Thing 40

Okay - what could be more fun than the Wheel of Food? This is one that is perfect for the indecisive family - and mine fits the bill every time! Now when someone asks "where should we go for dinner?" we'll be able to actually come to a decision. What a fun little app!

Visual Headlines: I can imagine that today's visual headlines (April 27) will be all about the swine flu! It was a pretty fancy interface, but moved very slowly. I wasn't impressed - although I think it had lots of possibilities. It just had too many little quirks to make me think I would ever recommend it. 

The "walkability" score of my neighborhood was incredibly low. I guess we don't have the things around here that score high. Kinda disappointing, because I think we have a beautiful walk.

I also tried out Google's history timeline, which I think fits in with these very well. It's a great way to get an overview of what was taking place during each decade, at least according to Time Magazine!

Thing 39

I think the digital storytelling and escrapbooking is fantastic!

I was familiar with voiceThread, and had shared it with the CMLE audience just last week. I think this is a website that is an incredible tool for schools. There are so many ways that this could be used - from sharing projects, to book reports, to understanding concepts and getting multigenerational comments from people. There is just so  much that can be done!

I also enjoyed looking at Scrapblog, Framento and Scrapo. To me these seem like they would be more useful for home use - but they would be fun at school as well. I am always encouraging teachers to post pictures of their activities in order to send them out to families. The bonus is that grandparents who live thousands of miles away can also view them - but most are so secure and nonthreatening for students. 

These are excellent tools - and I look forward to sharing more of them with my teaching staff. I thought VoiceThread would make an excellent conference breakout session, and a great "Techie Tuesday" item for my staff. I think the others would be great for teachers to learn, but would also be fun to share with parents in a community education program.

Thing 38

I found the applications i learned in this lesson to be incredibly useful and helpful for schools!

The first one I really spent time with and shared with all the media specialists in my district was wink - the way of compressing powerpoint slideshows. They can get so unwieldy - so this was very helpful.

Then I spent a lot of time looking at jing - and I was really excited about the possibilities with that one! I intend to create a lot of tutorials for my staff using it - because so many of them really want and need to be walked through all of the screen shots, and it is so easy to  do that by creating it in jing. What fun!

Skitch was also a blast to work with. I thought these were great - and I can really see a lot of applications for school use. I found them to be very easy to use and a person could put some very professional-looking tutorials together very quickly. Thanks!

Thing 37

Wow! It's been a while since I've gotten any work done on my "things". I played around with the fun digital storytelling tools a few weeks ago and then didn't get back to them to write about them. 

I love Animoto. I think I enjoy it so much because it is so intuitive and so very simple.  It's just so amazing how quickly you can put together something that looks so professional. I can't wait to share it at school!

I enjoyed playing with all of the great photo programs again. I'm not always sure how students could use these at school, because we are so limited on the number of cameras we have - but I have always thought it would be fun to have students create their own "year-end" video selecting the pictures they'd like to use from our folder of yearbook photos. I've never felt I could do this because of the strain on the network. I need to look into this and find out how network intensive it is. If it's not bad this would be a wonderful year-end project!

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!