Christmas break

Now that I am officially through with my Research and design class I hope to have more time to devote to the blog and adding some really cool stuff.

Went up to the panhandle to see my parents. We got a little snow so we had a semi white Christmas. Tara, Russell and the kids were in Florida at Disneyworld for Christmas so it was a little different. This was the first time that we all haven't been together on Christmas eve/day. Although Cadence and Campbell did have lunch with the princesses and a fun filled day with Mickey and friends.

United Nations National Peace Day September 21st

School has officially started

We have officially made it one week! Wahoo! Progress is being made on the house. I am still living in total chaos but at least the walls don't look like dog vomit any more. Do not try Bellagio Faux technique on your walls if you have any sanity left at all. After spending $250.00 I decided to basically stick with just the base coat since the treatment was NOT WORKING OUT no matter how hard we followed the directions or what we tried, it just wasn't going to work. The fish on the walls in the kitchen are looking great, only problem is I need about 20 more fish. LOL. 10 foot ceilings and a large kitchen make for a great canvas to work off of. I will be posting pictures soon of work in progress.



May everyone's dreams be filled with happiness!

Thing #23 Summary

Finally, after a whirlwind tour of 23 Things on http://www.library2play.blogspot.com/ I have finished. I loved so many different parts of the journey, but I guess I would have to say exploring with Big Huge Labs , delicious , and Zamzar are in the top 10. I had seen friends who had blogs and was envious their fearlessness to meet the future. I didn't have a clue where to begin until this class! (THANKS! Dr. Bishop)
This activity has heightened my awareness of web 2.0 and the many applications that are available. (many for FREE) I wish I had had more time to explore each of the items on the list, but the deadline was closely approaching! I know I will be sharing the things I learned with my friends and colleagues, as well as, reviewing many of the activities again and again. This is just an awesome activity! I can't wait to begin Library2Play2! Wahoo!!!

Thing #22 Nings

Ning is a social networking tool that allows you to collaborate with people interested in many of the same things you are. Nings are very specific such as Teacher Librarian Ning. They are basically for social networking and exchanging ideas. Videos, photos, as well as, discussion forums. Let the idea sharing begin!

I signed up for Teacher Librarian Ning but I am not sure how often I will frequent the site. Part of it relies on my schedule and what my specific needs are at the moment. I will probably check it out every couple of weeks, but will rely on my tried and true networking right now. I will definitely need to explore more, since I want to feel completely comfortable with the site before I "live" on the site. It will be benificial for bouncing ideas off of others, as well as, finding pictures and videos that relate to the classroom.

Thing #21 Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! -A Podcast

Recently I spent a week with my niece and nephew and had to read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, and The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog EVERY NIGHT. Since we live so far away from each other and they LOVE Mo Willems' stories, I thought I would create a podcast that they could access whenever they want to hear me reading The Pigeon to them. I hope you enjoy!

This podcast was created with a webcam, microphone, and Windows MovieMaker. There are several productivity tools to create a podcast/videocast: Photostory, Audacity, Windows MovieMaker, Animoto to name just a few.

Animoto of Hershey and Rouxi


Give animoto a try! You can create a video in less than 5 minutes. So many possibilities - Just think! You can use it as an attention getter, story writing prompt, and more.

Thing #20 YouTube, TeacherTube, and Zamzar

Wahoo! I am published online. What do you mean I should already know that since I am writing a blog. No, I am talking about TeacherTube. I have a video that has been accepted and anyone can access it. Now is that not cool? I submitted my Flat Stanley Promo Podcast to TeacherTube and it is up and running. http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=118421&title=Flat_Stanley_Project_Promo

Now, TeacherTube is not blocked in most districts, but have you ever found the most perfect video clip on YouTube that you needed for your lessons and as luck would have it, the blessed website is blocked! Of course you try to embed the video in your PowerPoint presentation and it doesn't really work. Now, what are you going to do? GO DIRECTLY TO http://www.zamzar.com/url/ and convert the video to 3gp and voila! You are ready to share the video when needed in your classroom.

Thing # 19 Web 2.0 Awards

Have you ever wanted to be on the "cutting edge" of things? Do you ever feel like you are "behind the times" and your students are more "hip" than you are? Don't feel bad, there is hope. Web 2.0 Awards at http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/short is here to help. It is an awesome site with website awards (1st, 2nd, & 3rd place, and honorable mention) for different categories ranging from bookmarking to gaming to social networking. The websites are nominated and voted upon. It is a great launchpad for leaping into the technical savvy world that our students dwell in. If you are looking for specific types of websites for your classroom such as a place to get images for students to use and really don't know anything other than "googling" this is a great place to go. You will find flickr listed under photos and digital imaging and a couple of other websites that are similar in content.

Give Web 2.0 Awards a try and you will soon be understanding some of the "cutting edge" websites that many of your students and colleagues are utilizing.

last minute thought:
Need to slow down all those twitters for a few days while on vacation? Just hit the snooze button. http://twittersnooze.com/

Thing #18 OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org provides open source software such as word processing spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. Since it is open source it doesn't cost anything. :) It has many of the same features seen in Microsoft Office but is free and you can download it on as many computers as you would like. In the Writer program, the software using many of the texting capability such as predicting what word you are writing at times. Many years of development have gone in to creating this open source product and anyone is able to report bugs and it is taken care of.

There are several different applications to use. Writer is for word processing, Calc is for creating spreadsheets, Impress is for creating presentations such as slide shows, Draw is for creating graphics and diagrams, Base allows you to "manipulate database data seamlessly."

Check out open source software for yourself: http://www.OpenOffice.org

Thing #17- Rollyo

Have you ever wanted to limit the searches of your students to a few key sites without having to create a hotlinks document? You can now control the quality of the "hits" a student gets when they use your created search engine. You determine what credible sites you want them to utilize for information acquisition. All you need to do is create an account and begin adding the sites you want students to utilize for their research. For example: You are studying Pirates (still) and want the students to create PowerPoint of Pirate Biographies. You already have a list of excellent pirate sites you have utilized for your lesson development, just add them to a searchroll that you created. Check out Rollyo for a rolling good time. :)
http://rollyo.com/

Thing #16 The Wonderful World of Wikis

There are so many wonderful things about wikis, where do I begin? Oh, let's start with where you can create one for FREE and if you are in education K-12 you can update your account so that you don't have to deal with advertisements on the side! Wahoo for teacher discounts! All you need to do is go to http://www.wikispaces.com/ and begin. It is very simple, you do not have to know html or any programming at all. You choose if you want it to be by invitation only (I would use that in my classroom setting- more manageable) or public, where anyone can add to it. Now you can always go back and change anything as the MASTER OF YOUR DOMAIN, incase someone accidently erases someone else's comments. Editing is tracked so you can see who did what if you have to play Sherlock Holmes solve a problem. Then you just edit and go on. All members of the Wiki have editing priviledges to a degree. If someone makes a typo and another member catches it, he/she can fix it.

Now the question comes in: HOW DO I USE THIS IN MY CLASSROOM?
Some possibilities include:

• A cross curricular thematic lesson with each page dealing with a specific subject (ex: Pirates- Social Studies focuses on history of piracy and even biographies, Language Arts focuses on literature with pirates as a theme such as Treasure Island or How I Became a Pirate, Math focuses on story problems that deal with "treasure seeking" or voyages, Science focuses on bouyancy, projectile accuracy (cannon balls away!), oceans
• How-to pages to solve math problems, complete assignments, etc.
• General discussion for whatever topics you are discussing in class. Many students will mull over the discussion in class and then a few hours later a thought hits them that relates to dicussion and it is not always at an opportune time to go back to the discussion.

Thing #15 Library 2.0

Many experts argue that we, as librarians, are already at web 2.0. We thrive on collaboration and sharing of data. Dr. Wendy Schultz details the vision of library 1.0 through library 4.0 in such an eloquent manner. She compares the visionary process from raising coffee beans to canning the coffee all the way to the jazzy cafe setting of Starbucks. At library 2.0 you are focusing on how to "package the product"-- similar to Amazon's recommendations and tagging, we as librarians are moving in that direction, especially with FRBR.

OCLC Next Space Newsletter – Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web it take libraries?
Five Perspectives:
Away from Icebergs
Into a new world of librarianship
To more powerful ways to cooperate
To better bibliographic services
To a temporary place in time (Dr. Wendy Schultz's article)

Nailed!

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Nailed 'Em - Library Crime
http://www.colbertnation.com/
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

This is unbelievable! This kid had his library card revoked because they did not pay taxes where the public library is located. The little boy is a riot. Stephen Colbert treats this injustice with his usual flair and makes you laugh and shake your head at the same time. Well worth watching. Thanks Stephen for the report!

Thing #14- Technorati and Tags

http://www.technorati.com/ is a website that keeps up with all the blogs out there in the mighty blogosphere and determines authority based upon how many hits the blog has gotten. You can view what are the top blogs and even the top topics of the moment. It even has a section for following twitter posts called Twitterati. "Twittorati tracks the tweets from the highest authority bloggers, starting with the entire Technorati Top 100 and soon including many more of the web's most influential voices." You can see the latest tweets and blogs from the these writers all in one spot instead of following links. You could use this in the classroom to follow specific topics and get the blogs on that topic all on one page. :)

Thing #13-Tagging and Discovering Delicious

OMG! Delicious is so addictive. It is a website where you can bookmark your favorite websites and tag them. Tagging is basically giving one word descriptors to help you "file" something. Amazon.com is famous for their tagging. With Delicious you choose the tags that you want. There are often reccommendations but you are free to create your own tags so that you can search for the items when needed. For example: DeweyBrowse.org is a website that has links to other websites that are catalogued according to the Dewey Decimal System. I tagged it under the following tags: library, cataloging, Dewey, library, kids, links, research, school, websites, resources, and DeweyDecimalSystem. These are all ways that I would used to search for this website again. It is like a personal search engine of my "favorites". There is a program that if you use internet explorer as your browser to easily download all your favorites. I was not that fortunate. I have been using AOL for forever it seems and had favorites bookmarked that I wanted to add to http://www.delicious.com/. I had to enter all the favorites "by hand"---copying and pasting URLs and labeling the tags. I was so OCD about it one night I stayed up until 3 am. It took me a few days to do, but it is finally done! On the plus side, I was able to check links to see if they were still hot and some were definitely not! And then I also wondered what was I thinking when I saved some of them in favorites, because they definitely weren't ones I went back to much.

Flat Stanley Podcast

Thing #12- Blogging

To be an effective blogger you need to be an effective communicator. Comments play an important role in communication. According to Vicki Davis' Cool Cat Teacher Blog there are several things you need to keep in mind when commenting:

• Write a meaningful comment. As teachers, we are used to putting a happy face sticker on things and moving on to the next item on our agenda. Explain what it is about the commentary that resonates with you and if nothing does, don't comment.
• If you have written about it, hperlink to it. You give the blog credibility as well as "giving yourself credibility as one who participates and truly cares about your topic and doesn't just have selfish aims."
• If you have a blog, comment about yourself. It personalizes it as well as creates possible traffic for your own blog.
• Use a comment tracking service. Vicki Davis recommentds CoComment. You are able to track comments you have made on various sites and see if the author of the site has responded. CoComment will also create tag clouds for your comments.
• Don't be afraid to comment. It doesn't matter if you are a newbie or an old pro, we all have something valuable to contribute to the conversation.
• Teach commenting and remember the power of words. Students need to be taought the proper way to comment. To paraphrase Thumper as he was talking to Bambi, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Consider how you would feel if someone wrote that particular comment to you. The web is full of bad examples of adults doing the wrong thing. (Just look at some of the comments regarding the death of Michael Jackson.) We need to instill proper netiquette in ourselves and in our students.

There are ways to get people to comment on your blogs:

• Ask questions
• Be open ended
• Invite comments
• Interact with comments left
• Make it easy to comment
• See

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/10/12/10-techniques-to-get-more-comments-on-your-blog/ for additional ways.

Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Blog: http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-to-comment-like-king-or-queen.html

Thing #11-Library Thing

http://www.librarything.com/ is a website that is designed to help you keep track or catalog your personal library. It doesn't take much time to do it. All you have to do is type in the title or author (or if you are feeling really up to it you can type in the ISBN). Within a few seconds images of the book come up for you to click on and add to your library. You can add tags, comments, and even rate the books. I love the fact that you can choose where the cataloging information comes from. It can be Amazon.com or Library of Congress or from hundreds of other sources. Having just lost hundreds of books due to Hurricane Ike, I can see how wonderful a tool like this could be for insurance purposes. We sometimes tend to undervalue our library collection because we see it every day and purchased the books a few at a time. When you try to replace your personal collection it can be overwhelming. Another interesting aspect of this program is that you can share your library with others and they can see what you have. I am constantly being asked if I have a book about _____ that someone I am collaborating with could use for a lesson. With this all I need to do is look for the subject and search for the appropriate tag and voila I have found the book needed for the lesson.

Thing #10- Online Image Generator

I have spent the past two evenings PLAYING with various online generators. They are too much fun! On Custom Sign Generator you can take your photos and input "shoutouts" onto them or you can use the photo and make a fake magazine cover. I remember seeing those booths at fairs and 'Vegas and wanting to make a fake magazine cover but I always look dead by the time I make it to the booth and I was not going to spend my money on a lousy looking picture. Now, I can choose my favorite pictures and create my own magazine cover for FREE!!!!! What a great way to make Mother Day's gifts with student pictures. I can see students going crazy over this. I also spent quite a bit of time at Image Chef playing around with all the different applications offered on the site. I finally decided to create a wanted poster of my niece and nephew that I took on our trip to San Antonio earlier this summer. Image Chef also has word clouds that you can create in various shapes. Big Huge Labs is just totally awesome! I love the trading card generator! I think using these wonderful sites will help get kids interested in technology as well as cause them to focus more readily on the lessons in class since they never know when they will get to use these applications. Below are some of the sites we visited in Learning2Play this semester. (Thanks Dr. Bishop!)

• Custom Sign Generator
• Image Chef
• Big Huge Labs
• Kid-Friendly Image Generators
• Dumpr
• Wordle
• Glogster

Thing #9-Useful Library Blogs

I began my search among the millions of blogs at Google Blog Search entering Library2Play in the search box. I was immediately "greeted" with blog updates from many of my classmates. Angie was the first one I saw. :) When I went to Blogline and entered the same search term, I didn't see anything that related to our class. There was a post by someone with library in their name who was basically writing about the death of her baby brother. There were not any relevant hits on the first several pages of the search. At that point I gave up looking, it seemed not worth my time to search any more.

There are several wonderful librarians out there blogging away enlightening the minds of many. I went to Edublogs' award winners and typed in librarians and a "slew" of bloggers popped up. Many of them we have discussed in class such as Doug Johnson (The Blue Skunk) and Joyce Valencia from SLJ. I tried Syndic8.com but the layout just drove me away. There is so much potential for blogging in the classroom. Thanks to all my classmates who created blog lessons for our midterm.

Thing #8- RSS

I have been wondering for the longest how RSS worked and now I finally do! Should I be the "gatekeeper of knowlege" or the "tour guide" pointing out all the fabulous things along the way? Now my evil twin has the keys hidden, but guess what, the door is open so who needs the keys anyway? LOL. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndicaton". What it does is it keeps you updated with information that YOU want. Using a reader such as Google Reader, you can select what information you want updates on. You can receive the lastest blog entry from Neil Gaiman or keep up with the latest celebrity info by following Entertainment Weekly updates. The subscriptions that you choose are sent to your reader homepage.
There are so many different ways that a teacher/librarian could use this technology at school. By following fellow librarians and "those in the know" you are able to be on the cutting edge and not left in the dark ages. There was an instant earlier this year when I was following Critical Thinking on Twitter and the CEO announced that they were having a 99cent-$1.99 sale on many of their gifted and talented products. They were giving their Twitter followers an advantage by posting it 12 hours before it was open to the public. I purchased 13 books for less than $25 (shipping and handling included). Yes, membership has its priviledges.
If students were studying a specific current event, the teacher could have a RSS feed that only picks ups that topic and when new information is posted, voila! And the teacher and students save time by not searching the Internet everyday for new information. What a fabulous tool!

Thing #7

Google is more than a search engine, it has some really cool features that are just waiting for you to play with. All you have to do is click on the more tab and voila! amazing aps are at your fingertips. One of the newest ones on the site is Google Health where you can organize all of your medical records in one place. How wonderful is that?!!! I created an igoogle page with oodles of items that "fit me to a T". I decided to broaden my horizons and learn about different art with the Daily Art gadget. There is even a gadget for learning Spanish! I spent several hours going over all the different gadgets to choose from and finally had to stop when I realized it was after 1 o'clock in the morning. There are so many different gadgets and widgets that would be great in the classroom. One of my favorites so far is Hangman. You try to decipher the word and once you have guess what it is, you can click on a link to find out what the word means- great way to build vocabulary! There are some that are not appropriate for the classroom so be sure to double check what they are about before you click on them.

Now I didn't spend all my time at igoogle (yes, I wanted to, but I just couldn't.... maybe later). I also had to check out Google Calender. It has some features similar to the calendar in Outlook but has the ability to share with nonmembers. This would be great to set up library schedules or special events and send out to teachers and parents. If you give "rights or permission" to the individuals they can add to the calendar as well. It is a great tool to use when collaborating with others and trying to schedule key events.

Thing #6

How much fun can one person have playing with their pictures? If you go to Big Huge Labs http://bighugelabs.com/ you will have more fun than should be allowed. :) You can take several pictures and upload and it will create a mosaic with the pictures (up to 36 wahoooooooo!) or you can create a trading card with your own pictures. There are so many posibilities, it is endless. You can have students look up vocabulary words and find images that "fit" the definition and then write the definition under the picture. Students could exchange cards with one another as they review the vocabulary. Another idea is students could use the cards as mini book reports. Download an image of the book read and then students could write their report on the card, using various icons to symbolize the various genres. They could even trade with friends to let them know what "they have gotta read". PreK and Kinder teachers could use students' pictures and create trading cards of each student and use them for daily attendance or centers assignment by placing them in pocket charts. Oh the possibilities are endless!

Thing #5

Flickr is awesome! Check out the Creative Commons area of it to see pictures you can download and use without worrying about copyright infringements! You can also upload your own pictures and add tags to them, as well as write details about them. I started seaching for pictures of painted pumpkins and then looked at halloween pictures and finally settled on searching for the elusive Harry Potter picture. I found lots of manga drawings of Harry Potter and then a photo of three people in costume. It was interesting to read the comments under the picture because several people had the same question I had: where did they get the costumes? Ends up that the photographer ran across the trio and they agreed to have their photo taken.

Thing #3 Creating a blog

Creating a blog is not as scary as it seems. It took more time to dress up my avatar than it did to set up the avatar. I did find a great widget to add to place books that I have read or want to show. http://www.shelfari.com/ I will definitely be putting lots of books on my shelf. It is easiest to go to shelfari and insert the widget from there.

Thing #2 Lifelong Learners

It doesn't matter if you are a "kinder" or a "senior" learning is as essential as breathing. We are constantly learning new skills or acquiring new information. Learning doesn't have to take place in a formal classroom setting; it can occur on a private beach while you are reading a book or in a theater filled with hundreds of others watching a movie. As a life long learner we must make a paradigm shift and break out of the "classroom" learning through playing games, cooking, acting, manipulating new instruments, and of course, READING.

According to the tutorial at http://www.plcmc.org/public/learning/player.html there are 7 1/2 habits of life long learners. I probably utilize habit 1: Begin with the end in mind quite a bit, but I don't seem to follow all the way through at times because I often get overwhelmed by the magnitude of my ambitions. YIKES. I need to work on modifying my goals and making the journey to the goal a little shorter.... no butterflies to distract me.