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.