Thing 23

Wahoo! I'm finished. This has been a interesting experience.

1. My absolute favorite activities were with LibraryThing and del.icio.us. Like I said in previous posts, I knew about both of these things, but had resisted them for one reason or another. NOw I'm hooked.

2. I like to learn. I like to learn about technology. And I like to learn about new technology that I can use in the classroom and at home.

3. I really didn't think that I would like del.icio.us or find it useful. I also wasn't sure that I would find a way to use this in the classroom, but I have already used Google Notebook and others--this week.

4. I felt like some of the Things were repetitive--that I had just explored that Web 2.0 tool and I would have liked to explore more things.

5. Yes, I think I would. Once I got into this, I thought it was really fun and helpful.

6. fun, excellent, informative, useful.

7. Ok, ok, I will.

This was a blast!

Thing 22

Nings are interesting. I have a couple of ideas for nings. You could create a class ning and your students could join and network and collaborate with each other. You could also create a library or school ning and have parents and students join and give information, have groups, etc. I could see how nings could be a very interesting way of sharing information in a school.

I also like the nings that were provided in the instructions (except Ning for Teachers was BLOCKED, which is really annoying). I like that these are places that teacher and librarian from all over can collaborate and share ideas. I think it is important that these things can happen readily and on a regular basis.

Thing 21

My podcast is about... wait for it... Pride and Prejudice. See a theme? I used PhotoStory to create my podcast.

This technology could be used to create so many wonderful things (book reviews, unit intorductions, etc.) for our students and for our students to create things. Many of my students have chosen to create PhotoStory videos instead of PowerPoint presentations. I think this could be great in the library for many things. You could have a weekly library report (what's new, etc.) Or you could have students and teachers record book reviews. Podcasts are great fro so many educational things!

Thing 20

YouTube is BLOCKED. (Anyone notice a theme?) I'm pretty familiar with YouTube though and think it would be great to be able to show those videos at school. (Though I do know about Zamzar and have used it.)



The above video is from TeacherTube. I teach The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien in my Junior IB English classes. This video describes a possibly project that a teacher could use when teaching this novel.

One thing that I really like about TeacherTube is that it has videos for teachers to use for ideas and videos for teachers to show to students. Kids these days (and this teacher) have grown up watching TV and movies. It is valuable to tap into the students interests as we are tricking them into learning something.

Thing 19

I really wanted to look at One Sentence, but it's BLOCKED. There were a few others I tried that were also BLOCKED. I hate when things are BLOCKED. Especially when they are useful and are not all something that should be BLOCKED.

[Stepping off of soapbox.]

So I ended up, completely by accident, exploring fuzzmail. With fuzzmail you basically type and email in the box and fuzzmail records your typing and your recipient gets to see the whole thing. It's kind of weird because you get to see all the typos and all the mistakes. They say that it makes email better because it records the emotion and makes email more personal (they use the example of love letters, personal as opposed to business, etc.). I was thinking about it for Creative Writing (which is also why I wanted to look at One Sentence). We could talk about adding emotion to writing and use fuzzmail as an example of one way to do that.

When the email plays, it looks like a video and you can do really interesting things with it. You could use it as a way to present information--if it would record longer, it cut one of my emails off. fuzzmail may be on to something--this could make writing a completely different experience. It would be great to expand the time frame and turn it into a word processor that shows your revisions in real time when you press play. This could be a valuable learning experience for some students.

Thing 18

I've used Google Docs before and Open Office was on my computer when I received it (way to go, SBISD!). I like that you can share your documents with other people and collaborate with them in Google Docs, but I wasn't particularly thrilled with the formatting. It seemed like I could never get it the way that I liked it. Not that Microsoft Office is much better. I like that I can save things to Google Docs and edit them form any computer. Many of my students use Google Docs and some of them were using it to collaborate of the project they were working on this week.

I haven't really worked very much with Open Office, but I'm not sure why. I guess I'm sticking with what I know. The advantages of working with free online tools are that they are FREE! And just as good, for the most part. I'm having a difficult time thinking of disadvantages. I love free online tools!

Thing 17

The Sandbox Wiki was interesting. I liked that I could leave comments and read other people comments, but I'm not sure what I could use it for in the school setting other than the things I mentioned in my previous post.

I think wikis are great as collaboration tools for both students and teachers/librarians. I would have liked to have my students use wikis on the project they are almost finished with.

Thing 16

I can see several uses for wikis in the classroom and in the library. I have considered creating a book review wiki for my students to post to. I also think it's neat the professionals can collaborate on wikis. Several of the wikis that I saw did this.

I like the idea of using wikis as a collaborative note-taking site. My students are currently working on a research project, and I think it would have been great if they had collaborated with their groups using a wiki.

I'm still thinking that book reviews would be a great idea in my classroom or in a library--I'd just have to figure out a way to keep people from abusing the wiki.

Thing 15

I completely agree that libraries have to change. As the place to find information, libraries must keep up with how information is accessed and communicated. Web 2.0 is where we are headed and libraries must head in that general direction as well.

As Rick Anderson said in Away from the "icebergs," we must steer clear of the things we do that stand in the way of progress. We can't keep doing things just because that's how we have always done them.

Library patrons are going to want more from us--and we can't do that unless we understand Library 2.0 and have the access that we need.

Thing 14

When I searched for "School Library Learning 2.0" in keywords, I got 1,294 hits, but when I did the same search in tags I got only three hits. That was interesting, and I think the searches would be good for different things. sometimes it's overwhelming to get thousands of hits, and it would be nice to get just three hits when you are looking for something very specific.

"Ambien" is the top search? Really? How mundane. "Emma Watson"? Yes, I'm surprised. There are some things that are top searches that I have no clue what they are. I wanted to look at the most popular blog in the world, "Boing Boing," but it is BLOCKED. I'll have to remember to check it out when I get home.

I'm still not sure how Technorati can help me in my teaching. I have considered that it would be helpful to search fro some up-to-the-minute information on a specific topic for my students. The trick is making sure that the information is accurate.

I still love tagging. I love the idea of making my own categories and finding things that other people have tagged using the same categories that I think of. I think this will make searches more meaningful.

Thing 13

I really didn't think that I was going to care about del.icio.us at all. But after watching that video on Common Craft, I think del.icio.us is seriously cool. I will be using this all the time. I can't wait to go through all my bookmarks and add them to del.icio.us and tag them. I'm always looking at my bookmarks and trying to remember which web site I liked for that assignment or for that book (which knitting pattern I like for socks or afghans). This is going to make my life so much easier--both personally and professionally, but especially professionally. This 23 Things business is adding so much more nerdiness to my life--I love it.

I'm also thinking about how I could use this tool with my students. Any ideas?

Thing 12

Here is my Rollyo search roll deally. Once again we are dealing with Pride and Prejudice. I already had these URLs that my students were using to research some historical background on the novel. I think that it would make their lives (and probably my life) so much easier if they could search those sites like this! I'm not sure how great Rollyo would be if I didn't already have a list of sites I were working on. I think this would be great in the library for research when you only want your students to go to certain sites though!

Thing 11

I've known about LibraryThing for a while, but I've been avoiding it. I was afraid that I would get lost in it and never be able to resurface. I was right! I love it! You can see the books that I added on the sidebar of this blog. I want to dive headfirst into LibraryThing and swim for days! I think I'm in love. LibraryThing, will you marry me?

Seriously though, I think this could be a useful and fun way fro my students and I to keep track of my classroom library. It seems like we never know what I have or where my books are. It would be great for my students to see what I have and know if that book would be of interest to them.

I clicked the groups tab, and saw a zillion groups that I want to explore. This will definitely be a Thing that I use. I would have explored further, but the Internet is being super slow, and I am getting frustrated.

Thing 10

This was created with ImageChef.

I think a good way to use these image generators would be to introduce a book or make something to represent a character. The sky is the limit here.

This one was made with Sign Generator. (Can y'all tell that I'm teaching Pride and Prejudice right now?)
I like this Thing and could see myself using it in a class. I think my students would love it--I just need to figure out what to do with it!
The only thing that I really didn't like was that the web sites were really crowded and difficult to read.

Thing 9

My problem with blogs is that any idiot can create a blog and type whatever they want... Present company included. Don't get me wrong, I have my blogs that I read and love, but it seems to take forever to sort through the "other" blogs.

Here are my answers:
1. I liked going through the Edublog Award Winners because the "other" blogs have already been sorted out. I usually prefer lists of award winners over searches for just that reason.

2. I thought it was easiest blog search to use the Bloglines search tool.

3. I don't think I had a "most confusing," but I didn't like the format of Syndic8.com. I couldn't even open feedster.com.

4. I found this thing overwhelming and didn't really find anything in particular to add. I think I would need more time or need to be looking for something specific. I already have too much stuff in my feed reader and not enough time to read it in.

5. I had never really thought about looking at blog award winners to find good blogs on topics I like to read about. I'm looking forward to next wears awards.

Thing 8

I subscribed to Google Reader a few months ago. I've subscribed to the following blogs: A Library By Any Other Name, Librarian Philosopher, PostSecret (I know, not an education blog, but still great), Mike Falick's Blog (because I was curious), and CrazyAuntPurl (another non-education blog, but cool because it's a knitting blog).

1. I love that I can go to one place to see all the blogs and web sites that I read. Before I figured out news readers I was going to several web sites a day to see what was new. Now I don't have to . Readers are great for keeping up with new information.

2. I think that readers are going to be wonderful for keeping up with information easily--for both my school and personal life.

3. Libraries could use RSS feeds in a number of ways. It is great for librarians to be aware of what other librarians are doing and the technology other librarians are using. It would also be good for librarians who was to keep information in one place for students (RSS feeds of book review blogs, for example).

Thing 7

I used Google Notebook today to give my students a list of links that they could use for their research. I just kept adding links to my notebooks as I poked around the internet and they were able to use it as they were researching today. I was really glad that I had done that--they had a list of places to start so that they weren't completely in the dark when they started.

I've also used Google Docs in collaborating with other teachers. We created a WebQuest and several other documents that we were each able to edit and share with each other. In addition we could use that document as the WebQuest that the students used.

I also think that Google Notebook and Google Docs would be great for students who are collaborating with each other. They could use Notebook to share Internet sites with each other and edit group documents for varying school projects. I think Google Tools are a wonderful resource in an education setting.

Thing 6

I had a lot of fun exploring these mashups. My favorite one is Flickr Color Pickr. I think it would be really good for students who are looking for pictures that are certain colors for a project or even just the background of a poster.

I made a Trading Card:



I think it would be neat to have my students make trading cards for authors, characters, etc. The sky is the limit with this one.

I want to make a Jane Austen and a Margaret Atwood card (yes, I know, I'm lame).

I really liked a lot of the mashups, but I have a difficult time seeing how some of them would apply in the classroom or the library. I do think that Mosaic Maker would be perfect in the classroom and the library. I could see using this tool in many uses, such as in a social studies class, etc.

I think this is a topic I need to let fester a bit longer.