Thing 47: Evaluation

MW--All done and survey submitted. Thanks for providing another worthwhile online summer learning experience!

Thing 46: WebJunction MN

I think none of my school library, public library, academic library nor special library friends have joined WebJunction. No luck in finding any of them.

In looking around the site, I see that most of the materials posted for schools come from Bruce Pomerantz, from the state. He's great about cross posting important information. For example, I get an email or two from him and then I see it posted on MemoList, plus someone from the U generally forwards his stuff along and now I know I can find it on WebJunction as well. What is nice is that WebJunction is a central spot to find lots of stuff. For sure I will share this site with my student teacher in the fall--it has lots of good resources to help beginning and continuing school media specialists.

Thing 45: Cloud Computing

Two summers ago (or has it been three?), I started using GoogleDocs. It was a way to do some work when I was not at my school or home computer. It was super effecient and the service has worked well for me. This past school year I've noticed more and more students using GoogleDocs as a way to get their school materials back and forth between home and school. For the most part, it works well. Formatting, on occasion, gives us some trouble.

I haven't moved my whole life there just yet . . . I still rely on the server at work for solid back-up, plus an occasional back-up on a plug in hard drive. For presentations I take materials on a jump drive as I don't want to be caught in a situation where there isn't a reliable internet connection and unable to access materials. A pal uses his Iphone in that same capacity.

Where does it go next? Great question. It seems like we have started some conversations about moving to cloud computing for students in the years to come, especially as it becomes cost prohibitive to keep up with all the technoligcal advance--this is true for both schools and families. Interesting to me, brother-in-law who was once a huge advocate for cloud computing has put himself back on the ground, and pulled everything back to local servers at home and hardwired things. No more wi-fi at their house. Security concerns drove this choice.

This article published last fall from the Christian Science Monitor discusses the impact of cloud computing on the business world and surmises only the powerful will succeed.

Thing 44: The Economy

As the economy has tanked, I feel quite fortunate to have had parents who have taught be about saving, how money works and so on. Also helps that I was raised by parents who were raised by parents who lived through the Depression and have no trouble reusing plastic bags. I knew husband had great potential beyond boyfriend status when one of our first dates I handed him the Happenings book and said "I don't care what we do tonight, but it's got to come out of the book." He laughed with me and many of our future date destinations were from this coupon book.

What's interesting to me is the push back schools are now getting on providing economic education. Certainly its important, but as classes like FACS (a place certainly appropriate for home economics education (saving, budgeting, etc.) become less available because of required courses, where do we squeeze in this info. Students take economics in 9th grade, but will they remember all that they need when it comes time to saying "no" to credit card offers in college? Perhaps, as with many things, this type of education is best done at home with some reinforcing at school. This websites provided in this thing are great for that. I can see making things like the Lee LeFavor video available, having a brief discussion in class and then having a homework assignment in Moodle. The types of economic exploratory activities here go way beyond the classic stock game and certainly would have more impact on students.

What are your cost saving tips?

This summer, we've spent some time on Craig'slist looking for items for the house and for many of our needs, we don't need to have new things. Husband and I are both ok with gently used. For us as we look at the costs of some things, it's an easy choice. My pal Bonnie is also a fantastic garage saler. She's on the hunt for us as well. Regarding other tips, I love coupons, should print off more than we do, try to plan meals around the Sunday grocery ads, Husband bikes to work at least three days a week, so on and so forth. Most of these tips are things we've been doing forever and so when the recession hit, we didn't have to make too many changes in our lifestyle, these things were already a habit. A new habit we hope to acquire in the new house is baking our own bread!

Thing 43: Online TV and Video

When I've missed an episode of a TV show I like, I will take time to track it down and watch it online. Watching online, I find that I don't pay as close attention as I do when it's on the box in the living room. I'm distracted by checking email or looking at FB updates. The quality is not as great, but that's not what I'm after. Mostly, I want to make sure I'm up-to-date on the story line. I do like that you can watch a missed episode in less time than on regular TV (though I can speed up time with our TIVO as well).

I've had fun exploring shows on Hulu and looking at new movie trailers at Apple.

Right now having access to free TV content hasn't changed my viewing habits much. I still like to be comfy on the couch when watching TV (though I know we could get a server for the TV and set that up, etc. etc.) and sometimes I like to watch Gray's Anatomy at the same time everyone else is so that friends and I can call during the commercials. Will free access change things? Sure, we've already seen that with the writers strike and their demands for payment when things go online. How to license creative content and pay everyone fairly is a hot topic! No longer is the guilty warning on the bottom of sheet music not to "reproduce because it negatively impacts the livelihood of the artist" enough.

Thing 42: Music 2.0

Friend Eric introduced me to Radioio a couple of years ago and I liked listening to that when I was working late. No longer did I have to lug around cds, there was a website that had a variety of music formats and I could listen to whatever I wanted. If I were willing to pay a fee, I wouldn't even have to listen to the commercials. Lately it seems that connectivity to this site hasn't been great, so as I have been packing up the house this week I've been listening to The Current via the computer. (We no longer have a stereo or boombox, all is packed away). With the advent of the Ipod and podcasts, I've been able to keep up with favorite radio shows that I sometimes miss and that certainly is a boon! For example, we downloaded a whole bunch of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me episodes to listen to in the car when driving to Chicago. If you haven't heard the recent episode where Paula Dean is interviewed, grant yourself this 7 minute pleasure. It's a hoot!

So will internet radio replace broadcast? I don't think so. It seems like the radio stations figured out the importance of the internet connection to their work before the TV stations did. In order to stay in business, they must stay relevant. They do that by having up-to-date content, making their original content available via the air waves as well as the internet and by hiring fantastic on air talent. Doesn't matter how good the news reporting is on NPR, if the on air talent isn't any good, no one is going to listen. Plus at this moment, the radio stations do have the advantage of a poor economy on their side . . . HD radio is a luxury for many people and in these times, it might one thing to forgo. Remember when new cars came with Sirius radio connections? They were fabulous, but how many people continued the subscriptions?

Thing 41: Mash Up Your Life

Ja, so our life is pretty much mashed up at the moment. Contents of one house locked away in a storage locker. Half the contents of the other house in storage at my parents house, quarter of the remaining contents packed up in boxes around the house leaving a quarter of things to get us through the next three weeks until we close on the new house.

My frustration with 23 Things is the constant registering for web services, many of which we may never use again. (I get that you don't know until you try, but at this stage I may be getting web service fatigue). Thing 41 wants us to register for yet another thing and quite honestly, I'm very happy with my Igoogle page and Tweet deck for keep tracking things. All the gadgets I have added to those pages do fine by me. So to answer the prompt do these services make life easier, some yes and are they productivity boosters? Yes and no, I like having only one place to check for blog, tweet and FB updates. Am I spending more time on FB this summer than last? Yep. Is that productive? Not so much. :-)

Thing 40: Mashup on the Web

Hmm, so first off I looked at Visual Headlines and found the site hard to use because it wasn't immediately clear where to click. After clicking on "Top Stories" the site loaded a banner of pictures to accompany the story "Family Doctors Are an Endagered Breed." The pictures on the banner don't necessarily relate. They were:

• A group of people seemingly standing in a line of sorts
• A man with with his hair pulled back in a pony tail and a pierced left ear
• People welcoming Hillary Clinton to India
  
• A lion
• A beagle on a couch

With each refresh, the pictures change. What is the reader to intuit about the connection between the photos and the headline? Are pony tailed men who also pierce their ears in danger of extinction? Is Hillary Clinton attending medical school while in India? Lions may be endangered, but certainly not a beagle, though beagles are an acceptable family pet. Uffda! All this means to me is that there is even more need to teach visiual and media literacy to students!

OK, now that I have ranted, I went back and looked at the site again. Each one of these pictures was to represent a word in the headline. Blech! Really, the people in India warrant an "an"? I understand the cuteness of what the site is trying to do, however, writing a computer code to match up pictures and words . . . without context . . . all under the banner of news seems irresponsible. Walter Cronkite would not call this journalism!

Also played with booktour.com. Helpful site in looking to see what authors are coming to town, the search feature could use a little work, but certainly could use this site as a starting point. Lazy Library won't work as a site for EHS students . . . outside reading books must be atleast 250 pages in length. (And when did reading short books be come something to celebrate rather than reading something that interests you?? Example--Marley and Me is a book that nearly everyone who picks it up just loves. Doesn't make this list because it is too many pages in length, 320 in paperback )

For this entry assignment, I made a first day of school outfit on Polyvore.

How To Use Polyvore by sarswenson featuring Fendi shoes

(Don't know why I'm getting those "drop and drag" labels. They don't appear at the Polyvore site.)

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

Looking at the Mark Twain lesson plan idea, I can see something like that being done in our building. What it would require is some more direct instruction on powerpoint and a shift in how teachers use the computer lab. I think we could pull off something like that and it helps that the lesson plan comes from a trusted resource like NCTE. The digital storytelling would be a 21st century improvement on the poster, because not only would it incorporate technology skills, it would be yet another chance to work with students locating materials and crediting sources.

Inspired by my friend Barb who was in a scrapbooking phase, I created a scrapblog account a couple of years ago. As I type this blog entry today, I am waiting for Scrapblog to send me my password so I can play around with it some more. (Obviously I didn't do much with it then). I can see having a student worker use this program to put together some fun online displays for the library, but overall I like "Shelfari" for these kinds of things. (It's been a bit and still no response from scrapblog . . . I'm moving ahead.)

Thing 38: Screencasting

Inspired by my fellow high school librarians, I explored Jing this past spring and consequently created a series of Jing videos, one for each of the subscription databases for our school. They are posted at the school website. There was a trial and error period in learning to use Jing, most frustrating was the headset that wouldn't work consistently. Overall, though it was an easy to use product and I'm pleased that we have these quick tutorials for students.

My Jing resume also includes a video done for the district, providing instruction on accessing our new online card catalog. I've also talked with a couple of teachers about putting lectures on their Edline pages using Jing . . . MW, I think we've both tried to get people jazzed about the idea, though with mixed results, the sawhorse in the road being not enought time.

Thing 37: Photo Tales

I had read about animoto in Joyce Valenza's blog. Looks like a great service and should be an easy enough transition for students who have been using Photstory. Animoto was certainly easy to use and I like that it has links to copyright free music. Here's a quick video with some pictures from our trip to Chicago in June:



I haven't used a lot of these sites for online picture sharing. At home, our digital photos are nicely organized into albums on the Mac, using IPhoto. I always think I'll spend more time playing them then I actually do.

Random Things

Two items from a recent American Library Association newsletter that might interest the Twitter users . . .

Discovering The Truth About your Twittering
Marshall Kirkpatrick writes: “How do you really use Twitter? Do you retweet a lot of other peoples’ content, share a lot of links, and respond to direct messages? A new service called Twit Truth will tell you the cold, hard facts about your own use of Twitter. It might sound trivial, but you could also say this service is an example of the kind of conversation data mining that will define some of the most exciting innovation in the future of the web.”...ReadWriteWeb, July 6

10 Ways to Find People on Twitter
Josh Catone writes: “Twitter is all about facilitating conversations, but until you’re following some people, it’s just a blank page. Once you find people to follow and talk to, however, Twitter becomes exceptionally useful. You can share thoughts, ask questions, get updates about news, music, brands, and businesses, and discover helpful links and information. Finding good people to follow can be a bit daunting, though. Thankfully, there are a number of ways you can find people on Twitter. Here are 10 sites you can use to locate tweeps to follow.”...Mashable, July 2

Thing 36: Comic Relief

Shelf Check 356

Ya RLY

Here's a comic that I tried making at Make Beliefs Comix. It wouldn't let me save an image.

Fun to play with the various image generators. We've used some this past year at school including Wordle to make signs for displays and Book Club posters. Also, reccomended a couple of these sites to some students who had to generate movie posters for a class assignment. Photoshop was proving too difficult and these image generators made completing the assignment easier. The only hurdle I can see for teachers is the email account, for some of the sites want to mail things. Creating comics is a higher order thinking skill (have to apply what you know, include humor, etc.) and would be a great summary activity for a lesson or unit.

Here's my Dewey classification. Is it ironic that it matches my astrological sign? I didn't include my birthday.

Sara Swenson's Dewey Decimal Section:
714 Water features
Sara Swenson = 91819354954 = 918+193+549+54 = 1714
Class:
700 Arts & Recreation
Contains:
Architecture, drawing, painting, music, sports.
What it says about you:
You're creative and fun, and you're good at motivating the people around you. You're attracted to things that are visually interesting. Other people might not always understand your taste or style, but it's yours.

Thing 35: Books 2.0

Lots of fun book sites to explore in this "thing." Some I knew and some were fun to discover and I look forward to playing with them a little bit more as we determine what to read for book club in the year ahead.

This year at school I noticed an uptick in students reading for fun . . . it was terrific to see! Students also used blogger for their book journals and by having to comment on others blogs, I think their interest in other books was picqued!

(MW--this might be the lamest post ever. Apologies!)

Thing 34: Online Answer Sites

Customer service . . . seems that libraries which are flourishing in these tough economic times have embraced a solid model of customer service, which includes taking a look at how reference services are delivered. Professional magazines have lots of advice and I've been an outsider looking in as MHS has contemplated how to evolve their reference services. This past spring, the focus of Minnesota Library Technology Conference was on creating useful library spaces for students who were unfamiliar or uncomfortable with traditional libraries. The keynote speaker, Stacey Greenwell spoke of a space she created at the University of Kentucky. The Hub, is outside of the traditional library and really seems to be a large rumpus room with WiFi, comfy furniture, large white boards and is staffed by a young librarian. It's quite popular with students. In a way it seems like a way to meet students halfway, acknowledging that computers are how they do their research now and by getting them into the library, the librarian can help make the bridge to research strategies and finding quality materials.

The question for me after the conference was how to incorporate some of these ideas in a high school. Staffing is limited and in fact, cut back for the next year, but I would like to update our webpage with a variety of different sources, hoping that students will take advantage of what is offered there.

It was fun to explore the online answer sites, many of them reminded me of what long time librarians would call a "handy file" . . . the place where we keep answers to commonly asked questions. Was surprised to see About.com on the list however, that site rarely seems to have what I am looking for . .

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

In our household, we had a Web 1.75 experience in planning a recent trip to Chicago. As a birthday treat, Husband treated me to a getaway to the Windy City. Our planning involved a computer, various web sites and of course, several books.

An Ode to our Trip
With husband was at the keyboard and I at the book,
we quickly planned our trip including chatting up a celebrity cook!

Using Hotwire, we found a room at the Palmer House
And from Frommer's printed guide, we did learn of a grouse
(Spot on!)

For certain we knew at Topolobampo we'd eat
And meeting Chef Rick Bayless was no mean feat!
For fun, we tried another spot in The Loop
Blackbird in Chicago, for it would be fun to tease our friends about this fancy pigeon stoop!
Eating is not all we did,
Rented bikes and saw a museum filled with kids.

All is all a fine trip was had,
Planning done with both computer, book and paper pad.
Two things are for certain, we know by far . . .
Computers help with finding good prices and books with maps are best in the car!

Thing 32: Google Maps and Mashups

Google has a long memory. When I clicked on "My Maps" it brought up the map I made last summer, showing the locations of my extended family. Husband and I have been using the real estate map ALOT this summer as we hunt for a house.

As far as school goes, I can see using this map with a variety of English and Social Studies classes. For example, last spring an AP English teacher and I talked about having her students create a sonnet map using Google Maps, tracking places in a city where sonnets have been written. Unfortunately the idea didn't get off the ground.

For this assignment, I used the timeline feature in Google to get a timeline of the explorer Marco Polo's travels. There was conflicting information about his birth year and birth place, so before I could even create my first placemark, I had to confirm the information in a third source (great research activity for students). I can see this sort of map making activity being a decent activity for a Social Studies class as it incorporates reasearch, geography and computer skills not to mention employs writing skills as students would have to write a description for each placemarker.

Marco Polo map

Thing 31: More Twitter

Just today I uploaded a picture for Twitter . . . small steps here. I am not much of a Twitter user and don't have much of a presence here. As the summer passes I am trying to add more to Twitter, but really am not sure that my contributions to the Web 2.0 world have much impact, primarily because they are haphazzard and aren't all that interesting. Perhaps I should take a marketing class as well?

Despite my lack of use, there's now denying its impact on our society and its staying power. From the election in Iran to the various celebrity deaths this past week, all events have been dutifully logged and shared via billions of tweets. The research from the Pew Research Center, "140 Characters of Protest" sums it up very nicely.

Thing 30: More RSS

Part of my morning routine is to check email and then check my RSS tab page on IGoogle where I keep up-to-date with the blogs of friends, plus follow a handful of professional blogs. I used to throw all my professional reading materials in a pile and once a month take some time to read through the collected materials. Now, I can do that more effeciently each day and then pass along any timely information. Less clutter makes me happy! (Husband, that one's for you!)

The suggested article was a bit overwhelming at first, particularly if you're not interested in how the RSS feed works, but rather just want the information. Their conclusion of "It's easy to get discouraged with RSS" could be applied to almost any new technology. I'll continue to plug away with my Bloglines account and will give their "reader" a try.

Thing 29: Google Tools

Search Tools
The ability to set up search alerts by keyword seems like a publicists dream. No longer do they have to search through newspapers, magazines, websites, etc. for posts about their client, now those articles/blog entries/etc. can be found for them and sent to them in their Google Reader.

Instead of playing further with these tools (though at our house, Husband set up an alert to track everything that was going on with the Iranian election), I chose to play around with the newer search features in Google, namely timeline and wonderwheel. These search features debuted this spring. I played with them then, but haven't looked at them in over a month. I'd like to show our sophomore World History students the timeline feature as it would work well with their Enlightenment project.

Productivity
Husband and I use the Google calendar to keep track of our lives. It's a great way to see who is free and to schedule activities, appointments, etc. without having to interrupt their work day. We each have several calendars (individiual, joint, work, etc.) that are easily combined into one spot. It's been great and I laugh when I think how far we've come from when we used to plan it out on paper--a huge step for husband who never used to keep a calendar at all!

Thing 28: Customized Home Pages

This past school year I created an IGoogle page which I use for tracking news, my favorite comic, FB updates, etc. Also, I created a second tab for tracking blogs. The IGoogle page has been an effecient way to track blog postings (I prefer it to bloglines). I get frustrated when I try to add a new RSS feed because inevitably time has passed since the last time I did it and something has changed in the process. For example, today I wanted to add the 23 Things page for our group at NetVibes and had trouble finding the RSS feed gadget. The gadet I used last time for this purpose is not where I remember it being and a quick search resulted in new gadets and those that I tried didn't work.

I read Joyce Valenza's article about using IGoogle pages as a way to help students track their research. It's an intriguing idea and I'd like to know more about the type of projects that the students used the readers for . . . was it a current events class? Best though was her third "duh" where she pondered if her student users wouldn't be better served by integrating specifc RSS feeds into exisitng pathfinds. That's a trail I'd like to follow!

Thing 27: Twitter

Husband started tweeting in March and I joined then to follow him. It's been neat to see his posts and to learn who's following him. After a conversation with him this morning, he proclaimed that I am Web 1.0 since I follow things and Web 2.0 is all about collaboration. My Igoogle page is filled with blogs that I follow, plus my daily Non-Sequitur fix. I love this tool as it keeps me in the loop with professional things as well as friends. But like the student I was in the classroom, I tend to listen and reflect internally and on occasion raise my hand to contribute. The challenge to me then would be to start tweeting!

Too funny is a recent Tweet from a public librarian. In responding to a common question posed to librarians, "What do you do?" he tweeted "I help mentally challenged people stalk celebrities on the internet. What's not to like?"

Thing 26: Join the Ning

Have joined the ning. In general, I like nings, though am frustrated that our proxy server at schools blocks them. I have read about several nings for content area teachers where lesson plans and other ideas are shared. As I have passed along those links inevitably I hear back from teachers about their frustrations about not being able to access them at school.

This summer, I see myself visiting and contributing to the Camp Read-A-Lot ning as I prepare to attend this conference in August.

Thing 25: Blogger's Toolkit

Turtles. The turtles are a gadget from Google and I added them to the blogger site using the online help at the designingers site, but the gadget isn't working as well as I would like. The turtles are moving quite slowly, more tortise like than turtle like. The problem may be the size of the gadget window. I've been unsuccessful in tweaking the HTML code to resize the window.

Professionally, I apprecriate the creation of so many different gadgets and widgets. This year I added to our school library website a widget which allows users to search all of our ebooks at once. Also, we added a Shelfari page to help display our latest aquisitions. The Shelfari widget reminds me of something I saw last summer on 23 Things . . . St. John's used Flickr to display their new acquistions, each book was linked to a review. Shelfari lets us do the same thing and seems like a little less work.

Thing 24: Refresh Your Blog

Green is the color of spring and summer. This year, seems like those two seasons are a bit intertwined. In honor of a return to 23 Things and to refresh my blog, the new layout color is green. Also notice the charming, or what I like to think of as charming, turtles on the left. Aren't they dear? This summer dear reader, I hope to update you on my reading. On the right side I've added a list of books currently read and will add to it as the summer passes. Perhaps you'll joining me in a reading a title or two!

Regarding the prompt for this entry, I've set up a blog reader page within my IGoogle site for following a number of professional and personal blogs. Now longer do I look at each blog each day, navigating from the favorites menu of the web browser. Now, I log into my IGoogle site and everything is there--super handy!