11.5: Thing 11.5

I thoroughly enjoyed this trip to the beach - no sand in my swimsuit and nn sunburn!!

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? My favorite discovery was screencasting. My least favorite was Second Life. Still haven't shaken that sketchy guy...LOL

2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? Just like 23 Things, I have benefitted from the structure. Had I not jumped in, I would've NEVER done this on my own.

3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? Oh yeaH! By commenting on some of the 23 Things group, I leanrded about docstop - very helpful

4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? you guys should win an awrd for this - seriously - someone better enter your product into whatever competition it fits in...VERY organized. VERY concise. VERY well thought-out

Thanks for another fun summer of learning!!!

11.5: Thing 11

Perfect timing for me - I can use "digital Citizenship" for my orientation! This may sound juvenile for the high school set - but PBS's "drivers License" test for the internet is really basic but that's the beauty of it It's a very cool site - and would be great for elementary kids - they get to print out a "license" and everything.

I'm going to incorporate the following points into orientation this year, not necessarily in the order - from digitalcitizenship.net

1. Digital communication issues: cell phone use, i-touch use, IMing, texting
2. Facebook, MySpace guidelines
3. properly using email
4. website evaluation
5. research guidelines
6. properly citing sources and honoring another's intellectual property
7. and more I'm sure

11.5: Thing 10

Second Life. Hmmmmm. It was super easy to become "Jacquelyn Sapphire" - but here's the deal. I'm just as shy in Second Life as I am in First Life! I don't want to visit with anyone. And note to sketchy guy that kept asking me my name...I heard you. I just want to play and walk around and look at stuff and fly if I want to. Can I be there incognito?? LOL

Now, to discuss the use of Second Life by children. I can totally see where geeky, shy kids would feel free to become someone else. Or abused kids could escape. Or maybe children with very few physical possessions could dream. And achieve. Kind of what books did for me when I was a geeky, shy kid. I browsed through some of the kid-friendly sites - they're pretty sophisicated! I think their screen time should be limited, though. It's just like some of the WOW addicts - they actually LIVE there because they find more success there. That's sad.

11.5: Thing 9

280 slides is a GREAT product, especially since you can import your powerpoint slides and not lose anything. Every now and then we have issues where it's a different version of powerpoint between home and the teacher's classroom or the library. 280 slides would make it easier for those kids, no doubt. And of course, don't forget Google's version of powerpoint. There's no excuse now. Slideshare, like Google, etc., would allow multiple students to work and collaborate and synthesize single presentations. That is probably the most important aspect - some of these products are sleeker than powerpoint, i.e. the graphics are more professional looking but really when you get down to brass tacks, the main thing in my opinion is accessibility.

11.5:Thing 8, part 1

Oooooo...I see big potential with jing. Even if I do have to download it. (I trust the TechSmith folks and I'm big on brand loyalty...LOL) I'm going to use it to do my orientation presentation this year. Instead of trying to herd the masses into the library to do orientations I've decided to instead shoot an infomercial, I mean, orientation presentation to send out and post to our site. Sue Waters's blog post about how to do a better job of screencasting has answered several of my concerns. I have the orientation worked out on paper (I'm still one of THOSE people that like to sketch things out, like a storyboard. I still write grocery lists. Yeah.) and all I need to do is shoot the video once I go back on duty. The screencasting is ready to go but I want to record the audio at work. I'm very excited about this project. I've wanted to do it for a long time but I feel I didn't have enough skills to pull it off...I'm almost there!

11.5: Thing 7

Hello. My name is Renae and I'm a television and movie junkie. Hulu is my drug of choice. Second only to All My Children. In all seriousness, there is so much out there. Fair Use is just the tip of the iceberg as far as I'm concerned. Remember how scared we all were (those of us with pre-adolescents that liked to download music)when music companies really started prosecuting? I get the same heeby-jeebies when I think about the mash-ups and mixes that we're coming up with. The Fair Use link helped me reason through it, though. And I believe we should show this to kids - not to just the broadcast journalism kids, either. I'm going to suggest (hi LR) that we broadcast this 4 min. video from the main page to the whole school - kind of like an part introduction to fair use, you know? And then follow up with the documents.
I thoroughly enjoyed playing with the National Geographic videos. I chose one to coincide with my trip to Holland - I came to realize after visiting the World War II AMERICAN Memorial in Holland just how involved we were. 8000 Americans lost their lives just in Holland. You know, I think we don't do our students justice when it comes to teaching them the history of WWII - as Americans we really just think about Pearl Harbor and then we dropped a couple of bombs. I talked with Dutch survivors that had German soldiers walk into their homes and take their food - the whole country was occupied. And they are so appreciative of the American, English and Canadian forces that saved them that they constructed memorials on their own decades before we did.

11.5: Thing 6

Boy, this was a challenge for me. I decided to wait until my son came into town so I could play with his iphone without the Apple guys breathing down my neck. He already had a plethera of apps downloaded so I really got a little bogged down in his toys first. LOL I did manage to download a free wikipedia app for his phone - it was very easy to do and I was surprised he didn't already have it downloaded. I have an apple itunes account because I bought my daughter a mac online a year ago - I just hadn't used it for anything else so now I'm hooked up. I want to visit with some other librarians to find out the best course of action in reference to downloading on the itouch(es) we're getting. I imagine most kids will have their own account but I want to have a general account ready. Maybe something easy to remember.

11.5: Thing 5

GREAT ideas for backchanneling during conferences. Especially the idea of having a friend monitor the chat so it doesn't get out of hand like the sxsw 08 interview of facebook's boy genius by Saray Lacey....I would've just died. And the transcripts can be archived so the feedback is immediate - you don't have to wait for those pesky eval forms. I like the idea of their eyes being on their screens instead of me (during presentations)...I don't like the attention as it is so I certainly wouldn't mind keyboard tapping as long as they weren't looking at me! As for a classroom, I think you would have to BIG TIME set boundaries at the beginning. Otherwise, they would be all over the place in their comments. I'm just as guilty!
As far as Twitter goes, I'm still not quite ready to share my every move with anyone yet - I like being under the radar...LOL Seriously, my Facebook account has been a HUGE step for me...and I go through little spurts of being super visible to leaving the country for two weeks and not touching a computer....I know! I'm a baaaaad girl.
Maybe I'll start tweeting. Arghhhhh.

11.5: Thing 4

I'm back and now that the jet lag is practcally gone, I've hit the beach again. Uploading to youtube. My first experience with video uploading went well. However, I uploaded straight from my camera and found that the audio file uploaded at a different speed. Catastrophe, right? No! It actually worked out better because the video shows my kitten and dog playing or I should say my kitten attacking my 60 lb. white german shepherd. I am laughing through the entire thing so my laughs and commentary are sped up like Minnie Mouse on crack. It's hysterical! I did figure out that I should've dumped it somewhere else first and then uploaded to youtube so at least there was a lesson there. But my mistake came out much better than the intended product :)

I didn't know about SchoolTube - only TeacherTube. Another great place for ideas and an easy place to upload student products. Did you see the list of sponsors????? WOW!

11.5:Thing 3

Skyppe hype - it's real. Out of my circle of friends, I know one couple that uses it to communicate while he's overseas. It (or a facsimile of Skyppe) was utilized in The Taking of Pelham 123 with Denzel and John Travolta. It's really easy to use and free for the most part. I see it being used in the educational and business arenas. One of the unique educational uses I discovered by exploring Vaughn's list of resources is Mixxr - really cool place for language learners to hook up. The list is continuously growing (ways for schools to use it) - virtual field trips, meet an author, collaboration with schools on the other side of the world, etc. And of course business meetings all but require face-to-face meetings so these tools can save loads of money in travel expenses.

One thing I worry about is that we're bringing up generations of kids that won't know how to sit across a table from another person and have a conversation. They would rather text or IM - even sitting literally across the library from the other person. At least with video conferencing, they have to be able to carry on a conversation and speak their thoughts as they flow instead of filtering them as they type.

Bookr, Dan O.... couldn't help myself...

Bookr. Another one of those free products that makes me wonder over and over again...who are these people and when do they have all of this free time to come up with these cool tools... for FREE??? Whomever they are...I LOVE them. I could see using Bookr's book format instead of powerpoint or photostory. I have to confess, though. I "cheated" and clicked on the index menu on the right so I didn't have to manually turn the pages. That option would thrill younger audiences, I'm sure. I noticed that pim pam pum takes donatons - I hope they get some $$$ so they can keep creating cool tools like this one!

Starship Log 11.5: Thing 2, Wordle

Wordle is soooo easy to use! I used the text from The Preamble and edited the color palette (red, white and blue, of course!) and played with the alignment to make something really cool. You can generate top-notch, high-art products so quickly. LOVE it. This could replace the old-fashioned "cut up a magazine and make a collage of who you are" project that I still see assigned every year. I remember reading about different learning styles and the "artsy" type of person could use this format to study key concepts or vocabulary. VERY cool.

11.5: Thing 1

I've watched this video so many times now - and we really are all students of connectivism. It's where we are all going - not just students. Now that we have opened up FB and MS, what I want to see actually happen is that students really do post their research findngs to ther FB account for their use or for collaboraton with their team members. They're not going to automatically do that since they don't see the potential yet - they still think of FB as their social pipeline, their lifeline actually. It's going to take librarians teaching teachers how to use FB - and this forum is going to go a long way in dong that. I hope.

SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER

Love it love it love it. And I'm back on the web 2.0 train so...WOOOWOOO, ALL ABOARD!!! I'll try to tear myself away from the yardwork and the really long list of things I want to accomplish in my household in the next couple of weeks to post and ponder and ride the web train!

Facebook, Schmacebook

OK. So I finally started the Facebook thing since my 30 year HS reunion is approaching and apparently, that's THE place to meet up with everyone. But I'm seriously overwhelmed with the whole thing. If any of my Facebook friends are reading this...STOP RIGHT NOW. JK - what I'm trying to dance around here is that I don't pay much attention to the little comings and goings. I'm a big picture girl...like...did you hit the lottery? Did someone propose? Did you solve the credit crisis? I don't look at it often enough to play the little games and take the little quizzes or figure out what mythical creature I am. Truth is, when I get home, the last thing I want to do anything that requires a log-on or password. The most technologically emeshed thing I do in the evening is fire up the DVR to get my daily dose of ALL MY CHILDREN. That's right...I still watch it, like everyday! I am seriously impressed with you guys, though. I do see some serious creativity out there...and I don't want you to stop poking, pod casting or pinging me...I would miss it...I really would.