summer learning 2.0

This has been a great course to introduce me to Web 2.0 tools!  I’m so thankful that I took it during the summer so I had time to explore and experiment with it.  I definitely will encourage others to take the class; it’s perfect because it’s all online!

I’ve tried to save all the websites we went to in my del.i.cious account so that I can (try to) pull them up at school.  A teacher has a project planned for September that would be great to use Flickr Creative Commons for, so I’m excited to be able to use something already!  At this point, I’m fearful that I will forget what I’ve learned, so I need to devise some method of remembering it.  Maybe printing off the checkoff sheet and keeping it at my desk?  Or, maybe just referring back to this blog?  I’m open to suggestions!

I’m liking Ning!  It did require some searching around to get the hang of it.  My searches for “media specialist,” and “library” didn’t turn up anything, but my search for “media” did.  I found a great discussion on What makes a student “media literate?” My coworker and I see every year that students do not know how to adequately assess the validity of a website, or any item online.  We really need to do a push this year to work with teachers to begin some real teaching of this concept.  The Ning discussion forum had some great ideas and additional links that I will go back and reread.

The Ning led me to a GREAT website, Media Awareness Network.  Yes, it is pushing its own products, but it has some great free stuff too.

One of my favorite blogs on my Google Reader throughout the entire summer has been Swiss Army Librarian, written by Brian Herzog.  Actually, the title is Swiss Army Librarian  or, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Fear and Loathing at a Public Library Reference Desk.  While Brian is a public librarian, many times he blogs about issues similar to the ones I face as a high school media specialist.

On July 30th, Swiss Army wrote about Tests for Hiring and Training.  He offered links to two documents, one used at a bookstore for hiring, and one used at his library as training for new employees.  I like them both and plan to answer them myself!  Additionally, with our media parapro’s hours in the media center being cut drastically, we are hoping to get some students to help us.  Hopefully, they will get credit for it.  These are great ideas that we could adapt for them.  Also, it would serve as great documentation of training if they are able to get credit.

I experimented with Pageflakes about a year ago and loved it, but this time around, I wasn’t quite so enthralled.  I’m not sure why…maybe I had more uninterrupted time to play around in it.  I thought I spent a lot of time last week searching for things to put in my Flake or figure out how to put them in there.  In the end, I decided to go with a Harlem Renaissancey theme.  I think this might be a cool thing for a teacher to create, let the students spend a period exploring the Flake, then write a reactionary paragraph/paper/blog/whatever in response.  I put in some links and some of the YouTube and TeacherTube videos I had downloaded on earlier assignments.  Just remembered that I need to include the podcast I did!  Now, just have to figure out how to do that!!

Oh, I am so liking Google Docs!  I was behind on my podcast assignment and probaly made more of it than it had to be, but I did a script for my podcast on the Harlem Renaissance.   I noticed that you could change the font, and justification but was disappointed that I could not indent.  I also explored the publication tool, which is similar to PowerPoint.

As for uses for GoogleDocs, they would be great for having a student type a paper, then adding a peer as a collaborator to edit the paper before turning in.  With the revision history, a teacher could see at any time who was working and what they did.  The teacher could provide comments and feedback electronically.  This would be a great tool for submitting a rough draft of a document, teacher provides comments, the student edits it, downloads into word, prints and submits the final copy.

The publication tool would be perfect for a group powerpoint project.  Each student easily works on their own slides, yet it is all one document.  No longer can a student say that they can’t work on their part because their partner has the jump drive and is absent!

The survey would be a great way to get feedback from peers.  Last year our AP Statistics students had to do a paper survey that turned out to be such a disaster.  This might be an option….have each participant enter their answers on the form and submit.  Done!

The possiblities are endless!

I explored the Harlem Renaissance in both YouTube and TeacherTube.  I found YouTube easier to explore and get the results I wanted, at least faster than TeacherTube videos.  However, I do appreciate that TeacherTube has content other than videos, such as documents, audio, and photos.   Of all the videos I viewed, my favorite was a student created work on TeacherTube, titled “Harlem” by Langston Hughes.  This is a perfect example of differentiated instruction, and a choice for a project.  A creative, artistic student would love doing a project such as this!

I plan to visit department meetings several times during the year (they would shoot me if I came every month!) to present ideas to incorporate technology into education.  This is a great introduction to project ideas for students, but also for teachers to introduce a concept.  Just last year, we searched for Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” and it was available on YouTube!  I would love to see (and be very willing to help) teachers create something like this for their own class!  Just this week, a teacher asked about how to either record or video her class to post online in the event that students needing review could have something easily accessible.

I just realized that this post had been saved as a draft and never published.  Yikes!

Creative Commons seems like the best thing since sliced bread!  I must confess that I don’t remember seeing it before; however, I will be much more observant in the future.

Hopefully Creative Commons will change the way that our students (and teachers) approach projects, after they are shown how to use the database…..is it a database? website?  Unfortunately, many of our students and teachers have the “it will never happen to me” attitude about copyright infringement.  I’m thinking that a link on our media center webpage will help a lot with reminding them to go there first before Google Images, as well as some posters, and gentle reminders.

Negatives for Creative Commons are that the website may be blocked, and students/faculty may not be able to find what they want (images).  The blocking can be remedied with a phone call or work order to Technology.  The answer to someone not finding what they need may be to sit down with them to suggest databases to search in, or sometimes I end up asking a student to come back later while I search on my own, then have them get back on the computer, and I show them where I found the information.

Definitely a new trick to have up my sleeve when school starts!

Podcasting is a wonderful addition to our educational toolkit.   I think that students will give more creditability to a teacher who creates or incorporates a podcast into the class.  As a colleague said just last night, if a teacher stands up in front of the class day after day with only a dry erase marker and an overhead projector, students will tune out.

I previewed several podcasts from Skip the Tuition:  100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World, Grammar Girl, and First Amendment Minute.  Several of them took forever to load, or loaded then took forever to start, and I got frustrated and clicked out of them.  I do like Grammar Girl and First Amendment Minute as they were quick to load, short, sweet, and to the point:  perfect for classroom use.  As always, this points to the issue of teachers previewing materials before use so they know exactly what they are dealing with.

I am excited that we are learning about this.  A teacher approached me on Friday and asked if I had any ideas or suggestions on how she could record or video lessons for students to use later on.  I’m really going to push the wiki this year at my school.  I’m thinking that she could do a wiki, and upload the podcast or videocast to the wiki for students to listen to at home.

• Skip the Tuition: 100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World

I’m all about LibraryThing!  I anticipate avid teen readers to enjoy setting up their own LibraryThing account and join a group to discuss their favorites.  Mmmmm….maybe a neat thing to try with a bookclub I’ve been talking about starting for a year….

Two areas of LibraryThing that I KNOW I will use:  the Suggester and coverview to create a photomosaic.  So many times a student says “I really enjoyed this book, can you suggest something else?”  Just this past year we discovered Book Index with Reviews, a database through Galileo; however, LibraryThing is much more user friendly.

I’ve been fascinated with photomosaics for a few months, especially those made from book covers, but couldn’t figure out how they were made.  A photomosaic is a photo of someone, but the picture is actually many many tiny photographs.  From a distance, one can’t tell that it is photos, only when you get up really closely.  This picture of David Louis Edelman is a great example of a photomosaic from book covers, and the accompanying blog gives instructions, or at least seems to get us started!  The time consuming part is adding your own library of books in order to create the photo!  I’ve thought that this would make a cool avatar for various 2.0 sites!

Another cool tool for my toolkit, just hoping that it will be accessible from school!

I do like the idea of being able to access bookmarks from any computer; however, I’m curious if I will be able to access Delicious from school!  I’m headed over there this afternoon and will give it a try!  So many good things are blocked.  Does anyone else feel that they need a portable brick wall to beat your head against at school???

I did get a little overwhelmed at first with Delicious.  Somehow I imported all my bookmarks immediately, then had to go back through all 90+ as they were untagged!  I’m still showing them all tagged with Bookmark Menu, and several as Bookmark Toolbar.  Do I delete these tags?  What does this mean?  Right now, I have most sites marked “private.”  I’m still a little wary of strangers peeking into my life, or that is what it seems like!  As always, it would have been better to read the directions and go step-by-step instead of trying a shortcut.

I did try the subscriptions for gothic+literature and poetry+shakespeare, but neither one has any bookmarks yet!  I added Jerrie to my network, but I’m concerned about adding too many of the experts as I’m still overwhelmed!

Here’s the link to my delicious links:  http://delicious.com/shsmediamaven