THING 23 I'm done---HALLELEJAH

HALLELUJAH-----I'm done, I'm done, I'm done.

1. Favorites. There were several: I liked photo story even though I had trouble with it. I think the kids would really like working with this. I liked google docs because I could see how much the kids would use this to share info when working on group projects. Out of the awards list, I liked the biblio.com site because I know I will use this to find out of print books. I have several IB teachers that always want these hard to find books. I like wiki's because of the many ways that students and teachers could collaborate. I loved the image generator and I have already shared this idea with several teachers. I like rollyo because I can use this to create lists of websites when teaching my research units.
2. I love to learn new things. My mother always told me that I would make a good career student. I did learn so much from this experience and had fun too.
3. I was surprised about how much was out there to learn. Who knew that there was so many web 2.0 things to go through. I was also surprised that I could do all of it. At times I was frustrated because it seemed overwhelming but I just took it one thing at a time. (just what we tell our students to do)
4. I liked the program format. I really liked that I could do this on my own timing.
5. I would do this again. It was a challenge and fun at the same time. I will probably do it all over again this summer for more hours.
6. I really did have a good time. One word---FUN

THING 22 Ning a ling

Ok--just plain nings. I learned that they are a social networking tool. I really was aware of these things, I just didn't know that nings was the name. I have 2 boys and a daughter-in-law so I have seen their my space and facebook pages a lot. I found that it really is a good way to talk to my one son who can spend hours showing me "things" on his page and on others. I have learned a lot just from watching him. Both of those sites are very interesting because you can find out alot of information.

I did search High School Teacher Librarians and zeroed in on the group section. I found one for librarians that are in the IB program. This group could be very helpful to me as IB schools are rare. There are only 4 in Houston. I also loked at the Texas School Librarians. I was surprised to see Vaughn Branom and Dr. Bishop as members. I did join. I saw something interesting on book trailers and could see a use for those but alas----it is youtube which is blocked!!!

THING 21 Podcasts and Audio Books

I did it-----I had my doubts. I created a photo story about dictators. It is very crude attempt, but it is done. I chose dictators because my IB European history teacher does a unit on dictators. I admit that my LA sis did come down to my office and showed me how to do it, but when I got home and started on my own it became a little harder. I had trouble getting the microphone to work so it doesn't sound very good. Also I couldn't get a blank screen to come up so that I could type the opening. I will had to ask my sis what I did wrong.

Also I did look at audacity and played around on it a little bit. I was so surprised about all of the languages that were listed at the bottom. Who would have thought that Basque would be listed.

OK----I have had a problem adding the photo story. I will try again later.

THING 20 Explore You Tube and Teacher Tube

I did not know that you tube was create by 3 former pay pal employees. Google bought it for 1.65 billion--yes B is for billion. This site is so popular that more than 100 million videos are watched every day. I was aware of you tube and I have watched a few of them but I had never surfed around on the site. I searched libraries and looked at a couple but it was overwhelming so I went to teacher tube. I saw a great video on 21 century computing. I also saw " A New Way to Publish- the Rise of Web 2.0: It pointed out that learning was moving beyond the classroom. Children can learn from places all over the world. I looked up world history and saw lots of great stuff I can share with my teachers. Then I started looking up other areas ans was so surprised by the sheer number of videos out there. My teachers will love it.

THING 19 Web 2.0 Awards List

I really like going through all of these awards but again you can get lost in them and time passes without you even being aware. I went through alot of them but I found a few that I really liked.

Biblio.com is a great site that lets you look for books that are out of print and then gives you a source to buy from. I have a couple of history teachers that are always asking me for books that are out of print but they still think that the books are essential for research for their course. they will be thrilled that I found this site.

Furl is a social networking site that allows you to share and explore people's favorite sites that they have bookmarked. You can search through the the site. I search books and found over 51,000 sites. I think I should have narrowed the search.

Writeboard is similar to Google docs. It is a sharing site that is web based. It lets you save every edit, go back to any piece, and compare changes. This site has tools that let you edit, export as plain text or an e-mail. You can invite as many people as you want to collaborate on a writeboard.

Wet Paint is a free wiki website. It is easy to add content ans has an easy edit tool bar. It works like a word processor. You can even add photos, and you tube videos. I liked the idea of a school PTO using this site to keep people up to date on what is happening at the school. It could share fund raising plans and events. It could post meetings, create volunteer sign up, post photos, and have attachments for all forms such as membership. Also school clubs could use this same idea.

THING 18 On line Productivity Tools

Open Office was frustrating to work with. It took so long to download and then I had trouble with it. It took 3 tries to get it to work right. But once it was done I could see that it could be a good thing. The great thing about it is that it is free to use. Which could be a great thing to people that can't afford the price for Microsoft office. The program has about the same stuff as microsoft and I found it easy to use. One of the tools is Impress which will let you use 2D and 3D clip art, special effects,and animation. It also has easy to use drawing and diagramming tools. Draw allows you to communicate with graphics and diagrams. I really like the old appleworks when I used their draw program so maybe this will take its place. Of course it has a writing tool as well as spreadsheets like excel, and presentations like power point. Information can be transferred between all of the 5 office products.

Goggle docs is a great place for students to save work. They could then have access to a file similar to their norway folder. This way they could access their work from home and would not have to save to a flash drive. Another good thing about is tool is other students can share and work on the same document. You can also publish your work online as a web page. This is just one of the many things that Google has to offer. They truly will rule the world some day.

THING 17 SANDBOX WIKI

When I was a little girl you could always find me outside playing. I had a sandbox and loved building cities and digging to China. This learning 2.0 sandbox is a different kind of playown the sandbox you can leave comments either on your own or respond to someone else's ideas This way you could build upon any type of sharing. It is fun and the kids and adults would enjoy using it. I did get a little frustrated when Itried to link to a couple of pages. I still am not sure that it worked.

THING 16 Wiki Wiki

Wiki's are a great way for people to collaborate. The name comes from a Hawaiian phrase, wiki wiki, which indicates something fast. Everyone on the planet should be familiar with Wikipedia which was my first exposure to a wiki. All the kids at school talk about going to wikipedia first even though I try to tell them that sometimes the information may be changed.
I like the "you tube" video that made it real easy to understand the concept. The video is called "Wikis in plain English" This shows a video that uses a camp out as an example of how a wiki works. It is cute and easy to understand. I would use this video as an intro for my teachers.
I looked at several of the examples of library wikis that I thought were useful. One of the best ones was "Must Have Graphic Novels Secondary" that came from the teacherlibrarianwiki
FrontPage site. It is a great place to get ideas on what graphic novels people are talking about.
This site has lots of places you can go for help with selection. Another site that I thought was unbelievable is "Library Success: a Best Practices Wiki" It has any and everything in it that a librarian could ever need. It has such things as reader's advisory, reference service,
selling your library, management and leadership, materials, selection, training, technology, and even information sharing.
There were several examples of how a wiki could be used in the classroom that I liked. Teachers could really get great ideas from these sites:

Sample School Wiki
Sample Literary Circle Wiki
Sample AP World History