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!

Week 7 - Thing 16

I have had a tiny bit of experience using a wiki prior to this exercise. The librarians in our distict created one to share, add, and edit information for a document that we wanted to present to the board in regards to a new superintendent. As I was looking through all of the examples that were listed for us, the first thing I noticed was the issue of security. Passwords were needed to edit and even one needed and email confirmation to be able to edit. I guess you really need to think about the people that you want to have access to the wiki and how they will be able to use it. I enjoyed reading through Library Success: A Best Practice Wiki. There were so many areas to go into and read. I especially enjoyed Keeping Up With the Profession. Once again, I used my del.icio.us account to bookmark. I also read quite a bit in Providing Technology to Patrons and the one called Collaborative Tools in Libraries. Another wiki that I found very interesting was the Library Bloggers wiki. I clicked on school libraries and found that some of the links no longer are active and that it is just a wiki of school blogs. I guess I was hoping to see how elementary schools used wikis. The Sample school wiki got me interested in the Flat Classroom Project that I found out about in the secion called Classroom 2.0. I then went off on my own search to read and learn all about that project. How cool!

I really have to think how I would used this tool effectively with elementary school students. First of all, their spelling and punctuation would cause me to do a lot of editing. I'm also wondering how you control the appropriateness of what is placed on the page. I know with a blog you can set it to be approved before the comment is posted. Can that also be done with wiki entries? I can definitely see it as a tool for teachers to use to collaborate on numerous topics. I would love to hear ideas of how it is used effectively with elementary students.

Week 6 - Thing 15

I spent last evening and this afternoon reading through the articles on Library 2.0. Once again, I found myself clicking on links within the links and finding lots of articles that sparked my interest. I have bookmarked many on my del.icio.us account to refer to later. I am on the Strategic Planning Committee at our school, serving on the Technology subcommittee so I am very interested to read about the future of technology in schools. I have printed out the 2008 Horizon Report and the Pew Report on Teens, Technology, and School to share with my committee.

Rick Anderson's article made me think about the ways in which I need to change my thinking in regards to how a library "works". How do I best serve my patrons in the next 5 years? What do I need to change? I like how Michael Stephens called Library 2.0 a "strategy guide" to help users find information. Isn't that what our job really is - helping people locate the information they need? How can we do that effectively if we don't keep up with the changing ways of using technology? I also liked what he said about not implementing technology for the sake of coolness and status but to stick to your mission and goals. He said that the future of libraries should be guided by how users access, consume and create content. We as librarians must stay current so we can serve our teachers and students in meaningful ways. Dr. Wendy Schultz says that libraries are not merely in communities - they are communities! Am I ready?

Week 6 - Thing 14

I have been spending lots of time on Technorati. When I did the keyword search for "School Library Learning 2.0" in the blog posts I found lots of actual articles and people's responses or posts about them. When I did the same search in tags (after I found it in "advanced")I found a lot of blog entries of people who are doing the 23 things, just like me. In their blog entries I did find some references to great articles and research and actually used my del.icio.us account to bookmark some of these. My problem with this Web 2.0 class is that I get so deep into looking at articles, blogs, etc. that I lose track of what I am supposed to be doing! :) Lastly, when I searched in the blog directory I seemed to get more "official" blogs from company execs and organizations. That was my read on these searches.

Well, maybe I am showing my age, but the most popular blog, BoingBoing, had a rather interesting mix of entries, most of which would not make me want to check it out each day. My very favorite of the top 5 was Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done. I found the posts on this blog very interesting. I actually bookmarked this on my del.icio.us account. I just have one question about technorati - How is the authority determined? What does that number mean?

My thoughts about tagging - Tagging does help to locate certain information in blogs but I also found that some people list so many tags that you may be led to a blog because you think it is going to be about a certain topic only to find that the main idea of the blog is something else. I think that some people "over tag" to get people to go to their blog. Because there are no common "rules" for tagging I think that blogs will be missed when you search and others will be found that really don't fit what you are looking for.

Week 6 - Thing 13

Del.icio.us is something that I have never heard of before. I spent Monday evening, first of all, looking at the tutorial and then I used the SJLibraryLearning2 account to get some experience. I scrolled down to L2 tools and clicked on Web 2.0. I clicked on an article called Scribd - upload and share documents online. 12, 433 other people have bookmarked this so I thought I should check it out. Once again, I had never heard of this and was wondering if it was something like google docs. It seems like a great service that allows you to upload and share many different types of documents. Unlike googe docs, I don't believe that other users can edit what you have shared. But, I could be wrong! :) I did look at the tags and the comments and was made aware, once again, that this is a global tool. Comments written in many different languages were there. I noticed some inapproriate language in the comments section, so this type of service would probably be best used by adults, not students. Through this search of Web 2.0 I also checked out 25 Awesome Beta Research Tools from Libraries Around the World - College Degree.com and Booktagger - Your Online Book Collection. I am always amazed at the wealth of information and resources available online. I can see why there is a need for tagging and for services like Del.icio.us. Imagine how much more is out there that we have yet to find.

The only way that I really learn how to do something is to do it! So, I have created a Del.icio.us account. Since I work in an elementary school, I am trying to think how I could use this to help with research. I already create a page of Internet links for the students and teachers for each research unit and post it on my website so it can be accessed at home or at school. I'm want to play with this and see what this can do for me that I have not already done through the pages I have already created. I also want to see if the district has this website blocked or not. Since I do all of my work for this class at home. I am never sure what we can access at school. I also want to see if anyone can post comments to my page. If they can, there could be a problem with not being able to control the appropriateness of what people say. I'll let you know what I find out!

Week 5 - Thing 12

S-U-C-C-E-S-S! I am so happy that Rollyo was easy to use. We are beginning a unit on the ocean with our primary students so I decided to locate websites on ocean life that they could use for research. I found Rollyo easy to use. I have added the link to the right of my blog page. Is this where I should be putting all of these things? I decided to place it there rather than making it a blog entry. I hope this is right.

My only concern about using Rollyo with students is the distraction of the advertisements going down the right side of the page. Even though we ignore them, they are drawn to them. This could keep them from focusing on the information that they should be using.

This is my last entry for the day. I need to get some rest so I am ready for video conferencing tomorrow. We are doing RAP and the 100th Day of School! :)

Week 5 - Thing 11

I have spent a couple of hours trying to get a widget onto my blog! I went to the Web 2.0 Award Winners and chose to explore Widgets. First, I tried SpringWidgets. I tried to create a customized RSS feed and have it appear on my blog. I tried numerous times but I was not successful in previewing my RSS feed in SpringWidget or getting it to appear on my blog. I then decided to try a different RSS feed site. I chose yourminis. I was able to customize an RSS feed through this site but when I copied it to my blog I was not able to view it. It showed the box but I was not able to see my RSS feed within the box. By this time, 2 hours + had passed and I then decided to see if I could find a way to have my RSS feed appear in my blog using the help within Blogger. As you can see, I do have an RSS feed there but it was not done as a widget. I wish that I would have had someone to talk to this afternoon to help me work through this.

I then moved on to read about Ning. In our school district all of the social networking sites that I am aware of, have been blocked. I was very interested to read about Ning and how it can be used safely by teachers because of the variety of control features. We are not using it at the elementary level, but I must find out if this is something that we are using at the middle school and high school level.

I then checked out my Travel IQ. I should have studied the map more carefully before beginning because it does not give you much time to look and think. I ended up with 144,016 points at Level 5 with a travel IQ of 88. I don't know if that is good or bad but I found the game very interesting and challenging. It did ask if you wanted to add this widget to your page, so I did. It now appears at the bottom of my blog. I couldn't get a widget on my page earlier but there is one there now. So, there was a bright point to the end of my day! :)

Week 5 - Thing 10

I have spent a lot of time trying out differenct image generators. The easiest one for me to use was Image Chef. There were lots of different choices for making personalized images for fun things but I'm not sure how I would use this in a school setting. The image that is shown above (I'm sorry - I got an error message and was not able to post my pictures!) is one that I sent to my daughter, as if it was from her dog, Jack. I also made a license plate from Image Chef which said PSUWed and sent it to my other daughter, since she is getting married at PSU in June. As I said, these were fun things to do! I used the bowl of alphabet soup to advertise the Martha books by Susan Meddaugh.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to create a mosaic using the FD Toys site. I finally did create a mosaic but my concern with this site is that your pictures must have a URL address to be used. I uploaded my pictures into School Center, which our district uses for our web pages. But, when I copied those URLs into Mosaic Maker it would not accept them since the URL did not end in .jpg or some other picture format. I then had to upload my pictures into Flick but did not want to make them public because they included pictures of students at school. I still could not make the mosaic because the pictures were private. I had to make my pictures public in Flickr to be able to make the mosaic. Since I was trying to do one for our Superintendent, who is retiring in March, and many of the pictures were students, I had to scrap that idea. It seems that this site is only good if you are using scenery pictures. I did create a mosaic of our trip to Alaska but I did not include any pictures of family members. It was just landscape pictures. What a long learning process!!

I have used Trading Cards quite often in FD Toys for our 3rd grade state project. The teachers and students were very pleased with the results. I also used Motivator which creates a poster. We tried using this for the states, as well but decided on the Trading Cards instead. If I use Motivator again, I would have the students find a great picture of their state that would make a person want to visit, make the poster, save it as a jpeg and then paste it into word and have the students add a persuasive writing piece to the bottom of the paper.

There are so many other ways to use these image generators. I am just tapping the surface!

Trying Flickr Again!

Originally uploaded by mardombach

This is the picture of Tracy Arm Fjord Glacier that I was trying to link to earlier on my blog, but the link sent me to the page of all of my pictures, not just this one. I hope this one shows up!

Week 4 - Things 8 and 9

I have spent the day learning more about RSS feeds. Hours have gone by as I have used different search tools to find the RSS feeds that most interested me. I used Google Reader as my aggregator and I have 5 feeds at this point in time. Educational Technology and School Library feeds were my focus. There are so many resources it was difficult deciding which ones were most beneficial. I did not want to subscribe to too many because I know that I will not have time to check all of them each day. RSS feeds were new to me about a month ago, so I know that I am just touching the surface of their potential! I tried out all of the search tools that were listed but still found the search in Google Reader to be my favorite. Feedster was a dead link for me and I found Syndic8.com to be confusing. I checked out the blog searching tools as well, but my interest was not in finding blogs at this point in time. I want to continue learning about RSS feeds and chat with others about which ones they find best for professional development.

Trading Cards

I'm actually using the trading cards as a way to present very basic facts about the states. After finishing their research, the students can use google images to find a picture of their state and then they present basic facts that must include something about the history, economics, geography, and government. They have had a great time doing it! I learned that it is best to do the typing in Word and then paste the text into the trading card description area. The students were taking too long to type and we would get "timed out." Some students lost all of their information in the process of logging in again. Things have been going much smoother since we have started using Word to type the facts!

Week 3 - Things 6 and 7

I just created a trading card. I never knew that these web tools existed. Awesome! I'm thinking that I may be able to use this idea as a way to present our desert research. I'm excited to try it!

Week 3 - Thing 5 - Explore Flickr

Well, I explored Flickr tonight and uploaded two of my favorite pictures from my trip to Alaska this past summer. I think that I have a link to them on my blog but I also uploaded this one to my blog, as well. Someone please tell me if have gotten my pictures from Flickr to my blog correctly. I thought they would show up instead of just creating a link. Please advise! :)

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Week 2 - Thing 3 - Blog and Avatar

This is my first experience creating a blog and an avatar. I am very excited about being able to participate in Web 2.0. I can't wait to try out some of these technologies with the students.