July 18: Accio Deathly Hallows

ITEM 23!!!!!

Thank you, CSLA, for this exercise. Indeed, this has been a voyage of discovery for me since I have been to sites I have not heard of before or have heard about but had no real reason or incentive to try them out. Following your directions has taken me to these sites and given me goals to achieve with them. Previously I have been hesitant to log onto new sites and download things because I believed each new connection created cookies on my computer slowing it down. Consequently I never explored very much. Either that isn't so much a concern any more or I have a better computer than I thought (thanks to my husband).
I really appreciated learning about Zoho and Library Thing. I had never heard about these before and I can't wait to share them at school. I will definitely keep my own account with Library Thing. It will be fun to try and remember all the books I've read. The Learning 2.0 Sandbox wiki will be added to my school favorites list and I promise to add any projects that might inspire others.
The other sites I have learned about will sit in the back of my mind waiting for an opportunity to pop out and be shared as a teaching tool.
I hope I will have an opportunity to help a teacher or department set up a wiki and maintain it for them.
I will also add more links to ebooks on our OPAC and find a way to make the students more aware of them. I want to track down the hand held readers and see if we can incorporate them in our program.
Since I have not been committed to a learning project for quite some time, it was fun buckling down, following a syllabus, and completing exercises. The format was well laid out and I appreciated the flexiblity to start when I was able to and proceed at my own speed. The only pressure to finish was from myself and I am proud I followed it through to the end. I now have the confidence to pursue more classes. I would jump at the opportunity for more learning from CSLA!

Like Mikey in the old cereal commercial - I tried it and I liked it!

Item 22

As mentioned in one of my previous posts, I created links in my school's OPAC to all of Shakespeare's plays. The copies on our shelves were old and yucky looking. I also wanted to see if our students would use them at home. I used the MIT site, The Tech, since I felt the pages were easiest to read. I am a big fan of books on tape, but I don't know if I could sit in one position anchored to my desk and read a book on line. Since I don't have a laptop, I couldn't take it outside with me or to my favorite reading place, my bathtub. I had an opportunity to try a handheld reader which was OK but I would hesitate brining it in the tub with me. I liked how one could choose font size making it ideal for students with impaired vision. I'll have to try them again.

Item 21

My daughter attends one of the New Technology high schools and I could definitely see daily podcasts at a site like that. They could produce a tech tip of the day that would be fast to produce. I wonder if public libraries could post podcasts with excerpts from audiobooks to promote new arrivals.

Week 9, Item 20

Time is ticking down to the release of the Harry Potter movie and book, so I posted a trailer of the movie. Looking around YouTube showed me there are many talented people out there. Besides the trailers for the movies, there were some very funny puppet videos people made to satirise the series. Since these videos are such hogs with band width, our students are discouraged from watching any videos that aren't school related. They are allowed to access videos that are curriculum related only. The video called "influential/favorite books" had a very eclectic collection of books. It was fun watching while wondering how these books have influenced the video's creator.

harry potter and the order of the phoenix trailer HQ

Week 8, Item 19

Library Thing is lots of fun and I can see this coming up on every school library's website! I have added a widget to my blog page with no difficulty. Our school uses School Center to manage web pages. I hope that it accepts Library Thing.

Wk 8, T18

OOOOH! Finally a solution to the problem that has been plaguing our students since the advent of computers. Hardly a day goes by that a student needs to print something they have saved on a disk or emailed to themselves and they can't open it at school. Yes, I have fliers and posters about Rich Text Format but here is another tool that we can introduce to them! And to be able to create spread sheets and presentations, too! Sweet!!!
This post was generated with Zoho writer and was posted by their site. I added this comment with the blog editor.

Thing #17

The Learning 2.0 Sandbox wiki will be a fabulous site when more ideas are posted. I added Idea #5 to the blog page about students starting their own blogs to post comments about books they have read. I think it would be so cool if they started a blog when they are freshmen and add throughout high school. It would take an amazing committment from the teachers (across the curriculum) to support this, though, for four years!

Thing #16

From my point of view, it seems that trying to keep up with Web 2.0 is like trying to keep abreast if not ahead of our students. It's good business to upgrade and make our library more like the virtual realities so many of our students seem to exist in now. By adopting and adapting features they find attractive and entertaining, we can create useful features for them and keep the library a resource that they will use.

Week 6, #14

Technorati is very interesting. I can imagine it would be extremely valuable to reach people with interests similar to yours.
The aspect of tags that worries me is that you can add tag words which have nothing to do with your site which may attract more hits but would frustrate people. For instance, this blog is primarily a teaching tool so I can explore and experiment with many new applications. If I added the names of these applications to my tags, others seeking specific information would waste time visiting my site and wading through the posts.

Week 6, #13

The most important aspect of this feature, is that I can save all my favorites and not worry about losing them when a computer is upgraded. It would also be wonderful to be able to add links from home as well as work. This will be a fun thing to set up when I get back to work.

Thing #12

This would be a very powerful tool to put on our library's website. I can see creating searchrolls for different projects. This would help students who have difficulty searching because of language difficulties or if they are easily distracted when trying to search with Google.

Thing #11

I can see how the Internet can become addicting. I went to the awards site and scrolled through the award winners. I opened Digg then clicked on the item featuring Times 25 best sites then....
It brought to mind a television commercial showing a guy sitting in front of the computer celebrating the fact that he finished the Internet. There's so much that's interconnected you could spend all day clicking on links and never visit the same site twice!
I visited the Ning site and I could definitely see setting up a teen book club on it.

Thing #10

It's truly amazing what people can design! It makes me wonder if my son will ever be able to write a program and profit from it.

Thing #8 & #9

RSS is a fun feature to play with. I made one with Google Reader and put it in a prominent spot on my personal Google page which I have had for several months. I put some fun sites like Onion and book reviews from the NYT. I also added Readers' Club Latest and Unshelved.
I can see how it would be fun to set an RSS up for various projects such as natural disasters and provide links to news services and science publications for the latest information.

Thing #7

This past year, I investigated using ebooks in our library. I started by putting links to all of Shakespeare's plays in our catalogue. I don't know if any students have used it yet but it was one of those challenges that I enjoy tackling. I found a site that featured only Shakespeare since others like Project Gutenberg had many books that would not be considered appropriate for a high school and I also liked the layout of the pages better. I will probably add other books that are in the public domain that are used in our curriculum next year.
I have a hand-me-down Ipod I should play with. It has some music already on it but I should try to learn how to load my own choices and investigate downloading ebooks from our county library.

Week #3, Thing #6

It's exercises like this that make me feel old. I'm sure many young people could fly through these apps and find something to do. I wanted to make a world map and attach the pictures of book covers to locations where the books took place but I couldn't get it to work. I finally found an application that allowed me to use the picture I took in my library in the header. When I go back to the library, I'll take different pictures to get a better banner, but I like the effect.

I've been thinking about the 7 1/2 steps and I think the hardest one for me is #4, having confidence in myself as a competent, effective learner. It's been so long since I've had to really buckle down and study something I don't know if I have the concentration level I had in college some decades ago. I do welcome problems as challenges. I'm not happy unless I have a new project to work on, particularly if I have to do a little studying to make it work.

Thing #4 & #5

I'm all registered which is added committment to completing the course. And I already have a comment from the 2.0 team. Thanks guys!

My daughter and I went to school to take a picture of the library. If you look closely, that's her behind the Harry Potter book.

Flickr is pretty amazing. I did a search for pictures of the Virgin Islands and found some beautiful shots people have taken of my childhood home. I'm heading back to that site now to play some more.

Thing #3

Designing my avatar was fun once I figured out how to work the site. My daughter was watching over my shoulder and helped me by showing how to have more than one site available on Firefox. It was a little tedious trying to go from one page to another. The penguins, by the way, are the mascots for my daughter's school.

I know I am starting late. My last day at work was Wednesday and I now have some catching up to do.

Week #1

I find myself feeling quite self concious writing here and knowing that (hopefully) many others will read this. So the exercise for me is not only creating a blog but putting myself "out there". Speaking in front of others has not been a problem for me, so writing in front of others shouldn't be either. The plus side of writing over speaking is that my audience won't hear any hesitations and I can back up and correct things before anyone reads them.