In a word – the class was mind-expanding! I enjoyed it very much and appreciate the opportunity. It was well set-up and organized and caused me to stretch myself to learn about all of the “things” that I had heard about, but did not really know about. Yes, yes, I would take another class like 23 Things! My favorites from the class are GoogleDocs, del.icio.us, photostory, and wikis. I plan to repurpose my blog to make it my school library blog. Thanks to the captains for the time and effort to set up the class and then monitor it.
I visited both of the library nings and think I would use Texas School Librarians. The videos are useful and it is probably a better format than TLC listserve since you can visit the ning and browse around rather than getting 25 email messages. Like so many of the other things that we have explored, I am unsure if I would actually use a ning very often. I just don’t spend that much time at my computer other than checking out books and checking my email. But like all of the other things, once I know of something, I begin to hear of ways to use it that make sense and seem actually useful rather than just fun. For instance, my son mentioned that at the big music/film/web festival in Austin, South by Southwest, they set up a ning for participants and guests so that everyone could contribute and “see” what others were experiencing and learning.
I enjoyed learning about Photostory. I had heard of it at school but had not taken the time to pursue it. It was very easy to use and I think it would be a great program to teach kids. I created a short piece of the new bluebonnets that I can use to introduce them. I even used the music creator that is part of Photostory so that I could check it out to see if it would be good for students. Overall, a good program.
I will use my 07-08 Bluebonnet photostory to introduce the books. I think it would be fun to show the video and then ask the students to write down the books that “caught their eye” and that they think they would like to read. It would be a good chance to talk about choosing a book for its cover then needing to investigate further before checking it out (reading the blurb, etc.).
I am most excited about being able to embed this video into my post rather than all of the great videos that I found. The directions on TeacherTube for embedding videos into WordPress nearly scared me off. It involved adding files to the root directory and I’m not sure I can even get to that directory. So I tried converting the file using Zamzar but that didn’t work. YouTube to the rescue. Very simple.
This was fun. There are several sites that I would like to go back and explore when I have some more time. I have already spent more time than I intended. Isn’t that always it goes when learning about the internet? I explored Twitter, iFood, Color Blend and several others. The one that I explored in depth is SpanishPod. I chose this site because we are trying to learn Spanish at our house and our son will be taking Spanish II next year so we have been keeping in practice this summer. This would be a useful site for him, especially Resources (alphabet, vocabulary, verbs, etc.) The daily lessons are well done and may be good to use later. The pronunciation audio portion of each part is valuable. I also explored this site because I frequently have students who want to learn to speak Spanish and I thought this might be a good site for them.
I took the tour of Google Docs and watched the video. Makes me glad that there are smart people working on this stuff all of the time to come up with better ways to do things. I think back to my master’s classes and wish that Google Docs had been around then for all of those group presentations. And I just realized that our job of revising our librarian’s manual will be much easier from now on. So many uses – writing a book with another author, creating novel units, editing campus inprovement plans….. Like he says in the video, “Google Docs rock!”
Pretty cool tool. I have set up a Rollyo search and added it to my Links. I think its usefulness might become more apparent to me as I get into the school year. Maybe good for things like e-field trips and webquests and copyright, etc. Right now, the most specific use I can think of is to show my son how to put all of his paintball sites into a Rollyo. Oh, and my husband might use it for his financial and news sites. Oh, and my oldest son might be able to use it for his list of add-ins for buidling websites. And here’s another one – my sister-in-law might want to use it for all of the health sites that she enjoys. Oh, and ……. (you get the picture – I just have to give myself enough time to get the wheels turning when I learn about something new like this.)
This was a good lesson. I actually did not feel overwhelmed by the information as I have on other lessons. And I came up with a very good idea for a wiki to use in my own library: a list of Author Read-Alikes. The students can add their suggestions of similar authors to the list of popular authors like J.K. Rowling, Lemony Snicket, Judy Blume, Paulsen, etc. I think it might be better to do a wiki for recently read books and reviews of them rather than a blog.
What great food for thought I found while reading the articles from OCLC! I worked in a public library for many years before becoming a school librarian and so I have seen the transition from microfiche readers at the front desk and physical card catalogs on the floor for patrons to the current state of technological affairs. It literally boggles my mind to think that a mere 12 years ago, I was listening to a friend explain this new thing called the internet!
I loved the student video! I even found it moving in a way – made me think of all of the young adults I know who are the first wave of those whose lives will be so very different from mine. I can remember having a discussion with my son when he was a senior in high school about being able to keep your focus in the face of such an explosion of access to information. I also enjoyed the article on Icebergs. I am very familiar with all of the icebergs that the author spoke: I did enough collection development in the public library to say “just in case” many times when weeding or ordering books; much of my training for that job was in the area of patron education (how to use the online catalog, how to use the state databases…); and all of our services at that library were of the “come to use” variety with the exception of the visits that I did to schools and community groups to talk about the library and our offerings. I was so proud, then, of the job that we were doing. But change is here and I am looking forward to seeing the fine job we will be doing in the near future.
Okay, I have to be honest here. I still don’t get how Technorati works. I was successful at finding blogs and blog posts and seeing the tags when I searched School Library Learning 2.0. But… I’m not sure how I would make use of the site at school. The video by the Technorati folks was interesting and I understood what they were saying – I just don’t understand the site as well as I should. I searched hand quilting and did find some blog posts which led to some blogs that might be interesting. Actually, I just think that I am not tuned in to looking for information in this way. I will try to gain more understanding by reading some posts on Library2Play about Technorati.
