Week 9 - Thing 20

Well, I looked around on YouTube and saw a variety of relevant and not so relevant videos. Some are quite clever and funny. Since I already posted the Librarian's Web 2.0 Manifesto from YouTube previously, I remembered this great video from the TED (technology, entertainment, design) site. What this brilliant man has discovered is that a $40 wii remote can be used to create your own Smartboard. In his presentation, he speaks of how quickly word was spread of his discovery/prototypes through the video's posting on YouTube. He hopes that researchers utilize the power and speed with which information is shared via sites like YouTube. And, that makes me think of one of the other videos that was posted for us to examine - The Machine is Us/ing Us. Since we are creating so much information, it is imperative that we as teacher-librarians ensure that our students are critical consumers of the information that is generated by us.

Anyway, back to Johnny Lee's Wii remote/Smartboard - if you would like to have that latest and greatest teaching tool, and the money isn't there, impress them all and create your own!

Week 8 - Thing 19

Visited Library Thing. Nice, but I am already part of Shelfari and I am not sure how many of these sites one needs to be a member of. I have so much trouble remembering names, passwords, that I feel I need to resort to keeping an actual paper notebook with all of the information. Honestly, there was too much to look at, read, and consider to do it justice. It will have to wait until a rainy, cooler day, because right now the pool is calling me..."Come swim...back to school, back to school you go!" I should be thankful that I am employed unlike too many of our library colleagues out there in the country.

And I am. But right now I am going swimming.

Week 8 - Thing 18

Created an account on Zoho, uploaded a PowerPoint, revised it, and placed it on the library wiki. Here is the link to the ZohoShow on Web Page Evaluation.

These applications become more and more important as we create information together. The learning curve for some of the teachers in my building is going to be steep this year. A Ning has been set up for our building as a learning community, and our forward thinking principal will expect all to participate in some fashion. It makes so much sense - sometimes I can go weeks without seeing some of the others in my building, much less the library department colleagues in other buildings.

Using GoogleDocs, I created this Short List of Summer Reads - got distracted (story of my life) and failed to write the annotations for the rest of the books I read. sigh

Week 7 - Thing 16A & 17

I posted #60 entry in the California sandbox. It is about a wiki for a school district's teachers to use to quickly access those site everyone needs - like differentiated instruction, learning support, ELL, etc. Since wiki means quick - quick easy access, one stop shopping for the hurried teachers. My colleague and I plan on doing this for our independent proposal this year.

Also, like Mary, I too could not sign into the PA sandbox since we did not receive an invite key. I sent an email to PBwiki and being impatient, decided to post now. Too many things to do since summer is ticking away too quickly. BIG sigh. What I would post under applications is VoiceThread. Last year a teacher asked me to book talk 30 books (2 literature circle units combined) in one 40 minute period. Well, I can talk fast, but doing the math, that just wasn't going to work out well at all. Enter Voice Thread. I could record my booktalks, the students could access on their time and listen to the books that appealed to them, or not. This was very successful and I didn't have to booktalk the same 30 books four periods. Time saver!