Week 15: Wikis

When I read this week's assignment for 23 Things Kansas, I immediately remembered a wiki that a fellow librarian had created and shared with us. She has so many wonderful ideas and has done such creative projects with her students that I knew I had to go back to her wiki and check out what new things she had posted, as well as see other postings from fellow librarians. I added a new activity to her wiki dealing with a new children's picture book that I had developed last week. The wiki site has been changed since I last looked at it so it took a little bit of time trying to figure out how to edit and add to the wiki, but I did it! Check out the following when you have some time: http://libraryshare.pbworks.com

I created a Wetpaint account to do the 2nd activity in this week's project, and found it was easier than I thought it might be to add a page to the 23 Things Kansas Participants page. I hope others will read the comments made by me and others as I found a lot of interesting facts, comments and suggestions on this wiki.

I just want to send out a thank you to all of our instructors for each week's lessons during this project. You all did an excellent job, and I've gained a lot of new skills and investigated a lot of tools and sites I might not otherwise have found the time to examine.

Week 14: Library Thing, Etc

I was very interested in this week's 23 Things Kansas project because I had started a Shelfari account a few months ago but really hadn't had much time to do anything with it and I knew that through this lesson I could really get into the program. I learned how to rate my books and how to edit them from showing them on my Planning to Read shelf to my Have Read shelf. I added a number of my personal books and also a number of books that I had recently checked out of the public library. I hope to be able to use time this summer and put a lot more of my personal books into Shelfari.

I mentioned in the 23 Things Kansas comments that I have a teacher who is using the Delicious Library program to catalog and track the books in his classroom library. He can scan the barcode on a book through the webcame on his Mac and it goes to Amazon and finds the book and puts all of the info into his account. He checks the books out to students through the use of the webcame, also. Is anyone out there using this program or have you even heard of it? I want to investigate it more when school is out and I have time to really see if it is useable for my personal books that I loan to others.

Week 13: Slide Sharing

I was excited when I saw this weeks assignment. I've used Animoto a few times and love to create short videos and I'm seriously considering purchased a pro account so I can make longer videos. I created a new Animoto video just for this project using pictures from our annual Pie in the Face ceremony in December after students bring in food for the food drive. Faculty members and student council members volunteer to be the recepients of the pies and the students (96 this year) all got to throw a pie in the face of their choice. I've chosen to embed the code here and I hope that works. I plan on checking out the other slide sharing options this summer when I have more time to investigate them.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Week 12: Screencasting

This week's 23 Things Kansas activity was a little harder to do than I thought it would be but only because the first three screencast ideas I came up with didn't work for me because my library system operates in Windows format while my laptop, which has the built-in webcam and microphone, is a Mac. I spent 3 days trying to figure out what I could do a brief screencast that someone else might want to know about, then a teacher came to me and asked for help with iPhoto and labeling events so I thought what an opportunity. I created the video linked below using ScreenToaster. It was easy to learn and fun to do and now I'm creating lists of other small projectors like this one that I want to do screencasts for in order to help both teachers and students. I think everyone should try this out. Thanks for making me aware of this wonderful resource.

http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stUEtXRU1IRFtYQVVVXV1fVlRR/iphoto_event_and_photo_title_changes

Week 10: Video

What a fun assignment this has been. I've spent a lot of time in the last 2 weeks looking at all kinds of video on YouTube and TeacherTube. I found some really great stuff to share with teachers in my building. However, the one video that I found that I love because it promotes reading is one I'm sure many of you have seen, but I'm posting it anyway. It was created by a group of students at Ocee Middle School in Florida. My students all loved it and they sang the song all day long after I showed it to them and they still come into the library and will sing part of it to me.

Week 11: Catch Up Week

Well, as you can tell by the date, I really didn't get caught up by Week 11. Too many things on my plate as my mother would say. Trying to make costumes for Chicago production is eating up too much of my time.

Week 9: Instant Messaging

I have been a semi-fan of instant messaging for a few years. However, I don't use it a great deal due to problems receiving some messages in our buildings. On our Mac computers we have iChat and it is managed by our district so that we can chat with other teachers/administators in our district during the day and it has been very useful in that I can send quick messages to teachers about concerns or with questions; however, it seems that many of them prefer using email to stay in touch during the day and we are told that using iChat uses up a lot of our bandwidth so we really haven't been encouraged to use it. I have tried out Yahoo Instant Messaging but was not happy with it. My family and I are using Google Chat because it is one of the few instant messaging programs that I can access at school. I tried the 23 Things Kansas extra credit link but only one other person was on and apparently they were away from the screen. I'll keep trying this because I think it could be very helpful.

Week 8: Cloud Computing

I absolutely love the idea of sharing documents with others and with everyone being able to add information and make changes. I've used Google Docs with the Intel Participant classes that I have taught and it is a great way for class members to share their work with others and to receive comments on their work immediately. I am setting up a Google Docs group to use with our 6th graders as they begin working on a social studies project. Their teachers are excited about how this will affect everyone's learning. A fellow librarian and I are talking about setting up a Google Docs group to use as a basis our Battle of the Books competition next school year. We believe it will be much more beneficial than the way we have been doing it in the past. I am a member of our district technology committee and our chairperson has set up a special Google group for us to share information with each other as we begin looking at our district technology plan. So, just in case you can't tell from this entry, I love Google Docs and I highly recommend it.

Week7: Microblogging

Microblogging has been a part of my life for 2 years as I became a Plurker at that time. I was introduced to Plurk by fellow technology integration friends as they invited me to join and I did. I decided against using Twitter as many of the people I wanted to stay in contact with used Plurk and not Twitter. I don't have enough time to keep up with both, so I decided to stick with Plurk. I became a fan/follower of two librarians on the east coast this week and after following their plurks for a week or so I will decide whether or not to ask to become friends. I've had no trouble finding friends using Plurk.

I would like to use a microblogging tool with the teachers in my building as a means of keeping them informed about new resources in the library, but microblogging is blocked in our school district so I can't use it as I would like. I really wish our administration would see the benefits to technology like microblogging and blogs, but not mine to question.

I don't know of anything like hashtagging in Plurk so I won't be adding any tags unless someone knows how to do that in Plurk.

Week 6: Social Bookmarking

I've had a Delicious account for over a year, but have not been checking it very often to see if my bookmarks are showing up. When I started this week's assignment, I had to locate my password before I could get in. I have accessed several friends Delicious pages because they will send them to me as we work on a project. Using this type of bookmarking is really much better than bookmarking sites on the computer I am using - I actually use Macs at school and both Macs and PCs at home so I'm planning on making much better use of my Delicious account to access the sites I will use both at school and at home. I need to do some research on how to re-organize the bookmarks I have on my laptops and then placing these on Delicious.

Week 5: RSS Feeds and Feed Readers

I have subscribed to a few RSS feeds over the last year. I use Google Reader because I am a great advocate of Google because of its ease of use. I located several new feeds that deal with books, children's literature and education and have added them to my Reader this last week. I really like being able to keep up with new additions to web sites through the RSS feeds instead of going back frequently to check out the possible additions. I have recommended to several teachers that they make use of RSS feeds but I'm not sure if any of them have done so.

Happy Valentine' Day, everyone!

Week 4: Photosharing - Beginning Chapter Books Section

Week 4: Photosharing - Beginning Chapter Books Section
Originally uploaded by brewerl2010

We created a special Beginning Chapter Books section in our elementary library because we had so many 2nd graders who were having difficulty locating appropriate books in the regular Fiction section of the library. We have had this special BC section for 3 years now and it has been a great success.

I had never used Flckr before and found it very useful to have the online tutorial that was posted on our 23 Things Kansas assignment. I want to try to use this as a resource for my elementary school library, as well as for my personal use. I have many family photos I would like to make available to other family members.

Week 3: Online Meetings (Webinars)

I found this weeks assignment for 23 Things Kansas interesting. I've had the opportunity to participate in 3 or 4 live webinars and I've watched a couple of archived ones before this came along. This week I checked out the Kansas Creativity Group archived webinar from the Kansas State Library and found this to be an interesting group. I gathered that the group has ended but would love to find another group like this one that promotes creativity in such ways. I think the 23 Things Kansas is an excellent example of creativity, and I know we will all gather creative ideas from each other.

I love the idea of online meetings. So many times I've wanted to talk with someone face to face about a particular problem or topic because I think it is much easier to learn things that way, but costs and time restraints keep me from doing this. I've used online chats with techs for some of the programs we use at school and it is so helpful to be able to share thoughts and impressions so quickly and get responses even more quickly than thru email. I want to use Skype as a means of communicating with others but it is blocked in our district and so I haven't been able to make use of it so far. I have used Google video and chat a few times in just the last 2 weeks with my husband when he has been out of town for an extended time. It's easy to use but you have to be sure that you both have Google mail up and running to know that someone is calling.

Week Two: Online Communities

Because I'm not a big fan of Facebook, I decided I would like to join the TeacherLibrarianNing and I've asked to join. I found some very useful information on the ning already. I joined this group because I feel I will connect with fellow teacher librarians around the world/country and this will only add to my knowledge.

Through this ning I became familiar with Shelfari and I signed up for a Shelfari account and have put a widget to my Shelfari page on my blog. I hope some of you will take a look at it and decide you might want to become a part of Shelfari also. I've only begun adding my books to my bookshelf, and I would love to have suggestions for new books to read for my own pleasure.

I would love to use a ning like this for my school library, but at this time all social networking sites are blocked in our district.

The TeacherLibrarianNing link is http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/

Week one: Blogging

This is going to be an exciting activity - 23 Things Kansas. Great way to learn new things and so I hope everyone will be patient as we all learn together.

I am a K-6 librarian at Nickerson Elementary School. We are a small school with approximately 365 students enrolled this year. I've been a school librarian for the last 16 years, although I've been an educator for 38 years. I began as a high school senior English teacher in Oklahoma and when I moved to KS I taught jr. high English for 9 years before taking on the job that has always been my dream job - school librarian.