The End - Summary

Wow! I can't believe I am actually finished! I really enjoyed these lessons and learning all about Web 2.0.I have to admit that I am pretty proud of myself and all of the new things I have learned. There is so much more to the web than just basic searching. I was a little bit scared at first when the idea of learning new technology was first introduced to us. But is has been a great learning journey!

#1. My favorite lessons were those that had to do with pictures and images. I loved animoto and flickr. I also had a lot of fun playing with the image makers and the mashups.These are things that I believe we can really use to make the library website more interesting and modern. The avatars were also fun to play with. I enjoyed changing my avatar every few days to match the season or the weather.

#2. As teachers,we are always encouraging our students to try new things. Learning something new can sometimes be intimidating but definately worth the effort. Working on the 23 Things has really helped me to take my own advice. If we are going to stay current in the everchanging world of technology, we have to become lifelong learners.In other words, we need to practice what we preach!

#3. I am amazed at how much there is to do on the web! I didn't know about even half of the things that we learned. I had never heard of social bookmarking, RSS feeds or Library Thing, just to name a few.I had heard of youtube and myspace but had never tried to use either one. I was really happy to find the creative commons site which hepled explain copyright.

#4.I thought all of the lessons were easy to follow and easy to understand. The directions were very straight forward. Anyone, even those of us who are not technology savy, were able to understand each step.

#5. I would definately take another course. I feel really proud of myself for everything that I have accomplished. I would never have learned all of these neat things if it hadn't been for these lessons. The only way to become lifelong learners is to keep learning. So sign me up for the next 23!

#6. The only way to really make learning the 23 Things worthwhile, is if we continue to use some of them in our library. I think that you need to choose several of the lessons that you really liked and incorporate them in your lessons, webpage,teaching, etc. I think the wiki and the blog would be great to use with our students and teachers. What a great way to share lessons, booktalks,teaching ideas, and suggestions. I am rally going to try out the blog with my students. I know they will enjoy it.

Thing #23

Ok, copyright issues have always been difficult for me. I will admit that when a teacher asks me a copyright question, I am not always sure if my answer is correct. The copyright comic book did help me understand a few things better. i.e fair use,public domain. I enjoyed the Disney character video on copyright. Would it be appropriate to show our teachers? To me, creative commons is a way for artists to share their work with the public without all of the restrictions of copyright. You are free to use these works as long as you abide by a few rules which are stated up front. You could use this in the library with music, pictures, and written pieces of work. Creative Commons makes me think of the game Guitar Hero where you play music on the guitar along with the original soundtrack. Would that be an example of cc?
My mother is making "grandmother books" for all her grandchildren. This is just a book of memories and pictures of her childhood to share with the grandkids. She didn't want to write 7 separate books, so she called the company and they gave her permission to copy the book seven times. This is a good example of asking the owner for permission to use their work.

My Girls

Thing #22

I think the animoto sight is really cool. I did get frustrated at first because I couln't get any pictures here at school to upload. I tried several times and even resized the picutes with VSO Image resizer as suggested. Nothing would work here at school. I finally just gave up and tried it on my laptop at home. I did get it to work really easily and quickly at home. So, I don't know if there is something at school that was preventing me from uploading pictures. If so, we wouldn't be able to use this on our webpage.

Thing #21

I didn't really care for the podcast session. It has been my least favorite so far. I had a hard time finding anything that really interested me and that I thought I could use. I also had a hard time getting some of the podcasts to play - this was frustrating to me. I'm not sure I really see a great need for podcasts in the library; maybe I just don't really understand them all that well yet. A teacher that is really computer savvy could let her students for the students to access. These lessons would be helpful for students that are absent or on extended leaves from school for medical reasons.

Thing #20

Youtube was fun to play around on. It is very easy to use and you can find videos on just about anything. I looked at several of the librarian videos - Conan the Libarian,the Angry Librarian, and the Bookcart Ladies. I like some of the features like the rating stars and the comments that viewers leave about each video. It would be neat to add video clips to our webpage. I know the students would really enjoy that. It would be neat if students could make their own videos for a class project and post it to youtube. My only concern is the filter. Would these be blocked at school? If so, they wouldn't be of much use for us as school. I found a really cute video of a little girl saying the 23rd Psalms. They showed this at chuch several months ago and I was wondering where they found it. Now I know! Take a look; it is so sweet.

Thing #19

I worked with gliffy and bubbl.us I have used Inspiration in the past but both of these are so much better because 1.) you don't have to download any software and 2.) you can access it from any computer. Students can begin work at school and continue at home which is a great advantage. I think you could use both sites for TAKS which is what we are all about. You could practice sequencing, timelines, etc. I really liked the floor plan feature on gliffy. Students could use this in projects when they have to recreate their rooms or house plans.I have to make a floor plan/seating chart of the libraty for TAKS/Benchmark testing and I am going to try gliffy. Anytime that the students can work/compose on the computer I believe that they will be more engaged in the lesson and the process. They like technology and like working on computers to create.

Thing #18

I have looked at craigslist before and it has some pretty funny things on it. You can find pretty much find anything you are looking for on it from used cars to used toilet paper!.I think you probably have to be careful though because some of the sellers may not be too legitimate.
I liked the One Sentence site. I think you could use this in your Language Arts classes to practice grammar, punctuation, etc. I know the kids could come up with some great sentences. Google Maps is also another wonderful site for students. (It was kind of weird how I found an actual picture of my house with my car sitting in the driveway!) It does have amazing pictures of the solar system and great aerial maps that would really be helpful in science.

Thing #17

I am typing Thing #17  in ZOHO   writer. Now this is a cool site!! I think you could spend a lot of time playing around here!  I like all of the neat extras that are here that you can add to your word processing.I think teachers and students ^{would love  ZOHO writer. They would be  able  to add some really cool things to papers and  reports.}

 

^{Shelby getting her car on her 16th Birthday!}

^{I think Bailey is as excited as she is!}

Thing #16

The tutorials and videos for the PB wiki were really simple and easy to understand.I think a wiki sounds like a great way to communicate with your teachers and your students. I just have to really decide what it is that I want to communicate. That is where I am stuck right now. I know that this in an ongoing project and for that I am glad. I did enjoy playing around in the sandbox and reading some of the ideas that others have posted there already. Some of you have some great suggestions.

Thing #15

I read all of the articles about wikis. I hadn't really thought about wikipedia as being the world's largest wiki but I guess that makes sense. I did create a wiki for Agnew.It is called "agnews". I haven't really decided what all I want to put on it yet,but I am in the process of doing some serious pondering on the subject! Debbie did give me one good suggestion so I will give her credit for this. At the end of the year, I could post a list of all of the students who still have books out. This would be a wiki that only I could edit but the teachers could accesss it every day and let the students know who had books still out. I would update every day so it would stay current. I thought this was a great idea. I think you could also use the wiki for book reviews on the Lone Stars or on book club books. Students love use the computer so I am sure they would enjoy writing or adding to reviews on a wiki.

Thing #14

When I first heard about Web 2.0 I really had no idea what it was or what it involved. Actually, I thought it was just one more thing that Mary wanted us to learn (hence the name of my blog!) Sorry Mary for not having more faith in you! I now realize that Web 2.0 is not really a "thing".To me it is more of social computing where you share thoughts, ideas, pictures, writings, feelings, research, basically anything that you want with other people. They can add to and even improve what you have created and vice versa. It has changed the library and the internet from just accessing books and information to so much more!
I believe that in the future we will need to look closely at our collections and decide what we need in the way of such things as hard copies of encyclopedias and certain nonfiction books. All of these can be found online and patrons will probably prefer to be able to access them from home or a hotel if that is where they happen to be at the moment. We also need to be ordering more playaways and ebooks since this is the technology of the future and students love anything that has to do with music,computers,earphones,etc.
It is a concern that there is only one of me and 900 students and I certainly can't educate all of them. But I do believe that a lot of the students learn this on their own. They certainly know about myspace and youtube and every day they teach me something. I also think that a lot of this new technology is very user friendly and students will pick up on it very easily.
Another concern I have is that so much of this technology is blocked right now by our district. I understand the reasons behind filters and blocks, but if we want our sudents to use this technology, we may have to get away from all of the filters. Just a thought.

Thing #13

I really like the idea of social bookmarking. When you think about having to bookmark all of your favorite websites on all of your computers, a service like del.icio.us makes a lot of sense! I really like the fact that you can access you sites from anywhere! - home or school. Last month I read an article in School Library Journal, Dec. 1, 2007, titled Best of Social Bookmarking. This was the first time that I had ever heard of del.icio.us. Little did I know that I would soon be learning all about it! I would really like to share this with my teachers to use persoanlly as well as professionally. I am going to have to think a little bit more about using it for research. I don't know how it would be that much better than the pathfinders that we currently use and they are available on any computer.

Thing #12

This was not my favorite activity.I don't really like MySpace or the concept of social networking among teenagers. I guess I am biased because I have two teenage daughters who LOVE MySpace and spend too much time on it (in my opinion). I do check their pages regularly but I have seen some things on others sites that I don't like too much. I don't really see that much use for school purposes. If you could guarantee what students would write and poststhen you could possibly use it to talk about assignments or books that you have read. I did set up a myspace http://www.myspace.com/technoblonde account. Both of my daughters left me comments. Ha! After a little help from Shelby(teenager) I did manage to add a background and a song. I can't see myself keeping up with a MySpace account. It takes too much time and effort for me. I would much rather be reading a book!! I think as educators we should know what our students are involved in and what they like to do at home (instead of reading or homework!)

I added myself to the MISD Librarians NING site and created my own page. I can see maybe using this one more than the myspace. It is fun to log on and see what new comments you have and if you have any new friend requests.