Saturday, January 3, 2009

#8 Share Your Creations

So, I'm marching on to new technology! This has been an eye-opener. So many opportunities are out on the web but with this, my focus is much more narrow so it saves me a lot of time to have the tasks geared to 23 things. Now, on with sharing on the web. The first group led me to see how presentations can be created - very similar to Power Point - and then shared on the network. I really looked into the Zoho Show. This one even had a chat bar so that you could be interacting with the audience or group while you are presenting. I thought this had interesting applications for education - especially through on-line learning or say for extra credit when kids tune in at night. Just brainstorming! I looked at Picture Trail also. Since I had spent so much time with Flickr, I didn't spend as much time with this one. I just explored the site and looked at some of the intro video and information. I could see a lot of uses for this one as well. The LazyBase was interesting because I've really only used Excel and here is something that's free on the web and more easily shared. I think it's cool how you can so easily share your work with others on the web. Also, efolio Minnesota was cool too but seemed more for secondary or higher ed or for professionals. Again, for an elementary media center, I'm not too sure about the application but I'm willing to be open to suggestions that would contribute to student learning and promote the scope and sequence.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

#7 Web 2.0 Communication Tools

January 1, 2009
I'm still hard at work on this 23 Things on a Stick. So far, the communication tools are review. I've used email quite a lot at school and we have another account at home. It's great professionally when I want to communicate the same thing to many people and it leaves a trail so that I can trace who I've told. I've also used IM through our school communication software. Easy and quick. With teenagers in the family (three boys), text messaging is sometimes the favored tool to let the parents know information without it really seen that a teen is talking to the parent. Very unobtrusive as long as they're not in class! As far as the examples go, they mostly seem geared for secondary or higher education. I have used email with my 4th and 5th graders on a limited basis so I can't say that texting and IM will never have a place in an elementary media center but at this point in time, I'm having a hard time seeing the relevance for students - parents and colleagues - yes! The one thing I learned was that text messaging could be linked to a computer so that staff could communicate a text with a keyboard. I didn't know that could be done and it sounded very slick for someone like me who has the typing thing pretty well down pat.

Web Conference: I went online to OPAL and registered and then I was able to listen to an archived webinar through MINITEX about Library 2.0 by Carla Steinberg Pfahl. I think there are lots of possibilities for staff development personally for me.

I've heard a lot about Twitter so it was great to read about it and watch the introductory video that 23 things directed me to. 140 words is the max so no great literary events happen here! I watched both David Free's and David Lee King's intro videos. Twitter (and all the cool "fluff" that I just witnessed) is a world that is evolving and eye-opening for me!

On-line Image Generator



January 1, 2009
I had fun playing around making a trading card of my son from a photo taken during his team's state tournament appearance in 2007. I made it twice actually. The first time I tried to save it and then because I didn't sign in (register) I lost it. The second time I tried to create a link which is another choice and then it prompted me to register again and since I didn't, I lost it again. I just feel that I've got enough memberships, even though they are free, floating around that I didn't need to subscribe to another. Having said that, I do have the link posted below because it was way cool! I'm sure I'll make use of it in the future.

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php

How will I use this in the future? Sometimes things like this need to be in my head for a while until I figure out how they will contribute to student learning. It's nice to have another tool in my back pocket to pull out when I need it. This was really easy too!



I went back in to show my son and then ended up clicking on Flickr which let me put the picture into Flickr without signing up anything additionally. Cool!


O.K. So, again, I had trouble uploading to this blog from Flickr. Everything works perfectly but then it doesn't show up. I'm going to try to save the picture to my computer and then upload from there.

More Flickr Fun!

January 1, 2009

There is so much to learn! Now I'm having more fun! click on this to see a slide show that I made using splashr.com web site. It found my photos and then put them into a slide show on a postcard format. Here it is! I tried to embed it into my blog but I kept getting an error message. Yuck~ I just spent way too much time trying to figure it out. I'm moving on! :)
Try this link!
http://splashr.com/show/postcard/33841342@N07/25/

I tried out Clockr, Flickr Color Pickr, making Puzzles and you saw the splashr! Lots of fun!


More Flickr!


January 2, 2009

I searched for my home town and came up with a beautiful picture taken by Lisa Nolan at the lake I used to life guard. I had trouble with the upload. I don't know what I did wrong but I guess the URL wasn't quite right because it wouldn't show the picture, just the link. Then I saved it and uploaded with the browse and . . . here it is! Here's the link for it too.
I checked a little more into the groups part of Flickr. The 23 things blog spot had this link.
This one is a group for libraries:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22503437@N05/

This one is the 23 things Flickr account:
http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=libraries

Here is one for the Library of Congress:
http://flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

Flickr!

January 1, 2009
Flickr!
As a camera enthusiast, this might be my favorite new thing I've learned so far. I signed in, I uploaded some of my digital photos and then I even tagged them. I placed a couple of them on the map to show Wright County so that was cool too.

I tried to do a search for them but eventually found out it might take a couple of days for them to show up. I'm going to try to search for them tomorrow. It's so wonderful to have a little bit of extra time so that I can try these things out. Three hours went by before I knew it!

http://www.flickr.com/