This was a great class and such a worthwhile project!
I have created a blog for my library entitled, "Voices From the Inglenook." Please click on this link if you would like to follow what is going on in the Cold Spring Library.
What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? I loved the Image Generators, getting re-acquainted with del.i.ci.ous, and the wiki lesson. I could see how I could really use these with my students and for my teaching. I am so fortunate to be teaching is a school that has a 1:1 laptop program for grades 3-6 and these tools make my job more exciting and more meaningful to my students.
How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? I love technology...and by loving it I have to constantly learn new things. This program was a great example of learning by doing. It gave me so many ideas, practical ideas that I could take right away and use.
Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I have been thinking of designing some units modeled after this format for my own students.
What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
I gained the most by the "things" that made me do something. So maybe more of those.
If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?
Absolutely! I also really appreciated being able to take it for credit through Fresno Pacific University.
How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote CSLA learning activities?
School Library Learning 2.0 gives you a chance to learn about this exciting new technology and it serves as a model for how we might teach in a Web 2.0 world.
This was a new world for me....all these books available online for download. With the advent of readers amazon.com's Kindle, I realize that this is a new possibility for readers...to download the books either to read or to listen to.
I found the World EBook Fair site a little confusing but I went to the regular Gutenberg Project site. It was interesting to see the top 100. I was a little surprised to find The Outline of Science as number 1. I looked at Pride and Prejudice just to see what it would like like online. This would be helpful if you needed a passage but I can't quite imagine curling up with my laptop.
LibriVox was the most interesting and I could see some possible use for students to listen to books. This might be especially good for learning disabled students. The site was having technical difficulties when I looked at it so I wasn't able to do any searching.
I enjoyed looking at the "Best Places to Get Free Books" link. I went to manybooks.net and searched in the Young Readers section and looked at Aesop's Fables.
But all in all, I guess I'm still going to stick with actual books as my first choice--the paper, the typography, the illustrations.....hard for me not to prefer that.
I keep trying to figure out a way to use podcasts but I'm not sure why I can't seem to get too excited about them yet. I looked on Education Podcast Network first and looked at Willoweb. I'd heard about Willoweb before. The podcast I listened to was a 4th grade class talking about renewable energy. What I got from this is that this is another way for students to demonstrate what they have learned. It sounded like they were enjoying themselves and it was very professional. Still, I found I couldn't get really excited about it. I listened to another podcast from a school in Scotland and wondered if there was some way two schools could collaborate on a project. That might be interesting.
I went to Podcast Alley and found Book Bites for Kids. This were easily found by searching for "children's book reviews." Subscribing on Bloglines was a snap. However when I listened I found the first part of the podcast a commercial for life insurance and the actual podcast started out with some technical difficulties. I don't know...
I think I'm more of a visual person and actually I don't listen to the radio much. It's almost a case of overload. So I'm not sure I'll use this tool but it was interesting to look into it and I'm going to keep trying to come up with applications for my library. Right now, I'm using Garage Band and recording little podcasts with my Bookworms (1st and 2nd graders) to have them practice fluency and see how they have progressed each month. That's as far as I've gotten with podcasting. We seem to like doing the video book reviews on the blog, but I could see that little booktalks might be another way to use podcasting.
I'll have to admit I spent more time searching around YouTube than I thought I would. I had fun watching old commercials, I wondered how people have time to do things like Library Dominos, Conan the Librarian was really funny (might use that one with my students at the beginning of the year), and March of the Librarians was hilarious.
What I like about YouTube and what I don't like about YouTube are almost the same. It's enormous. There is so much on it that you can find almost anything and there is so much on it that there is a lot that is worthless. This is, of course, the dilemma we all face with the amount of information to which we now have access. Teaching my students how to search is a huge responsibility.
I do like TeacherTube a little better in that it narrows down the material. My favorite video on YouTube is Yes We Can by Will.i.am. (yes, I'm an Obama supporter) followed by the speech Obama gave last week about race in America. What I find wonderful about YouTube is that there is access to this kind of material. I couldn't hear the speech because I was at work but I could listen to it on my lunch break. I found the Yes We Can video amazing just as a video but also as a new way to communicate with voters...young voters...on their terms...using a medium that they are excited about. This has implications for teaching as well.
Professionally, I liked the Librarian 2.0 Manifesto. So interesting with the Burning Man images. The one phrase that stood out to me was "responsiveness to change." That I think, is the key, both for us as librarians in this explosion of information and for our students. They will need this skill...responsiveness to change. We need to see this as a positive skill (or at the least a survival skill) for we are teaching them how to be lifelong learners in their world, not the world we grew up in or even the world of today. Responsiveness to change...it sounds so exciting, so hopeful.
LibraryThing is a lot of fun. A great way to connect with other people about books. I had started a LibraryThing account a while ago but hadn't gotten around to getting back to it. I read some of the posts on Librarians who LibraryThing and found them interesting. Another way to connect with colleagues online.
I found that one of the books I'd added The Giver by Lois Lowry was my most popular book with around 5000 others listing it on their LibraryThing as well. The least was Princess Furball by Charolotte Huck. Oh well...that's one of my all time favorites anyway.
I had an idea that next year I might use this with my 5th and 6th graders. I have book club for all the grades and I'm always looking for a fun, exciting way for 5th and 6th graders to do a bookclub. Maybe, with parental permission, they could have their own LibraryThing for the books they read for the book club.
That's what so great about doing these 23 Things....all these new ideas!
Zoho Writer--WOW! This was so easy to use. I created my account and did a test document. In that document I added a link to my Library Blog and emailed it to myself and exported it as a Word Document. So easy! Then I thought I'd get tricky and post it on my SLL 2.0 blog. No problem.
I'm already thinking of ways I could use this with my students. They could compose documents after doing research (I also took a peek at Zoho Notes) and then post it to our Research Blog. It's a little more familiar than doing posting in Blogger.
I can also see its value in creating interesting emails to parents about programs in the library using video or images.
Very nice tool. Free, too! I'm going to pass this along to the teachers. Could be a great way of having kids take work home to work on it since the copy is saved online and it can be exported into Word.
