Thing #23

Well my brain and fingers are sure glad to be here! Ha ha on the "A fair(y) Use Tale from You Tube it was great and I would love to use that with my 6th graders! Wonder how long it took to put that together? Creative Commons is a neat site that I plan to return to and explore some more. Web 2.0 WOW is what I have to say I have learned so much. The tools and new technology are easy to use and understand. I (this is weird) really liked the tutorials I felt they were simple and to the point , except for the Ebsco2.0 flash movie it was well "yawn" missing something. I loved creating the Avatar and exploring wikis. Teacher tube was a hoot, I went for the funny and creative stuff, del.icio.us I can't wait to get that up and running at school, I enjoyed the creativity of Flickr and most of the sites overall. I liked setting up my blog and reading the others and the feedback, thanks Ann. The textbook (this is also weird) was an interesting and informative read and I wish I could keep it!
What didn't I like, the TIME CONSUMPTION, think I averaged around 4 hours a session at least and the really scary part is I am all enthusiastic about these new tools and I am afraid that I just won't have the time to implement them the way I want to once I get to work, I hated all the registering, user name, password stuff but that is done and I won't have to do it again anyway. and last BRAIN OVERLOAD!
For the new kids on the block I would plan lots of time nothing is fast when exploring all these new tools so plan a large chunk of your day. Get a partner from the class to blog about difficulties, frustrations, and to share the fun stuff, Ann and Katie are great but a partner would just be that lot less lonely! Have a good fast connection!
Ann and Katy thank you so much for the effort that you put in I hope you feel that it was all worth it as I certainly do, it was everything I was hoping for and more.
Last thing, is this site going to stay around? I know that I would love to be able to refer back to it and explore the links again and again.

Thing #22

Ebooks are great for some I know that lots of people enjoy them I personally don't. I think that having a free site is great though and would definitely share this with all. It took way too long to download onto my computer but then again I do not have the best or fastest here at home. I can't see my patron computers handling the download either. I could see this in a classroom setting or as with tumblebooks I could do a presentation to a group of kids. I really didn't think much of the free books site as most asked for donations of so much a year isn't that just like paying for a subscription. I did find a link through the site that really had free books about engineering texts or college type books which would be great for an individual looking for that particular subject so... not a lot I could see for me on this one at this time.

Thing #21

Podcast I found it hard to find a site of podcast that I liked at first I didn't like Podcast Alley or podcast.com. I found okay podcast on them like the Harry Potter podcast Pottercast in which J.K. Rowling was talking with others about the last book. and I found Justonemorebook a pod cast about children's books but I didn't like the sites all that well. I did find ODEO which is much more to my liking and there i found some interesting podcast like a story Goblin Lullaby, in Podcastle under literature. I found podcast to teach you french or Chinese but my favorite under literature was the Merriam-Websters word of the day. Today's word was Xanadu and example I will use for this word is to me Alaska is not my Xanadu! I could see doing Podcast for information gathering within a business community and within a school community I could see students and teachers/Librarians using it for reading or just discussions about what was read. I already have the RSS feed for itunes in my blog reader as that is the site I usually like to download my music for my ipod so I didn't want to add another at this time.

Thing #20

Teachertube what fun. I posted Shake It Up! to my blog as it seemed to fit so well to what we are realizing and learning about right now! You can view my choice at the top of my page. I liked teachertube I found it interesting and informative! I didn't like the fact that I lost another hour of the day but oh well. I think it would be fun to explore this further with some fun reading things to do with kids might have to try one on my own first to see how easy it would be to make time wise. I think also if you found a video that was short and good about library issues it would be great to have students view. Is teachertube available to our district??

Thing #19.1

Ah SLED I love it! Anyway the flashmovie for Ebsco 2.0 was interesting in the fact that the new search features are really promising. I especially liked the smart results, source type options, subject search images with it the search results and the breadcrumb trail. I didn't like the flashmovie itself for the lack of sound, but I never liked silent movies anyway. Glad I didn't find any major recalls on my automobile! I set up a folder and a journal alert for School Library Journal. The search interfaces for the different grade levels were nice with the elementary the most eye catching and easiest to use. I did like that in the High School level they had college prep. and careers. Oh also on the elementary search I liked the teacher resource page wonder how come they don't have a Librarian resource page?? Hey did anyone catch the plus and minus signs on sled so you can make the font appear smaller or larger. pretty cool I say. I could see having the Ebsco search interface on my computers for the kids to research subjects that way sure a nicer option than Google. For the teachers I could share in my wiki new or good articles, images and other forms of media so that they could access if interested. I liked the Auto Repair page and will refer to that alot! other things I liked was the SLED toolbar, and off of that I like the QuickRef and AK History, oh and the AK news! The consumer health database is interesting but I think I will still refer to my home medical bible when in a panic, but since I wasn't today it was interesting to see that they had options of images and video under the medical term that I typed in the search box.

Happy Places

My Zoho writer document

Where are our happy places? Are they a real place? A time in history? Just being with someone?

I have many happy places, pretty much anywhere with my family, a certain summer in my teen years, the church where I married my husband, a really great book! The happy places are endless. But the one truly happy place where cares would just fly away would be on a beach on a warm summer day just watching the waves that is a truly happy place for me!

Thing #19

Library thing is a cool site I enjoyed it. I put 11 of some of my favorite books under my account and it was interesting looking at the comments about those titles. I really like the images, links, recommendations, ratings and popularity. Some of my titles were very popular. All my books had a high rating (of course!) some had lots of members and a couple not so many. I liked that I could change the cover of my book so that it matched the copy I owned. The group links were fun to go on and see what others are talking about. Harry Potter is definitely the most talked about under the 4 groups I went to. I liked that the Hogwarts Express group are reading each book and conducting discussions by groups of chapters, very fun to read peoples thoughts and insights to a book. I can't for some reason figure out why the link isn't working on my page it seemed fairly simple, which means it is and I messed it up somehow but I can't figure it right now and will look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow!http://www.librarything.com/ltsw/mySearchWidget.

okay maybe this one will work...