Thing 23. Final Thoughts

Yeah! It's finished!

I think the main way in which participating in this project has affected me is that it has opened my eyes to new uses of the web. It has changed the status quo for me so that I'm looking for other ways to deliver instruction and for new and better ways to reach my students in the 21st century. It has broken down a little bit of the apprehensiveness that I may feel as I delve into new technology horizons. I greatly appreciate this state-wide program that encourages librarians of public libraries and school library-media centers to stretch themselves while learning about technology.

Thing 22. What Did I Learn Today?

I think the biggest thing I've learned is that there is so much opportunity on the web for me to grow as a teacher and for me to incorporate into my lessons as I try to teach my scope and sequence. I'm not necessarily talking about adding additional topics into my scope and sequence as much as I am thinking about how can I use the tools I've learned to improve my choice of delivery so ultimately, I am preparing my students to be learners of tomorrow? So, I need to continue to learn as a professional and I need to continue to see what works for me to incorporate into my lessons to help my students. They kind of go together. If I am learning, then I will be better prepared to help my students learn.

Places for me to visit on a regular basis:
http://www.alatechsource.org/blog
http://librarybytes.com/
http://mn.webjunction.org/1

Thing 21. Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

Gather - an outlet for a debate format on mostly single issues, MPRG is involved in this for its listeners.

Webjunction:

Webjunction: Webjunction looks great as a place to grow professionally. Maybe I'll use this as my next CQEP? It is an online community for library staff which helps staff incorporate technology into their media centers. Webjunction Minnesota is specific to us!

Ning : It looks like Ning is made for specific groups and needs to be more customized. There's one for Library 2.0. Also - I just found one for a teacher Librarian Ning which might be better for what I'm looking for. The Library 2.0 is so generic for public libraries and higher education libraries that a lot of the information doesn't pertain to my situation. When I visited the Teacher Librarian site, they have a webinar posting for June 7 about virtual authors which would be interesting to be a part of since we just did that at Northwinds on May 21st.

#20 Libraries and Social Networks

Facebook is one of the social networks mentioned in Thing 20.

Name: Librarians and Facebook
Category: Organizations - Academic Organizations
Description: Discussion of how librarians are using Facebook to communicate with students, censorship issues, privacy issues, etc.
Privacy Type: Open: All content is public.

I can see where this might be useful to me but right now, I don't want to spend lots of time networking with others. I know my extended family is involved so if I want to see pictures of great nieces and nephews, I might have to succumb. I'm just afraid I'll be obsessive with the time it will take.

I viewed the short intro video and I guess I knew all that stuff already. I know libraries use Facebook too so they can reach their younger clientele.

I'm definetly not interested in My Space. If I were to do it all, I'd do Facebook.

#19 Podcasts

I have also used Podcasts with success last year when I could do it fairly easily with our biweekly newscasts. Now, with our new website, I have to go through the school secretary which just makes it more cumbersome since I have to hook up a computer to our newscast, save it, log in on that computer to my email (which I already use on a different computer), email it as an attachment to the secretary and in the meantime, I'm teaching. I decided it's too much work and not necessary to my objectives so I had to give it up. Maybe I will find another use for podcasting. The point is, I know how it works and what to do with it. I'm just frustrated at the hoops our district puts on us to achieve it. I might try my google site to see if that's more amenable and quicker for what I want to do.

#18 You Tube and Other Online Video

You Tube! What fun! I have used this quite a bit to illustrate a point I'm teaching. When teaching illustrations, I have found examples of painting, since I can't actually do that in person. I found a segment on kite flying to introduce my theme for the year. This year, it was on stars.
Here is a You Tube video on reading.

#17 ELM Productivity Tools

I have used the ELM site quite a bit with my students in grades K-5 so I was interested to see what I've missed! I've created a link from my school's web page and have also shown the students how to use these resources from the public library links.

Turns out, I haven't missed much. They talked a lot about using the RSS feed but I won't be using that at my level. I have used all the different resources available and really appreciate that the state of Minnesota pays for these resources.

There is a web composer from EBSCO but I won't be using that since I have my Google Site page and my page through school.

#16 Minnesota Library 2.0

The University of Minnesota Assignment Calculator is a free tool to use to budget your time when completing an assignment. I put in an assignment due in a month for education and it laid it all out for me, with a printer friendly version. At the elementary level, we do this for the students but I can see where it would be invaluable to students who need a little more structure at higher levels of learning. The Research Project Calculator is very similar but with a more specific focus.

Thing 15 Online Games and Libraries

I approach gaming with a fairly sizable sense of apprehension so it was with interest that I read the online article "8 Games About Video Games Debunked". As I read the article, authored by Henry Jenkins, the director of comparative studies at MIT, I found myself agreeing with some points and disagreeing with others. As a teacher of elementary students, I have seen first hand what happens when some kids are let loose on this level. The author points out that family involvement is imperative to balancing virtual life with real life and I agree with this. I would however ague, that without proper family balancing, the video games take on a higher level of influence for at-risk students. He also points out that while younger students may use these, most of the games are targeted for adults and again, a family's job is to monitor what kids are playing online.

I also took a look at Ohio University's short video about its presence in Second Life. Interesting! Colleges are continually changing to reflect the needs of their learners and it just amazes me how some universities are reaching out in this new form of delivery. I also read the article about its inception/creation and how people all over the world have contributed. Interesting!

#14 Library Thing

The Library Thing looks really cool. In fact, I had just created a list of new books to read at school using Excel but using this would have made it much easier this summer to access from anywhere! I like to read the new books I've purchased, especially the chapter books so I really know my collection.

The Library Thing links you with other lists and it's an "easy Library-Quality Catalog". If you have less than 200 books, it's for free. Otherwise, it's $10 for a year or $25 for a lifetime. I'm going to have to see how much I use it.

I am going to explore this more for our church library.

Thing 13 On-Line Productivity Tools

Number 13 offers many useful online tools. The first one is called a flash countdown timer generator and it will let you customize the information. It's fairly easy since you can just paste the link into your website. I checked out the five calendar selections that you allow you to include a personal calendar of events into it. I am not at this point where I would use it however. I really depend on my lesson plan book which I carry around with me all day and it travels with me from home to school and back. This also has my class lists with me, my seating charts, etc. I am not at the point of replacing it!

The ta-da list looks really interesting when you can share it with others for planning an event. Right now we email lists back in forth or save them to a server at school but I can see this as something usable when coordinating events with my colleagues or even my spread-out family.

Backpack looked really cool but I don't think we're ready to integrate it into my particular education setting. You can do a lot of the ta-da list things along with a whole bunch of other things and pictures to plan an event. Pretty fancy but not for us.

Zamzar and the PDF converter will be handy to use as they convert many things, like Word to a PDF or images, videos, music, etc. to be able to be used on your computer. I'm going to remember this! It would have come in handy a couple of times already.