Week 9 - Thing #23 Questions

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
   My favorite discoveries were all of the widgets and artsy tools because I really like when things look good. It is a sickness. But, the really practical side of me liked discovering tools that will be useful for students like Rollyo, wikis, ebooks, and online tools like zoho and google docs.
   
2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? Needing to stay current is part of being a librarian because we need to be on the cutting edge of information and using these technologies is 21st Century Learning. Keep current or retire.
   
3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? A personal unexpected outcome was finding out how easily I can get drawn into designing a learning site, and then almost being obsessed with making sure it is perfect. But the take-a-away is the Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto of "not having to have something perfect" before release or using with students.
   
4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?Make sure the links work or are current. The concept is great, as is the format. It is easy to use and follow. The only thing that kept happening to me, and it could just be me, was I lost the main page when I clicked on the links for the tasks for each thing.
   
5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? Yes.
   
6. How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote CSLA learning activities? Stimulating.

I tried to complete the survey but received the message from Blogger : Blog no found. I'll keep trying to post.

The sites for copyright are very useful and I will share at school. Creative Commons is good, but I need to keep studying it and when and if I should post it on my wiki, and the Fair(y) Use video is wonderful!! How creative. The PSLA Web 2.0 23 Things has modified the California 23 things for our benefit in Pennsylvania.

This has been a great experience and I will continue on my journey as I Consider all things Web 2.0

Week #9 - Thing 22

At first I thought "Who exactly would want to read a book on a computer screen? Or the new Kindle from Amazon? Or on your iphone? That is just weird." OK. I am the mom of two of those weirdos. My son, who in high school threw The Diary of Anne Frank on the floor and said, and I am quoting "I am NOT reading that. It is a chick book." is now reading Immanuel Kant on his Kindle. My youngest daughter downloads to her iphone indie books from around the world showcasing new art styles as well as fashion shows, etc. on that tiny little gadget that fits in a sock.

OK. I must be the weirdo. I like paper and the feel of turning pages. I can't pay attention to stories on the Playaways I have for the kids in school. I miss whole chapters because my mind wanders. I am a digital immigrant. Is there a Digital Immigrant Anonymous?

Well, back to the task at hand or thing, shall I say. I searched the Internet Archive and found the Masque of the Red Death (feeling a bit Halloween-y) The book popped up and I could use the arrows to page through the book on the monitor. Not bad. Not the same, but not bad. Checked out more composers than I ever heard of on IMSLP and found something from Bach. Useful perhaps for music teachers and a link to share. Was not entralled with Project Gutenburg nor the British site. Moved onto ManyBooks.net - liked the way this one was arranged. You could select genres, so I looked at Banned Books - interesting, and Fiction - found Anne Of Green Gables in audio with a variety of choices to download to including the Kindle and the iphone, as well as another favorite Wuthering Heights. Cool. This is nice, very nice. And LibriVox is free. Even better.

I will need to add these to the wiki pages.

Week 9 - Thing 21

Heading into the final things for this journey by exploring podcasts. Some of the links I couldn't access, were no longer working, and Yahoo discontinued their podcast services last October, so I set off on my own. I found a very good website "Podcasting 101 for Librarians" that had some interesting podcasts for sign up - Podcast Pickle, for one. Topics about any and everything you can think of to listen to when and where ever you are. Very cool. But...

Honestly, I ponder the limits of exactly how much and how many and how often any of these things are really useful/necessary/valid/or just plain fun. Many of the pages I visited with podcasts had a message like "I hope to keep this updated" with an update of 2006. Enthusiastic when started; interest wanes after a bit. Real life gets in the way.

The podcast I linked to was Nancy Keane's book talks, a whole page of book talks for kids, great stuff from a pro at it. I don't want podcasts sent to me; I don't want them piling up reminding me there is that much more to do. Sometimes, I just like to do things the old fashioned way. If I want it, I'll look for it when I need it. I guess it is rather a bit like downsizing all of your possessions when you get older.

However, uses for school are numerous for both students and teachers - orientation, book talks, tutorials, oral histories, gallery walks, to name a few applications. We have Audacity on our laptops; I've only played with it, but I can see this being a very useful tool in many, many ways.

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!