Nailed!

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