Week 9!!!!, Thing 23

Better late than never. I have finally gathered my thoughts and can write my last post! Well, not my last blog post ... just the last one to complete the class.

Now that I know more about Creative Commons licensing I realize how wonderful it is for education. I think many librarians, teachers and most of all students love to share things. CC can make it so much easier.

I feel I always need refreshers in copyright so the YouTube clip was helpful. I think I can incorporate it into an intellectual property lesson. I'll add it as a bookmark on my ma.gnolia page! (I never switched to delicious).

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

My favorite discovery was http://www.bighugelabs.com/. I haven’t used it in the library yet but I have shared it with students in the yearbook class. My own children loved the “movie poster maker.” I loved the “Wharholizer.” If you have a lot of time for fun stuff this is a cool site.
Another favorite was blogging. I’ve always wanted to set up a blog but never had a reason to, until now. I hope to expand it so I can use it in the library.

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
As an adult I love learning new things and as a school librarian I get to by taking classes, going to conferences, and reading industry publications. This program made me realize even more how important it is for a school librarian to continuously learn of emerging technologies that can enhance learning, lessons, life, etc.

Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I was surprised that I fell behind. I thought I'd have plenty of time to examine the tools and report back. But, the amount of infomation that I couldn't even get to was overwhelming! Podcasts .... wow, the subject range was staggering.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I felt it was a lot to do in 9 weeks. The format was great. The only change I would recommend would be more interaction from "cheerleaders."

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
Most definitely! I learned a lot.

How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote CSLA learning activities?
This program gave me the confidence to explore and use emerging technologies every day!

Week 9, Thing # 22 continued

I don't know about the rest of teachers my age but I don't like to read anything lengthy from a computer screen, ipod, or pda but my students are used to doing everything online! I haven't tried a Kindle yet ... maybe that would be better.

The two sites that I found to be the best were: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/ and http://manybooks.net/. World Public Library always asked me for a username and password so I just went elsewhere.

Week 9, Thing #22 eBooks and eAudio books

Hmmmm. I went to World eBook Fair to look for free ebooks but they ask for an $8.95 membership fee to view books. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I'll try again tomorrow.

My husband is excited about all the free podcasts I've discovered. He wants to learn another language! I really feel like I'm "in the know" with all these great web 2.0 resources!

Week 9, Thing #21 Podcasts

I never realized how many podcasts there are out there! Pretty much any topic I searched for resulted in something to choose from. I used ITunes initially since I use it for music. But, I couldn't figure out how to add an rss feed. I subscribed to a few free ones ... book reviews, essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson and travel.

There are many podcasts that could be used to enhance curriculum. I found "great speeches in history" and "ideas for teaching reading and writing." "The Groovy Girls Guide to Grammar" looks interesting too.

Podcast.net was the next one I tried. It's very easy to use and again there were choices for all topics I searched. Here it was easy to add an rss feed to my google reader.

I've only listened to parts of the podcasts so far. I think I'll load a few onto my IPod and bring it to the gym.

Week 9, #20 YouTube

This was the first time I used YouTube to search for something I could use in teaching! I've seen many funny videos to share with friends though!

Today I searched for videos on plagiarism and found a few that could actually be useful to use with students. We are in the midst of our 11th grade term paper and there have already been two possible plagiarists.

Here's a video that was based on the recent Identity Theft commercials.

Oops, I have to go back to youtube to see how I can add this to my blog. It didn't work the first time.

Okay, I think I've got it.

Week 8, #19 Library Thing

I do think Library Thing is great but I already use Good Reads. Good Reads has tags, groups, and all of the features of Library Thing. I did add 5 books to Library Thing and added it to the bottom of my blog. I wonder if they'll be able to co-exist or if one or the other will take over. I didn't compare how many members each has. I have heard more buzz about Good Reads lately.

Week 8, #18 Online Productivity Tools

I am using Zoho Writer to write this post to my blog. I will also try Google Docs to see which one I like better. This is certainly easy to use and the toolbars appear to have all of the formatting I would want in a word processing document.

This resource is great for students working on a project at home. Students can't access their school files from home so this would eliminate the students with corrupt disks or files that can't be converted. We can't convert Word files that were created in Word 2007 and I'm always asked to help a desperate student just before a project is due!

Well, I typed the above in Zoho Writer but when I tried to "post to blog" I logged in and then got an error on the page. It happened twice. I just copied and pasted instead.