THING 11.5 Evaluation

Time to pack up from my beach trip and go back to work. It was fun to work on the 11.5 web lessons this summer. I enjoyed being able to work from home or on my trips using the computer.

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

I liked several of the sites and will share them with my school. I liked wordle and wordshift because they are great ways to share new vocabulary. Glogster is a great way to have kids do on-line posters which they will love. Animoto allows kids to make videos from pictures. Skype I already knew about and have used. My family uses it to talk to our kids that live in Kentucky. I think teachers will love to use sites like Hulu, PBS video, and National Archives Video Collections.

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

I think that there are so many things to learn and so little time to explore everything new that comes out. I was amazed at the number of things out there that is avilable to all of us. I was so glad that I was able to do the 11.5 things because someone else did the searching for me on the new technologies out there. I think that being able to learn in this manner is great.

3. were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I thought second life was interesting but I don't think that I would really ever use it. I know the kids will love it, but it really didn't grab me. I have known about facebook for a long time but I had never joined. I was surprised how quickly people asked me to be their friend. some of the people I had not heard from in a long time. Now I am hooked. Several fo my teachers have expressed interest in doing a facebook project next year.

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program's format or concept.

I likethe format and I can't think of any thing that could be done any different. I especially like being able to work from home to get the necessary inservice hours I need. Also this course is so revelant to what I need to be able to progress in my job. As always, it took way more than 11.5 hours to complete the course.

THING 11 Digital Citizenship

I looked all of the sites on digital citzenship and found it overwhelming to say the least. There was lots and lots of information to sort through. I liked the TEA sites but several of the links didnot work. The Texas School Safety Center was great. It had 3 sites that I thought were very good and I bookmarked them. they are: Stop Cyberbullying, Cyberbulling Prevention Tips handout, and Internet Safety Blog. I plan on sharing these with my school.

I learned that since 87% of all kids use the internet it is key that they learn how to evulate sites since their opinions are usually formed from the first site that they use. Students need to learn how to know if material is valid. They need to know how to use the deep web searches instead of always going to google. I looked at several of these deep web sites like Clusty, Intute, and Informine from the on-line education database. I know that these are on our Library Resources Page under find it, but I confess that I don't use these enough and I need to make an effort to teach them.

I will need to form several lessons on digital citizenship that include:

What is a digital citizen

Proper internet behavior

Cyberbullying

Copyright and plagiarism (have a lesson)

Valid websites

Evulation websites

Safety on the internet

Citing sources (have a lesson)

THING 10 Second Life

Second life is an online virtual world that is imagined and created by you. First you have to create an avitar that will be you in second world. I did create one but I just did some basic things to mine so that I could play. I learned how to walk around in steampunk victorian caledon. I learned how to fly and sit. I talked to 2 people. I really don't see myself doing this too much, but I think kids would love it. I can see how you could get lost in here for hours. I looked at some educational areas and liked the physics and astronomy place as well as the second china idea which I thought was great. I can see how people could experience things in another country without actually going there. I think teachers could use this to let their students experience many different things. My son said that he would go in with me so that I could experience doing something with him.

THING 9 Slideshare

Slideshare allows you to share powerpoint files online. I like it because you can also view other powerpoints. I think it would be great idea for librarians from all over to be able to share the different presentations that they make. This would be a great way to either use the presentation or adapt it for your own use.

Students could also upload their presentaions and that way they could work together from anywhere. Plus students could get ideas for their own presentations from other students.

I got some great advice from one of the sites we had to view to help me with my own presentations, so I will share.

1. Use both words and graphics----65% graphics and 35% words.

2. Don't use pictures that dont relate to the topic.

3. Adding audio is effective.

4. Use an on screen host to engage the viewer.

THING 8 Screen cast

A screen cast is a digital recording of a computer screen. Atomic learning uses screen cast to teach their lessons. I have used atomic learning a lot. I have had Camtasia for quite a while as we got it included with snag it, but I had never used it. My son worked with me to get my microphone to work as it was having problems. I had 2 ideas to make my screen cast, but the first one didn't work as I wasn't connected to the SBISD network and the second idea would have given away some library codes and I realized that I couldn't do that. The screen cast that I did was my son's idea---it is silly, but it showed that I learned how to do it.

THING 7 Video Resources

I listened to the codes of best practices video and just learned that the kids will be confused about what should be copyrighted or not. Having the book would be a good idea.

I looked at all of the video sources shown and learned that there was more out there than I was aware of. They were all good and I plan on sharing several of them with my staff.

Hulu was the first one I saw and I found the section on Farah Fawcett. While not so educational, I was interested because I went to high school with her. I was so sad that she died and I have been keeping up with all of the news items on her.

PBS video is a great site. I looked into several of the history sites and I liked how you could filter so that you could get just where you wanted to go. I looked at some cold war videos.

THING 6 I phone and I touch

I have used my friend's I phone to play with some of the apps. It was fun to use and I would like to have the same phone from Verizon when I am able to update my phone in November. I thin teachers would rather the kids have I touches than allow I phones because of the trouble they might have with students wanting to text their friends all of the time while in class. Someone called the I touch mobile learning which is how the world is moving today. We cannot be without our mobile devices. Still the kids will be able to benefit from using an I touch. I know that the library will be getting several for use next year and I will be interested in seeing how well they do. I know that there will be many uses for them such as the calculator, using google, brainteasers, on line lessons, a calendar, gps, taking notes, and being able to work together from anywhere.

Thing 5 Facebook and Twitter

I have 2 sons and a daughter-in-law who all have a facebook account. I have watched them use it for years. Every time I go to my son's house, he lets me get on his account and catch up on all of his old friends. I love doing this as I have not seem any of these people since my boys were in high school. Also. one of my teachers created a facebook project this past year and I worked with her on this project on people in history. The kids had to pick a person that they wanted to research and then create a facebook page for that person. Then they could invite other people that were created by their classmates. it was a huge success as the kids loved doing it.

Twitter is interesting. I have never used it, but I know that thousands of kids are using it every day. This generation is becomming used to keeping up with their friends not much by phone but with twitter or by texting. They want instant information. Each twitter can only use 140 characters, so it has to be quick. I am not so sure how to use this in the classroom, but I look forward to hearing what other people have to say about it.

Thing 4 You tube

This is a great way to share videos. I learned that you tube was started in 2005 and 70 million videos were viewed daily. The mega giant, google, owns it.

Last year my speech teacher wanted to use some academy award acceptance speeches in her classroom. We played around uploading the speeches into zamzar so that they could be viewed in our school district. It worked great and the kids enjoyed it.

I can see how it could be used by kids that want to use videos that they make as a project. The kids watch you tube every day and are very familiar with how to use it. They would love to use this application with various projects.

Thing 3-- Like Skype--free, zip,zero, nada

I have known about skype for awhile. We researched it because some friends of ours take groups of people to Israel every year and they were complaining about the high cost of calling over there to talk to their guide. My husband showed them how to use it.

The best thing about it is it is FREE. My son and his wife live in Kentucky and we are going to have a first grandbaby in July, so the web cam feature is a must for us to be able to keep up with the baby every day.

I think it would be agreat idea for student who are out of school for a long period to be able to join their class using skype. Also classes from all over the world would be able to communicate with each other.

I looke at a few of the other services and found the EVA phone but it limits the use to 5 minutes per call. Gizmo is a free service that can create a conference room but you would have to have the connecting phone number handy.

Thing 2 Word play, and voki

I really liked this "thing" and the new 2.0 items that I explored.
Wordle and word shift were similar because you could point out the most prominate words in a speech or text. It is a fun way to play with text and use with word relationships. I practiced with putting in words that had to deal with the French Revolution. These words could be used projected with an LCD to introduce a unit.

A glog would be a wonderful way to change the way a poster can be made for a project. I think the kids would like this idea much better than the old traditional poster---and it was fun to do.

I made a voki and I attempted to add it to my blog. We will see if it actually worked. It didnt work. I will try again later.

I went to Bookr and made 2 books. I was alittle frustrated with this program because of the picture choices that I had and I thought it was a little hard to use. The pictures scrolled by so fast and they were hard to see unless you added them to the book. Then I attempted to add them to my blog but was unsuccessful.

Thing 1---registration for the beach

I am all registered for this second go around to learn new techniques that will help challenge the 21st century student. As librarians we must be on the cutting edge ready to teach not only our students, but also the teachers on the new ideas that can be used in the classroom.

I liked the viedo that showed how the students of today can take charge of their learning by using connectivism and build a network to use for learning. Kids of today are so used to computers that they learn best when they can use that computer. I loved the idea of searching for articles and blogs on the topics that they are researching. Then the student can create his own blog on what he has learned so he can get comments from others. I especially loved the idea that they can download lectures from college professors and get information from the best teachers in the world.

I liked the words to describe the student's teacher; words like modeler, learning conceirge, change agent, and my favorite,learning architect. I think the librarian can play a major role in this learning process by showing the student where to find all of the information he is needing. The teacher and the librarian are a team that can plan and then execute the learning problem that will be presented.

Audio Manipulation

We worked with audio and I learned how to use audacity which I had never used before. But we had trouble getting it to post to the sandbox wiki. We mthought it might be that several people were on at once, but that still didn't work. OH WEll----i WILL TRY AGAIN.

Image Manipulation

We found images from Discovery Education and Flickr creative common and then uploaded the pictures into powerpoint to learn how to resize the image. I had never used Irfan before and I thought it was so cool. Now I know where my son had taken images and turned them into sepia. I hd done the image generators before and had created a traading card. This time I did a magazine cover and I had trouble getting the bullets to work.

photostory--olympics

olympics are so exciting this year. see this photostory. Well, it would not download. I will try again later. The kidecause it is funs will love working wiwth this b

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.