Thing 36: Generate Some Fun!!

 Ah generators! What a blast! (And what an enormous consumer of time!!

I loved using the generators - but find so many of them to be just plain old "fun" and not of much real use. However, here are my favorites:

PDF convertors - I install one of these on every computer in my school and teach teachers how to use them. It helps for sending documents home to parents so they can actually read them.

Graphs and other template-type generators - I'm sharing these with teachers through my "delicious" links, individually, and through short staff development opportunities during staff meetings. They are great, easy to use and fun.

Wordle - The art teacher and I are going to use this as a fun "last week of school" project. In media the students will generate their list of words - their favorite school things from the year (teachers, friends, subjects, etc.). They will pick a favorite layout and print it. Then they'll take it to art and decorate the page with their own illustrations and border.

ToonDoo - I love sharing the funny things kids say - and I continue to look for ways to share them. I need to develop a "media specialist/teacher" character (me) and some kid characters and re-create the funny things I hear every day at school. If nothing else, I could send these out through email to share them with the staff - or post them in the lounge. Our schools are so full of humor, and we need to share it!

I love the name generators! I can never think up a good name, especially for blogs and other usernames. I actually stole one from my sister (purpleloon) and she's not happy about that at all! So I thought these were fun and I'm hoping to get a name I can use for myself out of one of them. 

Thing 35: Books 2.0

It was great to look through all of these book-related websites - some for the first time, and others as a revisit. I have loved using Visual Bookshelf in Facebook, and have been using it for a long time. It has been especially fun to share book titles with my friends and relatives: to see what they're reading, to share our love of specific books and authors, and to introduce them to my reading choices. I have connected with so many people about books, in particular one of my young cousins, and realized we have read many of the same titles. We continue to share our booklists with eachother, and now when we get together for family gatherings, we have so much in common. 

I love using Storyline Online with students in school, but I sincerely wish they would add to this collection. I recently subscribed to Tumblebooks (www.tumblebooks.com) and have found it to be fantastic! My students love it, but so do my teachers. It seems to provide some of the "audio book" needs that they have - and is especially nice for those students who need to follow along while the text is read aloud. Very nice site!

I am intrigued and excited about Bookcrossing! I can't wait to talk to my sister-in-law and her husband, who own a great coffee shop in Park Rapids, about setting Bella Caffe up as a bookcrossing location! I think it would be amazing - so I'll be working on that one. I thought this was a great idea that could really take off!

Then...the book group resources! Awesome! I can't wait to get my book group signed up and begin utilizing these. I was especially excited about LitLovers, which has a great clean interface, and BookSprouts. I liked using the Target bookclub site as well.

One of my passions is finding book and author-related websites for all of the books I use with my K-4 students. I try to keep my own website up to date with these great sites, and add more as often as I can find them. I think Scholastic is trying to do a nice job with their "The Stacks" for kids. It is a great resource with lots of fun interactive activities for students.

Thing 34: Ask the Internet

Since the beginning of Internet time, people have been believing whatever they read. Where will it end?

It is amazing to see the huge number of question and answer sites out there. I have used several of them with students - and consider them to be good reliable sources. I regularly have students use Factmonster.com, for one. 

When do I use online answer sites? When I want to look smart. Really. I do this most often during sporting events on tv. The usual scenario goes something like this:

We're watching the game. An athlete makes a great play and someone in the room (my father-in-law, husband, son) asks "What college did he go to?" They make a few guesses while I turn around to the pc and type in the athlete's name. Bingo. I give the answer to the group and they swoon in amazement. 

These are the easy questions. Generally these types of questions fit into the trivia category. The other time I find myself using sites like these is to help my son with his homework. I am amazed at the resources students have in their own homes, due to the Internet. However, I am also amazed at the lack of instruction and direction students are given in using these resources. I have rolled my eyes many times when my son either doesn't even try the best resource that was suggested by his instructor, or when he attempts to use it but doesn't use it correctly and can't find an answer. 

One of my favorite stories was the high school student who spent an hour in the library on the Internet trying to find research for her topic. She finally threw her arms up in the air and spouted to the media specialist (whom she hadn't asked for help) "There just isn't anything on the Internet about alcohol abuse!"

I do believe that one of the primary roles of a library media specialist today is to teach students (and everyone!) how to access and use the tools that are available to them both inside the walls of the school and through the Internet. I don't think this will take anything away from a good media specialist - but will only add more to the program!

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

Okay - I'm not sure that it's fair. I'm on spring break this week...and I'm writing about travel. I think I should be traveling!

For years I have used Expedia, Orbitz, and all the other online tools to book airline reservations and hotels. I've had some successes ($40.00 5-star hotel rooms on Priceline) and some failures (paid way too much for airline tickets to AZ) but overall I was feeling like I knew a lot about online Travel.

I was wrong! I knew nothing. I had often noticed the "fun stuff" off to the sides of the travel sites, but I always considered them to be advertising and I felt I should stick to my job of finding tickets. If only I had ventured off the beaten path into Travel 2.0!!

The articles in the "More Things" wiki gave me the knowledge I needed to explore further. And did I ever explore!

Travel Blogs: I loved "Lost Girls". I'll probably never get to any of those exotic locations, but it was so much fun to read about all the travels overseas. The amount of international travel a person could explore was incredible -and made me longing to use my passport again. It's been too long! I also really enjoyed "Notes from the Road" - although I read the blog postings from a little closer to home. The posts about the Spam museum in Harmony, Minnesota were a lot of fun to read, and very insightful as well. I also enjoyed Travelocity's blog "The Window Seat" although I found it to be a lot of advertising.

Then it was on to the review sites - and these were great too! I loved Sheraton's Share Your Story site and Boo.com. These lead me into the Travel Journal sites. These were incredible. I'm always at awe over those people who create incredible scrapbooks of their trips - but an online journal? What a creative and exciting idea! I definitely have to travel more. I enjoyed viewing all of them - but thought "My life of travel" seemed to be the cleanest and easiest to use.

Several elementary classes require their students to plan a trip. I was looking at each of these sites to see if they would be appropriate for elementary children. It would seem that they could easily assit with this project. However, so many of these sites are so filled with advertisements - and the ads are very adult. So I'm not sure they would be useful for kids.

That caused me to consider how easy it would be to set up a classroom wiki using these concepts. Then students could do their research, create their links, do their journaling online - and create their own classroom travel journal. It would be very exciting - and I would think you could continue it and create a wonderful kids travel site that would be the perfect online tool for families. It could include all of the things the best sites had: tips, pricing, ideas for fun, ways to get around, reviews, etc. - and all of it geared toward families with children.

I think that would be highly successful...and perhaps something the Pine Meadow Media Center could take on?

Thing 32

It never ceases to amaze me - all that Google has created! I didn't want to stop playing with Google maps as I enjoyed looking at the Park Rapids area where we used to live, our home town of Sartell, and so many of the places I've enjoyed visiting. I can see how wonderful it would be to use this site prior to a vacation or visit - or to assist in planning a trip.

Here's my Google mapping of the Park Rapids area: 

View Larger Map
It is so cool to see all of the places we love to visit. The lake shown here is Potato Lake - where we lived for about 25 years.

The map options are so much fun to work with! Now I think I'll try using Google to find the perfect house to buy...or maybe a cabin in the north woods?

A person could spend literally HOURS on these maps! I enjoyed racing (well, I lost every time) through some incredible cities, looking at the missing children maps, viewing tons of other maps, and then I happened upon the bible map. I can't wait to share this with my friends and family! It was incredible to see the actual locations and how far different regions are from eachother. Once again, amazing!!

Thing 31 Twitter, cont.

Although I have am following a bunch of people on Twitter, am updating my status almost daily and actually have people following me, I still don't really get it. It seems like an extra step - a bother - and I'm finding that I have to force myself to go to it and see what those I'm following are discussing.

There seems to be such a distinct difference between those who are twittering about unimportant things and those who are twittering about educational issues. I like the educational questions and thoughts - and like the links too.

I enjoyed checking out some of the celebrities on Twitter -but as I looked through so many of the other options and "opportunities" they just seemed  more and more like a waste of my time. So...Twitter is one that I am going to set aside for now. Perhaps I will revisit it and find some great educational uses at some point, but, really , for now, I'm not interested.

Thing 29 - Google, continued

I presented our school's technology equipment to the PTO the other night. It was really fun to see their faces as I shared the wireless Airliner Slate (by SMART), a portable laptop and projection unit and a SMARTBoard. They were sold after only a few minutes...and I think most of them were ready to pull out the fundraising efforts and put a complete SMARTBoard setup in every classroom. They were impressed - and it was a blast!

At the end of the meeting I dazzled them with Google 411. No one had heard of it - and every one of them put the phone number in their cell phones. I demonstrated it with my cell phone's speaker on and just asked for Sartell's pizza places. Of course it found all of them, and began to list them with the phone numbers. They could certainly see the value in this service! What will Google think of next?

I think I'm ready to head on into Thing #31, but I didn't feel I had covered this one well enough - so there it is. (Oh - and I even tweeted Google 411 a few days ago. My big thrill was to see that I have 4 followers! Oh boy!)

Thing 30

I have been so big into Delicious over the past year or more that I didn't think I could do any more with it. But then I found popacular! It is so awesome! I just love being able to see the hottest links of the hour/day/week or month!! Now I've found my new passion, I guess!

Now I've been playing with Tagrolls, and I love that too! However, I just can't seem to get the cloud to paste in here. 

Wow! Not quite sure what I did, but once I inserted the html text into this post I crashed my browser. I guess I'll have to try this again. Perhaps I didn't want to show you how it looked with the tagroll in it! Sorry.