Thing #23 ---- FINALLY!

I would have to say that this experience was worthwhile. I wished that I weren't taking two other courses at the same time because I really could have explored more. My explorations were limited due to lack of time to commit. My favorite "things" were Photostory and Open Office. I think these two were very beneficial to my needs. Although I had technical difficulties with Photostory, I still enjoyed the process and results. I plan on trying to download Open Office onto my computer at work if I can get access to do so.

I think that some of the tools that I learned about during this process were things that I would have never known about if I hadn't taken this course. I am glad to have had them introduced to me. I might participate in another one of these if I don't have a time limit attached to it. I need to work at my own pace when time permits rather than with time restrictions.

If I could sum up this project in one word, it would be INFORMATIVE. The information that I gained from participating will undoubtedly help me in my teaching career and my career as a librarian in the future.

Thing #22

I visited some of the Ning sites involving teachers. I thought it odd that some of the teachers were talking about being excited about the 4th of July and drinking beer. Not that teachers don't drink beer, but the heading at the top of the page says, "An educational community to connect teachers from every level." What kind of education were they tweeting about?

I think these Ning social networks would be a great place to share ideas with other educators around the country. A Ning network could be set up for students at school. Of course there would have to be some strict rules involving what could be posted on the school Ning, but I think it would be a great place for students to social network.

Thing #21

Yay! I finally got it to work!

Photostory was by far my favorite "thing" in this whole project! I have seen photostories and love watching them, but never knew how to make one. The last Photostory that I saw was created by my son's awesome first grade teacher as an end of the year gift. While watching it I cried and cried because it was so good. I had a lot of fun creating my photostory for this "thing". The only difficulty that I found was trying to find some free royalty-free music to download. There's something about watching pictures slide by with music that gets me all emotional! I am glad that I now know how to create a photostory.

Thing #20

TeacherTube and YouTube can be very beneficial tools to use in the classroom when just the right content is found. I watched a couple of videos on YouTube about the library. One of them entitled The FUNdamentals of Book Care in 5 Easy Lessons was a humorous video that showed the right and wrong way of handling books and materials in the library. After navigating around YouTube, I searched on TeacherTube. I did a search on reading since that is the subject area that I teach. I found a video, Gotta Keep Reading, that is an educational take on a Black Eyed Peas song. It was the video that I chose to embed on my blog. The only problems I have with TeacherTube and YouTube is when the video stops in the middle to buffer. I'm sure if one has a super fast computer then this is not a problem, but it was on mine. I've had this same type of issue using United Streaming at school once or twice before as well.

Thing #19

The Web 2.0 Awards List is awesome! I have always heard of people going on craigslist to buy stuff but never visited that site myself. We are in the process of trying to sell our house right now and so I am going to look into using craigslist and some of the other real estate award winners that were on the list. I might be able to owe the sell of my house to this class! I was surprised to see that Twitter beat Facebook on the list. Maybe the surprise came from me not knowing anything about Twitter. I added Web 2.0 Awards List to my favorites and will add it to my del.icio.us account as well.

Thing #18

I had previously been introduced to Google Docs and found it very useful. For my other technology course, one of our assignments was to upload a two page paper that we wrote and share it with someone else in the class. That person then read the paper and left comments for us. I also read a little about Open Office and fiound this program very beneficial as well. There have been so many times that I have created something on my school computer and saved it on that network instead of a flash drive. I then got home and realized that I wanted to do something with it and couldn't. I think the idea of saving documents on the web is a very smart thing to do. The only issues that I have with this idea is someone hacking into my documents and deleting them or editing them. I know that in order to share a document with someone you have to invite them, but there are obviously people who could figure out how to get in there without the invite. I think it would be wise to save to a flash drive and Google Docs or Open Office just to be safe. Overall, whoever came up with these programs are geniouses!

Thing #17

I had never heard of Rollyo before this activity. When I first saw the name on some other people's blogs, I thought maybe it was a game of some sort. I kind of got excited thinking that maybe we could actually play a game on Facebook for one of our things. No such luck!

I created a specialized search for shopping. I know this is not educated related, but the search I did was for backpacks and backpacks are for school, right? I can see the benefits of a search like this, but think it would be more beneficial to someone who truly only visits certain web sites. I tend to just browse. As far as the school related part of this "thing," Rollyo could be used on student computers so that only certain sites could be accessed by students. This would make searching the web much safer for our students.

Thing #16

Before last fall, I had never even heard of wikis before. Kay McBride was the first instructor to introduce a wiki to me. I have not created one of my own, but know that there are many ways to use one. I think a great wiki space would be to set up the different genres that we study in 3rd grade and allow students to add books that they read for a particular genre. The students could also explain why another student should or should not read that particular book. I actually tried a concept like this last year but it was in paper format. We did not keep up with it very well, but using a computer might be a different approach. Students could use the class computers or computers at home to input this information.

I have to say that Common Craft videos with Lee LeFever (sp?) are very helpful. He explains the concepts in such an easy to understand fashion.

Thing #15

Out of this entire "thing," the part that I liked the most was the video. The messages that the students gave were very true and eye-opening. I think it is definately a great video to show teachers who are hesitant to get with the times. In fact, I am going to bookmark it so that I can share it when I become a librarian.

As far as the articles, the information that I found the most interesting and applicable was when Rick Anderson said, "No profession can survive if it throws its core principles and values overboard in response to every shift in the zeitgeist. However, it can be equally disastrous when a profession fails to acknowledge and adapt to radical, fundamental change in the marketplace it serves." I think this is very true for successful programs.

Thing #14

I was not too impressed with Technorati. I had a hard time figuring it out. When I searched for "school library learning 2.0" I yielded 0 results. I searched for this under blogs, posts, and blog directory and found nothing. I then clicked on "tags" and was not able to search for it in this section. The only thing that showed up was popular tags used in the last month.

Tagging information is very valuable and seems to be a way to put all of the good blogs and other web sites in one place. I think it would be wise to stick with one tool rather than trying to use a multitude of them. I think so far del.icio.us is one of my favorites. I'll probably stick with that one!

One final note--I tried to explore the Technorati widgets but they were not available at the time. It seemed as if they were doing maintenance or something.

Thing #13

Del.icio.us is a pretty great idea! I created an account and added my two blogs, but nothing else yet. I can totally see how this tool can be shared amongst colleagues so that helpful web sites can be shared. This would be considered a type of collaboration if sites are shared. I did forget to add the Del.icio.us bookmark thing to my toolbar when signing up. Does anyone know how to do it now that I have already have a working account? Help would be greatly appreciated!

My URL for del.icio.us is http://delicious.com/sarahalbright

Thing #12

I looked at Cool Cat's information about commenting and thought her idea about hyperlinking anything that you refer to is important. Most people don't have time to search and being able to click on a link to see what someone is talking about is very convenient. The other idea that I liked came from Problogger. He said that asking questions is a good way to get someone to comment on your blog. I think both of these ideas are important.

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-to-comment-like-king-or-queen.html

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/10/12/10-techniques-to-get-more-comments-on-your-blog/

I did a search on Google Blogs to find blogs that are related to my field of study--language arts/reading and library science. I found the following blogs that interested me.

http://lovewhatyouteach.com/
This blog was created by a 3rd grade teacher to share ideas for the elementary classroom.

http://totally3rdgrade.com/wordpress/
This site shares resources that teachers can use.

http://elementary-school.blogspot.com/
This site shares valuable resources for elementary teachers, including links to other sites.

http://thepithypython.blogspot.com/
"The blog of an elementary school librarian about children's books, reading and research"

http://fromtotstotweens.blogspot.com/
A site that includes booktalks and other valuable information about promoting reading.

Oops. I didn't read very well because I found 5 blogs of interest. I guess it's better to do more than not enough!

Thing #11

I created an account for LibraryThing. I was first introduced to this tool in my children's literature course but never visited the site. This is a great tool for keeping up with books that I own in my own personal collection and books that I have read or would like to read. I did not visit any other collections but would be curious to see how others rate some of the books that I've read. I will definately try to keep up with LibraryThing and will most likely visit some other's collections to see what books they recommend so that I can read some of them in my free time (of course I have so much of it right now!). I think as a librarian this would be a great tool for students and their parents to see what I have read and what I would like to read. Students love to know what their teachers are reading or want to read.

Thing #10

I played around with Fake Magazine Cover and put my photo on a couple of magazines. I actually put my photo on the cover of Bad Housekeeping but the lettering went right across my eye and I couldn't figure out how to move my photo to fix this. This tool could be used in the library or classroom by placing teacher or student photos on school-related magazines. Student magazine covers could be posted around the room or library. Students are self-centered and would love to see themselves on the cover of a magazine or as the subject of a portrait. This was a fun tool to use.

http://www.fakemagazinecover.com/

Thing #9

I used Edublog to find a few blogs to follow. I looked over the "Best blog" lists to find some librarian blogs, technology blogs, and teacher blogs. I ran into some trouble when trying to subscribe to a free technology blog and somehow pageflakes popped up and then about a 100 (that's not an exaggeration) pages started appearing on my screen. I eventually had to log out because I couldn't close out the pages. That was not a good experience. The feeds that I did subscribe to will now appear on my Google Reader and I can take advantage of some of the technology suggestions and other free resources suggested on the blogs. I love freebies! :)

Thing #8

I really like the RSS feed using Google Reader! Of course all of the feeds that I subsribed to are not educational, US Weekly, but the idea is really cool! I think this tool can be used when I become a librarian by subscribing to professional journals and other award sites. I think subscribing to author sites would also be beneficial. As far as my personal life, having these feeds all in one place will keep me from visiting site after site. Instead, I can just visit my Google Reader and find it all in one place. I really enjoyed this "Thing" because I have always wondered what that little orange symbol meant on web pages. Now I can use these feeds to my advantage.

Thing #7

I played around with Google Calendar and filled in events for the next week. I liked how I received an email reminding me that I needed to drive to the Frio River on Friday, June 18th. Good thing I didn't forget to do that! I think this tool would be great for keeping track of meetings and when assignments are due because it does give alerts as reminders. Students in school could use this program and receive alerts on their cell phones. The other tool that I explored was Google Scholar. I was not aware that this tool existed and will certainly use it in the future when trying to find sources for papers that I have to write. Students would also be able to use this web tool for research in the library, classroom, or at home.

Thing #6

My Boys

I really liked playing around with Mosaic Maker. The only thing that was a little time-consuming was that I had to upload the pictures to Facebook first and then take them from there. It didn't take too terribly long, though. I'm not sure if the option is available, but I would have liked to shuffle the pictures up. Black and white and color would have been cool, too. I'll have to play around.

I think this tool could be used in the library to showcase some photos from the library. It's a neat way of viewing a set of photos in one interesting visual. With permission, student photos could be used to decorate the walls of the library.

I plan on trying to make a trading card when I get a chance. That ought to be interesting!

Thing #5

I browsed Flickr and was a little nervous about not finding a picture under the Creative Commons label. I hope I did it right!

I chose a zebra because my classroom is decorated with zebra stuff. It's not that I like the actual animal, I just like the animal print and all of the cool stuff that is out there in zebra print.

Zebra photo is taken from Flickr

Thing #4

I have emailed my blog so that I can officially play!

Thing #3

Setting up a blog was something that I've actually done before. The whole process is a little overwhelming because I don't find the actual site user-friendly. Maybe it's just me, but I need buttons that are obvious in order to change, add, delete things I've added. I suppose it just takes some playing around and exploring to get comfortable with it.

I did have a hard time putting my Avatar on my blog. I played around and ended up somehow getting it on there. Not sure I did it the right way, but it's there! I've not visited anyone else's blog and need to attach some links to other blogspots in order to easily visit other places.

I hope that I actually keep up with this blog since I've not kept up with my original blog about my family. The chances of this happening are pretty slim, though!

Thing #2

After viewing the presentation over the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Effective People, I have concluded that I am not very effective! The easiest habit for me is accepting responsibility for my own learning. I am aware that if I want or need to learn something then I have to take the initiative to make it happen. I don't wait for someone else to make it happen for me. The habit that is hardest for me to accept is viewing problems as challenges. I tend to view problems as problems rather than seeing them as a way to make me stronger. When all is said and done and the problem is solved, then I can look back and realize that it wasn't so bad. But initially, a problem is an obstacle that I am not always willing to view as a challenge. I still need to work on my habits!