It’s hard to believe we’ve actually come to the end of the 23 things. It seemed so long in the beginning and now looking back, the time seemed to fly. There were frustrations along the way but I am truly thankful for the experience and I have learned so much. Most of all, I have learned not to be afraid to try the new Web 2.0 tools that are available and find the ones that are most helpful. There are so many other tools out there that I have not yet used but now I am willing to try. Our students are truly the “digital natives” of the Web and hopefully this “digital immigrant” can keep up and continue to find new and interesting ways to engage them .
Ning is not my thing. I did not find much of interest to me, except one site called TeacherLibrarianNing organized by Joyce Valencia. It did have some groups of interest and I could check there for library/book information. I did join our school Ning a couple of months ago, but I don’t remember to check back very often. Although I can see some value in Nings for groups like clubs or associations, I also think the social networks can be a major time waster. I see my daughter spending too much time on Facebook and My Space instead of having face-to face real interactions or even studying! Through her I have also become aware of cyber-bullying in our own school that was very upsetting to a number of students. I do think we need to address this issue with students, as well as talking (again!) about putting too much personal information out there on the Internet. The two additional resources, 7 Things You Should Know about Ning and Schools and Online Social Networking both had helpful information about Nings and what we need to know about them.
One of the most interesting and most helpful things I found in my reader was an article called Filtering Flicker that was on the blog of Learning 2.1: Explore…Discover…Play. This blog is interesting because it is the extension of a Learning 2.0 program based on the 23 Things – much like what we are doing now! They suggested using the website FlickrCC and I loved it. I’m so excited to use it. I had enjoyed exploring Flickr in our Thing 10 and was very happy to know about Creative Commons. But the Flickr site was a little confusing trying to find and use the advanced search for Creative Commons. FlickrCC makes it unbelievably easy. All of the photos are already in CC and the website offers a simple in-house editor that is quick and easy to use. With one mouse click you can make the attribution a part of the picture, add text, crop image, make a frame, resize, or add a line. I love it!! In fact, I don’t think I will ever use anything else for inserting photos.
It was fairly easy to create a page in Pageflakes. However on the first page I created on the K12 Learning 2.0 template I followed all the directions to create it but did not click on Make This My Homepage at the top when I was finished. So when I closed the page and then went back to find it, it was not there. So I started over and created another page. There are so many things that can be added that it can be overwhelming. I’m glad there are the little arrows below each flake so the flakes can be closed until you want to look at them.
Pageflakes would be a good tool for classroom teachers to build for specific assignments. All of the on-line resources could be added to the page as links or feeds. In the library we could collaborate with the classroom teacher to add resources. Examples could be Ms. Regan’s Global History and Geography or Election 2008 Resources. Another good use of Pageflakes would be to create a page for individual professional workshops. The participants could then refer back to the page at any time. Much like the way this course is presented.
Google Docs is great for collaboration and very easy to use. It would be great for students collaborating on a project. They could work on Google Docs together in “real time” or add to the project later on their own time. It would also be very easy for teachers to plan a collaborative project together with Google Docs. Google Docs has similar functions to Word, except for formatting. The only real problem is bringing in an already existing Word document, because Google Docs does not keep the original formatting and spacing. In some documents this can be very important. It was annoying and time-consuming to import a Word document and them have to spend time trying to re-fix the spacing and formatting. Also it hard to get the spacing exact because there are no visual guidelines so it is all “eyeballing” it. This was my biggest complaint when importing an existing pathfinder/resource sheet. It was very nice to be able to add active links to the page in Google Docs. I could invite the classroom teacher to share the document before the class came to the library and he could add links to the resources also. The teacher could share the document with the students ahead of time or in the library.
We seldom use spreadsheets in the library, but the classroom teacher could easily use one to have the students sign up for the research projects ahead of time. We could possibly use spreadsheets for some of the end-of-year reports.
The Google Docs Presentations could be used to make a quick and easy PowerPoint presentation. Once again it is difficult to import some existing presentations because Google Docs does not hold the transitions or some of the advanced features. But for quick and easy it is great and completely portable. You don’t have to worry about having the appropriate software. I had a little trouble with importing pictures and then being able to move them or size them. Words that I thought I had deleted would come back when I moved the picture. But I think this is something that I could work out with practice. The functionality of having all these Google applications at your fingertips anywhere you have a computer is really nice.
Most of the YouTube videos I had seen before were funny things sent to me through e-mail. I had never really searched on YouTube. There were many funny things there, but not too much to help in the library. The instructional ones I did find were boring and one could spend a whole lot of time searching without out very good results. However there were a number of very good booktalks. There were quite a few related to Young Adult literature and they could be very interesting to our students. Many of the booktalks were on books that we have in this library or that we had thought about ordering. After listening to one on a book called An Abundance of Katherines, I will reconsider ordering it.
There is a book on the bestseller lists now about Dewey the Library Cat. Here is a cute video about Dewey.
A somewhat bizarre and interesting video was How to Charge an iPod Using Electrolytes and an Onion. All you need to charge your iPod is Gatorade, and onion, a screwdriver and your USB adapter for the iPod. I suppose that could be useful to charge your iPod in a pinch without a computer handy. I wonder what it does to the USB adapter for future use?
TeacherTube did seem to have much more useful information related to libraries and information technology. There were a number of videos that could be adapted for our use. One was on logging into the Follett Destiny OPAC which is the same catalog that we use. The only problem I found on Teacher Tube was that several of the videos froze up in the middle of viewing. Since this happened while using different computers, I assumed this might be a TeacherTube problem rather than a computer problem.
I can see the value of podcasting in the classroom more than in the library because there are so many different assignments for students to participate. In the library we have used podcasting to do booktalks and potentially for students to do book reviews , instead of book reports. We might also use podcasting for instructions on how to use the databases. The problem with students doing podcasting in the library is the quiet space for them to do it without disturbing other students who need quiet study.
I had used iTunes before in another class, but I found it very frustrating to try to find the podcasts available and did not find any that were helpful to me in the library. Nor could I find the audio podcasts that I had done in the other class. Trying to watch the Apple tutorials made my computer freeze up. I don’t know how to search the iTunes library. I think I need to be 13-year-old to figure out how to use and search iTunes. It is certainly not intuitive for an “digital immigrant” like me. I could really use some help with this, after spending many hours going back and forth and getting nowhere.
It was much easier to view the podcasts on the Education Podcast Network and Learn Out Loud. On Learn Out Loud I listened to a very interesting podcast by an 8th grade History teacher called Speaking of History by Eric Langhorst. It was a very creative lesson on the Declaration of Independence that made the students think it was a break-up letter. They were totally hooked. On the Education Podacst Network I subscribed to Open Stacks by Greg Schwartz who is a librarian in Louisville “promoting information access and literacy for all.”
I really liked being able to attend a conference in my PJ’s. It is nice to have the ability to “attend” a conference on your own time and explore different sessions when you wish. I don’t think it is as interesting as attending a conference in person, but with time and budget restraints, it is a good way to get conference information.
After listening to several of the presentations from the K12 Online Conference, I thought one of the most interesting and most useful was in the Getting Started section called “Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy.” Jennifer Kraft presented a number of free tools found on the internet for supporting literacy in the classroom. Some of the tools were Text-to-Speech, Text-to-MP3, Speech-to-Text, E-books, Research Tools including Google Notebook, Delicious, Google Docs and others, and Concept Mapping (similar to Inspiration, but free). As Jennifer herself said, the presentation was “fast and furious,” but she gave very good supporting links to her slideshow and instructions for free downloads. There were so many different tools mentioned that this is an excellent resource for teachers. Many of the tools could help with reading and many with organization and research skills.
One of the most fun things I found in my Google reader was Kathy Schrock‘s instructions on how to use Dumpr to convert photos to Rubik’s cubes. Since we had been doing lots of photo work with Flickr and making slideshows, I thought this was a good extension to use with photos. Dumpr offers many other designs to do with your photos too.
Actually I have already been using LibraryThing for over a year and a half now. I love it because it is so easy to use and it is a great tool to help me get the New Books List ready for the library webpage. You simply type in a title or ISBN and LibraryThing pulls in all of the other information about the book from Amazon including a small picture of the cover. You can configure 5 different styles to show information about each book. However I seldom ever use all the social features offered because there are so many groups available and it is so time-consuming to browse. Occasionally I look at reviews or recommendations made by others, but usually I just work with my own library to keep track of books I have read and my own ratings for our recommended reading list. But if you want to connect with others about books and join groups there are lots to choose from on LibraryThing.
