Thing #23

#23

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
I enjoyed finding all these resources for things I never knew I always wanted to do, and some I even wanted to do, but didn’t know how, like making the video.

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
I hope to maintain learning about new innovations on technology. Thing #19 that pretty much summarized all the new web 2.0 things seems like a good way to keep going. It will be updated all the time because it is an award program.

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? It really was fun (mostly) and that was highly unexpected.

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
nothing that I can think of. I liked the links. Maybe if you set the links to automatically open in a new window from the Thing page because I kept having to go back and find my page every time I forgot to right click. But that's me, not the Thing.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
Yes, but unfortunately, time being what it is, I would have to ensure pd hours for it before promising myself to all this time.

How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities?
Innovative
Easy
Helpful
Pick one.

Now go and comment on some of the other Players' blogs - did that.

Thing #22

#22

Ning seems awesome. It seems exactly what I was looking for a network of librarians. I plan to join the network. I think this is good for helping me in the library just to collaborate with other librarians and get fresh takes on my ideas, as well as find other ideas.

http://txschoollibrarians.ning.com/

Thing #21

I really enjoyed the Photo Story maker. I made a video of my daughter Elizabeth that made my sister cry. I think I will really enjoy using this in the library. I can think of so many ideas - pics of kids reading books for the kids to see, something for pd of the teachers or inspiring photos of kids, etc.

My video uses Billy Ray Cyrus's Ready, Set, Don't Go. It fit, so I hope you like country. :)

Thing #20 - almost there

I love Teacher Tube.

What Teacher Tube can do: It can find great videos to HELP a teacher in the classroom by supplementing her already great lesson, add interest, and a little bit of enthusiasm. It uses technology the RIGHT way - or one of the many right ways.

What Teacher Tube cannot do: Teach for you. It does have lessons on there. Most of them are boring. If you are going for a quick lesson, use Brain Pop instead. It is part of your own lesson, not the entire thing.

While playing on Teacher Tube, I found a great little skit narrated by kids about reading.

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It's from TeacherTube

It's cute, and would be a great intro or closing to a library lesson about basic reading and imagination at the beginning of the year. The narration goes a little too fast though, so some ELL's might have difficulty following it.

Unfortunately, You Tube is blocked in my district. Their rational is "it slows down the servers."

I love the Harry Potter Puppet Pals videos. Snape is my favorite character in these, so here is a sample of one. It's from YouTube

Thing #19

So, this whole time that I have been working on 23 Things, I have been bookmarking finds and producing great searches and new ideas. Forget that list. This list is the same stuff, but better, and in one easy location! How can I use this in my library? Easy! It's organized for me. Whatever I need, it's right there. All I have to do is bookmark this site. Done!

One of the thoughts that have been going through my head is "How am I going to remember all these tools for when I need them?" This is how. Now the only down side to this assignment is having to do it so quickly; therefore having less process time. But I hope to play with it during the school year and really LEARN some of these, not just blow through them, like now.

Here's the website http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/short

Thing #18

My method is a thing of the past. In college, before jump drives were huge, so they were way overpriced for a college kid living on Ramen Noodles, I didn't trust disks - they needed to be "reformatted" just as soon as you were done with your document. I didn't have a printer at home. Ink required money. I was a member of the Honor's Lab, so I could print for free. Plus, it was in the Humanities building, and I was a history major. The library was across campus. Easy cheesey. I developed a system for my papers. I would work on my paper at home. Email it to myself. Open it in the Honor's Lab. Work on it. Email the new one to myself. Open it at home. Work on it. Save the changes. Get confused because I had multiple docs with the same or very similar names. Email it back to myself. Print it the next day in the Honor's Lab for free. I teach my students the same method, with some improvements to prevent the confusion. They like it because they don't have printers either.

This would have saved all that emailing. Just put it in Google Docs and make changes where ever you go! This is so neat. The downside - and its a pretty big downside - is the size limit. For a word document, the size is 500kb. That's only 25 pages or so. Many of my documents are projects for school or work that is a compilation of information or a research project with links and stuff. Links and formatting add to the kb real fast, so my average size of a doc is well over the 500kb max. But... for my students, this would be beautiful. They could work on something BCIS, where the teachers encourage typing their essays for English to practice their typing skills, pull it up in my room for peer editing, then take it to the library to print, all without spending money on disks, jump drives, or anything except the 20 cents to print. Beautiful.

Thing #17

This is a fabulous tool. In my classroom, when I teach Google, I teach kids what to look for in a quality website. The problem is that I simultaneously have to teach kids what to look for in the summary space of the website before clicking on the website itself. This would be a great tool to teach the kids to search in a safe, reliable set of sites before teaching what's wrong with Google. I created a rollyo for my wellness websites that I have bookmarked on my home computer. Then I did a random search and it came up with an automatic result that was much more direct than my typical Google search. I could see this could be helpful just for my own benefit.

Here is my link, but it is a generic link, so I don't think my search roll will show up when you go to that link. http://www.rollyo.com/index.html