Thing # 11 LibraryThing

Talk about getting lost for hours! What could be more fun than a site where people talk about books!

Setting up an account was super easy, but I didn't do the profile yet. I'll do that later today. Throughout the years, I've had teacher book clubs and student book clubs. I've always thought it would be fun to have a book club that involved both students and teachers. However, I never want to take up more of the teachers' time. This site, though, would allow for a book club where we could all participate as time allows.

My own personal children have tons of books. People always want to know books to buy them, but I can't keep up with what they already have. If I will take the time to enter the books, I would have it all the books they own in my hands anytime a relative asks, "Does he/she already have this book?"

Thing # 10 Online Image Generator

I looked at several of these sites. As with many of the others, I could spend a lot of time playing on these different sites.

Word Mosaic from Image Chef is a fun tool that I can use to promote novels with my teens. Since we recently started an integrated technology program at my campuses, the teachers are always looking for new ideas for final products. It is one thing to do the reasearch or read the material, but we can only do so many power points. My teachers are always excited about new presentation methods!

My 8th graders do poetry books, so I can see them using the poetry blender to "illustrate" their poems.

When I was in the classroom, I always enjoyed having the kids make comic strips to illustrate the plot of a novel. With the comic strip generator, they would love it!

Thing # 9 Library Blogs

I'm beginning to feel more and more comfortable with the different google tools. As a result, the Google Blog Search is the easiest one for me to use.

This is something else that I could spend hours playing with. I started on the Cool Cat Teacher Blog, then looked at some of the blogs on the blog roll. From there, I moved to another blog roll, then another. Notice a pattern here!

The blog that I am most interested in looking at more closely is A Chat with Mary: A Blog for Teachers. I can see using this when collaborating with teachers. Our campus uses United Streaming, but I'm not sure the teachers are aware of all the possibilities. I also like the way she links some of the more interesting blog posts of the day.
http://achatwithmary.blogspot.com/

I also like the way Technorati has divided the blogs into categories. Something else to explore later.

Topix is not something I will use often. There is too much on one page, so it seems overwhelming. I'm sure I could get used to it, but I don't see myself taking the time to figure it out. The other blog search sources seem more user-friendly.

Thing # 8 RSS Feed

I've never been a huge blog follower. If I stumble across something, I will read it. Sometimes I look at it again; sometimes I don't.

I think with the blog reader, I will be more likely to read blogs on a daily or at least weekly basis. Obviously, the education/library blogs will help me find new ideas or keep up with new books more easily. I've also subscribed to a few blogs of friends so I will be notified when they add new posts rather than having to go into their blogs individually whenever I think about it.

A lot of educators are not comfortable playing on internet. If they learn how to use rss feeds, they can still get the info they need through updates.

The biggest problem I see with rss feeds is how addictive it could be! With so many blogs out there, one could spend a lot of time reading blog updates each day!

Thing # 7 Cool Google Tools

I had previously toured google tools at a conference session. I have a google calendar, but I don't use it often. I still heavily rely on my dayplanner. However, for keeping up with two libraries, google calendar might be a better option. Not only could I keep straight what is going on at each campus, but I could also share it with the staff. Then, they could see when I'm available and what campus I'm at without having to track me down.

Google docs is another tool that I plan to use with my students. I have one teacher that wants to do group papers. I told her Google docs would be a fun way for the kids to work collaboratively on one paper. We didn't get around to it last year, but it is certainly on the agenda for this coming school year. Hopefully we can sit down together to explore the tool at the very beginning of the year.

Thing #6 Mashups

This is the most fun thing we have done so far! I could spend hours playing with all the different mashup tools. The possibilities with trading cards are endless...favorite books, characters in books, historical figures, planets, colonies, states, elements, etc. My kids would also have a lot of fun making movie posters for favorite books. The Captioner and Billboard apps. could be used in various creative writing activities.

Thing #5 Flickr

I've looked at friends' pictures on Flickr before, but I've never really explored the site. I love that there are so many pictures under the Creative Commons group. I see projects all the time where students use images from all over with no thought to copyright. My first project is to educate my teachers about Flickr as soon as we get back to school in August.

I selected this picture by Laram777 because our district-wide theme next year is Surf's Up. Adding it into the blog was amazingly easy!

Thing #3

Setting up the blog was the easy part. Uploading the avatar was a bit tricky! It would show up, but when I went to view blog, it wouldn't be there. I'm still not completely sure what was going on.

I've actually created blogs before, but I never seem to find time to update them.

Thing #2

I watched the video a few days ago, so I've been thinking about this since then.

The habit that is most difficult for me is viewing problems as challenges. That is not my typical first response. Fortunately, with experience, I am learning to get into challenge mode much more quickly than I did in the past.

The habit that is easiest for me is accepting responsibility for my own learning. I am definitely a control freak. I much prefer working through things and figuring them out on my own, rather than asking someone to show me. This has worked well for me with the exceptions of math and playing golf!

Getting Started

I am so excited about participating in the workshop this summer! I'm thrilled to have time to sit down and really figure things out rather than learning as I teach my students.