Thing 23

1. My favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey were image generators, photostory and googledocs.
   
2. This program assisted and affected my lifelong learning goals because it has opened my eyes to many different ways I can teach my students how to broaden their horizons. With Library 2.0 the classroom is not contained in four walls. It is everywhere!
   
3. The take-a-ways from this program that surprised me were when were learning about Podcasts. I thought to myself, I am never going to be able to figure this out, and when I do I will never use it! I learned that Photostory is so easy and I can use it in my classroom!
4. To improve upon this program’s format or concept I think I would go through things 1-4 with the students in class. I know it is old fashioned... but I spent more time on my darn avatar than anything else. I think I just needed some support in getting started. I loved it once I got going and I appreciated that I didn't need to be in class to do it! The freedom of doing it online at my convenience was awesome!
   
5. If another discovery program was offered like this in the future, I would choose to participate. This has helped me become a better educator and has introduced some fun new things to play with in my personal life!
   
6. Innovative!
   

Thing 22

Nings could be great in the classroom. It is a social networking service and they are attractive to students. So you already have the kid's attention - now you just need to get a topic that you want them to network about. Another good use for a Ning would be to collaborate amongst the teachers in your district. You could even collaborate with teachers in the state, the country, and the world! It said in one of the articles that Ning is competing against Facebook and My Space... I doubt that it will ever get that big. However I never thought Facebook would get as big as it did!

Thing 21

Yay! Photostory is so easy! I created this small vidcast with pictures and music I already had saved on my computer. I can use this in my personal life and in my classroom. My students could create videos and/or book reports. The possibilities are endless!

Thing 20

Having educational videos have been very helpful to me while completing my 23 Things. I am a very visual person and have benefited tremendously from them. My students will also benefit from the videos because they will provide another style ( visual and auditory and could be kinesthetic) of learning from Gardner's 7 styles of learning. TeacherTube is usually not blocked by the district's firewall and can be very helpful in the classroom and the library. I uploaded this video from TeacherTube about the main idea!

Thing 19

I read through many of the 2.0 tools, but I chose to blog about UrbanSpoon under the food category. I can use this tool in my personal and professional life. I love food and I like that UrbanSpoon allows me to search for food by neighborhood. This allows me to find restaurants that are close to me. One way I can use this in my classroom is I can have students look up restaurants and then create maps on how to get there. This will be integrating real life skills, students need to know how to access information and how to get places. Best of all we get to talk about food!

Thing 18

I love GoogleDocs! In life - with work and school and personal affairs - I sometimes can't remember where I have saved things. Also I may not have my USB with me at one of the places I am - and then cannot access my information when I want to work on it. I plan to use this while working on my final project. It also has a calendar to help keep me organized! For now I have not found any disadvantages!

Thing 17

At first I was overwhelmed with rollyo. Then I watched the video from the teacher in Spring Branch. He did an excellent job of explaining what rollyo is used for and how it is helpful to our students. Using rollyo saves the time of the reader and provides students with authoratative, safe sites. I created a rollyo for the rain forest, which is a project we will be doing in our class. Check it out: http://rollyo.com/adrienne/rain_forest/

Thing 16

Wikkis are great! They allow a group of people to access and change information. In my school we are using Wikis in my school to log benchmark data. I could use Wikis in my classroom to have students research a different parts of the regions of Texas. Each student would have a section and they could add or change information to what was already listed until they complied a list or group of notes that answered the questions. This is a great way to incorporate group into technology.

Thing 15

I read several of the articles about the Library 2.0. The one I want to discuss is "Moving Away From Iceburgs". I agree with the author that librarians are working hard trying to provide our students with what they need to excel in the tech world. However working hard does not always mean we are working smart. The library profession certainly does need to make a shift change - a redirection of principles and mission statements. We must do this to keep up with our students. There is one thing that I am scared to change - and the author said we (librarians) would be. I am scared to order less books and other print materials. I think we need to put books in the hands of children - especially elementary school children. This change will be a hard one for me to achieve.

Thing 14

Flickr is great because the tags are concise and helpful. I did not find the tags in Technorati as helpful. However it organizes blogs, videos, and more into subject area by using tags. It is a helpful site for organization, for some people. However there is a lot of information to be had. Technorati was not helpful for me right now in my life. Perhaps one day I will see its use but for now I will stick with other search methods.

Thing 13

The Del.icio.us website was very interesting to explore! I thought it was a great idea to be able to access your "favorites" from many different computers! The most beneficial part of the bookmark site is that the teachers can share their sites with each other. This is potentially a huge time saver! Teachers and librarians are very busy people - using this bookmarking site will save time and unnecessary work. This can absolutely be used as research tool!

Thing 12

Two points that I found important in the readings about blogs were: 1. Read what you write - it is important to understand what the post is asking before you post a response. It makes the author look ignorant if they answer something that has not been asked or if they are off base. 2. Use humor in your blog postings. People come to your blog for information. They are more likely to come back if they are enjoying what they are reading.

I made a post on Kathy Schrock's blog on Wii Sports. I became interested in her blog because I know that she has a lot of sound information to offer concerning the education world. I also posted on the Blue Skunk Blog. It was a very comical blog on the president -elect's speech patterns :)

Thing 11 LibraryThing

While searching LibraryThing I became very excited because I thought it was an easy way to be part of a book club for the very busy person. I am interested in reading and learning about what people that are like me like to read - however I am involved in many activities and simply do not have time to join another activity. By subscribing to library thing I can be a part of a book club from home! - and have a vast amount of information right at hand!

The groups were plentiful - ranging from Harry Potter to "I See Dead People's Books"... However once inside the groups I find the responses and questions to be very confusing. These people have been conversing together for a long time.

Thing 10

I searched lots of image generators. I enjoyed looking through this image generators, it helped to add some fun to my 23 things!
The first one I looked at was:

http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/ - I hated this one! I was excited to use this but it wouldn't load my pictures and wasn't user friendly.

The one I liked was http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php - I created a trading card displaying a picture of me after my marathon.


I will use trading cards in my library to do character analysis lessons.

Thing 9

• Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use? The easiest way that I found feeds was to look at feeds that were respected or given to me through this assignment. Then I was able to look through them and find what blogs they suggested.
  



• Which Search tool was the easiest for you? I thought using googlereader and then using the blog search was the easiest way for me to find blogs besides looking at other blogs that I respected.
  



• Which was more confusing? It was confusing to me to have to look through all the blogs to find information that was useful to me. Really I wasn't confused - just overwhelmed with information.
  


• What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find? I liked Kathy Schrock's blogs she is very helpful in elementary education in many aspects of the profession.
  



• What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds? I looked through the newsfeeds given on Library2Play. I think using these will give me a good start to start to getting information!
  

Thing 8

YAY RSS - quick and easy info! I added five new RSS links to my e-mail address. This news reader will alert me to new blogs on topics that are of interest to me in my profession.

• I like that RSS and newsreaders is that they save the time of the reader - one of Ranganathan's Five Laws! I can use this at school and in the library by teaching my students how to use it- therefore giving them quick, effective, and authoritative resources.
  

Thing 7 google tools

GoogleNotebook - is used to help students research topics. While they are searching topics they can click add to google notebook and the notebook will store their information and they will be able to copy and paste the url where they found the information - which will help them in citing sources.
igoogle - On i google I was able to create my own homepage that had links to topics of my interest. This is a wonderful way for children to indivdualize learning by letting them have information on their that interests them. Google Alert is also very good for this. A way you could use this in your classroom is you could have a each student reseach a current event. Using google alerts you would help the student access information.

Yay! google! I learned a lot today that I will use in my personal technology uses and in my professional uses.

Thing 6

I loved exploring the mashups. I learned what I am going to give as stocking stuffers this year! The two applications used to in FD Toy's is Big Huge Lab and Flickr pictures. The thing that interested me the most on FD Toy's was the motivational poster maker. I loved using my own pictures and quotes to create posters. I can use this for personal uses as well as professional uses. In my library my students could research famous people and then create posters for them, using descriptive quotes. This could also be used in a character analysis reading lesson. Loved it!

Thing 5

Flikr has lots of pictures that can be downloaded for free or you can pay a fee to get more freedom within the site. This picture depicts battles in Texas history. The picture was found on Flickr, the photo sharing website in the creative commons folder and was taken Bill and Mavis.

one hot lady!

Yippee! My avatar is up!

Avatar

Setting up my blog and picking my avatar was easy! I enjoyed finding the right lady for me! However I still can not get her to show up on my blog! I will keep trying and use my resources for help! On to Thing 4! Hopefully next time my little lady will appear!

Lifelong learning and 7 1/2 Habits

To be an effective teacher one must know how to instill the desire of lifelong learning into his/her students. To be able to instill that desire the teacher himself must have it. Covey outlines the 7 1/2 habits of lifelong learners and sheds some light on how to be one. Of the 71/2 habits the hardest one for me is confidence. Sometimes I get anxious about a task at hand but once I get involved in the project I find that I am successful. I wish my confidence was higher when approaching new projects, however I never let that factor keep me from trying new things! The easiest habit for me is setting goals and figuring out what I need to do reach my goals!