Thing 23- The Summary

Wow! Three months ago I thought finishing this project was going to be a daunting task. I was wrong. I have learned more about the new web 2.0 tools than I could ever have imagined. This project required a lot of work, but the learning was well worth it. My favorite was the one I put off to the very end...Photostory! I am in love with Photostory! I am now more confident and apt to search for things on the internet, and on BLOGS! Never before would I have looked at reading blogs a learning experience, but now I do. The only suggestion I would have to improve upon the program would be to add Shelfari...it is a great tool that I learned about from other classmates! Depending on the where and when, I would for sure do this again if offered as a different unit. If I had to sum up this project in one word it would be Immense. Immense, because it was a big project. Imemense, because I learned so much. Immense, because the possibilites are endless for me as a librarian with these tools!

Thing 22- Nings

To be honest, I had a hard time getting into Nings. I think the idea is great though! A social networking site that is organized into interest groups! The Ning in education was my favorite, because I felt it to be the most visually appealing. This site offers discussion forums, a place to share videos and photos of events, groups based on your personal needs, and an activity feed. I also liked this Ning because it seems to be more current, and has a great deal of members. The more members, the more people you have to share ideas with. This is compared to the Texas Librarians Ning which seemed to have very few members, and had not been updated in a while.

Thing 20- You Tube and Teacher Tube

Using video sharing sites is a great tool for teachers and librarians to be knowledgeable on. We are constantly looking for ways to make our lessons more appealing to studetns, and what better way than to show them video!! This is also a great tool for teachers, as contrary to popular belief....we don't know everything :-) This is a great way for us to learn new things, contributing the educational goal of lifelong learning. You Tube has so many video files, it is truley amazing what you can find. When searching on You Tube I looked up Library 2.0 and found a video on the 23 things!!! Here it is:



Teacher Tube also has great resources, and the beauty is...they are meant for the classroom. I looked up Ancient Rome, since that is a coming SS objective for 3rd grade and found many videos. A downfall that I found was that it seemed to be VERY slow! I searched for quite a while, and only managed to view 1 video.

Thing 19- Twitter and amMap

The two web 2.0 award winners I enjoyed exploring the most were Twitter and amMap. Twitter is a great communication tool that alerts followers when a status update has occured. This makes it easy for the people who want to know about you, as they dont have to go to a computer and look you up. Updates are sent directly to phones. As a teacher or librarian the benefits of using Twitter would be communication to parents. They could easily be alerted of upcoming assignements, events, fun little tid bits of information, and reminders.

amMap is a great free mapping tool! It offers information such as population size, flight routes, a zoom tool and timelines. It is also interactive and a country is highlighted when you scroll over it. As a teacher this is a great tool to use when discussing ancient civilizations, heritage projects, geography and the location of just about anything! A librarian can use this to show the where the setting of a book happens, to help with research, or to give more information about an author.

Thing 18- google docs

The online productivity tool I chose to look at was Google docs (mainly because my hubby is picky about what I download!). This is a GREAT tool! Never again will it's users have to worry about losing their documents to a failed computer....they are safe in their account on the web. The program is very user friendly. I uploaded a word document with ease, and was able to begin the process of keeping my documents organized in folders. I also love the fact that there is a way to chat with others while working on the same document together. This is a great feature to limit getting off task! It is completely compatible with Microsoft, meaning any work we have done previously can be uploaded and kept in this account. I remember in class Dr. Bishop making the prediction that these types of tools are going to be very valuable in education due to the rising cost of the Microsoft products. I can now see why!