Week 5 Thing #11: Explore Award Winning Web 2.0 Sites

Oh my! I chose from the award winners list and went to the Lulu site for books and they can help you publish your very own book. The do take a cut of the profits, but the whole process is right there. I watched the tutorial on how it all works, and it is amazingly simple. That is one thing I have noticed about much of this Web 2.0 "stuff" is how amazingly simple it is once you get in and play with it. The hard part is keeping on top of it, and finding the time to explore them all.

I wonder about self-publishing, however, and envision legions of wanna-be writers publishing and promoting their books (you can directly market from this site as well, via Amazon and such!) and I do worry about the quality of literature. There is a reason for editors and editing, though I do think the system we have now is so focused on only publishing that which has potential block-buster appeal, that this is a nice solution for those who might be more in a niche market.

I saw that GoogleDocs was the #1 winner for online collaboration tools, and this is one we use as a staff at the school already. I also used this one in planning a road trip with a fellow teacher last year. It is a great tool!

I also use Delicious as well, and love that one. I haven't done much with sharing my bookmarks, but I like being able to access my bookmarks from any computer. Another great tool.

I then explored Docstoc.com and searched under education-teachers-highest rated and found all kinds of useful things my teachers will be excited about--it is a place where other educators have uploaded their lessons, lesson plans, organizational tools, etc. and it has some really good stuff--some garbage, too! It has a sign-up for earning money in some way, though the downloading of peoples' offerings is free--the earning comes in with advertising or something. That would be interesting to explore, to see how you could earn money by posting your lesson plans and ideas. One item I found in particular is a math Jeopardy powerpoint. I know our kids love those, and I plan to pass that on to our fifth grade teachers.

Week 5 Thing #10 blog: Playing with photo apps

I found an application called Blog Header (http://bighugelabs.com/blogheader.php)that turns a photo into a Wordpress blog header, so I took a photo into it and created it--I put it into this site as my profile picture, thinking it would fill the header on my blog, but that is somewhere else. So, then I explored the making motivational pictures (I chose to make mine within Facebook so I could upload it right to my Facebook page: Big Huge Motivational Poster Maker) and had fun with that...I'll insert one I made here. How cool! This would be a REALLY fun app to use with our fifth graders during our technology exploratory...though I wonder if it will be a blocked site.

addendum

Okay, I take it back...I went back to the search I did on blog digger came up with this amazing site where two people review and post podcasts (very well done!!!) on a plethora of children's books--you can look through their list of authors, or you can click on any topic in their list of topics...The site is called Just One More Book...Check it out!

Oh Dear...I just subscribed, got their last RSS feed and they are on hiatus as the woman is battling breast cancer...oh just too much.

More Week 4? Thing 9-Useful Library Blog...

Wow. I checked out the Edublog "Award=winning Blogs" link posted on the classroom website and found the winner of 2008 best library blog, and just one page in that, at quick glance had me sending a link to it to all my 4th and 5th grade teachers. It was a list of all the Web20 tools students should be getting to know and use. Amazing wealth of resources on this one site alone. I could spend HOURS exploring in there...and probably will come the weekend. I added her RSS feed to my Google page. Only thing is, I keep adding so many, it will quickly become a management/time issue! I'll have to go in and cull out the ones I notice I'm not using that often.

I tried out the blogdigger and searched for "school library" and "school library elementary" and found nothing interesting in either search. I'll try the others in another post, as I have reached my limit in eye strain for the day!

Week4? Thing 9 Classroom 2.0

So, I signed up for Classroom 2.0 social network for teachers, and added their Twitter feed to my Google page...sounds like a foreign language. What I like about it is I can get whatever random twitter topics they are addressing right on my Google homepage, and it spurs me to re-visit the website--today I went to look at the twitter feed on using iPod touches in the classroom, and from there went to the main website, followed a link for using iCal collaboratively via Google calendar, and now plan to figure out a way to meld the two calender apps so I can have my teachers manage their own laptop cart reservations without having to email me, then I reserve for them, upload the calendar, then email them back that it is done. I would LOVE to have them all able to log in, reserve a cart themselves, and bypass my intervention entirely! Tonight it is too late to try setting it all up...need a fresh, coffee inspired morning to go there, but I'm excited to know it is possible.

More on RSS ideas

So, I'm busy adding RSS feeds to my Google Reader page, and also adding them to my Google home page, not sure of which is actually going to be more useful. In thinking about how to apply them in the library, I'm thinking of my school library webpage. I wonder how it would be used instead of, or in addition to direct links to author webpages...but then, those are generally static sites, and I think the RSS's strength is in keeping folks connected to info sources that are constantly changing. I'm just not seeing clearly how this could benefit my students, though I suppose it could benefit my teachers if I sent them educational RSS feed links to help them keep updated.

What are others doing? I think next time I check in, I will go look at past participants in this Web 2.0 class to see what they came up with!

Wohoo!

Okay, after looking over everyone else's blogs, I was determined to go in and change my personal photo to my Avatar--couldn't figure it out before. It took me five minutes to do, once I set out to do it. I should remember that working in the early morning is for me the key to clear-headed thinking!

Week 4, Thing #8 RSS Feeds

Well, it turns out I had already established an RSS feed page in Google. Those darn ASTE conferences! We go from room to room in a blitzkreig (sp?) of techno learning, creating accounts for all kinds new-fangle gizmos and thingamajigs, and then when I get home, I can't remember any of it! :)

I have everything from gardening to sewing to yoga in addition to technology, photography and library feeds on there. So many, in fact, it is a bit overwhelming! I think my goal needs to be to streamline it all enough so I can and will actually use it!

I'm wondering if I should have a separate one for personal life and one for my school life--more focused on library, technology, teaching and such. I think that more and more we are merging our professional and personal lives with these technologies, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. If I create an RSS feed blog, and then have a mix of professional and personal feeds coming to it, then turn around and share it with my colleagues or students...where do we cross the line of professional behavior? Hmmm just a thought--same thing with having students/former students/parents of students requesting to be my "friend" on Facebook.

What I like about this RSS reader is that everything comes to one place--things I had forgotten about in the past were sitting there waiting for me when I logged in to my Google Reader page. What I don't like is I have added way too many feeds, and I don't have enough hours in the day to read them all, and my nature is one that likes to be thorough and finish things, so I feel like I'm not "finished" if I don't read all the feeds! Argh!

I really liked the cleaner, simpler look of the Bloglines feed. Maybe I should sign up for that one and make it my "professional" feed and make the Google reader my personal one. I would like to know how others manage the quantity issue and the personal/professional issue!

And another thing!

We will be having a parent info night about Cyber-Safety and ethics. I'm in charge of pulling it together, and we signed up with the iSafe curriculum. However, I have been reading some articles that pointed out that some of these packaged curricula gather data about students and use it for marketing purposes. So I will watch out for that and won't be contributing any real data about our students!

I know that during our parent evening the question of filtering and monitoring software for home use will come up, and I have no knowledge of what's available and what to suggest to use. Does anyone have ideas and/or experience with these?

Week 3, thing #7 Blog about anything tech related

This is more a social commentary related to tech, I think! I have phone envy. Everyone around me has or is getting an iPhone, and I really feel I need one--indeed am professionally obligated to own one! But...it's the cost! How can I justify purchasing a new phone when the one I have is less than two years old and works just fine? While I'm at it, my camera is falling apart (literally!) and is at least five years old, and my computer is a dinosaur....And so the social commentary to all this is: can I really afford to be a cutting-edge, tech-savvy teacher? On my income? As a single home-owner with two girls in college trying to keep up with the latest technology, I wonder about the huge digital divide between those who can and cannot afford it. Just a devil's advocate posting to help us remember that many of our library patrons come to us because they don't have a computer at home, they might not have the technology to take advantage of our library blogs, videos, feeds, on-line catalog and all from home. While ecologically I would like to only have virtual newsletters and use email for communicating, I still do send home paper promotional brochures, newsletters and handouts with those folks in mind who have limited technology access.

I have long wished I could have the school library open in the evenings for parents to bring their children in and just play with, explore, and use our equipment. It would take an extraordinary amount of volunteering to make this happen, however, and I suspect it would become an evening of playing on gamesites...or is that okay?!

Further exploration of Flickr Montage

Okay, I discovered you are supposed to be able to go in and add the specific ID # of the picture you have posted on Flickr. I tried it and it didn't find my pictures. Also tried searching for the tags I had placed on my photos, and it came up with something else. Hmmm. I will play with this more, as I think it has potential, and I will find out if Flickr is indeed blocked at school.

Week 3 Thing 6: Flickr Mashups!

Oh, how fun! I followed the link to the mosaic site, and immediately wished I had known about this when the entire school made mosaics two years ago with a visiting artist. Everything for two weeks was all about mosaics, and we completed six lovely mosaic panels as a whole-school effort that now hang in front of our building. This site would have been a very fun exploratory event to include during computer sessions with students!

The "color pickr" app would be fun to explore when students were studying color in art--I especially like that you can make it lighter or darker tones. I tried searching for some pictures I had posted on flickr, but my titles were too general. I wonder if you named a picture something very unusual and specific, then searched for that within the color pickr app, you could get your picture to come up? I think I'll try that.

I am not sure, but I do think flickr may be blocked at our school, unfortunately...just thought of that. This is a problem I found with many of the cool applications and tools I learned about at the last two ASTE conferences. I think we are in a fearful transition phase wherein we play it safe a block anything not completely controllable. I hope we eventually get to the place where we can just use the tools!