Thing 21: Podcast

This has been an extremely frustrating task. Some of the frustration is my fault and some isn't. Anyways, after working 5 hours on it, I am fairly satisfied with my 1min 30sec podcast. I know it will go much smoother next time.

There are many ways podcasts could be used in the library. Booktalks, library introduction, technology tutorials, information literacy tutorials, PR announcements, etc. In many of these cases I would use just Photostory without making a separate audio file like I did this time. It was nice having the music at the beginning and end, but it added another layer of complication.

I am proud of myself for discovering how to switch to the old post editor so the video button would show.

Extra: Make a cartoon movie

I stumbled on this this morning while glancing over my RSS feeds. Xtranormal is a free web application that allows you to make simple movies with one or two cartoon-like characters and all you have to do is type! Well, there is a little more to it than that but Quick Tips will teach the basics. Here is what I did this morning. Yes, it's in Spanish. Several languages are available. This is a quick reminder to the students about how to set up a subtraction problem. Maybe students will remember what the cartoon character says better than they listen to me.

My sample is still "publishing." It's a long process so I'll give you a little more information. My movie is only about 11 seconds long so you can see it's kind of slow. Since I haven't shared one yet, I don't know if I can embed it or just paste the URL link. We'll see soon.

Wait a minute. It's not free! You have to pay to use movie elements, but supposedly you only pay once to use each one. You could make a simple movie for only $2. I don't like the way the cost is not up front, but I went ahead and bought the points I needed to publish the movie.

Ta-daaa

Uh-oh. I've been waiting hours for it to render and nothing.

Alright, I swear there was embed code on the Xtramormal page but now there isn't. I'm pretty confused about this but, any way, I am now going to try to create a link to it. Movie

 This is still neat, but much less usable than I thought.

Thing 20: Videos

To tell you the truth, I'm ready for a little of the 7 1/2 skill, so I'm embedding a fun library video.


This video is a tutorial on embedding video in wikis.


Finally, I found a very neat video of a volcano erupting on YouTube.


Many types of subject matter blog would benefit from embedded video. It gives students quick and safe access to just the video you want them to see. And they can watch it as many times as they want. Also, there are many videos on using technology that teachers will benefit from and many times the students as well. Having a visual and voice narrative greatly improves the learning many people, myself included.

Thing 19: Web 2.0 Awards

I'm not sure you could use this in a school setting but I loved One Sentence, which is simply a collection of one sentence mini-stories. Naturally, much of the story you have to extrapolate, which is one of its appeals. The idea is to write one sentence that captures the reader's attention. I can see using this in a high school segment on writing. Students could read the One Sentences, do some ranking, and find longest/shortest. I think it would really motivate students to talk specifically and deeply about what in that One Sentence appealed to them.

Their "About" page also has a list of links to other sites that are exercises in writing briefly.

Thing 18: Online productivity tools

I recently started using Google Docs as I mentioned before, primarily to handle overload from my limited space on the district serve and to make certain documents available from any computer.

There are kinks. I have successfully uploaded files previously but today I couldn´t. But still the capability to use basic productivity applications online is very appealing to me. 95% of the time I´m only using basic functions anyway. I´m not sure how much I would use the online collaboration capability since wikis offer the same--except for the presentation and spreadsheet apps. Hummm? 

I loved the form tool. You can create an online form with several built-in question types including text, multiple choice and scale easily and quickly and then either distribute the link or embed the form in a blog or web page. Responses from the form are tabulated for you. I can think of several classroom and community uses for this.

I also played with the drawing tool a little bit. It's very basic. Here's my class profile picture fancied up a bit.

 

Online productivity tools definitely have a place in what we do and they may be the wave of the future.

Thing 17: Rollyo

Rollyo could be very useful. As one person said, it can used with curricula wikis. I take he is talking about a teachers' cooperative wiki to find and develop resources for particular subjects. It could also be used with a classroom wiki or blog, limiting student searches to particular sites. And I can see using Rollyo on my own for projects and recurring tasks that require certain information from the internet. For example, I might have a book idea and I could take useful sites and create a searchroll with them. Delicious.com tags would work, but if I wasn't searching for something in particular and didn't know if it was in the sites or where, I would have to open each one and Rollyo would let me do a single search. Yes, I like that idea.

I created a searchroll of sites with booktalks for middle school and teens. I tried it out and it works pretty well, but I noticed that there were hits from sites I hadn't included. I don't know why that would be unless sites linked to the one I included got bundled in too somehow. Feel free to explore and copy. As video showed, open the searchroll,  rename it and modify it as you like.

Thing 16: Wikis

I loved the idea of using a wiki as a collaborative way of gathering notes, images, links, etc. on a research subject and then having students write their papers just from those notes. I think even elementary students could learn to do this but I worry about the citation requirements for responsible use being a bit much for them. If we're not too strict on the format, they can probably do that too. I think this idea came from David Loertscher's presentation at the 2007 AASL Conference.

A wiki could also be used to collaboratively write a paper, though a teacher would have to be sure specific roles are assigned and then track individual contributions to evaluate each student fairly. Such capability seems to be built in.

It could also be used for book reviews and long term projects. In particular, I am thinking of the Habitat Club I founded at my school several years ago. A wiki would have been a great way to record and share the progress of the club's projects. A lower elementary could use the blog to follow the course of a single seed from planting to full maturity with text and images.

This is definitely a post where I would love for others to throw in their ideas. What do you say? Please comment with more ideas or reactions or improvements to the ideas I've mentioned.

Thanks

Thing 15: Web 2.0, Library 2.0

Whenever I read what the people on the cutting edge are writing about the Web, Library 2.0, and the learning environment in general, I am both fascinated and terrified.... I don't know nearly enough.

And my guiding questions at this point couldn't be more basic: What do I need to know? and Where can I learn it? Clearly, I need some kind of technological guru. But back to the topic.

I have no doubt that libraries need to be transforming themselves in the way that Michael Stephens and Dr. Shultz describe. The young people already know that. Older people tend to think the Web 2.0 is such a radical shift from the learning environment as we know it that it blows apart all our previous schema--that reading and writing will be replaced with other skills (waving your arms in the air to design a new engine, for example) but we need to recognize that reading and writing are actually more frequently used skills in the online world, and that by not acknowledging that fact we are creating a schism between us and our students which threatens to send us all to purgatory. (Sorry, I recently read A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman and was fascinated by the fighting between the pope and ant-pope in the Middle Ages.) By that I mean, we are failing to teach all we should and the students are failing to learn all they need to. But I'm getting a little off topic.

Libraries will change physically. Print will be less important, computer and information delivery systems more important. And, yes, it saddens me. Some of my earliest memories are of browsing local libraries. One was housed temporarily in the basement of the fire station with books stacked haphazardly here and there. And some of those books were musty. Maybe eventually our physical collections will become caches of nostalgic sensory input ("Wow, smell this book!" or "Do you think this paper was originally this brown?")

One thing for sure: whatever Age we're in, it's quickly morphing into something else.

Thing 14: Technorati and tags

I was unable to do most of the exploratory tasks for this assignment. I was able to search the blogs and posts for "School Library Learning 2.0" but I got no hits. I couldn't find a way to search tags although I did look at the list of popular tags and none of the terms were there.

Watching the video with the Technorati honchos talking, I kept hearing them say they wanted to serve "the masses" and even "the unwashed masses" (which is a very elitist term, isn't it?). So I got the impression their site was self-limited to pop culture and social media. After coming to this conclusion, I decided not to join or register my blog.

The contrast between Delicious founder, Joshua Schachter's and the Technorati slant on tags was interesting. Technorati's goal seems to be pulling worthy blogs out of the Internet swamp and Schachter's idea is individual users should be doing that. Both notions seem worthy to me.

Thing 13: Social bookmarking

I was shown the old style ikeepbookmarks site a couple of years ago and I used it very sporadically, until recently when the quantity of sites I wanted to keep track of and return to became so large that I had to go back to it. I had heard of Delicious and I'd seen classmates on it so I was curious about it and whether it really would be better. The answer is definitely yes. The ability to assign several tags to a site means you are more likely to find it quickly the next time because you avoid have to work your way through the hierarchy of folders you used to have set up to organize all those sites. 

On Delicious.com, I explored the sites people had tagged with "library" and an interesting list of easily skimmed sites came up with everything from the mundane (Naked man arrested with stolen cheese in library!) to the unfamiliar (PEAR packages?) and including the ALA and libraries of all types. Here is one site from a retired librarian that I found when I input "library", "school", and "technology"--it provides links to sites of particular interest including technology to librarians arrange by broad topic.

Another social networking site I explored was Diigo, and I nearly subscribed to it also. It has similar tagging facilities as Delicious but it also allows you to capture and store page online as pdfs or html and you can highlight and add sticky notes onscreen and save that as well. Cool, huh? I may have to go back.

Thing 12: Participating in the community

The posts we read about commenting were written from the viewpoint of a blogger not just a commenter. So some of the points weren't relevant to me now. Maybe later I will care about how to attract commenters by registering in a myriad of places that at this time I neither have heard of nor understand.

Saying something positive, of course, is the most important commenting advice. If we want our opinions to be listened to, we have to first respect the opinions of others. It also seems important to me to write with at least a little humility. With such a potentially wide audience, we have to recognize that the participants also have potentially very different experiences. And you can count on there always existing somebody who knows more than you do.

I commented on a Cool Cat Teacher post and a 2¢Worth post. Cool Cat Teacher is the epitome of the technologically savvy teacher. She's scary! I read her and I think, Am I really supposed to be doing all that? And she posts on exactly the topics we are all currently concerned with.

2¢Worth is another blog focused on technology especially as it applies to education. The post I wrote a comment for addressed exactly the issue that most worries me now: How do we engage students in their own learning? I worry a little about that comment because the question is vital to me and in the disjointed, remote conversation of a blog, it is hard to hit the right tone. In this case I just had a couple of opinions, a bunch of urgent questions and no solutions.

One of the pieces of advice for commenting was to not just say "Right on", or "Thanks", but isn't it also important to know to what extent your readers' opinions coincide with yours? If there isn't a one click way express agreement that shows up as just a number, there should be.

Thing 11: Library Thing

Love it! I've already mentioned I have a Google Books page where I entered a few books, but this site is free from the commercialism of Google. I loved the ease of adding books and my long cherished dream of actually cataloging all of my books (two or three thousand, probably) has revived. The rating system is super-easy and the social networking aspect is cool.

I checked out the YA book groups. There is some real variety. I chuckled when I saw the Hogwarts group was the most active. That's staying power.

I couldn't resist checking out the person at the top of the list of people with my same books. Judging by her titles, she's apparently Spanish, a new or expecting mother, possibly a paramedic, interested in public speaking.

I add the Library Thing widget to my blog. Take a look!

Thing 10: Image generators

Spiffy text is a great tool for creating very slick looking banners and headings that can be used on their own or as part of a document.

Comic strip generator is only limited by your imagination. It would also be a neat tool for students to try as a writing warm-up or reward for good work. Let them create a TAKS poster or strategy reminder using cartoons.

This was created by Barcode Generator, which along with Spiffy Text is part of the long list of sites listed at Custom Sign Generator Widgets. It would also make a great banner or a cool bookmark.

As you can see, I had a lot of fun with this assignment and wish I had time to explore more. I'll just have to play around more later. In fact, I'll close this post and dive back in there.

Blog problem

I added a page to my blog thinking I could divide a blog into 2 separate parts. First I discovered that I can't add any gadgets to a page without adding them to the other page. Then I found that I couldn't seem to get a post on the secondary page without it appearing on the Home page. Does anyone have advice about this problem? I'm now considering deleting that page and creating a separate blog for the topic I wanted to appear there.
???

Thing 9: Useful Library Blogs

I found the search tools for blogs unhelpful. I didn't get anything worthwhile from Technorati or Syndic8. I guess I was overly optimistic, but out of the 130,000,000 blogs out there I hoped I would find one that focused on Native American literature. No luck. Or I just didn't put in the right search terms.

The most useful tool I found was the Edublogs site. I subscribed to a class blog (a concept I find fascinating) and a couple of educator blogs, "Free Technology for Teachers" and "Using Blogs in Science."

Thing 8: RSS Feeds

In this world inundated by information, RSS feeds are necessary to have a fighting chance against the flood. I see it as a great way to limit the information to just what you want. At first I had a hard time understanding how to set them up because I couldn't them afterward. I think I just didn't know where to look.

In my personal life I can subscribe to sites that cater to my hobbies, like beer brewing! And because books are important to me, feeds from blogs on books will also be great.

As a librarian, or for just about any professional, RSS feeds will funnel the relevant information to one. I subscribe to several blogs and requested feeds from ALA and TLA. I added the blog links to my new iGoogle page. Then, once I figured out how to do that, I discovered how easy it was to add them to my blog from Google Reader because it was a single button option on the edit page. So you can see them to side of this post.

Thing 7: Google stuff

I have experimented with some of the Google features before. In Biblio & Ref we used Google Scholar, and I was quite impressed with it. It quickly brought up many relevant hits for specific searches. I have also used Google Reader. I have done very little with it but you can link to it here to see a few books I have read and others I want to read.

I am very interested in Google Docs. I do a lot of translating and create a lot of documents for my class, so my allotted server space is always filling up. Google Docs would be a great place for overflow and I could move an entire segment of my files there. Librarians could also use it to collaborate with each other or with teachers on projects. I uploaded a Word document with math and science web sites I use to direct students to certain sites and you can access it here. It is also great for those projects you want access to wherever you are from any computer. For example, I can upload files that I may want to access next month while I am in Spain.

Thing 6: Mashups

The sites I explored are cool! I tried the Magazine Cover and Mosaic tools in Big Huge Labs. The magazine cover I made for my wife is at the right. And then I made a booklet with Bookr. (Did you notice that Bookr originates in Barcelona, Spain?)

I can see all kinds of applications for these tools, mainly outreach and PR in the library. Bookr could be used in the classroom or library, especially the lower grades, to cooperatively and write a book on a particular topic. Here is one about insects by Alejandra Farias.

Personally, I can see them becoming dangerously addictive. It is so easy to spend hours with these things. For example, this morning.

Thing 5_Flickr

It turns out I set up a Flickr account years ago when it was still pretty new then forgot about it. Flickr is a great way to share photos and get feedback on your work. The tags and comments are good for getting information about the photos and the groups are like small communities of photographers and their work. I loved the Creative Commons feature that allows quick access to pictures you know you can use without legal issues.
I did a search for insect in the Creative Commons non-derivative group and found tons. Here is one that I could use to discuss camouflage. It was taken by Antoine Hubert.

Thing 2: 7 1/2 Habits of Life Long Learners

I love learning new things, but I am not fully equipped with the 7 1/2 habits. Probably what I'm best at is using technology to my advantage. I saw personal computers first emerge from the haze and jumped right into them. However, I'm not a nerd and there are significant holes in my knowledge because I have only invested the effort into technology when I saw a clear and present need. But I'm not afraid to try, and I often do very well because I know the software designer wanted the software to be used so must have made it possible. I WILL read the help files, research online, and even buy a manual if I think it is necessary. I look for the shortcuts and try different ways of doing things.

I hate to talk about what I'm not good at. So I'll be brief. View problems as challenges. I love technical challenges that I can deal with like puzzles. But I don't do as well at the softer skills, such as planning ahead, which was almost most my choice of most difficult habit for. So like many people I will do promptly the things I do well and procrastinate with the things I don't do well.

I think real personal change is very difficult but unless you are totally fossilized, you can always learn and improve.

Entry Numero Uno

Wow! A blogger at last! I thought the day would never come.

My main focus is developing the technology skills I need as a modern educator/librarian. I may occasionally slide into more personal things as well.

I really don't know what this blog will end up being... . That's part of its appeal, right?

A little about me:

I was born in the Texas panhandle. My parents decided early that they were going to escape the cotton farms they were raised on and did they ever. At four I moved to Wisconsin (where based on the incomprehensibility of the speech, I assumed they spoke a different language), at 12 we moved to Missouri ("Misery" as the first teacher I met pronounced it), and at 15 we moved to Arizona.

I did well in school, graduated and went to the University of Arizona originally planning to major in plant genetics, but a dynamic English professor made Advanced Freshman Comp much more interesting than Agricultural Science so I jumped the fence big time and majored in Creative Writing (the capital letters are to try to make it look more important). I stayed on and got my masters in Poetry Writing and discovered I enjoyed teaching freshman composition as a TA.

Once graduated and shiftless as most creative writing graduates are, I followed a pretty girl to Germany where I learned German and taught ESL. Poverty drove me to look for greener pastures and I ended up in Madrid, Spain, teaching at an American language academy and later for a couple of private universities. I married a wonderful Spanish girl, had three boys and decided the U.S. would be a better place to raise the family. So after seven years we moved to the Houston area because my sister lived here and it seemed a good place to find employment. I got a job in a refinery as an operator/procedure writer (see, that Creative Writing degree did come in handy!) and my wife switched from research biologist (a job she hated) to a bilingual teacher (the job she was born to do). Eight years ago I also became a bilingual teacher, and since my wife won't let me move again, I have to seek change some other way. One of the ways is to keep learning and trying new things.