Thing #23

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?

I really enjoyed learning about Flikr (although Photobucket seems to me to be easier to use), and Googledocs (there are several in there that I expect to use regularly). I knew a little about Wikis and now feel much more comfortable about using them. But my favorite was Podcasts - they intimidated me and I never even attempted them before, and now I see how silly that was and hope (if I can get our technology to cooperate) to make use of them for book talks at our school.

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

It was like a super condensed college course - learned so many new things it made my head spin from everything roiling around in there. It made me feel good about myself and the time spent this summer learning new things, and I feel I will be a lot more interesting and au courant talking to my grandchildren and students. It has inspired me to become more technologically savvy and try to keep up with all the fast paced changes.

3. Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

I must say the inclusion of Avatars surprised me - I thought they were for the gamer group of people and never really thought of them in any relationship to teaching or libraries.

4. What could be do differently to improve upon this program's format or concept?

Firstly, I think it is wonderful and don't have any criticism at all. As an older learner with less than the most up to date equipment, it was a little frustrating when things wouldn't load as they were supposed to and videos couldn't be viewed on your site - more troubleshooting help might be nice.

5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate?

In a New York minute!

6. How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote 23 Things learning activities?

It opened up a whole new world of learning possibilities and energized and excited me about the upcoming school year.

Thing #22

I really like the idea of nings. The format is simple, seems easy to set up and navigate, and I could see that teachers in many areas of grades maybe six and up could do really great things with it. I think a local librarian ning could be helpful for surrounding school districts to share things of local interest. It might help us not have to constantly reinvent the wheel!

Thing #21

OK - I tried!!!!! I made the very nice podcast which is a Book Talk about one of the Bluebonnet Books for this year - Pale Male. I saved it both ways as per your instructions, but each time I try to upload it, it either gives me an error message or it freezes on the upload half way through and does not complete. I could not view the Common Craft video either - it showed as an empty white box on your site. This would be very exciting to use, if it will work on our computers. My grandson, in the third grade in another school district, was in a class that made podcasts where they were candidates "running" for mayor. He was very proud of his podcast.

Addendum: Woo hoo!!!! Moved to the school secretary's computer (much better than mine) and got it to load!!! It doesn't have narration because I don't have a mike, and it isn't playing as clearly and sharply as it shows on the video program, but at least it is here!!!!!

Thing #20

I found this video, which is not really polished, but it gave me the idea of having a student make a "tour of the library" video to post on the school's website where they click on to our library section. Thought the visual done by a student would be better than what we might say.

Thing #19

Some of the sites wouldn't open for me, but I did explore most of them. I thought World Cat would be very helpful in finding books in other libraries, and Google Maps would be very helpful in school, since the maps in our atlases are out of date almost as soon as they are printed. I have never used Craigslist before (can you believe it?) because I didn't think there would be much there for our small town, even though my kids in big cities swear by it. But I was pleasantly surprised to find a free bike for my grandson and a free chest of drawers for my granddaughter, right here in our little village.

Thing #18

Wow, Google doc was so much fun to look over! They have templates for everything (lost pets, Christmas wish list, scrapbooking albums, plus all of the usual business type forms.) There was even a form for a survey of Star Wars vs Star Trek! Having the other language capability would be very handy for us - half our school speaks Spanish! I think that this is a sight that I will be using a lot.

Thing #17

http://www.rollyo.com/index.html#

I can see where this would be really handy for adults who do a lot of searching, and to set up previewed sites appropriate for students to use. At the elementary level, we spend a lot of time previewing sites so they will be ready for students to use when they come to the Media Lab to do research.

Thing #16

Love, love, love Wikis!! They seem so easy to use, and could substitute for committee meetings for busy teachers, and sharing information and ideas among the 11 libraries in our ISD. They are simple enough for the kids to use without a lot of instructions. This past year I assisted the music teacher in a research project that she was doing with 4th and 5th grade on composers. This would have been so much better and more fun than each child writing their own individual and boring (to them) paper. If they collaborated through a wiki, that might have been pretty exciting, and I plan to suggest it for the upcoming year. (Harking back to another Thing - I will suggest that they make a trading card about their composer too.)

Thing #15

I have felt for a long time that it was a mistake to buy books for the library just so that we could say we have books in that area of Dewey (our religion section hasn't been touched in years), and encyclopedias, almanacs, etc. have been a waste of money for a long while. A lot of nonfiction just sits there and becomes outdated, without enough use to justify what it cost. We do need certain books for teacher support in the classroom, and to be one of the sources for kids' research (they are always required to have three sources, one of which is a book), but what our elementary kids check out from nonfiction to actually read and use are World Records, Mummies, Paranormal, Spies, Zoo Animals, Horses, Pets, Sports, Cars, Reptiles, Insects, Dinosaurs, I-Spy, Origami, Drawing, Pirates, Titanic, Jokes, Weapons and Knights. The rest is just stuff their teachers make them read. I don't know where it was written that elementary school libraries had to be exact duplicates of public libraries, or have to include all the Dewey classifications, but lots of money has been wasted working under that premise.

Thing #14

I tried to claim my blog but the site froze up - I guess everyone else is claiming theirs at the same time!! I will go back later and try again. I can see how all this would be helpful to people in their personal lives, but I am not really seeing too much of a use for elementary school kids, which is who I work with. They don't have much time to use the library computers, and when they do they have something prescribed by their teachers to do. Might be helpful for high school and college kids though.

Thing #13

Tagging seems like it would be great for people who spend a lot of time on the internet for their personal interests or for research. It would be really handy to tag things that look interesting 2read and then get back to them later. That would be helpful for students writing a research paper, and only have access to a computer sporadically. It would be helpful when pre-researching things for elementary classes too. At this point I am a little underwhelmed by tagging, as I don't get to use the computer that much, but it is good to know about for future use.

Thing #12

To be perfectly honest, I am very hesitant to blog and twitter. I know I am old school, but I am sort of worried about how technology is in so many ways "dumbing down" America. People walking around with hands-free headsets gabbling on and broadcasting all of their personal drama, destroying the ambience of restaurants, movies, and even their kids ballgames; teens texting a mile a minute in their pockets while you are trying to talk to them or teach them or just have a family meal; people endlessly blogging, twittering, e-mailing when they are supposed to be working so that you can't get anything out of them when you need it; I just feel we are headed for a future when no one actually DOES anything of importance because they are too focused on the minutiae of their lives. Would Marie Curie have discovered radium if she was blogging 8 hours a day, or Stephen Hawking discover the Theory of Everything if he had to twitter about what he had for breakfast and who he saw at Walmart? I am all for dialoguing and sharing ideas and information about things that matter, but what small percentage of what is blogged and texted and twittered really makes the world go around? The government has no need to develop Big Brother - we have handed over every detail of our existence to the public on a silver platter. OK, that rant being over, I did pick out five blog sites to post a comment on, keeping in mind all of the tips given in this exercise. I will keep checking back to try to establish a dialogue. The two blogging pointers that I thought were important were (1) that blogging is casting a vote on the importance of an issue (some people seem to think that Gov. Perry's hairdo is an important issue) and (2) it is important to teach kids how to comment appropriately. I have been trying to encourage teachers to let kids blog in lieu of or in addition to their traditional written journaling. In searching for new blog sites, two particularly drew my attention. The first one was http://dodgeintrepid.blogspot.com/2009/06/death-mountain-crusaders-episode-501.html. This one has a radio serial for podcast, with the explorer Dodge Intrepid. In this particular episode, he and a librarian and library aide are trying to establish a library in a tiny African village. The second one was http://www.unshelved.com/blog.aspx?post=734. They have an Unshelved magazine, and in particular they sponsor a library cart decorating contest every year, and some of the past winners are a hoot!! Everyone should check them out.

Thing #11

Absolutely loved this site! I added some books to my list - this will have to be an ongoing project for the rest of my life to get them all in there, but it is really neat. I registered for the review books and the giveaways, and am keeping my fingers crossed that I will win at least one! I visited some of the groups, especially liked 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. Funny what different opinions there are, and how some seem to be on just about everyone's list.

Thing #10

This is so much fun!!! Several of the sites wouldn't come up because of adult content, but enough did to have lots and lots of fun. This one would be a very useful sign to post in the library. I made it at: http://www.customsigngenerator.com/

Thing #9

Well, the easiest search was probably School Library Blogs on Suprglu - or at least it was most pertinent to what I want to know right now, and hence the most useful. None of them were especially confusing to me, all seemed to have pretty easy to follow instructions. I especially like topix.net - as soon as I clicked on it, the site fed me all the news for my town of Waxahachie - didn't have to do a thing extra to get it.

Thanks are in order

I was musing about being a lifelong learner and all of the new things I have learned just since starting this program, and just wanted to state that I am so very grateful for this opportunity. Spring Branch ISD - you rock!!!!!! The purpose of being a librarian, I always thought, was to disseminate knowledge, and I am very thankful to all of the librarians I have known in my lifetime, even as a gradeschool student, and all that I have learned from them, even to this day. Some have been so generous with their knowledge, sharing journals and teaching me whatever I asked to know about. Unfortunately, there are exceptions, who regard ALA as a group like the Masons, and if you don't know "the secret handshake", you won't learn anything from them, but this has been the rare exception. I think that anything that helps the kids and feeds their desire for lifelong learning is a good thing, regardless of where and who it comes from, so increasing the knowledge of all library personnel increases the students' knowledge as well. And I am so glad that Spring Branch ISD feels the same way - you guys are the cream of the crop in Professional Learning Communities!!

Thing #8

Wow, talk about information overload and having your head explode! All of the information about RSS readers was exciting and helpful and opened up whole new avenues of lifelong learning. I created a Google Reader account, and installed five sites, and immediately began reading about all sorts of interesting library and book related issues. This is going to be so much better than searching all over for information. I of course like the time saver issue and not needing to sort through all of the "junk" on websites to get to what I want to read. Personally, I plan to use it to get myself up to speed during my 30 minute lunch breaks at work. In the library it would be so useful to help teachers get linked up to information for their projects and special interests. We don't have much student time at the computers that isn't related to TAKS preparation, but this could be a real shortcut for them in lots of areas, if it is prescreened for content.

Thing #7

So many apps - so little time!!! I created a new books alert, which should come in handy so I can let teachers with special interests know about new ones coming out. Also, did a Google calendar, for keeping up with family events - have five children and nine grandchildren so it will be very handy for getting us all organized.

Thing #6

All of the available apps were amazing! I particularly liked the Flickr Color Pickr - last year I read a book called "Red" to the kids at story time, and it would have been cool to have a collection of red pictures to go along with that book. I am also designing a Librarian trading card as we speak - just looking for a good picture to go along with it.

Thing #5

What a fun site!!! You could spend hours on it and I can certainly see how it could be useful for library and school projects. Loved the picture that I chose for my blogspot - it could have easily been taken right in my own bedroom.

Thing #3

Setting up the blog was fun - but the Avatar part was somewhat frustrating. We have so many security measures on our school computers that it was very hard to export it to the blog. All the avatar choices are so young and cute - they need some that are older and not so skinny!

Thing #2

The easiest one for me is accept responsibility for your own learning - I am a voracious reader and love to learn new things. The hardest is view problems as challenges - I tend to react negatively sometimes when things don't go as planned.