Thing #23

Woo Hoo! I'm done!! the 23 things was A LOT of work but I really enjoyed all of it, some more than others. My favorites were Flickr, audacity, google tools, google.docs, image generators, library thing, del.icio.us (which I have shared with everyone I know), fuzzmail, pandora, YouTube, and TeacherTube. Through this activitiy I have learned that I will never quit learning. I kinda already knew this, but this activity really reinforced it. Before starting this activity, I had no idea what the web had turned into. It is sooooo cool! I would definitely participate in another discovery activity like this one. If I had to sum this activity up in one word I would say....who knows....enlightening.....I guess. I feel like I have learned so much, one word won't do it. I feel like I have gone from 0 to 100 on the information superhighway.

Thing #22 Nings

Cool, cool, cool! I explored the Texas School Librarian Ning and loved it. It has information about members, different forumns, vidoes, and groups. I really liked the forumns because it gives you a place to share information with fellow librarians. At most schools, there is only one librarian, nings allow librarians to collaborate when they want to. You don't have to worry about meeting someone at a certain time, you can just read and share when the time is right for you. I also found a video that was used for Dr. Seuss's birthday. I would have loved to have had this video several weeks ago when we had Dr. Seuss week. Oh well! I will have it for next year. I think I would use nings just to hear what other librarians have to say about different topics. This is a place I will visit everyday!

Thing #21 Podcasts

Without knowing it, this was one of the first "things" I did. My partner and myself made a podcast for our midterm. It was a lot of fun but very frustrating at times. We learned some things to avoid next time to make it a little less frustrating. The fifth grade GT class at my school made a podcast over the civil war and shared it with a near by school. The near by school is making a podcast over a different subject which they will share with our school. There a numerous ways this can be used in the classroom, and it will allow us to narrow the space between other learners and learn in collaboration. You can find the link to our podcast in the link section of this blog.

Thing #20 YouTube & TeacherTube

YouTube and TeacherTube were really fun. You can find a video on just about any subject you can think of. Both of them are very valuable resources. They are free, easy to use, and most importantly the students will love the videos.

Thing #19 Web 2.0 Awards

The web 2.0 winners were really neat. I like fuzzmail because it makes e-mail more personal. I don't think I would use it at work but I will use it to e-mail friends and family. I also like Pandora which "creates" a radio station based on what type of music you like. I might try to use this around the holidays when I am wanting to listen to Christmas music. However, I would be very apprehension about using it with children around because I couldn't find a way to see exactly what songs would be played and I would not want some inappropriate to be played. I also explored backpack, which is kinda like google.docs. I think it could be use to collaborate with teachers and other librarians. I watched the video on backpack and wondered how they made the video. I would like to use something that would help me demonstrate to students how to make documents in word or excel.

Thing #18 Google.docs

I watched the Google.docs in plain English and played around with googles.docs. I really like it and I think it would be good for collaboration. When Nina and I did our midterm project we would e-mail our power point back and forth. It got kinda frustrating because there was so many different versions of it and we never knew which one we were looking at. It would have been much easier to have created it using google.docs. A lot of times I create something at home that I want to use at school. I then have to e-mail it to myself at school and hope it is there. The major advantage of using an on-line productivity tool such as google.docs would you would be able to access your documents from any computer and many people could collaborate without having multiple copies. The only disadvantage I see is that you would have to take some time learning how to use it and convince others that it should be used instead of Office.

Thing #17 Sandbox

I THINK I like wikis. There seems to be numerous uses for them. I really like the idea of using them for collaboration, but my fear is that teachers will see it as just another thing to do, and won't use them. I made a blog for a novel we will be reading after spring break and shared it with the 5th grade GT teacher. I was surprised that she wanted to participate in the activity as well, because she is far from being "tech savvy". So there is hope, hopefully if teachers are exposed to things slowly and I show them the relevance they will be more willing to "give it a go".

Thing #16 WIKIS

Yeah! I found more of what I was looking for back on thing #9. Sometimes I am afraid to stop looking and exploring in fear that they next thing I look at will be perfect. I love the children's book review wiki, the series binder, trouble shooting technology, and the library instruction wiki.

The series binder wiki was one of my favorites because sometimes it is hard to find a book that a child will like. However, once you do find one they like it would be great to have all the other ones in the series.

There wasn't much on the trouble shooting technology wiki but I will definitely be checking back. Who doesn't have technology problems!

While I was exploring the library instruction wiki, I found a lesson on boolean searches. I have never really understood the difference between "and" and "or". I loved the dating scenario she gave. It would probably be a little to old for my kids but I could adapt it with something like pets.

Thing #15 Library 2.0

WoW! All of this information is getting a little overwhelming. I now know why our first "thing" was about life-long learners, because if we ever decide to stop learning the world and everyone else is just going to leave us behind. I'm not sure what my thoughts about Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 are. At first, I thought it was terrific. Technology is awesome! However, I can't shake the feeling that as the world becomes more technology driven certain people are going to be left in the midst. I really liked what Dr. Wendy Schultz said, "libraries are not merely in communities, they are communities." My question is that as libraries and information become more engrossed in technology, are we going to lose that "community."

Thing #14 Technorati

The video about Technorati was very interesting. I have always wondered how things work on the internet, such as Amazon. Tagging information is just another way to get "organized". We have so much information today that we have to have some way to find that information again when we need it. I have begun using del.icio.us and everyone I tell about it has also started using it. I am somewhat OCD and tagging information feeds into that, and I love it!

Thing #13 Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is the "best thing since sliced bread," no pun intended. I am always bookmarking something on one computer and then I can't find it on another computer when I want it. I will no longer have that problem because of del.icio.us.

Thing #12 Rollyo

Rollyo was neat. I made a searchroll using the websites that I had bookmarked. I had trouble exporting my bookmarks, so I ended up cutting and pasting all of them. Thankfully, this is a new computer and I hadn't bookmarked a lot of websites. It seemed to work when I searched for "library internet use", however, it searched the whole web and I couldn't figure out how to change that. I also didn't know what my link was, is it just the URL?

Thing #11 Library Thing

Yea! Library Thing! I have found in Library Thing what I wanted to find in the RSS feed activity. I liked the groups titled "children's fiction" and "children's literature". They had suggestions, as well as reviews, and summaries of children's literature.

I think I might use this activity to post what I am reading so that my students can see it. I will also use it to keep track of what I have read and what I think about each book. I read so much that sometimes I forget what I have read and what it was about. This will help me organize my reading in a managable way.

Thing #10 Image Generators

The image generators were so fun. I spent hours playing. My favorite thing was the "dummies" cover I made, because I actually googled "Copyright for Dummies" in the past to try to find something on copyright.

At the beginning of the year, I have my kids decorate a folder and over the year we put our creative writing activities in it. At open house, in the spring, the students get to share how much their writing has grown with their parents. In the future, we could use image generators to make very unique covers for our creative writing folders.

Students could also use the image generators to make unique pictures that could be used instead of posting their actual photos. This would help when you have some students whose parents do not want their photos on-line.

Thing #9 More RSS Feeds

I am not sure if I am understanding RSS feeds. I tried all of the RSS feed search sites that were suggested and I found the experience very frustrating. I wanted to find something on book reviews that were written by children, but was unsuccessful. I found a lot of news information but no book reviews. I did find one search that located news information for my area of the city and I thought that was kinda neat.

I explored the sites on the Edublog awards and was excited when I found something on the Second Life. Second Life was mentioned in class on Thursday and I had no idea what it was. Now I know what Second Life is and where to begin if I decide to participate in it or develop something for my children to do. It might be neat for students to use Second Life because it involves buying things just like in the real world. However, I would have to do a lot more exploring before I would let them do something like that. I would need to make sure that it was both safe and educational for them to use.

I again I found this "thing" very frustrating and my least favorite because of that frustration.

Thing #8 RSS Feeds

I thought the idea of RSS feeds was neat. My question is, is there a way to put that information on your google home page? I don't know how much I will use RSS feeds, and maybe I say that because I am having a hard time deciding what type of information I want sent to me. Perhaps, as I am planning for future lessons I will think of some other things I would like to subscribe to.

I subscribed to an Astros news blog, a political blog, and 2 of the blogs that were suggested. I saw that some of the blogs suggested were for Spring Branch ISD, and I want to ask my IT person if there are some for Fort Bend ISD. As a librarian, I think I would use this technology just to keep informed. I would like to find one with kids input on books, the couple I found I didn't particularly like because they were too busy.

Thing #7 Google Tools

I had no idea that google had all of those tools; I thought google was just a search engine. I made my own homepage and love it. It has links on it that include things I enjoy such as cooking, entertainment, and sports. I liked the google alerts also. You could use google alerts to keep classes up to date on election news or space shuttle exploration. Google alerts reminds me of a setting we have on our cell phones. My husband uses it to keep up with football news. I am excited to know that you can do the same thing on a computer and use it in a school setting.

Thing #6 Mashups

I really liked the mashup sites. I am always trying to think up creative, cheap presents for family and friends, and one of the websites allows you to make calendars. That would make a really great gift for my friends and family. I also like the trading card. It would be neat to make one with library information and give it out to the children. I know my kids are always confused about when (especially before and after) they can go to the library. A trading card with library information on it would make them feel apart of the library.

Thing #5 Flickr

I liked the idea of uploading pictures to Flickr for safe storage or to share with family and friends. However, I am very leary about putting pictures of myself out there in cyber space. It seems like this site is safe but how do you really know?

Thing #4 More blogging

Registering the blog was easy! However, I want to go back and revise my other postings and I can not figure out how to do that.

Thing #3 Blogs

Creating a blog was easy and making the avatar was very amusing. I had a great time playing with all of the different accessories, backgrounds, etc that were avaliable on Yahoo!Avatars. It reminded me of paper dolls that I played with as a child. The hardest part for me was exporting the avatar because I wasn't sure where I was suppose to paste the HTML. I tried it several times and it finally worked. I am not sure exactly what I did.

Thing #2 Life Long Learning!

The power point over life-long learning was very interesting. The easiest for me is keeping the end in mind. During my current endeavor, the end is easy to keep in mind because it is a graduate degree. The hardest one for me has always been viewing problems as challenges.