Week 9: Thing #23 and Congratulations!

I am sitting at my kitchen island and it is only 4:04 Sunday afternoon. With all my computer problems I had foreseen at least midnight until I started Thing 23. I loved the video "A Fair(y) Use Tale. It has raised a lot of questions that I want to investigate more especially since the audio portion was very choppy. I guess I want to find out how copyright went from 14 years to forever if I heard the clip correctly-which segues into my feedback...

First, I realize that I need a much more powerful computer and a less invasive security network. I will make sure it is fast and it speaks clearly.

Next, I have overcome my fear and aversion of You Tube - I really like it but it is a time thief.

Overall, I am more overwhelmed by all the technology available but less ignorant or fearful about taking it on and adapting it. I felt so successful when videos and pod casts actually appeared in my blog. If only there were more hours in the to experiment with it but this course has given me a great start.

My favorite week was Week 5 Play week (probably why I work well at middle school). I really liked the pod casts especially since I don't have an Ipod. Now I don't feel at all left out. I will probably buy a Kindle and read everything I can download for free from eBooks.

Besides You Tube designing my Avatar took forever. I had to go through all the outfits and accessories before I could commit.

The only things I would add would be:
1) A bit more explanation to the RSS feeds= maybe a step by step guide. I watched the videos several times but I need a printed script also.

2) About two more weeks to complete the 23 things. However, part of my problem was that sites had been blocked the second week into the course.

Overall, I found this to be one of the best courses in technology that I have taken.
I loved the tone of each week's lesson. It was like I was to embark upon a new adventure each week. I would most definitely sign up for anything else that was offered and I plan to share what I learned with anyone who will listen to me.

In one word this course was: EMPOWERING

A Great and Terrible Beauty

Teen book video award winner.

Week 9: Thing 20 Discover YouTube and a Few Sites

I finally finished this assignment. I knew it would be a bear since the school has blocked Youtube and my own computer shuts itself off at whim. I first explored sites that weren't blocked to the school and found that I could get everything offered on TeacherTube. There is a great little video for Rick Riordan's Olympian Series called "Camp Half-Blood". I love this series and I am always promoting it so I would definitely show this clip the next time I book talked The Lightning Thief.

Next I explored Youtube at home and found a fabulous clip for Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty It is at the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L93HOOy-lSc

It was from Teen Book Video Award Winners. There were also some interesting clips about banned books which would work well with a lesson I sometimes teach.

I have tried several times to down-load it to this blog but I thought I better get this posted since time is running out. I will try to get the clip in when I finish the rest of Week 9.

The drawbacks were of course the blocking of Youtube so I would have to see if I could have individual sites unblocked. The massive amounts of video clips and the time it took to buffer and download. On TeacherTube an ad page popped up before the video would start to download.

Overall, it was interesting and I am going to explore these sites more. This experience has also convinced me that I need either a more powerful computer or a weaker security program running in the background.

Week 9: Thing 21 (Podcasts) and Thing 22 (eBooks and Audio eBooks)

The podcasts were really neat. I found a fabulous one by Nancy Keane. It is called:

Podcast Book Reviews by Nancy Keane

They are available as a page at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/08125276564536541007(and there's a feed too! I have attached it to my delicio.us. account.

I have so many students who speed read and always want a new reccommendation. I am going to favorite this site on the library computers and have them search here if they want more choices than I can give them.

My exploration of eBooks coincided with the science teacher showing off his birthday gift to me. It is a Kindle which is like a notebook that downloads books from many of the sites listed in the lesson. He also rattled off a few other sites he goes to. I usually go to Mexico for a month each summer to study Spanish and I fill one suitcase with books I want to read. After this lesson and my introduction to Kindle I think I am going to invest in the machine and give my arms a break.

We also have a student who is legally blind and I told her about the eBook site and
have invited her back after school to show her how to log on and listen.

Week 8: Thing 18 and 19 Online Applications and Tools

I fell behind in keeping up my blog because I had jumped ahead and started playing with the links of this week three weeks ago. I love the Zoho writer. We have two teachers in my building who wanted personal accounts for each of their students so that no other student could go into the file on the desktop and change, copy or delete another's work. After many phone calls and a few frustrating sessions, the kids were able to have separate accounts. However the option of having them create an account with the Zoho writer seems far better since they could access their accounts not only from any computer in school but also from any computer at their homes, at a friends or at gram's. The only drawback is if the power or internet goes down but it seems like a great trade-off. Both the teachers who had wanted separate accounts seem very interested in using this next year.

Okay, Library Thing is very cool. I need about three more hours to really explore but I see many possibilities.

Week 7: Thing #16 Wiki's

Although I know many people love wikis, I feel a little nervous about creating one for my students. Teaching middle school students,I don't think I could give uncontrolled editing permission. Even though students are constantly reminded not to give out locker combination, there are always incidents of theft from a locked locker because the combination had been given out. If I gave passwords and told students to keep them safe, 99% would do it but the 1% would cost me untold grief. I have opened computer screens to some shocking sites even with firewall controls.

One site that I saw asked that book reviews be emailed and then they were posted. I think this might work but I would need to find the time to read and post the reviews. But couldn't this be done with a blog and one would have more control. I don't want to be a control freak but I also do not want to be a lead story on the 5:00 news.

Week 6: Thing 15

I have just reread three of the articles from Web 2.0 and I am feeling a little despondent. I feel that my school library is stuck in the Dark Ages and there is no forseeable hope for a future in Web 2.0. I hate to be a nay-sayer and I try to think of the ways I can bring some of the new and exciting digital changes into my school environment but I am in a system that faces grave financial problems each year. Our middle school students do not have classes in health or even keyboarding never mind other computer programs. Saying this let me respond to each of the articles I have read. Rick Anderson writes "Away from the 'icebergs' listing the three problems he sees threatening the progress of libraries and "indeed our existence".

The first deals with the "just in case" collection. He claims that this approach does not make sense anymore since as Web 2.0 continures to emerge patrons will be accessing everything digitally. I agree with him totally and the upside for me is with little or no budget each year I can still help my students access information they need.

The second "iceberg" deals with "reliance on user education". He states the understaffing doesn't allow the needed education for research so the tools must be user friendly requiring little or no instruction for use. As a school librarian one of my jobs is educating my clientele and helping them navigate through the information with the tools at hand. Taking this course, I thought I could count on some computer savy kids to help me but they are not familiar with any of the tools I have asked them about. Well, some had heard of Blogs. I myself am waiting for the day when I just have to ask the computer to do a task verbally and it is accomplished.

Finally, changing the "come to us" model. I like going to the library. I like the ambience and order. I do feel that libraries have made great efforts in accessing materials for patrons from all over. We are in an "I want it and I want it now" age but what we give up is practice in patience and civility.

Week 6: Things 13, 14

I really like Del.icio.us. I added it to the tool bar on my home computer. I thought that I did pretty good searches but Del.icio.us has added a whole new dimension. It is like having extra help. After almost collapsing into a diabetic coma, my father was to finally be released from the hospital Tuesday. He was super anxious about what he should eat. I used Del.icio.us to search for diabetic menus and came up with a great site! I also discovered that my comments went public. I had thought they were just for me. Overall it is much quicker than using the favorites on my home page and I love the fact that I can access it at school- a site not yet blocked!

Technorati is a site that I am going to share with the Computer Room Tech. I wish I had been aware of this six months ago when I was trying to find out how people felt about wireless printers and laptops. I have to admit that I was overwhelmed with all the information that is out there and need to spend much more time working with this site.

When I typed Librarylearining2.0, I found 68 results, 15 Blogs and 12 of the posts were tagged.

Week 5: Play Week Things 10, 11, 12

The sites were fun and terrific. I have already shown "image generator" to one teacher who is doing a unit with her students that involves creating their own businesses and she is excited about using the logo maker and the cartoon maker for the advertising part of the unit. I have posted my own practice attempt with the cartoon maker and see multiple possiblities for using it- from making my own Dewey Decimal Signage to working with a poetry unit.

I haven't finished exploring the sites on the Web 2.0 awards list since each one is so good I want to check them all out. One of my favorites is onesentence.org where one can post the whole story of an event in one's life in one sentence. The lines are fascinating and as a former English teacher I immediately thought how this site could be used to teach writing hooks. I also found a site "Etsy.com" where people sell handmade items. One of our art teachers was in the library laminating and I showed her both this site and Flickr. She immediately wrote down the URLs and went back to her room to explore them in depth.

At first I was skeptical about Rollyo but when I finally got the grasp of it, I realized how useful it is. I have wanted to buy a all-in-one printer that would be compatible with my laptop when I used it wireless. I find that I can read through articles from all the major technology magazines on my subject using this tool. I am still experimenting with it.

My only complaint with this week's sites is that I need a lot more time. I would also like to add I am thinking of a way to circumvent the filter issues and maybe set up a blog about books that my students could access and contribute to.

Week 4: RSS & Newsreaders

This has been the most frustrating assignment. I started working on it ahead of time. Staying late at school and learning about feeds and bloglines. I decided to spend time Monday after school to attach a library blog to my site. Unfortunately, over the weekend a new filter was installed on the server and it is impossible to access any links to all the following assignments not just the RSS feeds on my school computer. I sent them to the head of the media office who explained that it would be impossible for him to unlock anything on my computer since it would then allow students to also access these sites which could lead them to forbidden sites.

What I did find out was that Bloglines were like a list of favorites put you didn't have to pull down a menu tab to find them. They can be listed right on one's own blog. This would be great for my husband who likes to start his day reading every major newspaper throughout the U.S.A.

However,at this point I am so frustrated! How do I expect to use these tools in a curriculum if it is impossible to access them ,when I am using them during a lesson? . Maybe the problem solving part of my brain is on shut down from this recent setback. I will continue to work on the assignment from my home computer but it is related to the family of turtles on t.v. -" The Slowvenskys".

Week 3: Photos & Images : Things 5,6,7

Okay, every week that I begin to attempt my new assignment I begin to break out in a cold sweat. It always ends on an up-note but I feel exhausted when I finish. Part of the problem with all this technology is that I have so many log on names and id's and although I write them down, I find myself going through piles of post-it notes. This week I'm taking an old fashion pencil and notebook and consolidating everything.

Despite all my complaining, I did find using Flickr a lot of fun. I have some ideas about using the trading cards. The collages were fantastic! I also found links to some very unique cites which I can't wait to share with some of my colleagues. Unfortunately when I tried to find the original cite through Flickr, I couldn't locate it. Going back to the instructions for this week I found the link by clicking on Flickr color picker. Here it is

http://www.krazydad.com/colrpickr/

It is created by Jim Bumgardner who says he created it to "provide wonder and delight" and it really does. I can't wait to show it to our art teachers and music teacher. Check out the music box link here.

I have posted a trading card I made using one of the projects from a Day of the Dead unit I do with our language arts teacher

What one needs is the luxury of time and repetition of task.

#2 Week One

Well, here is my first blog posting. The difficulty I will have in regards to this course is finding uninterrupted time. I have been trying to set up this blog page since last week. The second area of difficulty is working with the technology but I keep telling myself if a sixth grader can do it, I should be able to with a bit of effort.

I am excited about learning new technology as well as a little apprehensive especially about remembering all my handles and passwords. I wrote them down and put them in a safe place but to date there are three safe places holding valuable information that I have forgotten. Well if worse comes to worst I'll just grab a sixth grader for some tips.