Motor Vehicle License Bureau http://www.license.shorturl.com/

Accuracy, reliability and bias are still things we all need to consider any time we use information - online or off. But it seems the ability to do this has become more difficult, not less, since 1995. Bias, often economically or politically driven, is more subtle, more accepted it seems. Stephen Colbert's Truthiness isn't parody - it's reality.

While spoof sites may be appropriate for younger students in demonstrating the need for skepticism about online information, I'd suggest that sites with a less apparent bias be used with older kids. Global warming sites and their critics, perhaps? 

* The site was hated by the local Chamber of Commerce and legend has it that the occasional tourist showed up looking for the hot springs and pyramids back in the 90s.