Week 9 Thing 23- I DID IT !!

What a journey this was!! I have taken in so much in the past weeks that my head is still spinning with ideas.
The last discovery was with Copyright and Creative Commons. This is a great site that offers information on protecting creative materials with flexibility. You can choose the kind of license you need. The video " A Fair(y) Use Tale" explains the copyright laws by using Disney clips(legally).

Week 9 Thing 20-21-22 ebooks, Podcasting and YouTube

This lesson included looking at YouTube. I discovered several sites from children's authors that I will incorporate into my lessons. Reading Rocket offers many. I downloaded a few to share with my students. I found several videos that would make good inservice material as well. Not sure if I'm ready to create my own YouTube, but I find them fun to watch and many useful. I also looked at TeacherTube.

Podcasting is another tool that I find interesting. I looked at EPN and the Ipods site. I was not successful in pulling up the other sites from the links provided. I did download from NPR, one of Daniel Pinkwater's session. I will attempt to include on my blog.

In researching the ebooks, I found it to be not so interesting. I'm not sure why ? World ebook Fair, Guttenburg and LibriVOx were the sites I tried. LibriVox was not available because of archival issues. I realize that this is just another tool to bring information to us in the 21st century, but being an elementary teacher, the idea of ebooks just doesn't seem cozy enough to me.

Week 8 Thing 18-19 continued

Today I explored ZOHO Writer. This is a great idea- Having all these word and text tools in one place. Especially for myself and others who travel between buildings. I am hoping to use this format to create an electronic newsletter to our teachers. I will definitely come back to this site and explore some more. This was so easy to import from their site on to blogger.com

Week 8 Thing 18-19

This week I added a great "Tool" to my bookbag. It is called LibraryThing. It is a great organizer for books and other media. I will use this for cataloging my own personal books that I use in our libraries. Perhaps this will help me remember where they are as well. LOL
Here is my link so far. http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bookberry

It was interesting to see how many others included the same titles as I.

Week 7 Thing 16-17

This lesson came at just the right time. I'm collaborating with a 6th grade teacher and her Book Club groups. I have created a wiki to enhance the students experiences while reading their novels.
I will introduce the "Wiki" to the students by using a PowerPoint that I found on one of the blogs during our class time and the teacher will follow up by posting questions and discussion topics. Not sure if our technology can handle it, but we will try.

I can see this wiki being valuable as a book sharing tool as well.

In exploring the suggested sites, I have found many activities that would be great to incorporate into my lessons. Such as using the trading cards to enhance my third graders animal reports.
Using Flickr to jazz up my electronic newsletter to the staff.

I am experiencing difficulties in adding to the PA curriculum site. I will try again later

Week 6 Thing 15

After spending many hours on this class, reading articles and blogs on the future of our libraries and how students learn, I feel assured that technology will be ever wired into our learning and our lives. The question is how does one keep up?
It is all exciting, it is fast paced and always changing. Just when you feel comfortable with one "tool" or way of teaching students, another evolves.

My goal is to learn at least 2 new "tools" this school year and incorporate them into my lessons. It is like my job at the three elementary libraries, you do the best that you can and realize that you may never catch up! BUT it is fun trying !!

Week 6 Thing 14

Technorati is a tool that I spent some time with. Just exploring, reading several articles and blogs on technology. I liked how one has access to photos and videos as well as the written work. I now understand how and why "tagging" works. It brings everything together for you.
I would like to come back to this site to research more. Not sure if this would be used in our elementary schools.