Thing #23 Old Dinosaur with lots of New Tricks!

What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
Successfully creating my blog. I had tried once before very unsuccessfully. I like this description of a blog:

“A site one establishes for the purpose of putting one’s thoughts online for the edification or amusement of visitors, who may leave pieces of their own minds before departing.”

Discovering what others had found and were experiencing along the way by reading their blog entries, and then leaving a little piece of my own mind...

Playing with the online image generators

Discovering educational videos on YouTube

Using Flickr to share photos with friends and family

The entertaining and succinct Common Craft guys

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
While in graduate school (online), I had a mainline to the latest and greatest through my coursework. Participating in 23 Things was like being back in school with the bonus of no grades! I’m a hands-on learner, so 23 Things was the perfect learning tool. What's next, Kickball Captains?

Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I was amazed at the depth and breath of this online adventure.

Actually understanding and using the 2.0 web tools my children use and talk about and understanding and using 2.0 web tools my children have not heard of!

Learning more about my SBISD colleagues. It’s amazing what you can discover about a person from reading their blog.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Possibly offer smaller parts of the whole at a time by dividing the 23 Things into thirds and offering 6 hour credit segments.

If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? Absolutely!

How would you describe your learning experience?
Hands-on learning of relevant and, best of all, applicable best practices and cutting edge technology for use with students and the faculty in my library.

Next to Last Thing #22 Nings

I love the concept of Nings, especially Shonda Brisco’s Texas School Librarians and Joyce Valenza’s TeacherLibrarianNing. It’s like having the best of LM_NET all in one location without the overload of irrelevant emails often found in the listserv messages. These Nings are the perfect venue for sharing best/interesting practices by having the opportunity to easily introduce and discuss topics of interest with librarians around the country. In addition to the main page, I noticed that there are different break out groups that the user can join, so that the discussion is more relevant to his/her particular interests within school librarianship. The video section would be a great place to share student or teacher or librarian generated videos. Both Nings are a nice extension to the terrific network of SBISD librarians we are so fortunate to have in our district. As an example of one of our own, check out this fabulous Ning!

Thing #21 Podcasts and Audio Books

My students have used Photo Story for creating final products after researching a topic, and they love it! Headsets with microphones are a must. They let students record without worrying about extraneous noise, and it helps keep the noise down when they add music and listen to their show. I normally make a PPT. of the new Bluebonnet books each year to introduce the books to my students, but I decided to try out Photo Story for this project instead. At first it was way too long. I went back and recorded less and spoke faster. The jury is still out on whether it is still too long!

Thing #20 YouTube, TeacherTube and Zamzar

It was fun discovering an educational application for YouTube. Attached is a video of Bill Martin reading/singing his book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Kinder would love this if they could access it on the district computers. They all have ACTIVboards at my school, and the videos would play so well on the large white board! I am going to try the Zamzar conversion with this video to see if it will give me a video that will bypass the district filters.


This video is a creative take off on Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It could be used as the introduction/hook to a creative writing activity.



TeacherTube seems to have a buffering issue. I didn’t experience this with YouTube. The following video is an animated and somewhat humorous review of the states and capitals of the U.S., perfect for 4th or 5th graders. I'm wondering if converting this TeacherTube video on Zamzar would solve the buffering issue. Has anyone tried that solution?

Thing #19 Web 2.0 Awards List

Wow! What a selection of online tools! After browsing quite a few of them, I explored Comiqs. It’s a lot like Image Chef, but with many more creative possibilities for classroom use including creating a comic strip with more than one panel. Just like Image Chef, the created images could be used for story starters, creative writing activities, or just for grins. A big plus is that this site can link to Flickr for easy photo uploading of personal photos or photos from the creative commons area. Unfortunately, I came across a random picture with a highly inappropriate expletive in the Comiqs photo gallery. Definitely a problem with students, but with teacher supervision can be overcome.

Thing #18 Online Productivity Tools

It’s always interesting to see what is offered for free on the web. These online office suites are great for those who can’t afford to have an original load set or for those who want or need web-stored documents. If the business or personal documents were of a sensitive nature, I would worry about how secure they would be stored online. Besides the site tours, I wonder what kind of tech support is offered for these online office suites. Just some things to think about.

Thing #17 Rollyo

The concept of Rollyo is great, but I am a little discouraged about its use for elementary students because of all of the extraneous stuff: ads, polls, etc on the page and the location of the custom web results. I do, however, like the feature of being able to search and create a searchroll using only kid-friendly sites for students. I created a Weather Search searchroll that my 2nd grade teachers might enjoy using with their students.

Thing #16 Wikis

Those crazy paper tossing, finger counting, marker drawing CommonCraft guys are a hoot. Talk about making learning simple + to the point + fun + meaningful! Someone suggested that we have a “Thing” devoted just to them next time. I agree!

Posting to the Learning 2.0 Sandbox wiki was interesting. Viewing online video wiki posting help and actually doing it were two different animals for me. I first posted in the discussion area. Oops! When I discovered that my posting was not showing up on the main page, I went back and tried again. Success! The image I uploaded turned out to be animated. Surprise! :-)

Wikis are a great invention and a wonderful discussion and collaboration tool. I can see using a wiki on the SBISD curriculum portal pages for each of the grade level curriculum areas where teachers could share their successes and new resources (syllabi, rubrics, homework calendars, slide shows, etc) for a curriculum area or strand or unit. It would be an accessible and easy way for teachers across the district in a particular grade level or subject area to globally communicate and collaborate. The PB Wiki Tour talked about online chats. Another application idea might be to have an online chat on a district wiki between two or more teachers/administrators instead of a face-to-face meeting. With the cost of gas, leave the car parked and meet online!

Thing # 15 Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and the future of libraries

The way students of the new "Net Generation" think and find, view, manipulate, process and use information has dramatically changed from the previous generation. While multitasking, they mentally and physically interact with their world on a daily basis. In creating library programs to address these students, it is important to define what their needs are, restructure the delivery of instruction according to those needs, incorporate a flexible library schedule with open access to address point of need access, learn and offer new technologies(!) in tandem with the classroom teachers, create and sustain remote online access creating a virtual library for anytime access, assure the freedom of the librarian to sustain a leadership role in the library program through adequate library staffing, and transform existing library buildings to meet the technological needs of these students. If the librarian can be the “go to” person in the building for supporting Web 2.0+ technologies, the library remains the information-rich learning hub of the school.

I like David Warlick's 10 step method for integrating oneself into 21st C. thinking and self-development as an educator. Our community of learners on the 2.0 playground this summer is a prime example of teachers/librarians who want to learn how to reach/teach/inspire/facilitate the digital natives we are given the opportunity to come into contact with each year. The digital language we are learning to speak requires networking/sharing with peers and maximum technology support. The final step in our journey is sharing successes with our uninformed (and possibly technophobic!) colleagues and “inviting them into the conversation,” so that they can develop an interest in joining the ranks of the digitally literate life-long learners.

I ran across this video when checking out TeacherTube. It is a “top rated” and “most viewed” video on the site. I can see why. It speaks loudly as to why we must continue to transform our teaching and evolve as educators.

Thimg #14 Technorati and How Tags Work

I did a blog search on Technorati using “School Library Learning 2.0” and came across the blog Library Byte by Byte's most recent posting (how fun to see a familiar blog among the many unknowns!), which was an outstanding podcast. This particular podcast is a prime example how one of our 2.0 tools can be used with students for reader's advisory!

Overall, Technorati was a bit overwhelming to me until I used the advanced search tool, which helped to narrow the results and get rid of many of the irrelevant blogs. The Technorati video produced by the (very young!) leadership made some interesting point about creating a community of 50 million people that is the vehicle for expressing the raw, uncut human experience from individuals who have not been edited. I guess the question that stands out most in my mind is how hard it might be to sift through the blah, blah, blah to reach the meaty, authoritative stuff. Or did I miss something?

Tagging is akin to using keywords for indexing information in an article. I like the way the author of the article decides what is important in the text. However, because it is up to the author to do the tagging, bloggers need to take the time to follow through. One of the articles on tagging cites the formation of online social groups when people using the same tags discover “similarities of interests and points of view.” Once again, here is a way for educators/students to find common ground and share/contribute/interact/collaborate with other educators/students around the world.