Week 9 - Thing 23

I am finished! Web 2.0 has been an "eye opener" for me. I have learned about so many different technologies that are available to me and to our students through the Internet. I feel very comfortable using many of them but with some of them I am still grappling. I have now used a blog for my Student-Parent Book Club, I have used many of the tools available through Flickr Toys, I have come to enjoy RSS feeds, and I have continued to listen to some podcasts.

I think the hardest thing for me was doing this on my own. I learn best by having someone to talk with - to brainstorm ideas and to work through challenges. I would be working at something and hit a wall and I had no one to talk with about it, that could help me at that moment, when I needed help. Since so many of these technologies were new to me the learning curve was pretty steep for some. But, I persevered, and feel that I have come out with so much more knowledge than when I went into this.

I would definitely recommend this course to every librarian. There is so much to learn and I know that I still have a long way to go. Since technology changes constantly, I need to continue to learn and grow so that I can be an effective collaborator with my teachers. Librarians have so much to offer teachers and students, so we can never stop learning.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be part of PA's Web 2.0!

Week 9 - Thing 22

Wow! I had no idea that there were so many copyright-free books available online either as audio eBooks or eBooks. This seems like a treasure store for high school librarians, specifically, since many students are still required to read many of the classics. Here all of them are - online text or print the text for reading, or download onto mp3s or ipods and listen to later. My only experience with audiobooks has been through companies such as Listening Library and Recorded Books. I have used them extensively to increase my collection of audio books for the elementary teachers and students. Since many of the younger children's classics are here as well, I need to think how I can incorporate the use of these free materials.

I personally would use the audio format much more than the online text. I do enjoy listening to books while driving long distances or while exercising. I don't prefer to read online because it makes my eyes very tired. If I really needed to read the book, I could print the text since it is now available in pdf format, but that would require lots of paper and then what do you do with it when you are finished.

LibriVox was very user friendly and the narration of the title that I listened to was done well. I also liked the fact that you could continue to search other sites while a title was playing, since it played in Windows Media Player. The World Public Library site is amazing to browse. I can't believe how many titles they have made available (free of charge) to the public. I was also surprised to see many government documents available as well. I have never been on this site before. I'm curious to see what the free books will be in July.

Week 9 - Thing 21

I've actually spent a couple of days looking for and listening to many different podcasts. I began by listening to the Yahoo tutorial called "What is Podcasting?" I then tried out some of the sites to locate podcasts. I seemed to make out best using podcastalley.com. I went in and checked out their top ten but most of these were inappropriate for school use. I then chose to look in the top 50 podcasts and filtered my search to the top 50 in education. The first thing that hit me was that I could learn any language I wanted to through these podcasts! My favorite one of all that I listened to was "Grammar Girls Quick and Dirty Tricks for Better Writing." These are great topics and are done in an interesting manner. I actually added the RSS feed for this podcast to my blog. Check it out! I think you will enjoy it as well.

When I looked up book reviews, I didn't find any that I became very attached to, but I did listen to the "New York Times Book Update", "The Giver", Book Bites For Kids, and some others. I was not able to access quite a few of the ones listed.

I have begun to do some podcasts in my library using Audacity, which is a free software download. Students are recording the information they have put together from their research and we are posting these along with their visuals on our school webpage. First and second grade students taped their information on ocean animals, and third and fourth grade students taped their state information. Kids love to listen to their presentations online and they build fluency skills by practicing their reading before taping. I also know of some schools who have the students write and podcast a book review after reading a book. These are then posted on the web page. Maybe we can build our students auditory skills by doing more with podcasting! :) They seem to be very motivated by this technology.

Week 9 - Thing 20

I have chosen to share "Circle of Smiles" which is a video of a book for children. The story is sung and the words are highlighted so children can sing and read along. I thought it was cute. I found two others that I liked as well. One was called "Parents as Teachers" and the other was called "A Love For Reading." Both of these were geared to parents - the importance of reading with and to your child. I needed to go into the Help feature on the blog to be able to embed the video since I had no idea how to do that.

I watched all of the YouTube videos listed on the assignment. I thought that "Introducing the Book" was hysterical. "Web 2.0" was great but I thought that it moved a little too quickly. "Library 2.0 Manifesto" had some great statements and "March of the Librarians" was a nice spin off of "March of the Penguins" but not real informative. When I clicked on "Jack O'Connell Goes Back to School" I actually got the video called "Tin Whistle Duet", which was quite entertaining. I had to search "Jack O'Connell" to find the correct video.

My feelings on YouTube are mixed. I can see why our district blocks the site. There were so many videos with inappropriate language and some of the advertising was not appropriate for elementary, as well. It is fine to find videos in YouTube to use with children but I would never let them go searching for ones. I have been in TeacherTube once before and I feel that it is a much better alternative.

Week 8 - Thing 19

I created an account for LibraryThing and took the tour. I then added five of my books and created my catalog. I hope that I linked this properly! :) I also added a LibraryThing widget to my blog. The rating of my books ranged between 3.91 and 4.39. I'm not sure how the popularity number is derived. I tried finding that out but did not locate the answer to my question. My popularity numbers ranged between 145 and 34,852. Those number did not make sense to me. It was almost as if the members number got mixed with the popularity number, but I'm not certain. All 5 of my books had comments listed after them and I also searched them in "Talk" and read lots of discussion from the Groups.

The MoBuzzTV Review link is dead but I checked out all of the other links. I especially liked seeing how other libraries are using LibraryThing. I am going to try to incorporate it onto my webpage as a widget, to share the newest books that have arrived in the library.

Week 8 - Think 18

This was my firsst experience with Zoho. I have used Google docs in the past but had never heard of Zoho. When I went into Zoho and looked at all of the features that they offered, I began with Zoho notebook. I am always taking notes for everything so I thought I would check out this portion. I actually created a note sheet on how Zoho notebook works. I had a little trouble in the beginning figuring out how to enter text but once I found that, the rest was fairly simple. I then saved my notebook and shared it with two people to see if they could open it easily. I talked with one of them this morning and they did not go in to register with Zoho yet to open it.

I also tried to import a PowerPoint slide into Zoho show. The slide was imported but did not open properly because Zoho Show only supports slides done in landscape format and this slide was done in portrait. I then tried to import it into Google docs to see if it would open in portrait there and it only opened in landscape. I could not find in either application how to switch the orientation to portrait. My guess is that landscape is the only choice since that is how most powerpoint slides are made.

Our elementary schools did Read Around the Planet video conferences this year so our tech person uploaded his spreadsheet of all of the district video conferences into Google docs and shared it with the librarians so we could go in and add the video conferences for each of our buildings. This was an easy way for us to get the information to him without him having to go in and add all of the information to his spreadsheet. We could also easily see each other's schedules.

There are some real advantages to Zoho and Google docs. Now, you don't have to worry if someone has the same version of the application as you, and multiple people can edit the same document, if needed. I will probably still create my documents in my Microsoft Applications but upload them into either of these if they need to be shared.

Week 7 - Thing 16a and 17

Wow! It is amazing to me how I can spend so much time just clicking and reading and bookmarking sites. I started off this section by going into the Sandbox of the California Curriculum Connections and spent a lot of time reading other people's entries. I got so many ideas from this section and checked out some of the links. I then went to the California Curriculum Connections wiki and checked out a couple of the topics. I first went into the section on Photos and Images and found a new site that allows you to do some great things with photos - dumpr.net. You can actually take a photo and turn it into a sketch along with other ways you can use photos. I bookmarked this site for further "playing." I also visited the voicethread site again because I am very fascinated by this concept. I am trying to see if this is something I could do with elementary students when they work on their biography/autobiography unit. I need to experiment and see how time consuming this is. I then went into the Wiki section and compared two different wiki creation sites. I read about PBwiki and Wikispaces for Educators. I create pathfinders for my elementary students using Microsoft Word and then save it as a web page and load it onto my web page. I read Joyce Valenza's article about the 10 reasons why a wiki is a good tool to use for a pathfinder. I then went and looked at some middle school pathfinders for science and social studies that are done using Wikispaces. I actually registered for an account to Wikispaces and plan to work on switching my pathfinders into wikis this summer. I like how wikispaces has a section for educators that allows ad free pages at no cost. When I was in the sandbox section I also found a pathfinder that was done using a Google custom search. I want to check that out futher, as well.

I did add an entry to the Sandbox portion of the California Curriculum Connections wiki telling how I used the trading cards with my 3rd graders with their state research. I love the trading cards! I will definitely use them again.

I have just added an entry to the PA Curriculum Wiki. I had trouble getting into it because I did not have the password. But thanks to Gabriella, I now have created an entry!