Week 9 Thing 23: Copyright

I have the seen the "Fairy Use Tale" a few months ago and I thought it was really good. The only thing that may be a problem is that I don't think students will quite get the concept because it does seem to be fast paced but would recognize the cartoons. Teachers would benefit from it better. The Creative Commons website provided useful information . I deal with copyright everyday in the library and it seems that teachers push it more than students. Part of that does stem from the teachers' lack of knowledge about copyright and we as librarians need to teach them how to avoid copyright infringement.

Week 9 Thing 22: ebooks and Audio ebooks

Surprise, there are a lot of websites that offer free ebooks. The only thing I did not like was I found downloading the books was challenging. Sad to say I am not a big fan of classics and most of websites contained many classics. I did look at Kids Audible and saw that there were a few free ebooks that my students would possibly interested. I guess I am not that comfortable in downloading ebooks. The last time I used an ebook was when I was finishing my master's. I was not very interested in this activity.

Week 9 Thing 21: Podcasts

My only experience with Podcasts was that I took a 1 day training on Podcasts. We used Macs with Garageband and learned how to create a podcast and I thought it was an intense class. It took a while to practice recording songs, phrases and actually talking and recording and matching all that to the pictures. When I went to search the podcast directory, I found out that a couple of the links did not work. Podcast.net's link was broken and Yahoo Podcast could not be found. Right now, I did not find anything that would benefit me to use in my library but I will keep searching and who knows maybe I might find just the right thing to share with my students.

Week 9 Thing 20: You Tube and few sites

For as long as You Tube has been around, this is the first time I experience looking through it. While I was taking this workshop I came across a wiki and saw a video that really caught my eye. I noticed they found it on You Tube and so I went to look for it myself. I found it and I thought it would a great introduction to teachers about using technology and connecting and sharing information that ties in with the library.





Another video I came across was so inspiring for writing that I would love to share it with our teachers. This little girl is so amazing and her vocabulary is mind boggling!!!

Week 8 #19: Library Thing

I have never heard of Library Thing until I took this workshop. I never knew there was such a tool to catalog books but surprisingly it can only catalog up to 200 books. Adding books was actually easy. I can actually catalog all of the books that my kids have at home. I like that you can see how the books rate and actually read other reviews. Here is a link to my library thing.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/mebarr66

Week 8 Thing 18: Online Productivity Tools

I created an account with Zoho writer and played around trying to create a sample document but did not find it that user friendly. My preference would be Google docs and I have not really used it until last week when we used it during a workshop. Now that I had a chance to spend some time with Google docs, I can see using this as a great way to share research units with other librarians. I really like this tool for the reason that I don't have to worry about saving documents or presentations on a jump drive and I can pull it up on any computer wherever I go. How convenient is that?

Week 6 Thing 14: Technorati

After I did a search for school library 2.0 using Technorati, I was surprised the number of posts. I expected the results would be higher. There was only 539 post but when I did a tag search, no results showed up. I did not feel very comfortable with this particular tool. Maybe I need to research this more in depth to find it useful for me.

Week 5 Thing 11: Web 2.0 Awards

As I was looking around the 2.0 awards list, I found some interesting topics to discuss. The first thing I noticed was the 1st place winner for Digital Storing and Remote Access was disbanded in 2008. Omnidrive was supposed to be an easy tool to just drop and drag online content but since it won the award in 2007 they kept the listing on this site. I wonder why it was disbanded, was it due to lack of use by consumers or that it might not have been as easy to use as they said? It makes you wonder. Another thing I was looking at was hosted wikis. I thought it was interesting that PB Wikis landed 1st place but Wikispaces received 3rd place. I thought they would be rated equally. As for my decision to create a wiki for my library, I have to choose a wiki that my school district will support. I can see why Google docs received 1st place for collaborative writing and word processing. I had the opportunity to experience with Google docs last week while taking a videoconferencing workshop. It was very easy to use and share with others.

Week 6 Thing #13: Del.icio.us and tagging

I can see the use of this tool can be very helpful and played around with it to figure. Of course I did have the problem with the buttons. This reminds me of another tool that I used in the past when searching for websites for research unit. We used a program called Filimentality that did the same thing. You were able to create a collection of bookmarks and tagged them according to the subject. I did not think Del. icio.us is as user friendly but that is because I am used to Filimentality. I will have to play with Del.icio.us some more to be more comfortable. My idea to use this would be for collecting websites to be used for a research unit.

Week #7: Thing 17 Entry to Sandbox wiki

When I went to the sandbox wiki I didn't much activity there so I was not sure what I was supposed to do. I posted a comment in regards to my wiki. I created a wiki for my school library with the purpose of trying to go paperless and provide information about my library program to the entire school community. There is a page for students, teachers and parents. It has taken some time to create everything and planning on what I want in the wiki. I just hope I can get most of it completed by the time school starts.

Week 5 Thing #12: Rollyo, Wordle and Animoto

I will try to sum it up in a few words. No, No, and Yes. I tried Rollyo and created a account and played around and I could not figure it out. It frustrated me and I gave up.
I checked out Wordle and couldn't understand how that would be benefit me. I did learn from a class member how this could be used with writing to see how many times you use a word but I don't see the need for this right now.

Now for Animoto, I really like this one. I thought it was easy to organize. I did a test video and it was real simple that I had to try with some of my pictures. Selecting the pictures and music was easy except the only drawback is that it takes quite some time for the process to create the video. I plan on using this with lesson introductions possible. Here is a video I created with my kids swim lessons. I hope it works.

http://animoto.com/play/fXrarBbkNLbaCyR30d6w1g

Week 4: #9 Locate School Library blogs and newsfeed

I searched through Google Blog Search and typed in library learning 2.0 and came across one blog that was real interesting. It was an article in the School Library Journal dated July 13 titled "AASL Released Best Web Sites for Teaching and Learning." It was mentioning that Facebook, Twitter, Wordle and many other websites have been singled out at being the best resources for curriculum development and learning because of the creativity and the active participation and the collaboration. I truly believe in bringing our students into the 21st century and develop these skills and making these real life lessons engaging and motivating. Google blog search was the only one I found useful for me.

Week 4: # 8 RSS and Newsreaders

I created a account for Bloglines and was able to view it but did not care for it all. I did not find it interesting to me and not very easy to manuver through. I could not figure out how to manage it through my blog account. I may come back to it later and play with it some more but for now "not a big hit for me!!"

Week 3: #6 Flickr Fun, Mashups, 3rd Party

I took the challenge of creating my own trading card. I finally took the plunge and learned how to upload pictures in Flickr. It took some time to figure that part out but creating the trade card was simple. I would love to see this activity used maybe with character traits for characters in books. That is something to might look into a little further.

Week 3 # 7 Technology blog

Yes, I am backtracking on my blogs to make sure I have done everything during this course. When I attended the TLA conference this year I sat in a session about using SMART boards in a library setting. I was so intrigued about the whole thing. While I was watching just a few samples of lessons on the awesome interactive boards, my mind went 100 miles an hour coming up with other lessons that can be done with the same tools. I have had the opportunity to use promethean boards during a research unit with 1st grade and loved it. My goal for my library is to eventually have these fantastic technology tools to really bring life into the lessons and for my students to be engaged in learning. I would rather use the SMART boards verses the promethean boards because it is more adaptable to convert existing power point presentations and have more features.

Week 7: # 16 Wikis

This is the week I have been waiting for!! The more and more I read about wikis, the more I get excited in adding to my wiki I started for my school. I know I am going to have lots of questions this week so I might have numerous postings. Here is one question: I came across a term several times as I was looking at ideas for wikis and still don't know what it is: Ning (school library ning). What is that? Have we had the opportunity to look at that earlier in the weeks and I missed that? It has definitely peeked my curiousity!!

Week 6: Tagging, Folksonomies # 15 cont'd

After reading Rick Anderson's "Away from the Icebergs" perspective, I am torn between believing and not believing in his ideas. In his comments about building collections, during the "Pre Internet" days, patrons only way to gather information was through the library informational materials. Information changes tend to be faster now then back in the old days. I do agree about the comment on building informational collections as if print is the only way of obtaining. The freedom to access information is not as easy in a school setting verses public libraries. The thought of my circulation rate dropping scares me as far as job security. Some school districts have so much control over budgets and the limitations of where the money can be spent does create "icebergs" to say the least. As a library media specialist, this can be discouraging in bringing the library to a level of informational age. I don't want to sound pessimistic, I am being realistic.
Another comment he made bothers me. He said we need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but eliminating the barriers that exist between the patrons and the information they need. How else are our patrons going to learn how to gather information they need if we don't teach them how to gather information? Did I miss something along the way? I would sure like to see what he is talking about.

Everyday I feel I have to fight harder for my job as I continue to reach out to the school community. As long as we continue to keep our educational focus on "TAKS", our profession will have to continue to paddle upstream and hopefully reach calming waters.

Week 6: Tagging, Folksonomies # 15

Well I have definitely fell behind on my blogs so I am going to try and play catch up this week. After reading Michael Stephen's blog about the new world of librarianship, there is so much of me that agrees with everything he says especially making the library a social and emotionally engaging center for learning and experience. Unfortunately, with our economy the way it is and school districts hit with cut backs, they tend to cut back in the area of libraries and librarians. It's hard to be what we call the "21st Century library" when school districts can't or I should say won't see us as 21st Century libraries. Reading his blog definitely gives me the opportunity to dream of what I would like for my library to become than what it really is. Who knows maybe someday our prince will come and our dreams will come true!!

Image Generators Favs

I spent some time searching a few generator websites and I can say my favorite is the comic strip generator. I did find some great images through Image Chef and plan on bookmarking that website as well. Right now my goal is to find images to use a I plan my wiki for my library. Of course I can relate more with Curriculum Connection Idea #3. Here is another image I found that fits just perfect with our school mascot.

Week 5: # 10 Image Generator playing

I found this image the message generator. I couldn't believe how many different images to use! I am definitely going to need time to really sit down and search for things that I could use for my technology projects.

Flckr Hunt

I was looking around Flckr to look for images to possibly use on wikis or blogs and I did find some cute images. If I find something that I'd like to use how do I use it? Would I just right click and save into my pictures file? How is anyone else using images? Maybe I have not explored enough with this yet.

Week 3: # 5 FLICKR Like or Not

I have been looking at Flckr and it makes me a little nervous to download some of my personal photos. I do like the idea of those letters but still have not figured out how all that works.

Well I changed my blog title to fit my needs for this course. I learned how to delete a post and change the title. I thought it was difficult at first but as I played with it a little longer it wasn't so bad.