Thing 17- Rollyo

Rollyo is an excellent tool for teachers or librarians! What a great way to make sure you students are not wandering around aimlesly on the internet. I created a Rollyo for Planet Research to use with elementary students. Enjoy!

Thing 16- Wikis

Wiki's are great! They seem to be everywhere now, which is amazing to me since before August I had not ever heard of them. They are a great way to collaborate and share ideas with fellow teachers. My campus has a wiki that we use to share resources and great lesson ideas, as does our Campus Lead Teacher group. I could see this being a great resource to use over the summer as a teacher. Teachers can collaborate and plan with eachother, while being able to do it on their own time. I would also love to set up a persoanl wiki to plan a family reunion for this summer!

Thing 15- Library 2.0

I read the Wikipedia article and the "Away from Icebergs" article about library 2.0. What I got from these articles is confirmation for what I have been learning about, and coming to believe from class. The librarian is no longer a woman who sits behind a counter and checks out books, or reads a picture book to kids every two weeks. Librarians today have to be 'digital natives'. We have to know how to get our patrons to the most accurate and effective information, that is most likely not in a book we have on our shelves. We have to positively impact our students' achievements by helping to teach them how to correctly find and evaluate information, when there is so much out there.

I also found the video, "A vision of students today" very powerful. It is so true, that so much of what I learned in the past is simply just 'book smarts', and have no bearing in the real world. As a 'Librarian 2.0' I am hoping to not do this with my students. It is one of my goals to not only help my patrons learn what they need to for class, but at the same time help them learn information retrieval skills and other skills that will benefit them outside of the classroom.

thing 14- Technorati

Technorati is a great tool if you are looking for information in blogs. There are millions of blogs out there and just like searching the internet, you can be bombarding with information to sift through. Technorati uses the process of tagging to simplify this. I think as a librarian this can be very valuable. Part of being a librarian is finding accurate information, and keeping up to date on literacy and technology. Following blogs is a great way to do both of these. A downside of Technorati was that as I was working with it, many of its features were not working properly. I will have to go back and check these features again later to see how they work. Tagging is a very simple step that can make retrieval of information much easier. To be honest, I am not one that has really been a 'tagger', I just didn't see the point. After learning about it though, I can see how simple it is to tag something, and what a tremendous time saver it can be later.

Thing 13- Delicious

I found delicious to be not so delicious at first. It was confusing to me but after the tutorials, I realized it is for people who have many bookmarks (I dont have many yet, but as classes continue I am sure I will). Once I got the process started it seemed easier. I did figure out how to share with people (I think), but you have to know their usernames and add them one at a time. I could see social bookmarking being used as a great tool in research. You can bookmark your sites and those who you want to locate those resources can find them more quickly and accurately. Teachers and librarians can use Delicious for research projects with older students, to share information about a topic with older students (studetns always seem more engaged when they can get on computers and find the information themselves). Teachers and librarians can also use this as a professional resource to share information with other collegues. I have added a few SmartBoard sites to mine, that I am sure my third grade team will love!

thing 12- Commenting

Wow! I never knew what an impact commenting had on blogging. It makes sense, why blog if you dont feel that anyone is reading it? One of the comments I found very true was in the "10 Techniques to get more comments on your Blog" article. The author says to be humble in your posts. I totally agree with him, while some blogs it is important to know how intelligent the author is....I dont want to read something simply to read someone bragging about themsleves. I also found it interesting that only 9% of people actually comment on blogs, that is crazy! The comment from the same article about interacting with comments left also seemed very important to me. I think the purpose of commenting is to start discussions. If you dont comment back, the discussion ends with your reader. This is also discussed in the Blue Skunks Blog.."comments on commenting".

One of the blogs that I commented on outside of our program was the blog for Layla Grace Marsh. I have been following her story, a heartbreaking one at best. This is truly a blog that makes you want to hug your families a little more every day. I simply commented my condolences, prayers and thanks for sharing their story. The other blog I commented on was the blog for Julie Powell (the movie Julie and Juilia). I love to cook, so I found this blog very interesting. My post was in response to a post about her actually liking Rachel Ray (not one of my personal favorites), I tried to be positive and tell her a bit of pep is a good thing sometimes.

Thing 11- library thing

I found this thing to be quite simple. I spend so much time every year trying to keep my classroom library organized, and accounted for....this will make that much more simple! In my library thing page I added several Patricia Polacco books(she is my favorite children's author), a nonfiction book, some Magic Tree House books, and a few books that I tagged as grown up books that belong in my personal library.

The site has a bunch of cool groups depending on what you like to read. The groups that got my attention were the book talk group and the historical fiction group. I could see these two groups being what I will go to most, and there are many members in each to share ideas and comments. I also liked the projects section. This has resources that are really valuable, for example the Name that Book site.

Thing 10- Image

This thing was alot of fun. I think my favorite was the wordle, because I could see being able to use it in class with getting big ideas and details. Examples would be ancient civilizations and characteristics of them, or math concepts, or a character in a books traits. I created a wordle, a custom sign generator, and a happy face generator all about my baby boy because he is about to turn 1!!! I also found Glitter Words that can be fun, but not sure how they would benefit you in the classroom, except for getting kids attention on a power point.

Wordle

Happy Face Generator

Puzzle Maker