Thing 23

This has been an exciting journey. I have learned a great deal about what Web 2.0 is and have experienced first hand how to use a variety of Web 2.0 tools. I know there are many more of these tools out there and I look forward to slowly learning about them as well and figuring out ways I can utilize them. The final video was an eye opener. It powerfully showed the impact of Web 2.0 tools and the changing world of the Internet. I look forward to growing with these changing technologies.

My thinking has changed a great deal from ten weeks ago. I felt that I was pretty well versed and experienced with technology, but after going through the 23 Things, I have learned that there is so much more for me to learn and so many exciting things I can be doing myself and with my students. The program has truly changed how I feel about the Internet and how information and the exchange of information is changing. I must say, it is exciting, but also a little scary. I do worry about the openness of posting information on the web. I see the benefits of sharing and collaborating online, but fear the misinformation that can so easily be put out there as well.

There are so many ideas I have floating around in my head with what I can do personally and professionally with all these new tools. Personally, I can see myself using Flickr, the photo mashup tools, video sharing and social bookmarking tools. I am expecting my first child and I can see creating a blog to document all the experiences I will be having as well as photos and videos of my child for family to easily view. Professionally, there are so many ideas I have right now I don’t know where to start. I’ll continue to subscribe to helpful RSS feeds; organize my Favorites into a handy social book marking tool; use SlideShare to help me locate presentations on a topic I am in need of ideas/samples on; use Google Docs to easily and remotely edit a document with my peers; and of course continue to work with wikis to develop helpful resources for the staff members and students I serve. I will learn these tools by diving in and practicing.

I walk away from this experience with the knowledge of the new tools that are available and helpful to me personally and professionally and with a sense of excitement to get in there and play.

Thing 22

I am really excited about creating a wiki for the very first time. I think this is a very helpful and valuable tool. Unfortunately, I found the editing tools to not be too cooperative. I had a difficult time formatting and repeatedly found myself loosing text I just altered and didn't have an undo button to go back one step. I also found it not so helpful that there is no spell check available. I am very excited about using this tool and hope that with practice I can work out all the kinks.

I think a wiki differs from a blog in that a blog simply allows one person to post information and is therefor one directional. A wiki on the other hand, allows multiple users to post and edit information and is therefor multi directional. A wiki is more appropriate when, just as I stated above, multiple people need to create and update content. A blog would be appropriate to use to simply list information, links and resources.

The wiki I created will hopefully be the beginning wiki for an upcoming cooperative Media Specialists project. It is called GPLibraryMediaWiki and much more work needs to go into it. I look forward to finishing the design of the wiki and updating our content.

I would like clarification as to how to alter my wiki design. I was able to click the link to change the theme and colors, but when I wanted to change them again, I couldn't get back to the screen to do so. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thing 21

The wiki that inspired me after exploring those provided on the list was the Hanalee Book Wiki. I found it to be inspiring because I see myself creating a wiki to discuss books just like the one discussed on this wiki. I also liked this wiki over the others as I found it less overwhelming. The other wiki examples seemed to have a lot going on and my eye was often distracted as I it took a while to navigate through the wiki.

I am actually going to be creating a functioning wiki with my fellow librarians before the year is out. We have been working together to research and develop a list of resources on the topic of Constitution Day. We are each in charge of a specialized area (web quests, video, books list, websites, SmartBoard lessons, etc.) and have been recording our findings in individual Microsoft Word documents and will later put them into a wiki. If I would have taken this course sooner, I would have started with a wiki from the get go, but either way we are going to get it done using this technology that is new to us. The hurdles that stand in my way would be getting everyone familiar and comfortable working with a wiki as I am the only one taking this course and now just a little bit knowledgeable about this tool. It will take time to demonstrate how easy, effective and efficient a wiki can be in collecting and posting our resources. It is definitely worth the effort as a wiki is an invaluable resource especially in this particular case where my peers are all at different locations and we need to share information in an easy way. In a world filled with time constraints, this tool will save us time and hassle.

Thing 20

I chose to subscribe to a podcast available from iTunes called Pea in the Podcast. I am listening to a podcast about picking a baby's name as I write this entry. It was very easy to subscribe to this podcast from iTunes, but I found it very difficult to search for podcasts.

I found it difficult to search for podcasts using all the the tools suggested. I did not like how you could not search by topic using the Education Podcast Network. All I could so was select a category and see what was available. Many times some of the podcasts did not play. This tool just wasn't so user friendly to me.

I thought Postcast Alley was a little better. I didn't find picking a genre to help me find podcasts that were appropriate beneficial. I preferred searching by topic which was a nice feature. There are many, many, many podcasts to have to screen through though either way.

iTunes took a while to get the hang of, but it was really easy to subscribe once I found the podcast I was interested in. I found many of the podcasts here were often from shows and were created to entice you to buy something.

It would be helpful to know if there are other ways to search for podcasts.

Thing 19

I really liked and was inspired by the Great Educational Podcasts by Wayne RESA as the videos easily informed you about podcasts and gave you some examples of how podcasts are being used in the classroom. I found this information to be very helpful to wrap my head around and understand podcasts and their value.

I viewed many of the podcast sites provided and enjoyed many of them. I did have some difficulty with some podcasts not downloading. I don't know if it is a problem on my end, if I was impatient in the download or if indeed there was something going awry with the website. I also noticed quite a difference in quality with the podcasts. For example, I listened to a podcast from The TechPod Zone and found the gentleman doing the podcast were very laid back and actually had had a minute or so of dead air time before they started talking and when they talked they were joking around. This is fine, but is just an example that not all podcasts are the same.

If I were to pick two favorites from the list of podcasts I would choose Radio WillowWeb because it is so well done and the students take such ownership of their learning. I also started generating lots of ideas on things I could do with podcasts at the elementary level while reviewing the podcasts found here. I do several research projects with my elementary students and it would be very exciting for them to produce a podcast with the information they have gathered. I also really enjoyed Reading Roundup Podcasts because it gave me an idea for promoting books in my library collection. Many times I do not have the time to book talk, especially with the older grades. This podcast is a wonderful example of how I can introduce books to students and excite them about reading in a way that they could incorporate technology as well.

Another use of podcasts that I would like to eventually try is to explain the use of new technologies available in our school district. As the Media Specialist, I am asked for guidance on how to use a variety of technological tools. A podcast would be a wonderful way for me to set up a list of tutorials that are available whenever and wherever the teachers needed them.

Thing 18

I chose to look up a SlideShare presentation on the Dewey Decimal System and I particularly searched for a presentation that made understanding this organizational system easy. I have made presentations on this topic myself, but chose this one because it is one I can use with lower grades and is easy to understand. I liked how they used pictures to help present the concept of grouping books by like topic. The presentation below is what I found:

Searching for Books - Dewey Decimal System

View more presentations from Cathy Oxley.

I think SlideShare will be a helpful tool in the classroom because I can search for pre-made presentations, by topic, and review them to choose the best one knowing that others have felt comfortable enough to post their presentations online. I also like seeing how many people have viewed the presentation so I can see which are most popular by the topic I searched.

Out of the classroom, I saw some fun, interesting and inspirational presentations that I would enjoy viewing and perhaps forward to friends and family.

Thing 17

I chose to try out Library Thing which allows users to catalog their personal book collection. I chose this tool because I would like to keep an inventory of the books that I own and found some of the features on this site to be even more helpful than just a simple inventory of what I own. For instance, you can access your catalog anywhere and anytime; you can be connected to other people who have similar reading interests/book collections as you do; and you can get recommendations on what to read next based on what you you currently have in your personal book collection.

It was really easy to locate and add the books I own to my catalog after I registered, but I found that the website in general was overwhelming with tons of information that tended to confuse me.

The books I entered are titles I personally own and use for teaching. I really liked how you could tag the books so they could be easily searched for later and grouped together by like topic. Personally, I could also catalog my professional books that I have at home.

Thing 16

I can't quite think of any personal use of Google docs, but professionally I see a great deal of benefit to using this tool. It was easy to use and upload files, although I did notice a bit of lag time when I was trying to edit my document. It seemed it took a couple seconds to process my editing requests. Otherwise the editing tools were very simple to use as they were just like what you find in Microsoft Word. I would really like to see this tool in action when two people are editing the document at the same time. I will need to make arrangements with a peer who is also taking the 23 Things course to see if we can try this.

I work at the elementary level, so I would not encourage or ask students to create an email address to use this tool. I see great potential at the middle school and high school level and of course with your peers. I know I could come up with many ways to use this tool at the elementary level, but again, I would be leary of having students set up email accounts.

I always heard about Google Docs and it was great to finally get a chance to learn more about it and actually try it out.

Thing 15

For me, RSS is not becoming easier to understand. I had to go back to Thing 5 and re-watch all the videos. For some reason, I'm just having a hard time processing how to use this tool. I believe this will become easier for me if I continue to use the tool though. I have not been regularly checking my Bloglines feeds which is part of the problem. I need to dedicate some time to continue to explore this tool.

During Thing 15, the only new benefit I can recognize is that you can subscribe to a Delicious tag which I think could be helpful. I was wondering during Thing 14 if I could have "grouped" the sites I searched with my tags so I didn't have to remember what those tags were later on. Now with being able to subscribe to a tag )or series of tags), this can easily be done. Is there a way to group sites from a tag search in Delicious, or is the subscribing to a tag (or series of tags) the way to accomplish this?

As stated above, I have not regularly been checking my feeds, but plan to get into the habit. I don't know if it will become an obsession, we'll have to wait and see.

Thing 14

My Delicious username is smartinlp.

I chose to spend some time looking for websites containing lessons on the library and information literacy. I found it to be extremely beneficial to see how many other people have bookmarked sites that appeared with my tag search as it gave me a good idea as to how valuable others think the site is.

Social bookmarking ranks up there as one of the best resources I have learned thus far in 23 Things. Although I value all the things I have learned so far, I think social bookmarking will be an invaluable tool for me professionally. I agree with one of the demonstration videos which stated the sites on Delicious have already been previewed and deemed valuable by others which can save one a lot of time from searching solely on Google or another search engine. I plan on using Delicious to look for resources that support my understanding in the subject I teach as well as lesson ideas and lesson resources. I teach elementary so I don't know how I would teach the use of social bookmarking or direct students to a list of links in my Delicious account, perhaps I can do that with 4th and 5th grade for research resources. Currently I have a "pathfinders" link on my school website on grade level research projects, but Delicious is so much easier to use. I feel Delicious and social bookmarking sites will definitely increase my productivity by making it easy to locate pre-screened sites, all from one location, and accessible from any computer. I'm really excited about re-organizing all the sites saved in my Favorites from different computers and put them all into one easy to use Delicious account.

Thing 13

I love the idea of having all my favorite sites accessible from any computer and I look forward to beginning rearranging the bookmarked websites I have so far. I think tagging is an extremely useful way to organize my digital resources especially when you have them scattered on different computers. Just like the video on the 23 Things site on Social Bookmarking said, it will clean up and easily index all the bookmarks you have. Right now, I find it getting more and more difficult to find the one site I need from the long list of bookmarked sites I have listed in my Favorites. I don't see any disadvantages to social bookmarking, especially becuase if you choose you can make them private. The advantages I see are learning from others in my field to see what sites they are using, and easily locating the sites I want by having them indexed. The only difficulty I can see is in the choice of tags. Being a librarian, I understand the need for controlled vaocaulary to ensure that the subject of a book will be categoriezed the same no matter what librarian enters the book. I will have to be careful and controlled in tagging my sites, but I might encounter difficulty when I search the tags others are using.

Thing 12

I did not know how many different types of widgets are available for use. I had fun reviewing the options from the links provided, but found it difficult to choose just one for Thing 12. I chose a Lost widget as I am a big fan of the show. I enjoyed taking the quiz on the events from the show. It was very easy to embed the code in HTML mode. I located the widget I chose from Widgetbox after I viewed the most popular widgets.

I do not belong to other online communities. I have many, many, many friends who belong to Facebook, but I just find that I lack the time and interest in posting any information about myself online for all to see. I might be a little old school as I feel that if I want to tell someone about something going on in my life or how I feel, I'll pick up the phone. I do see many kids using Facebook and MySpace, including many of of nieces and nephews. Kids are social which is why I feel they gravitate towards this technology. They like to share how they feel and get feedback from others. Myself, I would like to get feedback on work related issues, not personal issues online.

Thing 11

I liked leaving comments on other peoples blogs, but found it difficult to offer any advice or substantial input at this time. I am new to Web 2.0 tools and it seems that the blogs I visited were created by much more experienced individuals that most likely wouldn't benefit from any comment I could make. I would think that this would change with time though as I become more experienced myself. I loved receiving comments on my blog which is why I would want to reciprocate to others as well. I found the comments on my blog were very helpful, supportive and had good suggestions to try out. I think commenting is important to online communities because, just as I witnessed in my blog, you can receive helpful and insightful information from others and benefit from their experience. You are able to reach out to the whole world and gain from their knowledge. Students who share their writing online, again, can benefit from the knowledge of far more people than a teacher or two they may be working with. This opens the door to communication to a greater number of resources.

Thing 10

I selected the attached video called the Melvil Dewey Rap because I have used it in instruction and find it to be very entertaining and educational. I researched the individual who created it and discovered that he was a Library and Information Science student who created this video because he had to complete a research project on Melvil Dewey and decided to jazz it up a bit. I am including here because it may be beneficial to other teachers in this 23 Things group. I was able to download using KeepVid, but it is sometimes tricky and doesn't work. It is good to have some other resources now to download video.

Thing 9

I love YouTube. I use it for simple entertainment and I have used it for instruction as well. I have used the Melvil Dewey Rap on YouTube to introduce my students to the non-fiction section of the library. They love it and recall the 10 main groups of the DDC system with ease. I used KeepVid to save the video in a mp4 format that I can easily access after logging in at work. Although YouTube is not blocked for teacher use in my district, I choose to download videos I want to use in advance so students won't accidentally see any inappropriate content on YouTube's main page if I were to search there. I find YouTube to be very useful, but at the same time I do worry about users posting every little detail about their life on it. The social networking and community sharing sites are a little frightening to me to think that so many people can put so much personal information online. I also do think it is a powerful tool to get a message out to the public when before people didn't have a tool to do so (for instance when the public is prohibited from openly demonstrating, but capture video and post online for the whole world to see.

Thing 8

I really enjoyed playing around with all the photo editing tools. I tried both Big Huge Labs and ImageGeneragtor and found them really easy to use. I especially liked how I could sync up Big Huge Labs (which I used to make my mash photo attached here) with Flickr where my photos are stored. So simple! I can't pick any one tool that I like more than another. I like the scrapbooking, the puzzle, the motivation poster, the fake magazine covers, just way too much to pick a favorite. Using both of these tools was very easy and a great deal of fun. I'm excited about making Caldecott and Newbery trading cards using the trading cards tool; pop art poster could be used to make my nieces and nephews some personal art work for their rooms; jigsaw Caldecott or Newbery posters; use BadgeMaker for cool badges for my student library helpers; have students make comic strips for a creative writing project; make "World's Best" certificates for star students of the month; entertain family and friends using the special effects tool where I can superimpose pictures over other pictures; and make a scrapbook with creative backgrounds. Tons and tons of fun, creative ways to jazz up my pictures!

Thing 7

I think Flickr would be a fabulous tool in the classroom. I liked that you could search by topic (i.e. geometry) and feel a teacher can find some really exciting photographs to share with his/her students that would really engage them. I also like how you can sort and group the pictures which would be helpful to keep your supplementary photos easily searchable by unit.
I could use Flickr to locate and organize pictures (like a digital portfolio) for the various research projects I do with students to get them excited when we begin our unit. I could also use it to showcase work done in the Library and special events that we have throughout the year. Finally using this tool for digital storytelling could be neat as well. Right now I use PhotoStory when I make a digital story with my students work, but this is a neat option as well. The only concern I have is logging on to Flickr in the classroom to access my groups of photos and having some photos appear prior to my logging on that might be inappropriate for young children.

Thing 6

I chose to download a picture from Napa Valley as I have been there several times and love it. I first started looking at wine country, then vineyards, then Napa and finally an individual vineyard that I have been to. It brought back memories of my time there as I saw people where the hats we were given to wear during our tour as well as the organic garden and buildings where the wine is made. I look forward to posting my pictures from this vineyard. I chose to post a picture hear of the wind vane that I liked so much at the vineyard. It is a wind vane of a frog and is also the logo on the bottles made and sold by this wine maker.

Thing 5

I found it difficult finding blogs on the topic I was looking for using the blog search tools. It would be easier if there was a directory of some sort that shows you all of the blogs grouped by topic rather than typing in a few keywords. Subscribing was a little flaky as well as my browser kept getting hung up. Subscribing wasn't always the same for each blog too. At first I did not like the suggested way of using the Easy Subscribe Bookmarklet, it seemed like too many steps. But as suggested in the video, it was much easier once this bookmarklet was set up. I would like to use RSS in my professional life by subscribing to blogs made by my peers to see what they are experiencing and teaching. I did find several blogs listed under Jackie Campbell's blogline that I opened and subscribed to. I think it might be easier to find a blog of a fellow librarian, see what feeds they subscribe to and then see if any of those feeds would be helpful to me and add to my blogline. I think this might be easier than using the blog search tools, but I'm inexperienced and may just need time working with blog search tools too.

Thing 4

Setting up my Bloglines account was very easy. I am interested in seeing how this tool actually works and how it could benefit me as I begin working on Thing 5. I try to handle information overload by trying to remain organized and I think RSS will help me with all the information that is out there by also keeping the news I want organized and at my fingertips as the news comes directly to me rather than the other way around.

Thing 3

As a Media Specialist, one of the immediate ways I thought about using a blog was to start a book club where students can share their opinions on what they're reading. In the past I had thought about making a database that students could access and write feedback which would be sorted by different genres and searchable by other students to help them choose a book recommended by one of their peers. A blog would be a much, much easier way to accomplish this task. In addition, students could narrate their feedback and include a copy of the cover of the book they are talking about. I also read on one of the blogs I was scanning through that students can use the online tool timetoast.com to create a timeline of events from a story they have read. I find that idea pretty interesting as well. I also thought about displaying student work on a blog. I also read about a really good idea of using a blog to display links to real and bogus websites. The blog that suggested this noted that students can comment on noted biases and link to online sources to prove/disprove validity/reliability of site. This would tie in nicely with my Internet unit where I teach how to evaluate a website. I know my students would love any blog assignment I would give them. They love technology and would especially love seeing their words displayed online for all to see. A concern I would have with students participating with blogs would be inappropriate comments written on the blog and also whether all my students have access to a computer either with my attempt to get time in the computer lab to complete such a task or if they have a computer at home with Internet access. Finally, I thought another potential idea for a blog would be to create a professional reflection blog on lessons that I teach listing strategies and techniques that worked well and allowing for feedback and ideas from my peers.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

I realize now that I didn't completely comment on my first blog experience in my previous post.

As I stated earlier, in Thing 2, setting up my blog worked easily, what didn't work so well was figuring out how to move about the blog page. I think using my blog in my classroom could be helpful to post current information, but my website has a great deal of resources already for my students so a blog would just supplement what I've already done. I think the biggest benefit to me would be to connect to blogs from other Media Specialists to share ideas. I look forward to continuing to explore the features of my blog.

I am participating in 23 Things so I have an understanding of the technologies that are out there and to figure out if there is a way I could incorporate them into my teaching. During Thing 1, I was truly surprised to see the different types of technology being used by students and staff. I was especially surprised about the use of cell phones which in most school districts I am aware of, students are not allowed to have cell phones out in class let alone use them. Thing 1 opened my eyes to what can be used in the classroom as well as how the tools can help staff members easily collaborate with one another. With that said, I am leery about what I write being out there for the whole world to see. I for one will be very careful before hitting that "Publish Post" button. I am, although, happy to see that there is a spell check button here.

Registering Blog

I found setting up my blog fairly easy to do, but have not been so lucky navigating through the various links of my blog (i.e. I added a picture and a little background information about myself, but then I had a hard time getting back to the main page to make a post). After a little while, I noticed the "Home" link on the bottom of the page and got where I needed to go. Oh, and I also got timed out, which complicated things just a bit for a minute or two. I am a newbee to blogs and I will need plenty of time to explore how the page is arranged and how to get from one place to another.