Week 7 - Thing 16

Checked out many of the links from the posting. Great ideas, good information, some links not available any longer. Such is the web. Notice the gizmoz to the left - saw that on a blog from a link on a wiki. Of course, I got distracted, had to play with that. Too funny!

I like the use of a wiki for research pathfinders. We have a district website and the capability of creating pages using this SchoolWires software...it is horrid and cumbersome. The wiki is so much easier to update as needed.

I've started a wiki for my library information...following Joyce Valenza's lead (and my colleague's - Allison the Amazing). Here is the link to it - a work in progress.

https://hersheymslibrary.wikispaces.com/


Let me know what you think.

Week 6 - Thing 15

Been giving LOTS of thought to Thing 15. I read most of the postings, looked around on my own, and have been thinking about this off and on for two, maybe three days. Well, I did go see Get Smart, Indiana Jones and the Nuked Refrigerator, and read The Pretty One, but I was thinking about this too. And what it made me realize is that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

The kids I work with have no concept of life without a computer. Our grandson, at two, turned on the TV and DVD player using the remote, put in the DVD, and pressed play to watch Miss Spider. Can he read? No, but he seems hard-wired to anything technological. The world these kids live in requires them to be technologically competent. We need to prepare them for their future, whatever that may look like, but it certainly is not going to look like our past. Earlier this summer I read the book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink. To summarize this book quickly, school and society, have celebrated the left-brainers and the right-brainers have been overlooked for too long. If his supposition is correct, and I do think it is, we have to radically change education, and the library along with it to prepare these students for their future by stimulating and promoting creativity, collaboration, communication, and computing skills.

Which lead me to the conclusion - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. For years I have been beating my head against the wall to have teachers schedule time in the library for research. Visions of showing the databases and the students preferring them over the internet and having wonderful, meaningful, relevant projects with real learning occur just never happened...often. What happened was I gave myself a bloody head, alienated some staff, and the kids kept using the internet. If you were at PSLA, Allison Zmuda annoyed many in the audience with her keynote address, if I remember correctly, by saying something to the effect of "Don't waste time stressing over working with the teachers. Work with the kids." When she said it, I was annoyed because we have worked so long to be seen as teacher-librarians and now what?

Well, the now what is teach the kids to survive in their world by preparing them to evaluate information. Try as we want, we are not going to have them stop using the internet. The important skill I am going to focus on is information fluency - author's purpose, accuracy, relevancy, currency. Sure, I can create links, provide databases, and buy books for projects, but does that really help them in real life? As Rick Anderson said, we cannot buy enough of books (they don't use them anyway), there is one of us (usually, if we are lucky), and they may or may not come (or their teachers don't require it).

Last year I had some conversations with darling seventh graders and asked them how I could improve the library for them. They looked around, and in that voice of a 13 year old girl, one of them said, "I don't know. There is so much woooood." Truer words were never spoken. As we brainstormed, they suggested that I move the fiction section to where the non-fiction section is because that is what they like to read, provide more comfy chairs for reading, and paint it lime green. (Building and grounds wasn't hot on the lime green) The rest I am going to do. I loved Dr. Wendy Schultz's comments after all of the technological changes, the library should be a retreat, a sanctuary, a pampered experience with information—subtle thoughts, fine words, ... rustle of pages.

Kids need a safe haven and someone to help them make sense of all the information with which they are bombarded daily. So much of what I now believe, and ultimately hope to implement and practice, is in this video from YouTube titled A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto.

Week 6 - Thing 14

My ADD must have kicked into overdrive because I cannot develop one iota of interest in Technorati. Tags are useful, practical cataloging for the individual and if you want, you can see what others use too. Nice. Easy. Practical. Got it. The rest of it? Not really caring right now. Shortest post ever.

I was thinking.....

My husband cringes when I start a conversation with those three words. He knows it will lead to work for him since it usually involves painting, moving, replanting, some kind of renovation work that will inevitably lead to the Mushroom Factor. The Mushroom Factor is that phenomenonon, usually with old houses, that a simple task leads to so much more. To have a better understanding of this, check out this blog about it.

http://fixithouse.blogspot.com/2006/09/mushroom-factor.html

Anyway, what I was thinking after starting the Technorati task, was I am not sure exactly why I need this. I found the mushroom factor blog by just putting it in google. Since I am a librarian, I know what I am looking for, and 99% of the time can find it quickly and efficiently. Technorati searches blogs. OoooHKay - then what? I have more to read? I need to see other people's opinions....all of the time...?

Last week I read, and I have no idea where or what source, that too often we mistake this information on blogs as valid resources. Yet again, another opinion. But, an opinion that makes sense in regards to what information we overload ourselves with. Honestly, blogs aren't research; blogs aren't peer-reviewed; blogs aren't scientific. So, what purpose would this serve for my students and the teachers I work with? Two sentences in the paragraph end with with. Now, there are three counting this one. Have the rules changed about ending sentences with prepositions because "with which we overload ourselves" sounds really weird. Just wondering.

Technorati also indexes 112.8 million blogs. Of course, checking all of this out, I got sidetracked, saw something about a suspect being released for the murder of a nine year old, read that, got sidetracked and found this blog about the "Dead Kids of MySpace". Talk about depresssing, but the poster's purpose was to make everyone aware of the dangers out there for children. Great purpose, and some of the information posted was from the perputrator's online journals or blogs. Great, too. Incriminating.

But what about those of us that aren't of the criminal mindset? Since our blogs are now being indexed, couldn't we also become noteworthy or suspect for a slip of the keyboarding finger? What all this reminded me of was Big Brother, spying, reading, organizing for someone, somewhere to be able to aggregate it all for someone else to do...?

So, I'll do my task whatever, for week whatever and explore Technorati. However, what I'd really like is someone out there to tell me why I need this for my job as a school librarian for a bunch of prepubescents.

Check out this Tool!

My forward thinking principal shared this site with us in June. I couldn't get it to work at the time, but I revisited it last night and followed their instructions with updates and deletes - and it worked.

According to their home page, "Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes."

Towards the bottom of this page are my del.icio.us tags in a Wordle. Check it out. Very, very neat.

http://wordle.net/

Photo credit - Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

del.icio.us millionth user + birthday bash
Originally uploaded by Laughing Squid

Week 6 - Thing 13

Del.icio.us is yummy! I've been using it for quite awhile and cannot imagine internet life without it. Here is a TeacherTube video with great visuals and clear audio for teachers. Why reinvent the wheel when promoting these applications for teachers. Convenient, on demand training ...and someone else has done the work.
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=7c623fbd095b4a565b5b

Last school year, two eighth grade teachers, science and social studies, used Del.icio.us with students for research projects. The science teacher's project involved students determining if NASA funding was worthwhile. The social studies teacher's project involved four different topics selected by the students for Project Citizen. In order to be able to use Del.icio.us, the technicians had to install the shortcuts on the library computers, but once that was completed, it was a matter of creating an account and password. Since the teachers were on the same team, they used the same password. Last year teams established new names, so to reinforce the team name it was used as the password. We modeled how to log on, how to tag and make notes, and how to access at home. What we failed to do at first - experience is always the best teacher - is to limit the tags used and use one word or joinThem_inSome_way. But, we took some time and organized the tags by bundling them. The students caught on quickly and loved that they could find their search at home to continue working on their projects. They were creating their own accounts and sharing it with their parents.

Week 5 - Thing 12

OK, Rollyo is very cool and the graphic looks like Target licorice, or what it should look like if Target had a brand of licorice. I explored a bit, got the gist of what it could do and realized this could be a great tool to limit middle schoolers to appropriate sites without having to list the links, label and describe them...oh such a time saver this could be! I cannot wait to share it with the teachers too.

I have so many links for the Civil War projects and Travel Asia projects, I wonder if there is an easy way to transfer them or if I have to copy and paste each one. bleh Anyone out there know of an easy way to transfer lists, not Bookmarks or Favorites?

An account has been created and I did copy the Mythology links we use, and I think the 8th grade is going to be starting with that this year, so I can model this right away for the Language Arts teachers and share with the rest. I added Rollyo to my blog choosing the searches that I thought were interesting...I probably should have included Celebrity Gossip for grins.

Here is my link: http://www.rollyo.com/hersheymslibrary/

Week 5 - Thing 11.1

I joined Joyce's Ning for Teacher-Librarians. That is a good name for us...maybe this tag will give us some recognition for all we do in the education world. I also joined the Middle School Librarian-Teachers Group, the YA Literature Group, and the PSLA group, as well as adding it to my RSS feeds. When on earth will I find the time to read all of this?

Discovered something quite by accident by playing around with Yahoo Avatars. I've been dressed in the same outfit for too long, so I thought I'd change clothes, got distracted discovered the International locations, went to France, and found the black and white kitty. Well, my one kitty is black and white, and the napping grey tabby in the picture, so I changed the cat to the black and white. Never did change clothes...too many choices, shoes not good...anyway, I thought I'd have to put in the code, etc. to change it on the blog. To my delight it is changed automatically. So, if anyone is so motivated you can change your Avatar as often as I change my earrings. Cool!

Week 5 - Thing 10.1

Checked out Image Chef to see what else they offer besides the banners, which I really like, and discovered the flower messages - neat but hard to read, the poetry - cool, but I am way beyond 15, and saw video. Now, here was something different. Here is a this little video to celebrate what we've been learning.

Week 5 - Thing 11

Checked out the short list of Web 2.0 Awards....so, so many. Often as I look at these tools, I focus on "how can this be used in school to help the teachers or students"; this time my focus was "how can this help me". Being a bit selfish right now.

I saw Pandora, which I absolutely love and use all of the time since I am cheap and am not willing to pay for Sirius radio yet. But it was only a second place winner, so I needed to find out what the winner had that Pandora did not. The name of the the winner is Last and what it has that Pandora does not is the social aspect. For example, you can connect to other listeners and what they listen to, check out concerts, videos, etc. Great features, if you are a thirty-something or less. I'll stick with Pandora.

Then, I moved onto the Health winners. Both Revolution Health and PEERtrainer are very well organized, useful and full of information. PEERtrainer's focus is on weight loss and fitness - both of which I definitely have on my "to do" list. This is a great site and I plan on using it to help me achieve my health goals this year. You can join a group with members that will encourage you on your way, keep a food diary, track calories, join in chats, peer trainers, etc. The site is very user friendly, has a logical layout, and is free!

Applications for PEERtrainer in the library would be just for providing the link for people to use. I would show it to the health teachers also to see if they would find it useful for students. Other than that, this was a selfish exploration to see what I could find for me, myself, and I.

Week 5 - Thing 10

Some of the mashup tools I already did in previous weeks using the Warholizer and the plastic bead maker. None of the others, right now, looked interesting on that site, so I moved on to the Comic Strip link.

My first attempt was the cartoon bubble. Not too difficult but instructions are rather sparse. I wanted to move the thought bubble and couldn't find out how to do that, so it is where it is. ugh - I hate that saying "It is what it is." Really? Thanks for telling me that one. I digress..

Looking around a bit more, I saw the special effects page and loved these ripples - like a hypnotic trance - so I saved the picture with the special effects, went back to the cartoon bubble and entered the text. Then, I looked around some more, being distracted every step of the way with characters like Homer, Stewie, Darth Vader, Storm Troopers... thinking I'd add one of them on the image. They distracted from the visual message - that sense of overwhelming, head-spinning, can't possibly keep up - of Web 2.0.

What I decided to add was a border, also available on the same site to the picture with the cartoon bubble and the special effects. So, this image from my digital camera, has three manipulations - the speech bubble, the special effects, and the border. I am sticking with this one. I like it.

Looking at this just gave me a thought of how to use this in the curriculum. One of my dear friends, an English teacher, is constantly looking for new ways to integrate technology into her lessons. Visual literacy is also something we feel the kids need to know. Creating an image such as this, instead of a power point (yuck) or MovieMaker (which can be bothersome) students could find or take a picture, "mash-it-up" to present their message. Technology, visual literacy, synthesis all rolled into one project. To take it even further, an accompanying essay could explain the picture to focus on great beginnings, supporting details, etc. to reinforce writing skills.

Week 4 - Thing 9

Catching up on reading magazines from the school year and found in Teacher Librarian's June journal from Esther Rosenfeld's notebook this wiki to check out. It was created by Dr. Baumbach and Dr. Lee of the University of Central Florida. The whole wiki discusses 2.0 tools and is appropriately named WebTools4U2Use. Here is the link. On the left side are lots of applications and what they are for - I only read the blog posting, and not all of that, but it really clarifies all of the uses a blog could be used for school libraries.

http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com

Checked out a variety of blogs and what is available; I am finding many blogs are like reading diaries for gossip. One blog I did check out, that lead to fame and fortune (and I know about it), is Diablo Cody's blog. Someone in show business read her blog and encouraged to write her book Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, which ultimately led to her writing Juno. Years ago when my daughter Leah (her image today) was living in Chicago she talked about her friend Brooke, who was dating her boyfriend's older brother, and how much fun they would have together. Leah shared that Brooke wasn't sure what to do with her life and was contemplating being a librarian, so Brooke and I talked a little about being a librarian. However, life took her in another direction to Minneapolis, blogging, screen writing, and now an Oscar winning screenwriter! I think she chose wisely. Not that there's anything wrong with being a librarian.

Reading the RSS feeds on anything you might be remotely interested in could consume all of the time available in a day. I limited my blogs, except for recipes right now, to technology or library. I still like to hold paper in my hands for most reading or indulging in mind junk food like Star or The Enquirer every now and again. All work and no play makes me dull. Checked out Technorati, OK; checked out Syndic8, OK; checked out SuprGlu, love it! I also put the "school library learning 2.0" in Google, found 33 matches which were basically entries like this. So, I guess we are finding ourselves. We need to expand our very, small library world.

Week 4 - Thing 8

At the bottom of the page are the blogs I have subscribed to by Google Reader. This was a much easier application than Bloglines, IMHO. With the Google choices I could add the RSS to my igoogle page and locate it where I chose. Then, when I was looking to see how to add the url for public access, Blogger does it for you when you add an element to the page.

I did, however, spend too much time trying to locate the tabs like shown in the 23 Things pages. I never did find it after multiple tries, etc. That is the frustrating part of technology. It is supposed to be the easiest, most logical thing to add or do, and you can spend hours trying to find or do it. When a tech person shows you where or how to do it, it only makes you feel that less competent. sigh

Using an RSS feed on the library page would be helpful for teachers looking for current information for projects, as well as students. Thinking about it more, a wiki page would be the best option. Content can be changed and modified as needed, not the timely process it is now with the web pages provided by the district. Also, if anyone is undergoing curriculum review, it would be beneficial to gather the latest information for that department or grade level. Another neat public relations aspect would be to have feeds for the local sports, music, and/or drama productions.

Week 3 - Thing 7

I do love the digital camera and how easy it is to upload pictures into the laptop and/or Flickr. One of my goals for this week is to explore google's Picasa and see what that has to offer.

Last school year our technology integration specialist showed us VoiceThread. That application is one I really liked to record book talks. Talking about the same books to four different classes to three different teams gets old. This allowed me to show it to the students, and they could look at the books that appealed to them on their time at home as I made it accessible on the library webpage.

Another application I love is MovieMaker, although I become so obsessed with cutting music at the precise time, I drive myself crazy. Windows should fix it to be able to key in the exact time like it is in Power Point...which I really find very annoying. Speaking of that, have you seen this YouTube How NOT to Use Powerpoint. Very, very funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLpjrHzgSRM

Some more technologies that I like, and need to learn to be more effective with are the new little Flip video cameras, which I just purchased for the library this year, moodle, and wiki pages.

So many applications and so little time.

Week 3 - Thing 6

Used the trading card link to create this card of my mom. Here she is!

There are numerous ways to use this in the curriculum - famous authors/artists/scientists/etc., countries/books/events.

However, what is becoming so very clear to me as I examine these tools, is that it really isn't about the tool, but what needs to be taught to students first and then modeled correctly. My friend and I have these discussions all of the time with our principal about exactly what it is that students need to learn. Can they pick up how to use these tools on their own? They could probably teach me a thing or sixty in regards to what all is out there in their world. Because, frankly, it is their world. I am a visitor in this online world that changes and expands everyday.

As I was selecting the card information, following the procedure to do it was easy enough. What gave me thought was what I wanted to write, how I should write it concisely and clearly, and without being too dramatic (although it was horrifying to see my mom in that condition - but she was the one enduring). So, even though these tools are cool, what really needs to be taught is reading, and writing, and summarizing, and thinking. Modeled for students; practiced with students; performed on their own with guidance and feedback until they feel successful.