Thing # 23 – Summarization

1. What were my favorite discoveries or exercises?
This is hard for me to pinpoint. There were many discoveries in this journey. I guess my favorite one would have to be Photo Story. I really enjoyed going through the pictures of my daughter’s wedding to make the slideshow and inserting the song that was sung in her wedding. This is a tool that I plan to continue to use in my professional and personal life.

2. How has this affected my lifelong learning goals?
I am a person who used to be afraid of the computer. When I was an undergrad, I typed all of my papers on an electric typewriter. I have learned so much about myself and the internet in this process. I plan to continue this endeavor by going back and revisiting sites where I can discover more tools to use in my career and personal life.

3. Where there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes?
Yes! I expected to get through this assignment and go on with my life. I am amazed at what I have learned and will continue to use. I will use Flickr for school projects. I will continue to use Google Docs for presentations and collaboration with fellow teachers. I have shared things that I have learned from this assignment with family and friends.

4. What could be done differently to improve the format or concept?
This format worked well for me. It was user friendly and easy to navigate. The links were all informative and I learned something new with each “thing”.

5. Would I participate in another discovery program?
Definitely! I enjoy learning about things that impress my daughters who think that they are much more computer savvy than their mother.

6. How would I describe this learning experience in one word?
Eye-opening (That may be two words.)

7. Now I will go and check out other blogs.

Thing # 22 - Nings

For this assignment, I looked at a few of the Nings listed and chose to concentrate on the Ning for Teachers. It took me to the Teacher Lingo website. This is a great website to share ideas about teaching. This interested be since I am currently a classroom teacher. My favorite features of this Ning are the Featured Lessons and lesson plans. I also enjoyed reading some of the blogs written by teachers.

After several attemps I could not get this link to work. To get to the website, you will have to copy and paste this URL.
http://teacherlingo.com/

Ning can be used in education for social networking so the teachers and librarians do not infringe on the students’ MySpace or Facebook accounts. I could see this being used with older students who spend a lot of time on their computers anyway. Ning could be used for projects through the library or classroom. This would be a great tool for the teacher and librarian to use in collaboration for a specific teaching unit.

Thing # 21 - Podcast and Videocast

Creating this Photo Story was my first experience with a videocast. It took me a few tries before I could download it. I can see many ways that this could be used in my classroom. I plan to use Photo Story to make a presentation for my end-of-the-year awards ceremony with pictures of my students.

Thing # 20 - You Tube, Teacher Tube and Zamzar

Videos can really enhance learning. The following You Tube video titled Embedding You Tube Videos taught me to embed videos into my blog.



I could not get the Teacher Tube video that I liked embedded. Here is a You Tube Video to go with a lesson on plants.

Thing # 19 - Web 2.0 Awards List

There were so many choices to decide from for this assignment. After connecting to a few and not being able to connect to others, I chose to explore Live Maps. The link too me to Bing Maps. I really liked exploring the US National Parks link under Explore a Place. I can see how this website could be used with geography lessons. The website provides pictures and descriptions of the U.S. National Parks. It can give students a chance to visit many locations without leaving the library.
http://www.bing.com/maps/

Thing 18 - Online Productivity Tools

Google Docs is a free online tool that can be used instead of Microsoft Office Suite. I have found that Google Docs is a great tool to use for presentations. More than one person can be working on the same presentation from different locations. One disadvantage is that I could not figure out how to hyperlink to a picture.
Document can take the place of Word. I found that it does not have as many fonts as Microsoft Office Word.
Spreadsheet is comparable to Excel. I could not find a way to change the font using this tool.
Here is a You Tube Video explaining Google Docs. It is titled Google Docs in Plain English.

Thing # 17 - Rollyo

Using Rollyo was made a lot easier by the video linked in the discovery activity. I decided to create a place for my first graders to search American symbols. I found Rollyo to be user friendly but very slow. Here is my link:
http://rollyo.com/bmoore6/moore_1/

Thing # 16 - Wikis

Although I had heard the term Wiki before, I really wasn't familiar with them until this semester. Both of my college classes for this semester use a Wiki to which I have had to contribute information about myself. I became more familiar with Wikis when Cheryl and I chose to create a Wiki for our midterm presentation on the revolutionary period.

http://fifthgraderevolutionmidterm.wikispaces.com/

Thing # 15 - Library 2.0

I read all 5 perspectives on Library 2.0 and decided to comment on To a temporary place in time. I liked the definitions of libraries and the librarian stated in this perspective. To me library 2.0 means that school libraries are or should always be evolving and involving the patrons to meet the up-to-the-minute needs of the patrons.

Thing # 14 - Technorati and How Tags Work

Technorati had 23 listings under Blog Posts for School library Learning 2.0. There were 0 listings in the Blog Directory. I could not figure out how to do a search in Tags. Technorati did have a list of the most popular tags for the past month in an easy to use alphabetically organized listing. This feature can be useful when looking up what people have to say about current or popular, subject matter. Tagging can be a valuable tool in the way that it can save a lot of time when you are doing searches for websites that you have saved.
http://technorati.com/

Thing # 13 - Tagging and Discover Del.icio.us

After looking at the suggested social bookmarking sites for this assignment, I opened a Del.icio.us account. After registering with Delicious. It was easy to import my bookmarks that were already on my laptop. I can see that this will be an easy, organized way to save websites that I come across and want to save for later.
As a teacher and future librarian, I can see that this will be a good way to organize lesson plans, articles and websites to refer back to later. It can be used to guide students to websites that can help them with research or topics that are being taught in class. This is a tool that I will continue to use both personally and professionally.
http://delicious.com/

Thing # 12 - Creating Community Through Commenting

Being new to blogging, I have A LOT to learn. One point that I learned from the readings of this assignment is that bloggers usually like to have people comment on what they are blogging about. It lets them know that someone is interested in what they have to say. Another point that I learned about commenting is that the comments should be meaningful. This helps reinforce opinions.
Commenting on blogs gets easier after you do it a few times. I commented on the blogs of classmates and then went to the outside world.
I commented on a blog that my preacher has. I have known about this blog for over a year but until today, I had never bothered to look at it.
An Open Door Blog
I also commented on a blog that belongs to a first grade teacher in Virginia.
Elementary, My Dear, or Far From It

Thing # 11 - LibraryThing

LibraryThing is really easy to use. I chose some books from my bookshelves at home to add to my list. I can see how this would help me organize my class library. It could also help me keep track of which books I keep at home and at school.
I did check out some of the groups from LibraryThing. A couple of groups that I relate to are the Children's Fiction group and the Graduate Students group.

Thing # 10 - On-line Image Generator

http://bighugelabs.com/jigsaw.php

http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/create-duo.asp?cartoon=stuffed-smiley-face-toys_

This assignment was a lot of fun. I had a hard time deciding which items to post. I discovered that there a lot of tools for my students to use when working on projects.

These tools can be used in the library or classroom during many lessons. Teachers can create posters or cartoons to introduce a new topic in any subject. Students can create products to show what they are learning on any given topic.

Thing # 9 - Useful Library-Related Blogs...

Edublogs' awards was easy to use. I enjoyed reading some of the teachers' blogs and viewing some of the wikis.

The most difficult for me was Suprglu. My internet exployer could not display the webpage. (I will try again another day.)

I found Topix to be useful for finding news stories.

Thing # 8 - RSS and Google Reader

I found Google Reader easy to use. I like RSS and think it is helpful to have information in one spot. The hard thing for me was finding sites that I frequent to subscribe to. I do not go to many websites on a daily or even weekly basis.

I can see how this would save time if someone does go to websites frequently to check news and updates.

It can be beneficial to teachers and librarians to organize their favorite websites and save time catching up on news and articles.

Thing # 7 - Cool Google Tools

I was familiar with some of the things that Google had to offer, but a lot of these tools were new to me. The two tools that I took a closer look at were Google Earth and Google Calendar. Google Earth is a great tool to use in geography. I really liked playing around with the 3D Tours. I created a calendar for this class. Here is the link to my calendar:
http://www.google.com/calendar/render?gsessionid=zTFEJbFlPjznhHjfQYJoFw

Thing #6 - Mashups and 3rd Party Sites

While exploring Flickr and Flickr Mashups, I found several tools that could be used in the library. Mosaic Maker could be used to put pictures together to illustrate any given unit of study. I spent time playing with FD Toys. Using Calendar, students could be creative with pictures that go with studies. I really enjoyed playing around with Magazine Cover and made this cover with a picture from my daughter’s wedding.

Thing 5 - Flickr

I was impressed with all of the pictures available on Flickr. I will use it in my classroom. I found this beautiful picture of the Texas State Capital to use when teaching the Texas Unit. It was uploaded by cybertoad.

Thing 3 - Setting up blog and avatar

Creating the avatar was fun. I enjoyed looking at the outfits and backgrounds. The directions were easy to follow. After setting up my blog for this class, I clicked on my profile and a blog showed up that I had started for another class. I was surprised to see it show up. I had not posted on it in over a year.

Thing # 2: Life Long Learning

After learning about the 7 1/2 habits, I would have to say that I am most comfortable with Habit 1: Begin with end in mind. When I start something I want to know what goal I am working towards. The hardest for me is Habit 3: View problems as challenges. I tend to view problems as a crisis. I am going to work on changing this viewpoint.