My practice Glogster poster

Check out my Glogster poster (click on poster image to see it full size)

The end or the beginning?

For me, it is the end of a long journey..but a good journey. My favorite exercises were Animoto..that was fun to play with and I can see me using that again. I really enjoyed creating my Avatar and even showed my daughter how to create one for herself. She really got into it and changes it with the holidays and seasons. I like that I can still show her one or two things on the computer that she doesn't already know because I know those days will be ending soon! And I like Flickr and the millions of photos that it contains. I used that just this week with a project for church where I needed pictures of Chile. Immediately I went to Flickr and had only 300,00 or so to look through and select from. VERY COOL!

The biggest take away for me was the Blogreader and the RSS feeds that send the information I want to my reader so I can go check it when I'm ready. I REALLY enjoy that and look forward to adding more feeds as I come across them. It's now part of my morning routine each day.

The only thing you might modify if you were doing it again would be to provide time to work together more often. Maybe once a month? And it could be optional if participants wanted and needed the help they could attend or if they were doing ok on their own, they could continue to work independently.

If another program like this was offered, I would certainly want to participate because even though it wasn't easy for me, I learned a LOT and enjoyed being stretched and sent out of my comfort zone a little bit. Plus, just because I don't plan to use MySpace doesn't mean I can stick my head in the sand and pretend it isn't out there. And now I can at least understand the language and "lingo" when others are talking about it.

I'm still not sure which of all of these I could and or will use in my library. I'm the type of learner that retains things better when I learn them at point of need rather than learn them and forget them. However, it is nice to have these sites, skills and terms in my head so when ideas where they would fit come along, I can revisit this blog and attempt to make them work at that time. Right now I think these will benefit me most personally, but the more I play and get familiar with them, the easier it will be to see the uses for the library and plug them in. Thanks MW for piloting us on this journey. Now, SHOW ME THE IPOD! :)

Thing #23

The final THING to do! I was totally unaware of Creative Commons but think the idea is long overdue! There are people who create things that they want others to share, but still want some ownership credit, and this provides just that. I think this might also be a good idea for those things that people make and they know even if they limit copyright, people are going to copy it anyway. Like every Peggy Sharp workshop we go to, she says you can make copies of her booklet for others because she knows even if she says no, people will do it anyway. This creative commons license would be perfect for her. In looking at other blog entries on Creative Commons, Knightlyne suggested allowing kids to use Flickr images to create a slide show about a book and I loved that idea. I'm glad to know people are realizing that copying is the sincerest form of flattery...and now have a way to allow people to copy their work, modify it to meet their needs and keep it legal! My only question now, is how to find such works.....

Thing #20

I loved playing around on You Tube! Now I know where people get those funny video clips they send around in email all the time. This is one of my favorite musicals...so I thought I would use it as my clip. There was a funny Sesame Street clip of Cookie Monster in the library too...but didn't want to double my work and post both! So you can check it out with the link I've provided rather than me embedding it. (I sound so much more knowledgeable than I feel!) I like that you can find a short video on almost anything and could use it to introduce topics with kids. A 3rd grade teacher and I tried and tried to do this for her earlier this year, but the district filters kept preventing us from getting to it..or at least that was our conclusion. But, since I've now had more experience with You Tube...we may try it again. I suppose I could use a clip on my library website instead of a picture on the homepage, but it would have to be something really appropriate and good...maybe create our own clip of kids in our library? I do like that you can keep videos private or make them public if you upload your own. However, as with all the other sites, people's comments are uncensored and therefore you may stumble across rude or inappropriate comments even if the video clip is OK. So, as with all things Internet, you have to monitor, monitor, monitor.

Thing # 22

This was a really cool thing to play with! I see lots of uses on campus...possibly for our 6th grade end of year slide show. I usually end up with that job..so I might have to join for the larger account and longer show. I really liked how easy it was to put in my pictures, though I wish I had better pictures on my school computer to use. I just used some of the music in the Animoto library, but would like to try it later and add my own. I did have trouble getting back to the right screen to allow me to put it into my blog easily. Once Meg helped me navigate back to that screen, it was a very easy process. I can't wait to play with this one some more!

Thing #21

Podcasting...boy was I surprised to learn you don't have to have an iPod for this! I heard that at our workshop that one Staff Development afternoon...but was glad to hear it said over and over so maybe it will sink in. I love the PodGrunt video explanation, and the other video tutorials we have had for these assignment. That is really helpful for me. So , once I had watched that, I tried Educational Podcast Directory...and was surprised at what was there. I clicked a few categories and a few podcasts...and some of the discriptions were rather inappropriate ( "Keith and girlfried discuss sh**) and agian makes me not want to turn my students loose on the web searching for podcasts. I didn't find anything of value there so I tried, Podcast.net...and the website "could not be found". Ok. Moved on to Podcastalley.com and the podcast I clicked on there wouldn't come up. So, I tried Yahoo Podcasts...and typed in Henry Winkler since we just were able to meet him and listen to him talk about his Hank Zipzer books on Wednesday this week. I found 4 podcasts, 2 were him reading from his books, one was Henry Winkler on Budget Deficits in American History(doesn't that sound fascinating!) and one was just titled Henry Winkler is a god. So, obviously I listened to the first two and though that would be fun way to introduce a book to the kids. Letting them hear the author read part of it is always a nice change. Then I wondered if Teaching Books had these podcasts on their site. So I searched Henry Winkler there...and they did have the same audio clips and even one other. That is really the only way I see using podcasts right now...and TeachingBooks is sure easier to use than the other podcast search sites in my opinion. I didn't find any I wanted to subscribe to, but will watch for some over the next few months as I search the Internet for different things. Maybe a good one will come along.

Thing #19

Before I attempted this exercise...I checked out some other blog posts on these sites to see what others thought about them and what they created with them. Once I discovered that most people had used Gliffy for flowcharts and Bubbl.us for mind maps, I decided to be different and try out the others. So, I looked at Flowchart.com where I thought they had a very good tutorial to watch that explained the how easy it is to use the site and many of the benefits. I did not sign up for an account because I'm not a big flowchart user, but I LOVED that you can create a flowchart, then send it to a friend and work on it together in a split screen form to make changes. Plus the chat feature as you make changes was really smart. I do wonder how it would work if you were editing a flowchart that was made earlier, and were not working together on it in real time. They are doing beta testing so you have to enter your email to get an invite to sign up...since that means nothing to me, and I have so many accounts all over the place already, I did not sign up. I was very impressed with the site and will go back when I need a flow chart for something.

I also checked out Mindmeister instead of Bubbl.us for mind mapping or brainstorming. They didn't have as much of a tutorial as Flowchart.com but they had a live demo where I could click and drag on the items they had already placed on the map, and it was super easy to manipulate. In the tools section, there was a button that would let you work on your mind map offline when you didn't have Internet access, then with the click of that button, your changes would automatically be linked back to the website. Pretty cool! And nice that you can still work on it without being online...I really like that option.

Overall, I tend to think these are great to know about, but I would probably not use them much. When we brainstorm at school, we can use Inspiration easily and without worrying if the wireless Internet wants to cooperate that day and that time. I don't use flowcharts much...but both of these sites are worth knowing about and being able to go back to if an occasion arises where I could see a good use for them.