Week 9 - Thingie #23

Wow! The end of the course!
First of all, let me thank each and everyone at CSLA who had a part in putting together this awesome experience. I can not believe the things I learned this summer that are happening in the Internet world. I really appreciate having this remarkable opportunity to expand my horizons and continue my life long learning. Thank you all so much.
I loved creating my own blog complete with avatar- decorating and "themeing" it. I guess of all the sites ZOHO would be my favorite. It has such incredible potential for use at our school and in our district. But I had a good experience at all the sites. I have put aside time this month to go back and revisit all the sites again to confirm what I remember and to really familiarize myself with them so that I can help students and staff access them easily.
I think the amount of satisfaction I derived from learning about all these new things was surprising to me. It really made me feel good about myself that I could learn and do these things that so many of my colleagues know nothing about. It also demonstrates the pride and professionalism that I bring each day to my "paraprofessional" position because I cared enough to do this on my own to take my skills and knowledge of the Internet to a new level.
I would love to do this type of "discovery" program again. It has been so "enriching" to have participated in Library 2.0.

I forwarded all those free audio book sites to my ipod friends and family. It's a good resource to use to enhance our audio book collection as well. I wish our county library system was using the Library Elf service I found on the Free books list! When my daughter was at home it could have saved us a fortune!!

Week 9 - Thingie # 21

My former principal, now retired and still a good friend, is absolutely a constant ipod user. She downloads books all the time and is never without something to listen to. My son downloads music song after song to listen to while driving, working, studying etc. I haven't succumbed to one yet - I like silence sometimes! But I did learn that you don't have to have an ipod to use the podcasts, checked out Educational Podcast Directory and found listening to a Nancy Keane book talk was way more helpful than just reading it. It gave me the opportunity to hear the timing, infection, and tone that she uses which will really help my presentation to the kids. I'm going to put her podcast list to my RSS feed to my Blogline account.

Week 9 - Thingie # 20

Okay - this was fun! Spent WAY TOO MUCH time looking at all the videos of English Springer Spaniels - just got to see them all!!! :)
Really liked TeacherTube. I love not reinventing the wheel everytime you need to do a pesentation - I'm going back to look for things like book care, Dewey etc., to use in the library this fall. I can almost bet a year's salary that not a single teacher has used this to find curriculum related material. Boy, am I going to look smart at a staff meeting :)
For now, I'll just enjoy high tech praise!

Week 8 - Thingie # 19

I had already checked out LibraryThing for an earlier lesson, joined, listed some of my favorite books ( okay, I admit I took the easy way out and listed the Harry Potter series), and joined two children's literature groups not looking ahead to this week.
So it seems that, hmmmmmmmmm, yes, just a few people have commented on the books I have on my list :)and they seem to be quite popular with numbers of readers!! Here is my link - http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ilibra16. While this site is all about books, I don't know that I will use it that much. Maybe it's a summer vacation thing. I didn't even want to read the discussions - sounded too much like a library list serve "discussing" proper protocol for posting!! Listing all the books I own sounds like work work - this from a woman who, while between library positions, catalogued, labeled, and "spreadsheeted" every video in the house and then moved outside to map and list every iris variety I had!!

Week 8 - Thingie 18

WELCOME TO THE RIDGEVIEW LIBRARY'S

 

"ONCE UPON A STORYBOOK"

 

 

 

2007-2008

Well, phooey!! I had hoped that this would come in better but I can't fix the text overlap. Anyway, this will be one of the signs that I use in the library this year. Really like the Zoho site. Seemed to go really slow but that could just be my antiquated computer :)

I love the interactive living document that can come from a wiki. Our school recently spent two years doing a curriculum map at each grade level. So much time and trees could have been saved using a wiki. We are doing our first book club next fall and I can see value and fun from using a wiki. I won't know until the new carpet is down in the library and I can get into the library but I think that a wiki site MIGHT make it pass the district firewall where a blog site never would.

Week 6 - Thingies # 13, 14, &15

The idea that you can have access to sites you have bookmarked on any computer is awesome. I spend a great deal of time either researching for a website in response to a teacher or student request or emailing the link to my school computer from home where I had it bookmarked so that I can bookmark it on my library computer. I will use del.icio.us to make it all much simpler.
"Folks" doing their own tagging can be fun but it can also be frustrating as the average blogger doesn't list a lot of tags - the kind that you would find in a well cross-referenced catalog. Guess I'm sounding like the little old library lady from Pasadena but there also seems to be a ton of junk out there that I don't want to read even with a tag I'm interested in.
As the world evolves, so must it's institutions. School libraries certainly must do all they can to change as well. Monies spent on print resources need to be turned toward subscription web services, state databases need to be championed until it happens for our students. Arbitrary fire walls need to be examined and content not words used as reasons to block sites and services. And warm and friendly is, as it has always been, technologically correct!

Week 5 - Thingie # 12

Spent some time this morning exploring Rollyo. Never even knew all these things were out there on the web. I'm trying to take them all in, one site at a time. I created a general searchroll for upper grade research but can see enormous use for all student research with teachers creating searchrolls to guide students research on any project area.