Thing #21

Using photostory was fairly simple. I was excited to be able to showcase some of my pictures from my Mission in Costa Rica. The only disappointment was not being able to use the song I wanted to play in the background. I am big on music and the music really helps tell the story. I look forward to continuing to use photostory both professionally and personally. I am hoping to continue trying to upload the song I wanted to my story soon. Stay tune!




Yea! Success at last got the new song uploaded. Enjoy!

Thing #20

I searched Teacher Tube as I had never navigated through this site. Wow! I was pleasantly surprised how helpful this site could be to me professionally! You can find a video on so many helpful things in any content are. I loved it! I searched videos on science for kindergarten as our curriculum for this upcoming year has much more for us to teach and I can use all the help I can get. One of the videos I found was on plants. Listed below is the video. Happy video searching!



http://teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=96565&title=Growing_plants

Thing #19

Searching through the Web 2.o Awards list was a great find! The possibilities are endless. There were so many great tools to use that I found myself navigating through many more than I probably should have. I truly think I could have done this all day! Some of the many great finds were as follows-Craiglist,Mango Languages, Urban spoon,bookmarking,mapping applications,live maps,google earth, delicious, and the list goes on and on! The nice thing about this site is everything is categorized and organized so you can easily find the tool that you are searching for.

Their were many sites that would work well in schools and libraries and would be helpful in various content areas such as Google earth, Delicious,Mango languages, Mapping applications, collaborative writing,twitter,etc.

One of the many sites that I really enjoyed was I'm cooked. This is a great place to get online and create your own cooking video. I thought his would be a neat idea to do with my kiddos who love to cook. You also get great ideas for cooking great meals! I also enjoyed Urban Spoon which is a great search for restaurants and provides reviews from critics and food bloggers. Picnik was another great tool for making your photos fabulous with easy to use powerful editing tools. I can't wait to try this tool on my photos from my trip to Costa Rica!

Thing #18

In my exploration of Open Office I was amazed at all of the great benefits this online software program offers. It does everything you want your office software to do the way you want it to. Most importantly it is easy to use, easy to learn and it's FREE!!! I especially liked the fact that you can install it on as many computers as you like or make copies and give them away to family and friends. One of the best features is the support you can receive in your own language. The "no secret" approach allows anyone to look at the program and suggest improvements or fix bugs. In my opinion this is a great way to keep the software current. Installing the software is simplistic-it contains all the software you need- no worries as to which version to install. The best gift of all is it's already installed on our laptops! Microsoft office obviously can not beat some of these great features as it is costly. You are not allowed to download as many versions of the software on your computer-probably a max of three downloads. You also do not get free upgrades for the new version that comes out- Microsoft Office will provide you with a price break when purchasing the upgrade. You also can not create pdf files on Microsoft Office which is a needed feature when sending files from one computer to the next!

Thing #17

Rollyo is a great way to create your own search engine! I loved the simplicity of it all. All you have to do is pick the sites you want to search and it creates a custom search engine for you! With the new changes and updates to our science curriculum this will be very helpful! I used this discovery as a way to get a head start on great sites to use as resources for science. The best part is the safety feature which allows you to create a site that kids can navigate through without worrying that they will view unwanted sites. Can't wait to continue using this as it is actually user friendly and helpful all rolled into one!

Thing#16

Prior to this discovery I was not familiar with Wiki and all that it allowed you to do. It it a great tool for collaborating,adding, editing, or removing content. This is a great resource to use with your students or colleagues when working on a document that requires everyones input. Students could use this as a resource for working on team projects. As a school this would be a great resource for collaborating ideas for a school wide project. In the future I would like to become more familiar with Wiki and integrate this tool into my professional life.

Thing #15

Researching about Library 2.0 was very engaging. I especially like the video that I was able to view on You Tube titled "A Vision of Students Today"-What students would say about the library in the future". This really captured my attention due to the many facts that were stated throughout the video. Students today are faced with far more challenges-2300 web pages, spending 3 1/2 hours online daily, 2hrs on cell phone, 26% reading in class is relevant to their life, 3 hours in class daily, reading 500 pages of email, and the list goes on and on. So much of what was listed rings true to the world of technology that we live in. Students today are faced with a true need for librarians to change the way they serve their patrons well in a world that has changed dramatically in the last decade.

The online article entitled, "Where will the next generation Web take libraries" by Tom Storey was very insightful. I find it extremely important that librarians embrace 2.0 world for there is much to gain by doing so.

Rick Anderson list many icebergs he feels that we need to be cautious of for example:
The “come to us” model of library service. Basically, what he is pointing out is how important it is for us to make libraries accessible from any where the user is in order to compete.

Bottom line is staying current and ahead of the technology game is crucial to libraries success. Its nice to know that there is a forum for communicating ideas to insure that we are moving in the right direction!

Thing #14

While exploring Technorati I learned alot. I first typed in the keyword School learning library 2.0 in the following search engine , blog post,tag,and blog directory but I came up with nothing. After watching the video I was able to understand the purpose of Technorati-basically it is an internet search engine which helps you search for blogs.After much time reading I learned that Schater the founder of delicious wants users to do the tagging not publishers of content such as bloggers,who put tags on their own work in hopes that it will draw readers and advertisers. I agree that tagging is benefecial as it allows to you to organize by specific interest and content. After searching The top 100 in Technorati I found Gizmodo which is great for finding information on electronics. There I was able to view a video of someone who had just purchased the new Iphone 4 and got great information straight from the horses mouth! The guy on the video was very entertaining. It is my prediction that he will probably make a commercial for the new Iphone. Technorati is great tool to explore!