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.