#13
I had to explore Del.icio.us for my LIBR246 class last spring, so I thought I would include the link to that blog post here http://yolywhite.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/social-bookmarking/
Since that time I have started using Diigo for my social bookmarking. It was recommended to me by the tech guru at one of our elementary schools. Diigo offers users the option of highlighting and adding notes to text within the page saved. I like the option of saving a page and not having to reread the whole thing to remember what I found that was significant. Here is a link to my bookmarks. This would be a great tool for students to use during research. They could search for information on their topic and save to their personal Diigo account along with highlighted sections and notes. Research groups could use a Diigo account to share resources.
#14
I didn’t have much luck exploring Technorati. It seems to me that I had a similar problem last spring. I’d love to hear what good things others found.
#15
#10
I was having trouble coming up with an idea for using image generators. I looked at several of the options at FD Toys. I thought about using book cover images for the photo to make a magazine cover http://bighugelabs.com/magazine.php. I thought students might use the different lines to describe the book, but the cover was too crowded. The words on the cover conflicted with the words in the magazine.
I also tried using the image generator to help make a blog header http://bighugelabs.com/blogheader.php, but I realized that I needed to crop my picture first.
I was able to make a picture with the captioner tool. This is similar to a software we use called Comic Life, but it doesn’t have many features.
I also tried out Image Chef – book photo.
Most of these seem fun, but I am having difficulty coming up with any real educational value. I could see them used for library promotion activities.
I’m not sure that this is what you would call an image generator, but it is a fun tool for playing with pictures – Animoto. I used it to make a music video introduction for my class last spring. http://animoto.com/play/g0VABQ1PGeIfKWbXx1nlaQ I also used it to make fun valentines for my family. Students could use it to share photos of a field trip or library activities.
*****A great resource for more ideas about photo sharing/image generators – http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/Photo+Sharing. WebTools4U2Use is a treasure trove of great tools and ideas for using them in school.
#11
I have already played with a number of the tools on the awards page, so I thought that I would highlight some of my favorites. I used Netvibes to create my news reader pages and thought it was easier to use than Pageflakes. It is really easy to add feeds by browsing their widgets or by cutting and pasting the feed URL from a favorite site. I also used Yahoo! Pipes as a way of making my feeds more manageable, by combining several related feeds into one (book review blogs, tech news, etc.). This is particularly useful for blogs that don’t change as frequently. I have also joined a number of Nings, including TeacherLibrarianNing, but I can’t say that I have really been using it/checking it. Although, I just went back and looked and found a great reference to Joyce Valenza’s blog post on adding database search widgets to her website http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/forum/topics/database-widgetsyou-will-love. I can’t wait to add these to our site for our EBSCO and SIRS Discoverer (http://www.proquest.com/en-US/utilities/widgets/search.shtml) databases. I can see a Ning as a useful way for a group to communicate when physically meeting is impossible. I thought this might be a good way to create a book club without having to worry about complicated after school schedules.
I didn’t have the patience to follow through with the Travel IQ game.
Here is the link to my blog post where I discussed RSS feeds for my Web 2.0 class last spring http://yolywhite.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/rss-feeds/
#8
The problem that I have found with RSS feeds is that all of the information can be overwhelming. I have found that I don’t uses my Google Reader page anymore. I prefer the more visual iGoogle page option, and I added a ton of feeds to the page. It has far more than I can possibly look at. Over the last few months, I find that I am returning to some of the same feeds all of the time, while I never look at some of the others. Now is the time that I can cull some of the feeds that are not supplying me with useful information or that never seem to update.
For my final project in my Web 2.0 class, I created two RSS Reader pages for the students and teachers to use. These are both available from the new Piedmont Middle School website, from the library tab – select “Cool School Tools.”
General Headline News – http://www.netvibes.com/pmslibrary#General
Science News – http://www.netvibes.com/pmslibrary#Science_News
My husband is starting a new class next fall called “Green Team” and wants the students to be able to keep up with environmental news, so I have started putting together a reader for that as well. http://www.netvibes.com/pmslibrary#Green_Team
I am always looking for new feeds to add. Does anyone have any favorite feeds (to use with middle school students/teachers) that they want to share?
I also realized that our new wordpress blogs created for all of the teachers in the district allow readers to add a feed from the blog. The feed from our book review/library news blog is http://piedmont.k12.ca.us/pms/faculty/pmslibrary/feed/
In the article “How to Make Your Feeds Pop!” the author suggested adding images or videos to the feeds to attract the attention of the reader. I have to say that I am also attracted to the feeds that come with images. I don’t know how to add the tiny little thumbnails. I would love to learn that trick next.
#9
I looked at the Edublog award winners from 2008 and added a couple of feeds to my iGoogle page. The teacher blog winner was Free Technology for Teachers and the library blog winner was Hey Jude. Hey Jude recommended a K12 video site called neoK12 that I want to check out.
I tried using some of the blog search tools mentioned on the School Library 2.0 site. The Feedster link didn’t work. Topix.net didn’t give me useful results with my zip code search or keyword “green schools”. I couldn’t figure out syndic8.com. I didn’t have any luck with Technorati either. I’m not sure what I am doing wrong with these tools, but I recall having similar troubles in my class last spring.
I had better results with Google Blog Search. It gave me a list of blog posts that at least mostly focused on green schools. Blog Pulse didn’t give me anything with CSLA 2.0 but “Green Schools” gave me the following lead- http://www.treehugger.com
I don’t have a favorite blog finding tool. I have to say that I have had my best luck just going to my favorite sites and finding RSS feeds for those sites. Eventually, those feeds lead you to other interesting feeds. The key seems to be to take some old feeds away before adding new ones to help avoid information overload.
Here is a picture that I had saved to flickr. I enhanced the image to make us look more like tanned wrestlers.
I always like looking to the Common Craft videos for the basic explanation of web 2.0 tools. The video Online Photo
Sharing in Plain English gives a great, simple explanation about why people might want to share photos. http://www.commoncraft.com/photosharing
I have not really ever used Flickr or other online photo sharing tool myself until recently. I have received emails from friends with links to slideshows. I love looking at the pics, but I have never tried to order prints. Last week I uploaded photos to send to my cousin. I tried Flickr first, but ran into trouble with a monthly limit to the number of pictures I could upload. I had heard from other people that Snapfish was a good alternative and used it instead. I was able to easily add all of my pictures and send them off in an email. I haven’t yet heard from anyone to know if they have been received.
I tried looking at the Flickr mashups that were linked in the 23 Things. The mosaic option looked cool but didn’t seem to work properly. I found a cool mosaic of flowers and tried emailing it to myself, but the link in the email didn’t work.
My favorite Flickr mashups are:
Tag Galaxy – http://taggalaxy.com/
Flickr Sudoku – http://flickrsudoku.com/
Multicolr Search Lab – http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/
The only one that I can really imagine using for a school is Tag Galaxy. My Cool Tools Screencast that I created for my Web 2.0 class describes how we used it.
Cool Tools for Library 2.0 #46
#7 Something Technology Related
A great site for information about using Web 2.0 tools at school is WebTools4U2Use.
We bought 7 flip video cameras for the library. We are hoping to have students use them as an additional production tool for a variety of library related projects. One idea was to have students make short book reviews using the video camera that we could share in the library or post (with permission) on the website.
How are others using flip video in the library?
#1 Jackie’s email on the CALIB listserve last month (thank you, Jackie!) prompted me to put out a plea to my fellow teacher librarians to try exploring web 2.0 together this summer. They were all excited about exploring together.
#3 I just finished a web 2.0 class at SJSU SLIS this past spring, and had to transfer the blog that I created from that course to a new site before it was removed. I decided to combine that transfer and this summer’s exploration.
I am really looking forward to exploring web 2.0 tools together with the goal of creating some sort of vision for how we can incorporated them into our library program (k-12).
#2 The hardest part of the 7 1/2 Habits is to create my own learning toolbox. How do you know what tools to include when you are just starting? The box is created in the process. There are so many tools available. I am having a hard time choosing the best tools.
The easiest part is teaching/mentoring others. New learning begs connection to old learning. Those connections offer insight into where to share the new knowledge. This summer we are combining the teaching/mentoring with #7 1/2 – play!
I just can’t seem to add the side bar widgets that I had with my other blog. I captured some images using Jing and included them in this post instead. It will help me remember what is possible, even if I can’t make it work with this blog.
I used Yahoo Pipes to create these mashups of book review blogs and technology news sources.
This widget shows my latest additions to my Library Thing account.
I didn't like easy poll as much as Poll Daddy for quick polls.
Here is my headline news mashup, created with Yahoo Pipes.
So, I exported my senna blog as an xml file and imported it here, but I still feel like I have to start over again. I can’t figure out how to get me old theme back, so I went with this one that allowed me to customize the header. I’m not happy with the widgets so far, but I guess I can’t expect free to be perfect. I wish that I could have just transfered it all. I have a lot of work to do to make this usable again. I guess I should take some screen shots of the old one just so I can remember what it once looked like.
http://piedmont.k12.ca.us/pms/faculty/pmslibrary/
By far the most time consuming of my final project creations was my book blog. After reading about blogs in chapter 3 of the Farkas textbook, I was intrigued by the idea of using a blog for readers’ advisory or book reviews (Farkas, 2007). The eighth grade students don’t get to come to the library for book talks anymore, yet they have a quarterly reading requirement. A blog seemed like a good way to share suggestions for books without even having to be face to face.
I was inspired to create this blog for my final project because our new school website, which still is not available for public consumption, will include blog pages for all of the teachers. I liked the idea of creating something that would be useful to the students but would also help me keep track of all of the books that I read. I needed to have something that would be searchable, but I liked the idea of having the items be displayed in chronological order so the newest items would always be at the top.
The hardest thing for me to establish was a consistent format. First, I decided that I would just use the book title for the blog post title followed by the author’s name, number of pages in the book, cover image and book reflections. I also added tags for the books, which I made more searchable by adding the Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar. Next, I decided to include some sort of a connection to another book, so students would have a recommendation for a similar title. I decided to label that section “Connections” to make it stand out from the reflections. I found some good video interviews with authors from a site called Reading Rockets – http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews so I decided to add some of those as “Highlights” following the connections section. Where appropriate, I included the author’s website as a link from their name. I found that some were not appropriate to include because of the tone (Kristin Cashore) or the audience (Neil Gaiman).
While the primary focus of the blog is to share books, I wanted to also use it for library news. The theme that was created by the website designer included the yellow featured box, so I thought that I would use that space for reminders. I also created a separate category for “Library News” so it can be separated from the book reflections.
I put the library catalog in a “Local Links” section that I added, which also includes links to the school and library webpages. The links don’t show up as prominently as I would like, so I tried adding an icon for the catalog like we have on our webpage. The problem that I ran into is that the image must be a URL. The image with a URL that was sent to me by our tech guru seemed to work initially, but I realized that users would have to log in using my username and password for my email account to see the image. That definitely won’t work. I tried capturing the image with Jing and uploaded the picture to my media files. I opened the image and copied the URL to try to add to the link, but it only put a box around the link. I will have to get more IT support on this one.
The original design for the links only had a section for “Recommended Resources.” Since the focus of this blog is books, I want the recommended links to focus on just book related information. The only one I have found that I like so far is the Author Name Pronunciation Guide – http://www.teachingbooks.net/pronunciations.cgi. I will continue to add to this links section as I find more.
I can't seem to import the actual widget, but here is what it looked like.
I tried to add a poll to see what students think about listening to audiobooks on their MP3 players. I went to Poll Daddy www.polldaddy.com and created my poll http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/1596298/, and I tried to add the poll widget to my sidebar like it did with my polls on my LIBR246 blog. Unfortunately, the widget didn’t work. I think that it is one of those things that is not being allowed by the district. I was only able to put the link to the poll in the blog post entitled “New Audiobook Format.
In the end I had a very difficult time deciding when to stop with the creation of this blog. Since it is something that is going to be used on an ongoing basis, I just kept having new books and bits to add. I guess the beauty in the blog is that if it is well designed, I will want to continue to go back and add more. Hopefully the students will keep going back as well.
Update 5/7
The tech guru from our school contacted the website designer to help us fix some of our problems, and I have learned some tricks. When you right click on an image, you can get the properties of the image including the option to copy the location. I needed the location to make the Mandarin logo the link button for the catalog in my “Local Links” section. I also learned how to resize images. When you click on an image that is in a post while in the editing mode, you get the option to edit that picture (picture symbol) or delete it (universal no sign). When you click on the edit picture symbol you get the box that allows you to make changes to the picture. One of the options to the left of the image is scale by percent. I also learned that the district will have to make decisions about the plugins that they will allow. I have asked them to consider adding the Poll Daddy plugin, but in the mean time… I will just use the link.
June 25, 2009 – I just tried to add a new poll on this transfered blog.
